Christina Schulze Föcking

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Christina Schulze Föcking (2019)

Christina Schulze Föcking (born November 19, 1976 in Emsdetten ) is a German politician ( CDU ). From June 30, 2017 to May 15, 2018, she was Minister for the Environment, Agriculture, Nature and Consumer Protection of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia in the Laschet cabinet .

Origin, education, profession and private life

Schulze Föcking grew up in a conservative family background in Steinfurt . In 1996 she obtained the advanced technical college entrance qualification (school part after grade 12). After completing her professional training as a state-certified farmer, she ran a family farm in Burgsteinfurt together with her husband until June 30, 2017 .

Christina Schulze Föcking is married (her husband Frank took the family name Schulze Föcking after the marriage) and has two children.

Political activity

Political party

In 2006 Christina Schulze Föcking became a CDU member. Since 2007 she has been a member of the Steinfurt CDU district executive and since 2010 chairwoman of the Steinfurt CDU district association. In addition, she is a member of the CDU District Executive Committee Münsterland and the District Executive Committee Münsterland of the Women's Union. Schulze Föcking is chairwoman of the CDU district agricultural committee in Münsterland and has been a board member of the CDU agricultural committee in North Rhine-Westphalia since 2007. There she was deputy chairwoman from 2009 to 2011 and chairwoman from 2011 to 2019. From 2014 to 2019 she was also chairwoman of the Federal Committee on Agriculture and Rural Areas of the CDU in Germany . Since 2019 she has been chairwoman of the Federal Committee of Equal Living Conditions in Town and Country.

Member of the NRW state parliament (since 2010)

In the 15th legislature of North Rhine-Westphalia state parliament Schulze Föcking took over as the directly elected Member of Parliament in the constituency Steinfurt I succeed Hannelore Brüning . Schulze Föcking was elected with 49.6% of the first votes; the second-placed candidate received 30.5% of the vote. Since November 4, 2010 she has been chairwoman of the CDU district association Steinfurt, succeeding Karl-Josef Laumann . Schulze Föcking was a full member of the Petitions Committee and the Committee for Climate Protection, Environment, Nature Conservation, Agriculture and Consumer Protection, as its spokeswoman for the CDU parliamentary group. As a deputy member, she sat in the committees for schools and further education as well as economy, energy, industry, medium-sized businesses and crafts.

Schulze Föcking has been a full member of the Family, Children and Youth as well as Culture and Media committees since 2019. She is a deputy member of the Committee for Economic Affairs, Energy and State Planning.

From 2011 to 2019 she was also the state chairwoman of the agricultural committee of the CDU NRW and from 2012 until her appointment as minister she was also the spokeswoman for the CDU parliamentary group for agriculture, consumer protection and rural areas.

NRW Minister of Agriculture (2017-2018)

On June 29, 2017, Prime Minister Armin Laschet announced that Schulze Föcking will join his cabinet as Minister of Agriculture from June 30, 2017 . The following day she was sworn in in the state parliament and took up her ministerial office. On May 15, 2018, she announced her immediate resignation. In this context, the Bund der Steuerpayers (BdSt) NRW criticized the 12-month transitional allowance , which the former minister can receive for almost 11 months in office: 16,700 euros gross for the first 3 months, then half of the amount for a further 9 months. The BdSt asked Schulze Föcking to forego these payments, as she, as a member of the state parliament, is currently adequately secured with around 11,000 euros gross monthly.

Allegations of fattening pigs on the family farm

In a report by the television program Stern TV in July 2017, a farm was criticized in which the minister and her husband, Frank Schulze Föcking, each had a 50 percent share at the time of the filming in question and which has been managed by her husband since July 2017 becomes. The magazine published footage of the animal welfare organization tierretter.de e. V., which was supposed to uncover alleged violations of animal welfare in the pig farm of the family business. A veterinarian confirmed on the program that the existing injuries must have occurred over a longer period of time and that the animals could only be euthanized.

After the allegations were published, Frank Schulze Föcking commented. He admitted that bite marks had been found on individual piglets, but that the animals had been looked after by a veterinarian. Of the 940 piglets that were delivered to the farm in March 2017 and that were “behaving abnormally from the start”, 31 animals were emergency slaughtered or they perished .

The Albert Schweitzer Foundation for Our Environment filed a criminal complaint against Schulze Föcking with the public prosecutor's office in Münster for torturing animals. On July 26, 2017, the public prosecutor's office in Münster announced that it would not initiate an investigation against Christina Schulze Föcking. After reviewing the existing contracts, according to the authorities, it was “proven that Schulze Föcking was not responsible for keeping animals for the period of the recordings”. Although she used to be the head of the fattening farms in Steinfurt, since she moved into the state parliament in 2010, she has gradually withdrawn from its management and from looking after the animals. On September 19, 2017, the public prosecutor finally closed the case, as no evidence-based suspicion of a crime under the Animal Welfare Act could be established.

Abolition of the environmental and consumer crime department

Beginning in 2018 managed Schulze Föcking in their ministry formed in 2004, department of environmental and consumer crime from. According to the ministry, all tasks of the staff unit should be retained and now be divided between three departments. In connection with the abolition of the staff position, the Westfalenpost also reported on unrest in the ministry because of several controversial personnel decisions by Schulze Föcking. In government circles one speaks of the minister's weaknesses in personnel management. A “very robust tone in the house” was also reported.

On April 18, 2018, research by the WDR became known, according to which, in a question hour of parliament in mid-March, inquiries from the SPD and the Greens about the dissolution of the staff unit by Schulze Föcking had not been answered truthfully. The WDR was allowed to inspect some of the files of the Environmental Crime Unit. According to WDR, the files contradicted various statements made by the Environment Minister during Question Time. The minister had claimed that the staff unit was mainly concerned with the protection of species and here again with the tracking of birds of prey . In fact, only 73 of the total of 663 files in the administrative department's files dealt with the protection of birds of prey. So the share was around ten percent. Mostly it was about illegal waste imports, soil, water or air pollution, animal and consumer protection. For example, in the case of the Dortmund "Envio" scandal, Schulze Föcking expressly denied the involvement of the staff unit: "[...] during the entire period, no contact was made with or by the staff unit environmental crime". However, there were numerous e-mails, file notes and meeting minutes in the 34 folders of the staff unit, which demonstrated close cooperation and participation in the “ENVIO project working group”. According to Minister, the Office was not in a environmental scandal involved in Cologne, in which thousands of liters of kerosene from an oil refinery the company Shell , the groundwater had contaminated. The files, however, showed that the responsible public prosecutor wanted to close the case in 2012. With a 20-page expertise , the then head of the Office protested. The further investigation ended with a fine for Shell in the amount of 1.8 million euros. One of the last files of the staff unit dealt with "Pig farming operation Schulze Föcking - Stern TV on July 12, 2017". However, there were only collections of the well-known journalistic publications on this subject.

Alleged hacker attack on television by Minister Schulze Föcking

On March 15, 2018, Schulze Föcking and government spokesman Wiermer claimed that unknown perpetrators had gained access to the WiFi in the Schulze Föcking family's private home. A recording of the State Parliament's Question Time on the incidents on the family's private farm was played on television, apparently suddenly. The allegation of a hacker attack was based on a police report, a "WE report" without any investigation results. Government spokesman Wiermer spoke of "obviously criminal encroachments on the minister's privacy". Shortly afterwards, the parliamentary groups of the CDU, SPD, FDP and the Greens expressed their solidarity in a joint declaration with the minister.

It was not until May 7, 2018 that it became known that "the video transmission was triggered unnoticed and unintentionally by a device authorized for the home network in an adjacent family apartment". Schulze Föcking had already been informed of the result of the computer forensic investigation by the LKA on April 18. The LKA had explained to her that there was no initial suspicion of a hacker attack. After the alleged hacker attack turned out to be an operating error by the Schulze Föcking family, both the justice committee and the environmental committee dealt with the process. As questions remained unanswered, the opposition applied for a committee of inquiry to deal with the "hacker attack", but also with the conditions in the pigsty of the Schulze Föcking farm and with the dissolution of the staff unit.

Web links

Commons : Christina Schulze Föcking  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Agriculture Minister Schulze Föcking resigns. In: spiegel.de. May 15, 2018, accessed May 15, 2018 .
  2. ↑ State election 2010 results in North Rhine-Westphalia ( Memento from December 17, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ Schulze Föcking follows Laumann. In: AZ Allgemeine Zeitung (Münsterland). Retrieved November 5, 2010 .
  4. ↑ Laschet names the cabinet. In: rga.de. June 29, 2017. Retrieved June 29, 2017 .
  5. ↑ 12-month transition allowance for an 11-month term of office: Taxpayers' Association demands waiver , BILD Online from May 16, 2018
  6. ↑ a b Unfortunately, these conditions are not uncommon in pig fattening. In: stern.de. July 12, 2017. Retrieved July 13, 2017 .
  7. ^ Statement by the Schulze Föcking company to stern TV. In: topagrar.com , July 13, 2017
  8. ^ A b Christian Wolf: Schulze Föcking case - What is known so far. In: wdr.de , July 19, 2017.
  9. ↑ No investigation against Minister Schulze Föcking. In: Westfälische Nachrichten (online) , July 28, 2017.
  10. ↑ Public Prosecutor's Office Münster ( Memento from September 27, 2017 in the Internet Archive )
  11. ↑ Answer of the state government to Small Question 665 of December 22, 2017 by MPs Barbara Steffens, Verena Schäffer and Norwich Rüße BÜNDNIS 90 / DIE GRÜNEN Drucksache 17/1598. In: Umwelt.nrw
  12. ^ Abolition of the environmental crime department: Greens criticism. In: Westfälische Nachrichten , March 7, 2018
  13. ↑ It's all a question of ideology Comment by Martin Korte Westfalenpost from March 7, 2018
  14. ↑ Personnel changes cause unrest in the Ministry of the Environment. In: Westfalenpost , March 7, 2018
  15. ↑ WDR research: NRW environment minister evidently misled the state parliament // Misleading information about the environmental crime department - connection with animal welfare allegations on the Schulze Föcking farm? In: presseportal.de. Retrieved April 18, 2018 .
  16. ↑ Hackers hijack Minister Schulze Föcking's television set. In: Westdeutsche Zeitung , March 16, 2018
  17. ↑ But no hacker attack on Schulze Föcking's television set. In: wdr.de , May 7, 2018
  18. ↑ Fridtjof Küchemann: Schulze Föckings TV - Media incompetence. In: FAZ.net. May 9, 2018. Retrieved May 15, 2018 .
  19. ^ Committee of inquiry deals with Schulze Föcking. In: Aachener Zeitung. May 10, 2018, accessed May 10, 2018 .
  20. ↑ “Hacker attack” on Minister was just a TV operating error. In: welt.de. May 8, 2018, accessed May 10, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Schulze Föcking, Christina
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (CDU), MdL
DATE OF BIRTH November 19, 1976
PLACE OF BIRTH Emsdetten