François-Xavier de Donnea

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François-Xavier de Donnea (left) with the trade diplomat Colin Evans (2009)

François-Xavier de Donnea (born April 29, 1941 in Edegem ), with full name François Xavier Gustave Marie Joseph Corneille Hubert Ritter de Donnea de Hamoir , is a Belgian politician of the Mouvement Réformateur party (MR) and professor emeritus of economics. He is a long-time parliamentarian, former defense minister and prime minister of the Brussels-Capital Region . At the local level, he was Mayor of Brussels .

Life

François-Xavier de Donnea was born in Edegem to a Liège and an Antwerp woman. Because of this, he has a command of the French language as well as the Dutch.

He graduated from the Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL) with a degree in applied economics in 1963 . He then obtained a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from the University of California, Berkeley (1965), a license in economics (UCL, 1968) and finally obtained a doctorate in economics from Erasmus University Rotterdam in 1971 . As a student he was a member of the Olivaint Conference of Belgium .

He continued his academic career at UCL, where he first held an assistant and lecturer position and became Professor of Economics in 1980. He has been retired since 2006.

François-Xavier de Donnea was the first in his family to become politically active. He took his first steps in politics in 1974 as head of cabinet of Etienne Knoops , former State Secretary for Economic Affairs and member of the Rassemblement Wallon (RW). From 1976 to 1977 he was Assistant Head of Cabinet to the Minister for Foreign Trade. Together with Knoops, Gol and Perin , he joined the Liberals des Parti Réformateur Libéral (PRL, today MR ) after a short time , where he rose very quickly in the internal party hierarchy (Secretary General from 1982 to 1983).

He received his first mandate in 1981 as a co-opted senator . In 1983 de Donnea received the post of State Secretary for Development Cooperation in the government under Wilfried Martens ( CVP ). Two years later he was entrusted with the post of Minister of the Brussels Region and Minister of Defense (1985 to 1988). During this time he was nicknamed "Top Gun" (after the film of the same name ) because he liked to show himself in action in front of the press as a tank driver or copilot of an F-16 .

After his time as minister, de Donnea was active as a parliamentarian in the Senate , the European Parliament and finally in the Chamber of Deputies. This allows him to concentrate on the city of Brussels, where he became mayor in 1995. In this capacity, among other things, he performed the civil marriage between the Belgian heir to the throne Prince Philippe and Mathilde d'Udekem d'Acoz in 1999 .

In 2000 he lost the mayoral election in Brussels to Freddy Thielemans ( PS ). However, in the same year he took over the office of Prime Minister of the Brussels-Capital Region , as the outgoing Prime Minister Jacques Simonet (MR) wanted to take up his mandate as Mayor of Anderlecht . After the regional elections of 2003, de Donnea announced that he no longer wanted to be available as Prime Minister and was replaced by Daniel Ducarme (MR) in this office.

In 2008, de Donnea surprisingly returned to the limelight when he was appointed "royal mediator" on July 17th by King Albert II, along with Karl-Heinz Lambertz ( PS ) and Raymond Langendries ( cdH ) to find solutions for the ongoing Find state crisis.

Since the end of this assignment, François-Xavier de Donnea has made less political appearances.

Honors

De Donnea is Grand Cross of the Order of Leopold II and Grand Officer of the Order of Leopold . He also carries numerous foreign awards: Officer of the French Legion of Honor , Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany , Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic , Grand Cross of the Swedish North Star Order and many others.

He has also had the honorary title of Minister of State since 1998 .

Overview of political offices

Web links

Commons : François-Xavier de Donnea  - Collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lalibre.be: François-X. de Donnea, dessus de mêlée (July 18, 2008) (French)
  2. ↑ De Tijd: Koning benoemt drie bemiddelaars (July 17, 2008) (ndl.)
personal data
SURNAME Donnea, François-Xavier de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Belgian politician, MEP
DATE OF BIRTH April 29, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH Edegem