Franz-Christoph Zeitler

Franz-Christoph Zeitler (born August 9, 1948 in Augsburg ) was Vice President of the Deutsche Bundesbank and representative of the President in the Governing Council from 2006 to 2011 .

Life

Zeitler passed his Abitur in 1967 at the humanistic grammar school near St. Stephan in Augsburg. He then studied law at the universities of Munich , Lausanne and Oxford from 1967 to 1971 as a scholarship holder of the Cusanuswerk and the Maximilianeum Foundation (doctoral stay). A year later he received his doctorate in constitutional and international law .

From 1975 he worked in the tax department of the Bavarian State Ministry of Finance . In 1990 he became head of the tax department. In this function he worked on the tax policy concepts of the Bavarian state government ("Tarif '90") and designed the linear-progressive income tax tariff, which was in effect from 1990 to 1996. At the beginning of 1991 he was appointed to the Federal Ministry of Finance by the then Federal Minister of Finance Theo Waigel as a permanent state secretary and worked there until 1995; His term of office included, among other things, the 1993 Site Protection Act with relief for companies, especially small and medium-sized enterprises (including the introduction of a "savings depreciation" with regard to the irregular investment rhythm of medium-sized companies), and the "20-point plan for tax simplification" 1994, as well as the preparation of the European internal market. In connection with the harmonization of the internal market and the Financial Market Promotion Act , a total of seven taxes were abolished. These included the stock exchange sales tax and the very complicated company tax, as well as some consumption taxes, such as the tax on lamps and tea. In order to bring the tax legislation “into calmer waters”, he pursued the plan to submit only one summarizing tax law (“annual tax law”) per year.

From March 1995 Zeitler became President of the State Central Bank in Bavaria and thus a member of the Central Bank Council of the Deutsche Bundesbank . In November 2000 he raised together with the then Minister of Economics Wiesheu and the managing director of Bayer. Bankenverband Picker launched the “Finanzplatz München Initiative”, which as a discussion forum and lobby group for the Bavarian financial sector has around 50 member companies (fpmi.de) and of which Zeitler has been an honorary member since 2011. After the centralization of the Bundesbank from May 1, 2002, Zeitler was appointed a member of the Board of Directors and from June 1, 2006 he was appointed Vice President of the Deutsche Bundesbank. On the board of directors, Zeitler was initially responsible for the areas of cash and law, and from May 1, 2007, he was responsible for banking supervision and law. As Vice President, Zeitler accompanied and represented the President of the Bundesbank at the meetings of the Governing Council. He was a member of the Eurosystem's “High Level Group on Banknote Policy” and, as the German representative, negotiated the “Basel III” international rules for banks' equity and liquidity together with BaFin in the “Basel Committee on Banking Supervision”. Zeitler warned early on that the Stability and Growth Pact would weaken in 2005.

In numerous essays and lectures, Zeitler dealt with the structural and regulatory causes of the financial crisis of the years from 2007 onwards. The advocate of the euro pleaded for a further development of the institutional framework of the monetary union and the like. a. by strengthening the Stability Pact and a “right of resolution” for countries in the euro area in order to create a procedure within the monetary union that, through more market discipline, increases the pressure to adhere to budgetary consolidation requirements and improve competitiveness. He sees the "core of European identity" in the connection between "value orientation and rule-based compliance". While he considered the interest rate hikes of the ECB in the financial crisis of 2007 and later to be sensible, he criticized the "ongoing low and negative interest rate policy" and the acquisition of government bonds by the ECB even in the years of economic recovery after the financial crisis.

University of Augsburg

In 2001 Zeitler was made an honorary professor for public law at the University of Augsburg , where he mainly dealt with legal and economic aspects of monetary policy in lectures and seminars.

politics

Politically, he was involved in the CSU and the Junge Union. From 1979 to 1982 he was Deputy Federal Chairman of the Young Union of Germany.

Engagements

Zeitler holds a number of honorary positions, including on the board of directors of the Cusanuswerk bishop's scholarship and in the Bavarian Union's economic advisory board and is a member of the board of trustees of various organizations (including the Maximilianeum Foundation, the Ifo Institute for Economic Research, the Hypo-Kulturstiftung, the Max- Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance, the Association of Friends of the Glyptothek and Collections of Antiquities, as well as the Friends' Association "House of Bavarian Costume Culture and Costume History"). From 2001 to 2010 Zeitler was an honorary member of the board, later a member of the advisory board, of the Münchner Steuerfachagung eV, and from 2001 to 2010 chairman of the support association for the humanistic Wilhelmsgymnasium in Munich. From 1990 to 2014 he was Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Charles' Arenberg Foundation for Cancer and Child Aid.

He is a member of the “Finanzplatz München Initiative”, the board of directors of the Wittelsbach Compensation Fund (from 2014) and the “Münchner Tafel eV”. Zeitler is a member of the Catholic student association KSSt.V. Alemannia Munich .

Franz-Christoph Zeitler was involved in numerous social projects in the Holy Land . In 1998 he was appointed Knight of the Order of the Knights of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem .

Awards

• 1994: Bavarian Order of Beer
• 2000: Bavarian Order of Merit

Web links

• Literature by and about Franz-Christoph Zeitler in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Bundesbank: Tasks and Organization - Board of Directors - Franz-Christoph Zeitler ( Memento from June 1, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
2. ↑ Börsenzeitung April 2, 2009, p. 4 bank supervisor
3. ↑ Taxes and Commerce, Volume 3, 1993, p. 3 Site Security Act: Success for medium-sized companies ; the savings depreciation was continued from 2008 as "investment deduction amount" (see § 7g EStG)
4. ↑ Deutsche Steuerzeitung No. 23/24 1994, pp. 705 ff. (706) Tax simplification - the way to the goal
5. ↑ Handelsblatt December 14, 2005, p. 24 Zeitler is on call
6. ↑ Simplification of tax law - a utopia? . Festschrift for D. Meyding, 1994, page 87 ff and page 91.
7. ↑ Deutsche Steuerzeitung 1994, p. 705 f.
8. ↑ NJW-Aktuell, Heft 43, 2010, p. 12 f; Süddt.Zeitung, 28./29. May 2011 When calling bankruptcy ; Die Welt, November 13th, 2009, Europe is not allowed to intervene with individual banks
9. ↑ Börsenzeitung August 27, 2005, p. 7 Bundesbank warns of loss of confidence
10. ↑ z. B. WM-Zeitschrift f.Wirtschafts- und Bankingrecht 2012, p. 673 ff. “Forgotten causes of the banking and financial crisis”; FAZ of January 12, 2012, p. 3 “Eurobonds prolong the crisis instead of solving it”; Mittelbayerische Zeitung of January 25, 2012, p. 3 "Hands off Eurobonds"
11. ↑ (for example through the automatic prolongation of government bonds of a member state when the latter takes advantage of an auxiliary loan cf. Interview in Münchner Merkur on October 27, 2012, p. 7; "Europe as legal community - monetary union and debt crisis", edited together with Th. Möllers, Verlag Mohr Siebeck Tübingen 2013; there essay "The return to law - further development of the institutional framework of the monetary union", p. 159 ff.)
12. ↑ "From the origin and goal of the European Union", 2016, ed. v. G. Kirchhof / H. Kube / R.Schmidt, p. 75 ff.
13. ^ "Five questions to Christine Lagarde", Börsenzeitung of August 10, 2019, p. 10