Franz Voves

Franz Voves (2011)

Franz Voves (born February 28, 1953 in Graz , Styria ) is an Austrian politician ( SPÖ ) and was Governor of Styria from October 25, 2005 to June 16, 2015 . He is a former national ice hockey team player and from 2002 to 2015 state party chairman of the SPÖ Styria. From 2002 to 2005 he was deputy governor.

Personal

Franz Voves' father was a worker and until 1981 councilor of the KPÖ in Graz. His mother was a housewife. He has three siblings, two brothers and a sister. Voves is married for the second time and has a daughter from his first marriage. His wife has a son from their first marriage.

Athletic career

From 1967 Voves played ice hockey as a center forward in the fighting team of the ATSE Graz , in 1970 he was appointed to the Austrian national team and participated in a total of 75 games for the national team as well as in seven world championships and the 1976 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck. In 1975 Voves became Austrian ice hockey champions with the ATSE Graz .

From 1995 to 2003 Voves was president of the ASKÖ regional association, until 2005 vice-president of the ASKÖ federal organization.

Working life

Voves studied social and economic sciences from 1972 to 1978 and graduated with a master's degree. He then became a trainee tax advisor and worked for Merkur Insurance from 1979 . Between 1989 and 2002, Voves was a Merkur board member, responsible for the finance department.

Political career

SPÖ

In 1995 Franz Voves was co-opted into the state party executive of the SPÖ Styria. On March 2, 2002, he was elected chairman of the SPÖ state party.

In spring 2009 Voves was commissioned by Federal Chancellor and party leader Werner Faymann to work with Ferdinand Lacina on a new economic concept for the SPÖ. April 2009 this was then presented under the name NEW (New European Economic Policy) . This program includes, among other things, the demand for higher wealth taxation and re-nationalization of privatized companies that do not fulfill their public mandate. In the SPÖ and its surrounding organizations, the new concept sparked a debate about an economic shift to the left .

Governor

In the state elections on October 2, 2005 , Voves won over 41% of the votes with the SPÖ, which was the first time that the SPÖ had a majority of seats in the Styrian state government ( state government Voves I ) in the second republic . On October 25, 2005 Voves was elected by 45 of the 56 members of the state parliament as the Styrian governor and thus successor to Waltraud Klasnic ( ÖVP ). On October 28th, he was sworn in as the first SPÖ governor of Styria in the second republic by Federal President Heinz Fischer .

The state elections on September 26, 2010 brought the SPÖ losses, but with 38.3% it was the party with the strongest vote. On October 21, 2010, Franz Voves was re-elected in the constituent session of the newly elected state parliament with 51 of the 56 MPs, i.e. those of the SPÖ, ÖVP and FPÖ. In coalition negotiations with the ÖVP, which was only just behind the SPÖ with 37.2% of the votes in the state elections, a “reform partnership” had previously been agreed. Due to the proportional representation regulation , the FPÖ, which succeeded in re-entering the state parliament in 2010 with 10.7% of the vote, was given a seat in the state government Voves II .

In the state elections on May 31, 2015 , Voves promised - before the election results were announced - to step down if the result was less than 30 percentage points. Since the Styrian SPÖ was only able to gain around 29 percent of the votes, Voves, who, contrary to his announcement, initially wanted to continue to govern, came under pressure. On June 10, 2015, he finally announced that he would step down from all political positions. On June 16, 2015, the state parliament elected the previous vice-governor Hermann Schützenhöfer from the coalition partner ÖVP as his successor as governor .