Hans-Joachim Reck

Hans-Joachim Reck (born August 4, 1952 in Uelzen , Lower Saxony ) is a former German CDU politician . Reck was, among other things, federal manager of the CDU and held several municipal offices. Since retiring from active politics, he has held various positions for various companies.

Life

Party career

Hans-Joachim Reck studied law at the University of Münster and completed his legal training in 1979 with two state examinations. After graduating, he initially embarked on an administrative career with positions in various municipal electoral offices. In 1979 he was appointed to the city council of the city of Lage . This was followed by a two-year activity as office manager and personal adviser to the then chairman of the CDU parliamentary group in the North Rhine-Westphalian state parliament, Kurt Biedenkopf . From 1983 to 1985 Reck was an alderman of the German and North Rhine-Westphalian Association of Cities and Towns. A term of office as district director of the Lippe district , Detmold , followed from 1985 to 1991. In 1991, Reck was promoted to senior district director of the Rheinisch-Bergisches Kreis . From 1993 to 1996, Reck was federal manager of the CDU under Secretary General Peter Hintze . In this function, he successfully coordinated and organized the CDU Bundestag election campaign. In the 1994 federal elections , he succeeded in achieving an election result of 41.5% at the federal level for the CDU , primarily with the so-called red sock campaign against the SPD and PDS. During his term of office there were also successful European elections (e.g. 1994) and 15 state elections.

In 1996, Reck moved to the management of Deutsche Telekom AG in Bonn. Until 2001 he was head of the central area for top management personnel. From 2001 to 2003 he was in charge of the central group control sales contacts.

In 2003 Reck returned to politics and took over the office of Secretary General of the CDU in North Rhine-Westphalia for three years . In this function he managed the state election campaign in 2005 so successfully that the CDU was commissioned to form a government in North Rhine-Westphalia after years of opposition; an indirect consequence were new federal elections that same year.

From June 2005, Reck was a member of the North Rhine-Westphalia state parliament and chairman of the economic committee. In the course of 2006, he drew the conclusions from conflicts with Prime Minister Jürgen Rüttgers and resigned his office as Secretary General and his mandate in the state parliament (constituency of Wuppertal) after he had not been included in the formation of the cabinet despite the successful election campaign.

After the political career

After resigning from political office, Reck resumed work in the private sector and became a partner at Heidrick & Struggles Unternehmensberatung GmbH & Co. KG.

On September 1, 2007, Hans-Joachim Reck succeeded Michael Schöneich as executive member of the presidency and general manager of the general manager of the Association of Municipal Companies (VKU) . On September 1, 2015, Katherina Reiche succeeded him. Reck is honorary president of the Federal Association of Public Services (BVÖD) and the German section of CIRIEC. He is also President of the German Alumni Association of Eisenhower Fellowships. On December 12, 2011, Hans-Joachim Reck was elected President of the European Central Association of Public Employers and Enterprises in Europe (CEEP - European Center of Employers and Enterprises providing Public Services) . Reck has been a member of the supervisory board of OMB AG since 2015. After working at VKU, he also worked as a lawyer at Ketchum Pleon . After Reiche had also followed him in this position in mid-2016, he took up a position as a consultant at the commercial law firm Gleiss Lutz .

Private

Reck is married and has one grown son.

Political goals

In terms of regulatory policy, Reck describes himself as “committed to local self-government and to the social and ecological market economy”. He also proves this with his long professional activity at the level of local self-government. He describes the municipal companies in Germany as the central infrastructure service provider for everything to do with energy, water / wastewater and waste management. For him, the municipal utilities are the “medium-sized energy sector” that also has good long-term prospects. In his opinion, the energy supply of the future will be based on decentralized generation structures - e.g. B. combined heat and power, wind, biomass, photovoltaics and geothermal energy. With their local presence, municipal companies are made to successfully shape this decentralized future as a key network partner.

Because the economic and financial crisis of 2008 showed that small units are better able to intercept such events. Manageable units and reasonable profit expectations are very popular with the people, "private before the state" has served as a leitmotif. The difference between local government and private competitors can therefore be reduced to a simple formula: “citizen value”, that is, the good of the public community, instead of “shareholder value” - long-term orientation instead of short-term profit-making. This is reflected in the business models of municipal companies: reliable and environmentally friendly, customer-oriented and affordable supplies of the highest quality are values ​​that citizens would repeatedly associate with municipal companies in surveys. Municipal utilities stand for this modern, decentralized energy supply and have planned investments in the billions for it.

For this reason, the VKU clearly positioned itself against an unconditional extension of the service life of the 17 existing German nuclear power plants, as provided for in the federal government's energy concept. Because municipal utilities in particular have invested a lot of money in modern combined heat and power (CHP) systems, gas and steam turbines (CCGT) systems and the expansion of renewable energies or still want to do so. CHP and combined cycle plants in particular can be easily combined with the fluctuating electricity supply from wind and sun. "But despite all the efficiency advantages, these municipal systems can hardly compete with cheap electricity from depreciated nuclear power plants." In any case, Reck emphasizes that nuclear energy is not a "bridge" to the age of renewable energies, as the electricity companies claim. Instead of the bridge, the extension of the service life of nuclear power plants created a dam, a dam of protectionism.

Reck is therefore convinced that longer operating times for nuclear power plants mean that medium-sized energy companies, the municipal utilities, are systematically barring access to the market. As a result, various studies have shown that the producer market is permanently dominated by the large energy suppliers. His suggestion: The large energy companies would have to shut down power plant capacities elsewhere - fossil power plants with an efficiency of less than 39 percent - for the longer service life of their nuclear power plants.

Anyone who wants competition must also ensure equal opportunities for all market participants. That is why Reck is repeatedly committed to ensuring that the municipal regulations of individual federal states - e.g. B. until 2010 in North Rhine-Westphalia - do not impede municipal companies in competition with private electricity companies. Real competition, according to Reck, can only be achieved with a variety of providers on the power generation market. The municipal utilities would not shy away from this competition because they are active and visible to customers on site. They also invest in regional value creation, because 80 percent of their investments remain in their region. In this way, municipal companies support the regional economy and thus craft businesses and service companies with their billion-dollar investments. A common line has been agreed with the chambers in North Rhine-Westphalia, for example.

Political party

Represented Reck as politicians of the CDU and later chairman of the economic committee in the parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia still a clear line against the remunicipalisation of economic activities which he sat as Executive Member and General Manager of the Association of Municipal Enterprises eV (VKU) for significantly greater local companies a that should compete with private providers.

October 9, 2000: "As far as local municipal companies continue to participate in the fulfillment of tasks and are thus in competition with private companies, fair competition and equal tax treatment must be ensured. Offer under competitive conditions means that full costs are actually applied. This is particularly true from the point of view of the economic cost determination of the municipal own operations. This also includes that no cross-subsidization may be made. In the case of tenders, the reliability of the order fulfillment must be guaranteed by instruments such as: time limitation of the orders or clearly clarified liability issues expect municipalities to make this balance between core competencies and transferring them to other forms of service provision at regular intervals ( task criticism ). "

2003: "Our key proposal" Promote structural change, renew town and country "is an unleashing program for North Rhine-Westphalia in order to be able to follow the path of economic recovery. Freedom for the people can only be regained by massively cutting bureaucracy and lowering the state quota that they need economically to get the job machine going again. "

March 3, 2006: "The black and yellow state government has a clear regulatory compass: freedom before equality, private before state, elaboration before distribution and reliability instead of arbitrariness. We want to realign our country politically over the next 10 years and ours must The goal is to overtake Bavaria and replace it at the top. This is not a technocratic project. We need a revival of the social market economy and a new founding of the canon of values. [...] We need a new justice through more freedom - above all entrepreneurial freedom Aspect must be an integral part of the further development of our basic program. "

Future issues

The challenge of the future for energy companies will lie at the distribution network level - and that is why municipal utilities, according to Reck, are becoming increasingly important. Because the majority of the growing number of decentralized electricity producers with their frequently fluctuating feed-in will be at the local level. The task must be to intelligently integrate local consumers with these systems, because this is the only way to make the vision of a sustainable supply based primarily on efficiency and renewable energies a reality. Communication and energy infrastructures would therefore have to grow together to form “smart grids”, intelligent systems. In order to bring the networks at all levels to such a sustainable level, extensive investments are required. In addition, digital electricity meters equipped with communication technology - so-called smart meters - are an important prerequisite for intelligent networks.

Electromobility is also a business area with a future for municipal utilities. Because the electrification of the vehicle drive is an important option for sustainable mobility. In conjunction with intelligent networks, the batteries of the e-vehicles could also be used as storage facilities and help to balance out the fluctuating feed-in of renewable energies. Due to their local ties, municipal utilities had ideal conditions for testing electromobility. “The cities and municipalities and their municipal utilities play a central role if Germany is to become a lead market for electromobility. Stadtwerke operate the local energy networks and local public transport. Municipal utilities supply more than half of the consumers and thus the future users of electromobility with electricity and benefit from the above-average trust values ​​of their customers. We are used to working with local authorities to develop solutions that combine aspects of energy management, transport and environmental policy. "

Web links

• Hans-Joachim Reck at the North Rhine-Westphalia state parliament
• Association of Municipal Enterprises (VKU)
• Federal Association of Public Services - German Section of CEEP eV (BVÖD)
• International Research and Information Center for Public Economy, Social Economy and Cooperative Sector - aisbl (CIRIEC)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Katherina Reiche starts as VKU General Manager ( Memento of the original from October 31, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. VKU press release from September 1st, 2015. 
2. ↑ OMB AG elects Hans-Joachim Reck to the supervisory board ( Memento of the original from October 31, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. OMB AG press release of March 2nd, 2015.  
3. ↑ Hans-Joachim Reck joins Ketchum Pleon article from PRREPORT from September 11, 2015.
4. ↑ Hans-Joachim Reck strengthens Berlin office article by LTO from June 7, 2016.
5. ↑ ^{a b} Energy companies: "The oligarchs have to back off". In: Frankfurter Rundschau. August 20, 2010. (Interview with Hans Joachim Reck)
6. ↑ Maintenance surveys. ( Memento of the original from December 6, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the website of the Association of Municipal Enterprises. 
7. ↑ coal plants: Germany's ancient climate sinners. In: Frankfurter Rundschau. October 28, 2010.
8. ↑ Electricity without an atom? Municipalities are buying power grids and transforming themselves into green full suppliers. In: Deutschlandradio Kultur. Broadcast: October 21, 2010.
9. ↑ Thomas Bruckner, Hendrik Kondziella, Sven Bode: Effect of extending the service life of nuclear power plants on prices and the competitive structure in the German electricity market. ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 702 kB) February 24, 2010. 
10. ↑ Dr. Ulf Böge, President of the Federal Cartel Office a. D .: Competitive appreciation of an extension of the service life for nuclear power plants. ( Memento of the original from December 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 402 kB) Meckenheim, April 30, 2010. 
11. ↑ VKU wants to take action against municipal regulations in Brussels. ( Memento of the original of December 30, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the website of Stadtwerke Herne. January 19, 2010. 
12. ^ Alliance of public utilities and handicrafts for new municipal economic law. on the website of the North Rhine-Westphalian Crafts Day. December 17, 2010. (Joint PRESS INFORMATION by VKU and Handwerk No. 23/2010)
13. ↑ Hans-Joachim Reck: Greetings - 10 years HL-Komm.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. May 3, 2010.  
14. ↑ Scope for small units. In: STARKE BÜRGER - STARKER STAAT, on the further development of our social and national order. Discussion paper of the CDU Presidium Commission
15. ↑ " Regaining freedom for people and awakening emotions ..." ( Memento of the original from December 13, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 1.3 MB) In: BISS35. Issue 2-2003, p. 5. (Interview with the Secretary General of the NRW CDU Hans-Joachim Reck)  
16. ^ Official opening of the congress by the Secretary General of the CDU NRW - Hans-Joachim Reck MdL. ( Memento of the original from December 13, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 73 kB) Bonn, March 3, 2006. (Opening speech at the 2006 Future Congress of the CDU North Rhine-Westphalia "Benchmark NRW")  
17. ↑ Electromobility - The route leads through municipal utilities and municipalities. ( Memento of the original of December 30, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. VKU press release from November 30, 2010.