Herwig van Staa

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Herwig van Staa (2014)

Herwig van Staa (born June 10, 1942 in Linz , Upper Austria ) is a former Austrian politician ( ÖVP or FI ) who was Governor of Tyrol from 2002 to 2008 .

From 2008 to 2018 he was President of the Tyrolean Parliament . Before that he worked in Innsbruck city politics. He is the founder of the list for Innsbruck . From 1994 to 2002 he was mayor of Innsbruck .

education and profession

After elementary school in Leonfelden and the Matura in Wels 1960 he studied at the University of Innsbruck the subjects of law, economics and social sciences, folklore and sociology (doctorate, PhD. And soc equality with Mag. Rer.. Oec. ). From 1971 he was a managing partner in a spatial and social research institute, from 1974 assistant and from 1980 head of the research institute for Alpine agriculture and forestry at the University of Innsbruck. In 1989 he became an assistant professor; With the takeover of the mayor's office, there was a parental leave without pay.

Herwig van Staa has been married to Luise, nee Wallnöfer, daughter of Governor Eduard Wallnöfer , since 1974 and has two children.

As a student he joined the K.Ö.St.V. Traungau to Wels in the MKV . During his studies he became a member of the K.Ö.HV Leopoldina Innsbruck in the ÖCV . In the mid-1990s he was awarded the ÖCV ring of honor. He is (2012) a member of 28 Christian student associations in Austria, Germany and Switzerland.

Political activity

From 1989 to 2005 van Staa was a member of the municipal council of the state capital Innsbruck. Because of repeated criticism of the city tour, he was expelled from the local council club. In the municipal council elections in 1994 he entered - although unchanged as a member of the Tyrolean People's Party - with his own list “ For Innsbruck ”, which became the second largest parliamentary group. From 1994 he held the office of mayor of the state capital and was re-elected in 2000. Herwig van Staa was able to reorganize the city finances during his time as Innsbruck's mayor and thus reduce the mountain of debt. He also laid the foundation stone for the new construction of the town hall, the train station, the ski jump, the football stadium and for the renovation of the old Olympic sports facilities.

On October 27, 2001, Herwig van Staa was elected regional party leader of the Tyrolean People's Party.

On October 26, 2002 he was elected governor of the Tyrolean state parliament to succeed Wendelin Weingartner . Hilde Zach succeeded him as Mayor of Innsbruck. Van Staa was confirmed in office in the 2003 state elections.

Van Staa does not see himself in the allied tradition of the People's Party . He himself locates his political principles as being based on Christian social teaching .

Although the ÖVP had dropped to 40.45 percent in the Tyrolean state elections on June 8, 2008 (2003: 49.89 percent), his party expressed their confidence in him and commissioned him to lead the coalition negotiations. Van Staa had stated several times before the election that he would only step down if the ÖVP fell below 40 percent. After the coalition negotiations were concluded and the coalition agreement with the Tyrolean SPÖ was signed on June 23, 2008, he announced his resignation as governor on the same day. Since July 1, 2008, his successor has been the former Minister of the Interior Günther Platter , who was considered a compromise candidate for the ÖVP groups, Bauernbund and ÖAAB . Van Staa himself was elected President of the State Parliament on the same day.

Since 2002 van Staa has been a member of the Committee of the Regions of the EU, since 2004 Vice-President of the Committee of the Regions and head of the Austrian CoR delegation.

In May 2002, van Staa was for two years as president of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of Europe chosen before he was already 1996-1998 Vice President of the Chamber of Local Authorities and from 1998 to 2002, President of the Chamber of Local Authorities have been.

On November 5, 2008, Herwig van Staa was elected President for the 2008/2009 term of office by the 12th General Assembly of the Conference of European Regional Legislative Parliaments (CALRE).

In October 2010 van Staa was elected President of the Regional Chamber in the Council of Europe for two years. From October 2012 to October 2014 he was President of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities in the Council of Europe for a further two-year term. From October 2014 until 2016 he was the Outgoing President.

Van Staa resigned his honorary chairmanship of “Für Innsbruck” after the Innsbruck municipal council elections in 2012 and suspended his membership, as Mayor Christine Oppitz-Plörer had formed a “traffic light coalition” excluding the city's ÖVP.

After the state elections on April 28, 2013, Herwig van Staa was re-elected President of the State Parliament on May 24, 2013 with 29 to 5 votes (2 abstentions) in the constituent session of the Tyrolean State Parliament. Herwig van Staa did not run for the state elections in Tyrol in 2018 , but ran for the Tyrolean Seniors' Association in the 2018 municipal council elections in Innsbruck .

On March 28, 2018, Sonja Ledl-Rossmann succeeded him as President of the State Parliament.

At their 35th meeting in November 2018, the members of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg honored Herwig van Staa with honorary membership for his special services in this international body. President Anders Knape presented Herwig van Staa with the large congress medal to receive honorary membership in the plenary. Associated with this is the right to speak and sit in the plenary meetings of the congress for life. From 1994 van Staa was a member of this body. During these 24 years he held various management positions: in two periods, namely from 2002 to 2004 and from 2012 to 2014, he was President of the Congress. For almost 20 years, Herwig van Staa also headed the Group of the European People's Party (EPP), of which he was elected honorary president on Thursday. His successor as a full member of this body was the President of the State Parliament, Sonja Ledl-Rossmann.

criticism

Because of his support for the construction of new river and reservoir power plants by the Tyrolean state energy supplier TIWAG , van Staa was criticized by the initiative tiroler initiative we all together (tiwag) .

In 2004 van Staa suggested that asylum seekers who had committed criminal offenses and those who did not disclose their identity be accommodated in special quarters, which aroused criticism. In February 2007, van Staa again demanded that legally convicted asylum seekers who could not be deported and whose pre-trial detention could not be extended or who did not want to reveal their identity to be "interned", ie locked up for an indefinite period. This proposal was criticized by the Tyrolean Greens and the Green human rights spokeswoman Terezija Stoisits as lacking any objective and constitutional basis, and by Deputy Governor Hannes Gschwentner . Van Staa's proposal was supported by ÖVP General Secretary Hannes Missethon .

The birthday celebrations organized by the city of Innsbruck for the former Gestapo official, former deputy Innsbruck mayor and honorary citizen of the city of Innsbruck, Ferdinand Obenfeldner ( SPÖ ) led the Simon Wiesenthal Center to call for various politicians to resign , including van Staa. The governor was also criticized for this by the Israeli historian Efraim Zuroff . Obenfeldner carried out an arrest in Innsbruck in 1938 as part of the November pogrom . In a letter to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, van Staa stated that Obenfeldner had been very involved in the social sector over decades and had never denied anything of his biography. In addition, no one made the claim that Obenfeldner was guilty of something during the Nazi era. He, van Staa, had always clearly distanced himself from National Socialism and condemned and abhorred the cruel crimes of that time.

Also in March 2007, van Staa said that he had heard rumors that the father of the then Green Federal Spokesman Alexander Van der Bellen had come to Austria with his family from Estonia in 1944 under unexplained circumstances, and said that this could only be done with the tolerance of the Regimes or under the protection of high-ranking Nazis. The third President of the National Council, Eva Glawischnig-Piesczek , spoke of a dirt bucket campaign . In an interview with the Tiroler Tageszeitung, van Staa denied having called Van der Bellen's father a “high-ranking Nazi” and stated that his statements were certainly exaggerated. In a broadcast van Staa once again made it clear that he never wanted to move Alexander Van der Bellen and his family close to the Nazi ideology with his statements. As a result, van Staa wrote a personal letter to Van der Bellen and gave him the freedom to publish the letter at any time. Van der Bellen did not want to comment on this letter.

Half a year later van Staa was accused by the Sölder publicist and tiwag activist Markus Wilhelm of having called the former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer a "pig" in a speech on the occasion of the anniversary of the German Alpine Club. A recording of van Staas utterances was published on the tiwag website by Wilhelm, who himself did not take part in this event . Representatives of the Tyrolean ÖVP spoke of a "manipulated band" that had been slowed down and stretched in order to falsify the meaning. They charged Wilhelm with forging evidence. Van Staa did not say “pig”, but “silence”. According to the news magazine profil , an expert opinion prepared by a court-sworn expert for the Office of Internal Affairs of the Ministry of the Interior came to the conclusion that van Staa had said “pig” and that the word had not been cut out of “silence”. Further experts subsequently confirmed that “the pig” could be heard on the tape. In October 2010 Wilhelm was acquitted of the suspicion of defamation in the last instance.

honors and awards

Web links

Commons : Herwig van Staa  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ https://www.oecv.at/News/Detail/4625
  2. ↑ http://news.at/articles/0825/10/209261/koalitionsverhandlungen-woche-tiroler-oevp-spoe-gruenen
  3. ↑ http://tirol.orf.at/stories/287804/ Van Staa resigned as governor of Tyrol ORF.On report of June 23, 2008
  4. ↑ http.//www.tirol.gv.at/landtag/gruss
  5. ↑ Van Staa again CoR Vice-President. In: tirol.orf.at. July 19, 2012, accessed November 15, 2018 .
  6. ↑ Archive link ( Memento from February 6, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  7. ↑ Spindelegger congratulates Van Staa on being elected President of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of Europe , Austrian Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs, October 16, 2012.
  8. ↑ Van Staa takes on an important role in the Council of Europe in the Tyrol region, October 16, 2012
  9. ↑ https://wcd.coe.int/ViewDoc.jsp?Ref=20141014-staa-bilan&Language=lanEnglish&Ver=original&Site=COE&BackColorInternet=C3C3C3&BackColorIntranet=CACC9A&BackColorLogged . = EFEA9C
  10. ↑ http://www.echoonline.at/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4157:das-erbe-des-zerrissenen&catid=17:politik&Itemid=45
  11. ^ Press release ( memento of March 13, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) of the Tyrolean People's Party of May 29, 2013
  12. ↑ orf.at: Van Staa says goodbye to the state parliament . Article dated March 28, 2018, accessed March 28, 2018.
  13. ↑ http://www.dietiwag.org/index.php
  14. ↑ Van Staa wants to discuss Strasser with state captains. In: derStandard.at. July 13, 2004, accessed December 4, 2017 .
  15. ↑ Van Staa demands internment at tirol.orf.at
  16. ^ ÖVP head behind van Staa, oesterreich.orf.at ( Memento from August 15, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  17. ↑ http://derstandard.at/2789844
  18. ↑ http://www.innsbruck.gv.at/page.cfm?vpath=buergerinnen--politik/gemeinderat/ehrungen1
  19. ↑ Guest commentary by Efraim Zuroff: Ein Blick nach Tirol In: Die Presse , April 16, 2007.
  20. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento from December 11, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  21. ↑ https://newsv1.orf.at/070307-9955/?href=https%3A%2F%2Fnewsv1.orf.at%2F070307-9955%2F9956txt_story.html
  22. ^ Letter to the Simon Wiesenthal Center at tirol.orf.at
  23. ↑ Van Staa “said it all” In: Der Standard , March 14, 2007
  24. ↑ http://cms.tirol.oevp.at/8760/?MP=61-11528 ( Memento from December 30, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
  25. ↑ tirol.orf.at "not correct in scope, surely exaggerated."
  26. ↑ derstandard.at "Allegations of manipulation around" pig statement "by Van Staa"
  27. ^ "Schwein-Sager": acquittal for Wilhelm. In: oesterreich.orf.at. January 22, 2010, accessed November 15, 2018 .
  28. ↑ dietiwag.at "Tape" (MP3; 1.1 MB)
  29. ↑ a b BIA burdened van Staa In: Der Standard, March 10, 2008
  30. ↑ http://www.ots.at/presseaussendung.php?schluessel=OTS_20080216_OTS0010
  31. ^ The Standard Higher Regional Court confirms Markus Wilhelm's acquittal, (APA) October 14, 2010
  32. ↑ a b List of all decorations awarded by the Federal President for services to the Republic of Austria from 1952 (PDF; 6.9 MB)
  33. ↑ AAS 94 (2002), n. 1, p. 95.
  34. ↑ https://www.tirol.gv.at/fileadmin/landtag/downloads/2014/LTP-Auf_einen_Blick_2014.pdf
  35. ↑ High awards for Van Staa , ORF, February 22, 2006
  36. ↑ High tourist award for the President of the State Parliament van Staa ( memento from September 13, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ), State of Tyrol, November 12, 2009
  37. ^ High distinction ( memento of February 27, 2011 in the Internet Archive ), Wilten Abbey, July 8, 2010
  38. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento from April 29, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  39. ↑ Big honor day MUI Innsbruck on November 24, 2012
  40. ↑ Ring of honor for Herwig van Staa In: tirol.ORF.at , 17th January 2019
personal data
SURNAME Staa, Herwig van
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian politician, governor of Tyrol
DATE OF BIRTH June 10, 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH Linz