Jaime Mayor Oreja

Jaime Mayor Oreja (2009)

Jaime Mayor Oreja [ xˈajme maˈjoɾ oˈɾexa ] (born July 12, 1951 in San Sebastián , Spain ) is a Spanish politician ( PP ) and has been a member of the European Parliament in the EPP-ED group since 2004 . Before that, he was a member of the Spanish Parliament and from 1996 to 2001 Spanish Interior Minister .

Family origin

Jaime Mayor Oreja comes from a family of Basque entrepreneurs and politicians. His grandfather Marcelino Oreja Elósegui was a member of a Carlist party in the 1930s , several great uncles belonged to the Cortes (estates parliament) of the time during Franquism . He is also the nephew of Marcelino Oreja Aguirre , who was a member of the UCD during the Spanish transition to democracy , Spanish foreign minister from 1976–80 and EU commissioner for energy and transport from 1994–99 .

Political career

Early phase

After studying agricultural science, Jaime Mayor Oreja joined the UCD in 1977 , where he became general secretary of the party for the province of Gipuzkoa . In 1980 he was first elected to the Basque regional parliament Eusko Legebiltzarra and a few months later took over his uncle Marcelino Oreja's seat in the Spanish parliament.

In 1982 Mayor Oreja was appointed Government Commissioner for the Basque Country, but lost this post after the UCD was defeated in the fall of that year. After his party collapsed, Mayor Oreja first joined the Christian Democratic Party Partido Demócrata Popular (PDP) in 1982 , and he was elected to the Basque regional parliament as its top candidate in 1984. After the PDP disbanded in 1986, Mayor Oreja announced his temporary retirement from politics.

In 1989 he returned to politics after he was commissioned by the then Spanish opposition leader José María Aznar to set up a Basque regional organization of the conservative Partido Popular (PP) party . He was also the PP campaign manager for the European elections in 1989 and again elected to the Spanish parliament in the same year. However, he gave up his seat a year later in order to run as the top candidate of the PP in the elections to the Basque Parliament, of which he was a member until 1996.

In 1996 he was appointed Deputy Secretary-General of the PP at a party congress and entered the Spanish parliament again in that year's elections.

Negotiations with ETA as Minister of the Interior

After the PP victory in 1996, Mayor Oreja was appointed Interior Minister in the first cabinet under José María Aznar . Just a few weeks ago the Basque terrorist organization ETA announced a ceasefire offer and called on the Spanish government to take the initiative to find a political solution to the Basque conflict. Mayor Oreja declined, describing the organization's offer as an "armistice trap " ( tregua trampa ); in his view, ETA only wanted to use the negotiations to buy time for rearmament.

On September 16, 1998, ETA again announced a ceasefire, which culminated in several meetings between representatives of the organization and the Spanish government. This time too, Mayor Oreja expressed himself skeptical about a possible negotiated solution. In fact, ETA ended the “unlimited” ceasefire in November 1999.

In 2001, Mayor Oreja resigned as Minister of the Interior in order to run again as the top candidate for the PP in the Basque regional elections. He was succeeded by Mariano Rajoy .

PP top candidate in the Basque Country and member of the European Parliament

Before the Basque regional elections in 2001, the PP under Mayor Oreja had also won the support of the socialist PSOE in order to replace the previous Basque government led by the Basque Nationalist Party PNV in a coalition if necessary . As a result, the PP significantly improved its results and became the second largest group after the PNV, but the alliance of PP and PSOE missed the necessary absolute majority.

Mayor Oreja then withdrew from Basque politics. In 2004 he was briefly traded as a possible successor to José María Aznar as PP party leader; but the last choice fell on Mariano Rajoy . Instead, Mayor Oreja ran as the top candidate for the PP in the European elections in 2004 . In the European Parliament , he became vice-leader of the Christian Democratic-Conservative EPP-ED group.

Before the European elections in 2009 , he was again named PP top candidate in Spain.

Political orientation

Jaime Mayor Oreja is seen as a representative of the conservative wing close to Aznar of the PP and is particularly noticeable in Spanish politics for his rejection of Basque nationalism. In particular, he strictly rejected possible negotiations with the terrorist organization ETA.

In connection with the rehabilitation of the victims of the dictatorship under Francisco Franco initiated by the PSOE government under José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero , Mayor Oreja gave an interview in 2007 in which he refused to condemn Franquism and said about the repression in the period after the Spanish Civil War would spread “infinite myths”.

In 2013 he visited the leaders of the " One of Us " initiative of the life protection scene in Berlin .