Jens Bullerjahn

Jens Bullerjahn, 2012

Jens Bullerjahn (born July 15, 1962 in Halle an der Saale ) is a German politician ( SPD ). From April 24, 2006 to April 25, 2016 he was Finance Minister of the State of Saxony-Anhalt and from 2006 to 2007 Deputy Federal Chairman of the SPD. He was the top candidate of the SPD in the state elections in Saxony-Anhalt in 2006 (against Prime Minister Wolfgang Böhmer ) and 2011 (against Reiner Haseloff , CDU).

Family, education and work

After attending the Polytechnic High School in Bernburg (Saale) , Bullerjahn trained as an electrician from 1979 to 1981. He then served in the National People's Army until 1984 . He then completed further training at the Magdeburg Technical College , which he finished in 1987 as an electrical engineer . From 1987 to 1990 Bullerjahn worked as an engineer for process automation in the Mansfeld combine .

Jens Bullerjahn is married and has two children.

Political party

In October 1989 Bullerjahn became a member of the Social Democratic Party in the GDR (SDP), which was absorbed into the all-German SPD. He has been a member of the SPD's federal executive committee since 2005 and has been chairman of the SPD's East Germany Forum since December 2005.

For the state elections in 2006 , Bullerjahn was the top candidate of the SPD Saxony-Anhalt for the office of Prime Minister of the state. With a result of 21.4% of the vote, the SPD was able to improve slightly under his leadership, but remained the third strongest force behind the CDU and the Linkspartei.PDS .

On the suggestion of SPD chairman Kurt Beck , Bullerjahn was elected deputy party chairman at the extraordinary party congress of the SPD on May 14, 2006 with 84.97% of the votes. In May 2007 it was announced that Beck wanted to reduce the number of deputy party leaders from five to three, which is why Bullerjahn was not proposed for re-election at the November 2007 party congress.

In September 2009, the SPD state executive proposed Jens Bullerjahn as the top candidate for the state elections in 2011 after Holger Hövelmann had declared that he would not be available.

MP

From 1990 to 1994 Bullerjahn belonged to the local council of his place of residence Ahlsdorf and from 1990 to 1998 to the district council of the district of Eisleben and the district of Mansfelder Land .

From 1990 to 2016 he was a member of the state parliament of Saxony-Anhalt . From 1993 to 2004 he was Parliamentary Managing Director of the SPD parliamentary group . In this role he played a key role in the creation of the so-called Magdeburg Model in 1994 , which he controlled in the background together with his colleague from the PDS, Wulf Gallert . From June 2004 to April 2006 he was chairman of the SPD parliamentary group. According to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), he viewed the time after the failure of the Magdeburg model with severe loss of votes in the state elections in 2002 as a “ Damascus experience ” and then changed its focus: in order to get a grip on the previous, rapidly growing national debt In 2004, he presented a concept paper entitled “Future-oriented financial policy until 2020. Strategies for sustainable consolidation” called for a fundamental change in financial policy towards fiscal rigor.

In December 2014, Bullerjahn declared that he would not run again for the state elections in Saxony-Anhalt in 2016 in order to concentrate on his ministerial office, which he would continue to exercise after the election. In autumn 2015, however, he announced that he would give up all political positions after the legislative period.

Finance minister

Since the previous CDU-FDP coalition had lost its majority after the state elections in 2006, a CDU-SPD coalition was formed in April 2006. Bullerjahn was then appointed on April 24, 2006 as finance minister and deputy to the prime minister in the state government of Saxony-Anhalt led by Wolfgang Böhmer (CDU) ( Böhmer II cabinet ). Bullerjahn began to implement his ideas of fiscal consolidation in what the FAZ described as "unprecedented in German federalism". After the state elections in 2011, the black-red coalition was continued, with Reiner Haseloff as the new Prime Minister. In the Haseloff I cabinet , Bullerjahn retained his offices as finance minister and deputy head of government.

Bullerjahn implemented a rigid austerity course with 15,000 job cuts, including in internal security and in culture and science, which, among other things, triggered protests such as mass demonstrations by universities. He managed to get the state budget from 2014 to 2016 by without new debts; Critics accuse him of having "saved up" public services .

Bullerjahn did not participate in the formation of a government after the state elections in March 2016 and, as announced, did not join Haseloff's second cabinet , which is why his term as minister ended when the new cabinet took office on April 25, 2016.

Further memberships

Since April 24th, 2006 Bullerjahn member was of the supervisory board of Nord / LB .

In October 2012 Bullerjahn was unanimously elected chairman of the board of the collective bargaining association of German states (TdL).

Web links

Commons : Jens Bullerjahn  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Personal homepage
• Jens Bullerjahn's CV at the Ministry of Finance of Saxony-Anhalt

supporting documents

1. ↑ Saxony-Anhalt: SPD relies on Bullerjahn. In: Mitteldeutsche Zeitung , September 28, 2009.
2. ↑ digitized version .
3. ↑ ^{a b c d} Reinhard Bingener : Saxony-Anhalt: A social democrat who can handle money. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , February 26, 2016.
4. ↑ Back of chairs before the state elections in 2016. ( Memento of the original from March 26, 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. In: MDR.de , December 20, 2014.  
5. ↑ New chairman of the board. In: TDL-Online.de , accessed on May 8, 2013.