Laurenz Meyer

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Laurenz Meyer, 2009 election campaign in downtown Hamm Laurenz Meyer, svg

Donatus Laurenz Karl Meyer (born February 15, 1948 in Salzkotten ) is a German politician ( CDU ). He was Secretary General of the CDU from 2000 to 2004 and a member of the German Bundestag from 2002 to 2009.

biography

After graduating from high school in 1968 at Hammonense grammar school in Hamm / Westf. Meyer completed a degree in economics at the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster , which he completed in 1975 with a degree in economics. In the same year he started as a clerk at VEW AG in Dortmund , becoming department head and main department manager. Most recently (1999) he was commercial director in the Arnsberg district office . Meyer is a member of the supervisory board of Dachdeckerkauf West eG Hamm and the Wirtschaftsförderungsgesellschaft Hamm mbH.

In 2008 Meyer married the judicial clerk Sonja Mertens in Berlin. He has a son with her. He has four daughters from his first marriage.

After leaving the Bundestag, Meyer started his own business as a management consultant. He has been involved in the Rotary Club of Hamm since 1985 .

Political party

Meyer joined the CDU in 1968. From 1997 to 2001 he was treasurer of the CDU North Rhine-Westphalia . Meyer was Secretary General of the CDU from November 20, 2000 to December 22, 2004, succeeding Ruprecht Polenz . Meyer described his appointment as general secretary as a mistake by the party leaders.

MP

Meyer was a member of the city council from 1975 to 1995, and from 1989 to 1995 as chairman of the CDU city council group. In 1994 he ran for the office of Lord Mayor , but was unable to prevail against the SPD candidate Jürgen Wieland .

From 1990 to 2002 he was a member of the state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia. There he was economic policy spokesman for the parliamentary group from 1990 to 1999, as well as deputy chairman from 1997 to 1999 and chairman of the CDU parliamentary group from February 23, 1999 to June 2, 2000 . After the state elections in 2000 , the CDU state chairman Jürgen Rüttgers claimed the chairmanship of the parliamentary group. From June 2 to December 6, 2000 Meyer was Vice President of the State Parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia.

From 2002 to 2009 Laurenz Meyer was a member of the German Bundestag . Since November 29, 2005, he has been chairman of the economics and technology working group and thus also the economic policy spokesman for the CDU / CSU parliamentary group .

Laurenz Meyer has always entered the Bundestag via the state list of North Rhine-Westphalia . In the 2009 Bundestag election , Meyer failed to get back into parliament because he was defeated in his constituency of Hamm-Unna II against the SPD politician Dieter Wiefelspütz , who has been a direct mandate since 1987, and despite moving up to 35th place in North Rhine-Westphalia Country list received no mandate.

Affairs

RWE affair

On December 10, 2004 it was reported that Meyer was purchasing electricity from RWE AG (which had taken over his former employer VEW in 2000 ) at a reduced employee rate, although he had left the company in 1999. A week later, new allegations surfaced that he had received funds from RWE while he was still secretary-general of the CDU. Meyer spoke of “special distributions” in this context. In addition, Laurenz Meyer still received his salary as Vice President of the State Parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia and thus received three salaries at times. The Bild am Sonntag reported on 19 December 2004 that the CDU Chairwoman Angela Merkel have disempowered the Secretary-General. First party colleagues have already called for his resignation. On December 20, Meyer announced that he would donate the amounts in question (81,106 euros) to the SOS Children's Villages .

After pressure from the party base, Laurenz Meyer resigned as General Secretary on December 22, 2004. The CDU paid him a severance payment of 52,000 euros. The reason for his resignation was that the special payment he declared as a severance payment was not a severance payment, as Meyer initially returned to the company after the CDU defeat in the state elections in NRW in May 2000. This fact and the wrong information to Angela Merkel made it untenable for the party. The payments made by him and the announcement of a donation to the SOS Children's Villages had not been able to reassure the state associations of North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein in particular, which were in the election campaign.

On December 23, 2004, the electricity company RWE announced the result of an internal investigation into the payments to Meyer. According to this, 160,000 of 250,000 marks were unjustifiably transferred from VEW to Meyer due to a "communication error". In a statement on December 17, 2004, Meyer had described this payment as “legally correct”, but had already admitted: “ … Nevertheless, with a view to the problems many people are facing these days, I am aware that it is not understood that I was doing this at the time Accepted money even though I went back to the company. ... "

At the beginning of 2005, Meyer and RWE terminated his employment relationship retrospectively as of December 31, 2004 with a severance payment of 400,000 euros. Meyer paid back the roughly EUR 81,000 severance payment to his former employer, while RWE has announced a donation of EUR 100,000 to SOS Children's Villages.

Montblanc affair

Meyer came up with new talk through press releases in August 2016, according to which, shortly before leaving the Bundestag , he had ordered several fountain pens from the luxury brand " Montblanc " within a few days at the expense of taxpayers for over 3,000 euros . However, he denied having placed the order himself. It turned out that this was not an isolated incident, and the Montblanc Affair developed out of it .

Web links

Commons : Laurenz Meyer  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. "He really worked," faz.net of December 20, 2004
  2. ^ Club and membership directory of Rotarians in the Federal Republic of Germany 2002/2003
  3. Westphalian reliability and Rhenish cheerfulness. Retrieved April 7, 2014.
  4. ^ Laurenz Meyer at the state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia
  5. DerWesten: CDU lifts Laurenz Meyer to a better place on the list. February 16, 2009, accessed on July 15, 2019 (German).
  6. Laurenz Meyer receives a severance payment of 52,000 euros , article dated December 24, 2004 on Faz.net
  7. ^ RWE on the severance payment to Laurenz Meyer: "It was a mistake" , article dated December 24, 2004 on abendblatt.de
  8. Meyer put pressure on buying premium pens. In: Focus. August 18, 2016, accessed June 7, 2019 .
  9. The whole Raffke list. In: BILD. August 24, 2016, accessed June 7, 2019 .
  10. ^ "Didn't order anything at all": CDU ex-General Secretary Meyer rejects allegations. In: Focus. August 18, 2016, accessed June 7, 2019 .