Mats Odell

Mats Odell (2009)

Mats Christer Johannes Odell (born April 30, 1947 in Värnamo ) is a Swedish politician of the Christian Democrats ( Kristdemokraterna ), who held various ministerial posts in the Swedish government between 1991 and 1994 and between 2006 and 2010.

Odell studied economics at Stockholm University from 1968 to 1973 and began his political career in 1974 as chairman of the Christian Democratic Youth League (until 1981). In 1988 he was elected to the Presidium of the Christian Democrats and in the 1991 elections he was able to enter the Reichstag. In the bourgeois coalition government, which was in office from 1991 to 1994, he held the post of communications minister.

Back in the opposition, he was the economic policy spokesman for his group from 1994 to 2006. Since 2005 Odell was second vice chairman of the Christian Democrats; After the resignation of long-time party leader Alf Svensson , he applied for the chair alongside Göran Hägglund and Maria Larsson , but withdrew his application before the election. In 2006, after the election to the Swedish parliament and the victory of the civic alliance for Sweden, he became minister for local and financial issues in the Ministry of Finance . In October 2010 he resigned in connection with a major restructuring of the government and was chairman of the Christian Democrats in the Reichstag until 2012. After a fruitless attempt to replace party leader Hägglund because of falling polls at the party congress in 2012, Odell, who belongs to the more conservative wing of the Christian Democrats, was replaced as group leader.

Web links

Commons : Mats Odell  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Official website ( Memento of November 3, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) (English / Swedish)
• Reichstag website - Mats Odell (Swedish)