Matthias Machnig

Matthias Machnig (2011)

Matthias Machnig (born April 15, 1960 in Wimbern ) is a German politician ( SPD ).

From October 2014 to April 2018 he was State Secretary in the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy and was responsible for the departments for industrial policy , foreign trade policy , innovation , IT and communication policy and SME policy . He led the SPD's election campaign for the 2014 European elections . From November 2009 to November 2013 Machnig was Minister of Economic Affairs in Thuringia and previously, from 2005, State Secretary in the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety . From 1998 to 1999 Machnig was State Secretary in the Federal Ministry for Transport, Building and Housing and from 1999 to 2002 Federal Managing Director of the SPD.

Life and work

Machnig is the son of an industrial worker. After graduating from high school in 1979 at the Walram-Gymnasium in Menden (Sauerland) , he studied sociology with the minor subjects history , English and educational sciences at the Bergische Universität Wuppertal and the Westphalian Wilhelms-Universität Münster . He completed this with the academic degree of a Magister Artium (MA).

From 1989 to 1991 he was a scientific adviser to the chairman of the committee for research, technology and technology assessment in the German Bundestag, Wolf-Michael Catenhusen (SPD). Then he was an advisor to the SPD parliamentary group for medium and long-term task planning. In 1992 he moved to the Ministry of Labor, Health and Social Affairs of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia , headed by Franz Müntefering , as head of the ministerial office .

After Müntefering became Federal Managing Director of the SPD in 1995, Machnig followed him to the SPD party headquarters and also took over the management of its offices here. In addition, he was head of the board secretariat and coordinator of the SPD election campaign headquarters "Kampa". Machnig was thus also responsible for the campaigns for the 1998 and 2002 federal elections and the 2000 state elections in North Rhine-Westphalia . In media articles at the time he was referred to as the “machinist of power” and “the voice hunter”.

Machnig joined BBDO Consulting GmbH as a communications consultant at the end of 2002 . In January 2004 he moved to the management of the management consultancy Booz Allen Hamilton . From April 2005 he worked as a freelance management consultant in Düsseldorf .

Since December 1, 2018, Machnig has been head of the industrial strategy at InnoEnergy , which also finances start-ups in the field of renewable energies . He also works as a consultant for the Australian investment banking and securities trading company Macquarie . Both activities were approved by his former employer, the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy .

Political party

Matthias Machnig began his political career as a member of the Socialist University Association ( SHB ) and as sub-district chairman of the Young Socialists, where he advocated the socialization of key industries on the left wing of the Stamokap . He worked for the magazine spw - magazine for socialist politics and economy .

When the new SPD federal chairman Gerhard Schröder reformed the structure of the party leadership in the summer of 1999 and the function of federal manager was downgraded to a more administrative function, Machnig initially became deputy SPD federal manager. At the suggestion of his sponsor Franz Müntefering, the SPD board then elected him as the new federal manager in December 1999.

After the electoral victory of the red-green coalition , Machnig left the Willy-Brandt-Haus at the end of 2002 , officially at his own request, but in the period before, during the election campaign, the media also reported several times about a rift between Machnig Federal Chancellor Schröder reports.

Machnig is one of the initiators of a “ secular working group” in the SPD, which was supposed to come into being in October 2010 and to oppose the reference to God in the Basic Law , the Christian symbols in public institutions and regular religious instruction. Party leader Sigmar Gabriel viewed the initiative as a purely private association of individual party members, and the working group was not recognized by the federal executive committee. In June 2013 Machnig was appointed by the SPD chancellor candidate Peer Steinbrück to his election campaign team and entrusted with the issues of environmental and energy policy.

Publications (excerpt)

As Federal Managing Director of the SPD, Machnig dealt with questions of party development and the modernization of party structures in his book "The raging tanker - analyzes and concepts for the modernization of the social democratic organization".

In 2002 he spoke in the book "Politics - Media - Voters, Election Campaign in the Media Age" on questions of the political and strategic capabilities of political parties, as well as on topics of political communication.

Together with Joachim Raschke , Machnig published the book “Where is Germany going? Bundestag election 2009 - a look behind the scenes ”, in which u. a. Jürgen Rüttgers, Andrea Nahles, Reinhard Bütikofer, Gregor Gysi, Berthold Huber and Frank Bsirske are represented.

In August 2009 Machnig contributed an article on political communication and strategy in politics to the editorial work “Communication and Crisis”. In the same work u. a. also the winner of the Alternative Nobel Prize Hermann Scheer or the journalist and manager Jürgen Hogrefe .

In September 2010 Machnig published the book “Measuring: Reorienting Politics”, which collects various articles and essays by him that deal with social democracy .

Public offices

In the red-green federal government under Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, sworn in on October 27, 1998, he became State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Housing under his sponsor Franz Müntefering, but left office in the spring of 1999. In December 2005 he was appointed State Secretary in the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety to succeed Rainer Baake .

As a civil servant State Secretary, Machnig came under fire for his amendment to the Packaging Ordinance : Experts had tried in vain for more than a year to bring up Klaus Töpfer's idea of ​​waste avoidance. Ultimately, Machnig prevailed against the Federal Ministry of Economics, to the benefit of the former monopoly for packaging waste, Grüner Punkt Duales System Deutschlands GmbH.

The State Secretary also faced bitter criticism when it came to the introduction of diesel particulate filters . According to research by Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH), Machnig is said to have instructed a department head to withhold an expert opinion that proves the ineffectiveness of a manufacturer's systems. At least 100,000 motor vehicle owners were defrauded, claimed the environmental and consumer association. The Dessau Administrative Court finally decided at the end of November 2007 that the report had to be published.

Machnig got away with a “black eye” in the 2006 “World Cup ticket affair” involving former EnBW board member Utz Claassen . The investigations in connection with the free tickets to the six members of the Baden-Wuerttemberg state government were discontinued because they "are still part of the sponsoring sector and do not impair the performance of government members, so that an injustice agreement does not apply." The proceedings against Machnig were discontinued on payment of a fine of 2500 euros. In the months after the invitation, the State Secretary for the Environment had important talks with the major energy companies, including EnBW. It was about emissions trading , for the companies a "distribution war", as Machnig admitted. The Karlsruhe Regional Court acquitted Claassen of the allegation of bribery . The appeal filed by the Karlsruhe Public Prosecutor's Office was rejected by the Federal Court of Justice in October 2008. As a permanent state secretary in the BMU, Machnig was also responsible for emissions trading.

On November 4, 2009, Machnig took over the office of Minister for Economics, Labor and Technology in the new Thuringian state government under the leadership of Christine Lieberknecht . Christoph Matschie , the SPD's top candidate for the state elections in Thuringia in 2009 , had already announced before the election that, in the event of government participation, Machnig would be appointed super minister for economy, labor, infrastructure and environment. However, infrastructure and the environment remained with the coalition partner. A large number of initiated projects gave him the greatest media presence within the state government, which in turn led to regular criticism from the CDU.

Barbara Unmüßig and Matthias Machnig at a conference of the Heinrich Böll Foundation (2010)

On March 22, 2010 Machnig was elected Deputy Chairman of the Advisory Board at the Federal Network Agency . He was elected Chairman of the Advisory Board at the Federal Network Agency on March 19, 2012.

In September 2013 it became known that Machnig had been receiving payments for years (first transitional allowance, then retirement pension) from his old office as State Secretary in the Federal Environment Ministry, in addition to his ministerial salary of 147,000 euros annually. According to Spiegel , the Federal Treasury paid a total of well over 100,000 euros from November 2009 to July 2012 (quote: "Machnig himself does not want to comment on the amount of the payments on request, but considers it lawful"). However, they were lawful at most until the judgment of the Federal Administrative Court of April 28, 2011 and should have been discontinued after the judgment. The responsible Federal Ministry of Finance said that after the judgment of the Federal Administrative Court, Machnig's salaries were cut "immediately". The public prosecutor's office in Erfurt discontinued investigations into fraud allegations in March 2014 because there was no suspicion of a criminal act.

From October 1, 2014, Machnig was a permanent state secretary in the Federal Ministry of Economics. He was met with skepticism there, wrote the FAZ :

“To put it carefully: Machnig is not exactly a popular figure. More like a solid bumblebee who sometimes gets wrong in the tone. Machnig is rather small in stature, but his self-confidence is all the greater; It's easy to see that he thinks he's a pretty good guy. And a former supporter of the stamokap thesis doesn’t meet natural allies in the liberal Ministry of Economics. The fact that Machnig, as State Secretary for industry and foreign trade, will also be responsible for the sensitive issue of arms exports, contributes to the disquiet. "

On April 13, 2018, he was given temporary retirement.

Web links

Commons : Matthias Machnig  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Matthias Machnig in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ Süddeutsche Zeitung, March 13, 2002
2. ↑ ZEIT, February 14, 2002
3. ↑ Matthias Machnig supports the role of InnoEnergy in the transformation of the energy and automotive industries . (PDF) Press release on innoenergy.com from December 1, 2018; accessed on October 5, 2019 (pdf)
4. ↑ What is the EIT? What is a KIC? What is KIC InnoEnergy? - EERA (PDF) eera-set.eu, accessed on December 2, 2018
5. ↑ Ex-State Secretary switches to Wirtschaft spiegel.de, accessed on December 1, 2018
6. ↑ Website of the "Social and Democratic Laicists"
7. ^ Overview of publications ( Memento of December 5, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) on the BMU website
8. ^ Parties on the test stand ( Memento from June 27, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) on Vorwärts book review
9. ↑ Machnig's list of publications ( Memento of the original dated December 1, 2010 in the Internet Archive ; PDF; 55 kB) 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. on Thüringen.de 
10. ^ Günther Lachmann: Confusion about the behavior of the Ministry of the Environment in the soot filter scandal . In: Welt am Sonntag . December 2, 2007 ( welt.de [accessed October 5, 2019]).
11. ^ Gabriel confidante wants to become super minister in Erfurt. In: Die Welt , August 10, 2009.
12. ^ Stadium renovation in Erfurt and Jena CDU criticizes Lieberknecht Thüringer Allgemeine, May 5, 2011
13. ↑ Activity report 2010/2011 ( Memento from May 20, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) of the Federal Network Agency.
14. ↑ brekoverband.de
15. ↑ SPD election campaign: Steinbrück's helper Machnig received double salary. In: Spiegel Online , September 15, 2013.
16. ↑ Decision of the Federal Administrative Court of April 28, 2011: BVerwG 2 C 39.09 .
17. ↑ Double payments: investigations against SPD politician Machnig stopped. In: Spiegel Online , March 18, 2014.
18. ↑ An undiplomatic doer . In: FAZ , September 2, 2014.
19. ↑ The SPD loses a puller . Welt Online , March 24, 2018; accessed on December 2, 2018