Michael Georg Link

Michael Georg Link (2014)

Michael Georg Link (born February 6, 1963 in Heilbronn ) is a German politician ( FDP ) and spokesman for European policy of the FDP parliamentary group in the German Bundestag . From July 1, 2014 to June 30, 2017, he was Director of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights ( ODIHR ) in Warsaw. Previously, he was Minister of State in the Foreign Office from January 24, 2012 to December 17, 2013 and a member of the German Bundestag from 2005 to 2013.

Life and work

After graduating from the Elly-Heuss-Knapp-Gymnasium Heilbronn , Link did his military service with Panzerbataillon 364 in Külsheim and then studied to translate Russian and French in Augsburg , Lausanne and Heidelberg .

From 1995 to 1999 Link worked as a research assistant at the Enquête Commission on German Unity of the German Bundestag . From 1999 to 2002 he was an advisor to the Bundestag member Klaus Kinkel and then until 2005 an advisor to the FDP parliamentary group in the International Politics working group.

In 2009 Link was elected to the Heilbronn municipal council. When he was appointed Minister of State at the beginning of 2012, he had to resign from this office. In 2014 Michael Link was re-elected to the Heilbronn municipal council.

Political party

Michael Link (left) with the then Federal Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle at a reception of the FDP Heilbronn 2013

In 1986 Link joined the FDP. From 1989 to 1995 Link was Deputy Federal Chairman and Federal Treasurer of the Young Liberals . Since 2003 he has been a member of the FDP state executive committee in Baden-Württemberg and since 2006 the presidium as state treasurer. He has been chairman of the FDP district association Heilbronn since 2014. Michael Link has been a member of the federal executive committee of the FDP since 2010. He is a member of the Party Council of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe ( ALDE) and Deputy Chairman of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe .

Member of Parliament and European politician

From 2005 to 2013 he was a member of the German Bundestag . Until 2009 he was spokesman for the FDP parliamentary group for the budget and finances of the European Union . From 2009 to 2012 he was its European policy spokesman and chairman of Working Group I "International Politics". From 2009 to 2012 Link was Deputy Chairman of the Committee on European Union Affairs of the German Bundestag. He was also nominated by his political group as a member of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly . On January 24, 2012, Link became Minister of State in the Foreign Office as successor to Werner Hoyer . In this function he was also the Federal Government Commissioner for Franco-German cooperation .

Due to the failure of his party to pass the five percent hurdle in the 2013 federal election , he was no longer represented in the 18th Bundestag.

From July 1, 2014 to June 30, 2017, Link was Director of the OSCE Office (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights ( ODIHR ). He was followed by the former Foreign Minister of Iceland, Ingibjörg Sólrún Gísladóttir . Link remained connected to the ODIHR as a member of its election observer missions.

Michael Link as OSCE election observer at a press conference in Moscow in 2018.

In the 2017 federal election , Link again ran as an FDP candidate in the Heilbronn federal constituency and was elected to the 19th German Bundestag via the FDP state list of Baden-Württemberg . There he is a member of the committee for the affairs of the European Union and spokesman for the FDP parliamentary group on this topic. He is also a deputy in the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Budget Committee .

Michael Georg Link has been on the board of the Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly since 2019 .

Memberships

Michael Georg Link founded the Europa-Union parliamentary group of the German Bundestag in 2006 and was a member of the Presidium of the Europa-Union Germany until 2011 ; since 2019 he has been a member of the Heilbronn district board of the Europa-Union Deutschland. From 2013 to 2018 he was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom ; He has been a member of the Board of Management since 2018. He is a member of the administrative board of the Reinhold Maier Foundation and a board member of the Franco-German Institute . He is a member of the Arbeiter-Samariter-Bund , the German Society for Foreign Policy , the German Society for East European Studies and the South East European Society .

Web links

Commons : Michael Link  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Homepage of Michael Link
• Biography at the German Bundestag

• Michael Georg Link Minister of State in the Foreign Office. Federal Foreign Office , accessed on January 24, 2012 . 
• Michael Georg Link on parliamentwatch.de
• Michael Link on the OSCE website

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://www.osce.org/node/120670
2. ↑ Michael Link - new Minister of State in the Foreign Office. Federal Foreign Office , accessed on January 24, 2012 . 
3. ↑ kra: The proportion of women in the council grows to ten out of 40 . In: Hohenloher Zeitung . March 14, 2012 ( from Stimme.de [accessed on February 2, 2013]).
4. ↑ 2014 local elections . In: Heilbronn voice . May 26, 2014 ( Stimme.de [accessed October 5, 2014]).
5. ↑ Paul Katzenberger: Election in Russia - The problem is not the election fraud In: SZ.de , March 20, 2018, interview.
6. ↑ Press release: Members of the Bundestag committees. In: fdpbt.de. Group of Free Democrats in the German Bundestag, January 14, 2018, accessed on January 25, 2018 . 
7. ↑ cf. Internet representation of the parliamentary group
8. ^ Website of the EUROPA-UNION Heilbronn , accessed on August 26, 2020.
9. ^ Website of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom . Retrieved September 28, 2018.