Neelie Kroes

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Neelie Kroes (2007)

Neelie Kroes (born July 19, 1941 in Rotterdam ) is a Dutch politician of the liberal People's Party for Vrijheid en Democratie (VVD). From 2010 to 2014 she was EU Commissioner for the Digital Agenda . Before that, she was the EU Competition Commissioner from November 2004. She was a member of several supervisory boards of well-known companies and was, among other things, Dutch Minister of Transport.

Pre-political career

Kroes went to school in Rotterdam. In 1958 she began to study economics at the Erasmus University Rotterdam . In 1961, Kroes was elected president of RVSV, the largest student association in Rotterdam. She was also elected to the Faculty Council. After graduating in 1965, she received a scholarship to the Faculty of Economics at the Erasmus University. During this time, Kroes worked in the women's organization of the VVD and was also a member of the supervisory board of her father's heavy haulage company "ZwaTra". Kroes was elected to the Rotterdam City Council for VVD in 1970.

Political career

Neelie Smit-Kroes (1971)
Neelie Kroes (1984)

In 1971 Kroes was elected to parliament, the Second Chamber of the States General . She remained a member of parliament until 1977, when she became State Secretary for Transport, Post and Telecommunications in Dries van Agt's first cabinet . In 1981 she briefly returned to parliament when her party went into opposition. From 1982 to 1989 she was Minister for Transport, Post and Telecommunications in the two Cabinets of Ministers Ruud Lubbers . During this time she was responsible for the privatization of the post office and the state telephone company PTT .

From 1989 to 1991 she worked as an advisor to the European Commissioner for Transport in Brussels.

In 2004, Kroes was appointed EU Competition Commissioner, succeeding Mario Monti . Her nomination has been criticized for her corporate ties and alleged involvement in dubious arms deals. Kroes evaded the criticism by letting the European Commissioner for the Internal Market and Services Sector Charlie McCreevy take over her business whenever there was a potential conflict of interest with her previous employers. This happened five times by January 2006. At the end of November 2009, EU Commission President José Manuel Barroso nominated Kroes as EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media (succeeding Luxembourger Viviane Reding ) and as Vice-President of the Commission. The appointment of a new commission was, however, subject to the approval of the European Parliament.

On February 10, 2010, Kroes was appointed EU Commissioner for the Digital Agenda. In December 2011 she hired the former German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor Guttenberg as an “advisor to the EU Commission for the support of Internet activists in authoritarian states”.

The Süddeutsche Zeitung reported in September 2016 in the context of the Bahamas leaks that Kroes was director of a mailbox company called "Mint Holding" based in the Bahamas from July 2000 to 2009 . Among them is the Jordanian businessman Amin Badr-El-Din.

Extra-political career

After serving as Minister in the Lubbers Cabinet, Kroes became a member of the Rotterdam Chamber of Commerce. She also worked as a board member for Ballast Nedam (transport company), ABP-PGGM (pension insurance), NIB (investment bank), McDonald’s Netherlands, Royal P&O Nedlloyd , and Nederlandse Spoorwegen (privatized Dutch railways). From 1991 to 2000 she was chairman of the board of the Nyenrode University of Economics and Business . After that she worked again as a consultant or on their supervisory boards for several international companies until September 2004, including Lockheed Martin , Bank of America , Merrill Lynch and Uber .

Kroes has other offices, mainly in cultural and social organizations. She is director of the Poets of all Nations , the Delta Psychiatric Hospital and the Museum Het Rembrandthuis . Furthermore, she is still a member of various supervisory boards, e. B. at Nedlloyd and Lucent Technologies .

Awards

Others

  • As chairwoman of Nijenrode University, she awarded Microsoft founder Bill Gates the academic title of honorary doctor. As European Commissioner for Competition, one of her first acts was investigating Microsoft's unfair business practices .
  • Kroes rejected her appointment as Minister of Defense in 1988.
  • Kroes is a confidante of the women's rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali , who moved her to switch from the social democratic PvdA to the liberal VVD and from whom she received the 2006 European Woman of the Year award.
  • Kroes attended the Bilderberg conference several times , B. 2005, 2006, 2011 and 2012.

criticism

During her tenure as minister, she was involved in the so-called TCR affair. She is said to have participated in the illegal sale of warships and to have had relationships with a tanker cleaning company (TCR) that received government grants without permission.

The fears expressed at the beginning of her work as EU Commissioner about the EU proceedings against Microsoft have not yet been confirmed. The proceedings against Microsoft are still ongoing. In July 2006 the EU Commission imposed a fine of 280.5 million euros on Microsoft .

The first fine, imposed in March 2004, was 497.5 million euros and was upheld in full on September 17, 2007 by the European Court of First Instance . The last fine to date against Microsoft was imposed in February 2008, it amounts to 899 million euros. Microsoft has appealed the decision and the case is pending before the European Court of First Instance. In January 2009 the Commission threatened Microsoft again with an antitrust fine, this time for coupling the Windows operating system with the Internet Explorer web browser.

After the dispute between the German federal government and the European Commission over the naming rights of the savings banks in 2006, Kroes criticized the German system of savings banks and cooperative banks in 2007 as distorting competition. Politicians and associations from Germany again evaluated this as an attempt by the Commission to smash the three-pillar system in the German banking system.

As part of the Bahamas leak exposure, Kroes is accused of violating disclosure requirements. The company Mint Holdings Limited, which Kroes managed, was founded for a planned billion-dollar deal with the US energy company Enron . The deal did not come about, however; the negotiations were broken off in 2000 and the company never went into operation. The company in the Bahamas was therefore intended for a business in one area - the energy sector - for which Kroes was responsible as competition commissioner from 2004.

Web links

Commons : Neelie Kroes  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ ZDNet: Neelie Kroes becomes EU Commissioner for Information Society from November 30, 2009
  2. ↑ "I'm looking for talent, not saints" - Karl Theodor zu Guttenberg receives criticism from network activists , NZZ , December 12, 2011
  3. ↑ Data leak on companies in Bahamas: "Steely Neelies" mailbox company. Bayerischer Rundfunk , September 21, 2016, archived from the original on September 23, 2016 .;
  4. ↑ Bilderberg Meetings, Chantilly, Virginia, USA, May 31-June 3, 2012. In: bilderbergmeetings.org. Archived from the original on June 1, 2012 ; accessed on August 15, 2013 .
  5. ↑ Microsoft and the EU 899 million fine . faz.net. February 27, 2008
  6. ↑ Article in Der Zeit: When it comes to money . zeit.de. 6 June 2006
  7. ↑ Sparkassen Trouble again from Brussels . tagesspiegel.de. January 31, 2007
  8. ↑ Financial sector EU Commission attacks savings banks . meinpolitik.de. January 30, 2007
  9. ↑ Bahamas leaks show: Politicians use island states as tax havens . sueddeutsche.de. 21 September 2016
personal data
SURNAME Kroes, Neelie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Smit-Kroes, Neelie; Peper-Kroes, Neelie
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch politician (VVD, EU Commissioner)
DATE OF BIRTH July 19, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH Rotterdam