Pierre Chevalier (politician)

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Pierre Antoine Marie Chevalier (born October 8, 1952 in Bruges , West Flanders Province ) is a Belgian lawyer and politician of the Socialist Partij (SP) and later of the Vlaamse Liberalen en Democrats (VLD), who was among other things State Secretary in the eighth and ninth governments of Prime Minister Wilfried Martens was.

Life

Lawyer, Member of Parliament and State Secretary

After attending school, Chevalier studied law at the Rijksuniversiteit Gent and worked as a lawyer after gaining a license in criminology .

First he was involved in the Trotskyist Revolutionaire Arbeidersliga (RAL) before he switched to the Socialist Party in 1983 and remained a member until 1992. In 1983 he was elected as a candidate for the SP to be a member of the Bruges City Council and was a member of it until 1994. At the same time, he was elected for the first time on October 13, 1985, and was a member of the Belgian Chamber of Deputies for eighteen years until April 10, 1993. First he represented the Arrondissement of Bruges and then, since May 21, 1995, the constituency of Bruges and was also a member of the Flemish Council (Vlaamse Raad) between 1985 and 1995 , which later became the Flemish Parliament (Vlaamse Parlement) .

After Chevalier was chairman of the SP parliamentary group in the Chamber of Deputies for some time in 1988 , he was appointed State Secretary for National Education in his eighth government by Prime Minister Wilfried Martens on October 18, 1988, and held this office until January 16, 1989. He then served as State Secretary for Science Policy in Martens' eighth cabinet on his resignation on January 18, 1990 because of problems with the judiciary.

Chevalier, who was also a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Western European Union (WEU) between 1990 and 1992 , took over the post of State Secretary for Science Policy in the ninth Martens cabinet on September 29, 1991 and held this position until Martens term of office ended on March 7, 1992. In 1992, he left the SP and instead became a member of the Vlaamse Liberalen en Democrats (VLD).

In 1998 Chevalier first became chairman of the health insurance company Liberale Mutualiteit West-Vlaanderen , before he was appointed Secretary of State for Foreign Trade by Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt in his first government on July 12, 1999 , and as such was attached to Minister for Foreign Affairs Louis Michel . On October 11, 2000, however, he had to declare his resignation prematurely, this time because of legal problems in Switzerland .

Senator and withdrawal from political life

Chevalier, who was again a member of the City Council of Bruges between 2001 and 2012, acted as representative of the Belgian government at the European Convention between 2002 and 2003 and was then a member of the Senate between 2003 and 2007 as a representative of the VLD . At the same time he was the representative of the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister at the Conference of Representatives of the Governments of the Member States of the European Union between 2003 and 2004 and later in 2006 special representative of the Belgian Chairman of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Karel de Gucht . Most recently in 2007 he was special representative of the Belgian government at the United Nations Security Council .

Chevalier, who was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Order of Leopold for his political merits , withdrew from politics in 2008 after another political scandal about himself after public allegations of stolen goods , money laundering and forgery of documents because of his relations with the French - Ivorian fraudster Jean- Claude LaCote were charged. Almost three years later, however, the investigative proceedings were discontinued by a Brussels investigative court due to the statute of limitations. In 2012 he announced that he would not retire from public life for good, but would continue to support his native city of Bruges.

Web links

  • Entry on the homepage of the Belgian Chamber of Deputies
  • Entry on the Senate homepage

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Een schandaal te veel: Pierre Chevalier kapt met de politiek (humo.be of May 20, 2008)
  2. ^ Pierre Chevalier (Open Vld) niet vervolgd voor witwassen . In: Het Belang van Limburg of June 16, 2011
  3. ↑ zijn Chevalier wil slagader van Brugge Lingen. Pierre Chevalier wil slagader blijven . In: De Standaard of October 9, 2012
personal data
SURNAME Chevalier, Pierre
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Chevalier, Pierre Antoine Marie (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Belgian politician (SP / VLD)
DATE OF BIRTH October 8, 1952
PLACE OF BIRTH Bruges , West Flanders Province , Belgium