Rainer Wend

Rainer Wend (2012)

Rainer Wend (born March 8, 1954 in Gütersloh ) is a German politician ( SPD ) and chief lobbyist of Deutsche Post AG . From 2002 to 2005 he was chairman of the Bundestag Committee for Economy and Labor and from 2005 to 2009 he was the economic policy spokesman for the SPD parliamentary group. From July 2012 to 2018 he was President of the European Movement Germany .

Life and work

After graduating from high school in 1973, Wend studied law from 1974 , which he completed in 1979 with the first state examination . After completing his legal clerkship , he passed the second state examination in law in 1984. In 1984 he received his doctorate as Dr. jur. at Bielefeld University with the work The admissibility of collective bargaining regulations for staffing positions using the example of recent collective agreements in the printing industry . He has been admitted to the bar since 1984 . He was also the curator of the New Social Market Economy Initiative .

Rainer Wend is a widower and has three daughters.

Political party

He has been a member of the SPD since 1970. During his studies he was involved in the Socialist University Association . As chairman of the Juso district of Ostwestfalen / Lippe, Wend was considered an important representative of the Marxist Stamokap wing of the SPD's youth organization. From 1989 to 1997 he was chairman of the SPD sub-district of Bielefeld .

MP

From 1998 to April 1, 2009 he was a member of the German Bundestag . From February to October 2002 he was spokesman for the SPD parliamentary group for economics and technology. Since March 2002 he was a member of the SPD parliamentary group executive committee and was chairman of the committee for economy and labor from November 2002 to October 2005. In November 2005 he was re-elected as economic policy spokesman for the SPD parliamentary group. He belonged to the Seeheimer Kreis and the Berlin Network . In August 2008, Wend announced that he would no longer run for the office of MP in the 2009 Bundestag election. A few months later, Deutsche Post AG announced that Wend would take over the central area of politics and sustainability in the company. There he will be responsible for questions of political coordination, for the environmental strategy and sustainability as well as for global social engagement. Wend, who took up his new position on April 1, 2009, succeeded Monika Wulf-Mathies .

Rainer Wend always moved into the Bundestag as a directly elected member of the Bielefeld constituency . In the 2005 Bundestag election , he achieved 47.2 percent of the first votes . On April 1, 2009, he resigned from the Bundestag.

European politics

Rainer Wend (center) with Minister of State Michael Georg Link (left) and EBD Honorary President Dieter Spöri (right)

Since his time in the Bundestag , Wend has set political priorities on economic and financial issues and repeatedly comments on the so-called euro crisis . In addition to budget discipline and structural reforms in the affected countries, important components of crisis management for him are a greater alignment of the economic and financial policies of the EU members towards a “political union”. Wend supports the introduction of a financial transaction tax as broadly as possible. In the course of the debates on the EU's Multiannual Financial Framework , Wend and his British counterpart called for a growth-oriented budget framework . Wend also advocates the idea of a social Europe, since in his opinion a political union can only succeed if the living conditions within Europe are comparable. In August 2017 he sharply criticized the German federal government's European coordination as out of date. It must be modernized from the ground up.

Rainer Wend has been President of the European Movement Germany eV since July 2012, succeeding the SPD politician Dieter Spöri .