Ueli Maurer

This article deals with the Swiss politician Ueli Maurer, for the cryptographer of the same name see Ueli Maurer (cryptologist) .

Ueli Maurer (2011)

Ueli Maurer (fourth from right) in the official Federal Council photo 2016

Ulrich "Ueli" Maurer [ ˈuəli ] (born December 1, 1950 in Wetzikon , resident in Adelboden and Hinwil ) is a Swiss politician ( SVP ). He has been a member of the Federal Council since January 1, 2009 , first as Head of the Federal Department of Defense, Civil Protection and Sport (DDPS) (2009–2015) and since 2016 as Head of the Federal Department of Finance (FDF). He was Federal President of the Swiss Confederation in 2013 and 2019.

resume

Maurer completed compulsory training and secondary school in Hinwil. He did a commercial apprenticeship and then obtained the federal accountant diploma . From 1994 to 2008 he was managing director of the Zurich farmers' association . Until the end of 2008 he was President of the Association of Swiss Vegetable Producers and the Swiss Machine Ring .

Political career

From 1978 to 1986 Maurer was a local councilor in Hinwil . From 1983 to 1991 he was on the Cantonal Council of Zurich , in his last year in office as Council President. Maurer was elected to the National Council in 1991 . In the same year he lost the election to the Zurich cantonal government against Moritz Leuenberger . During his tenure as President of SVP Switzerland from 1996 to 2008, twelve new cantonal parties and 600 local sections were founded, with the SVP establishing itself as the party with the largest number of voters in Switzerland.

On October 21, 2007, Maurer ran for one of two seats in the Canton of Zurich in the Council of States , but failed in the first ballot. In the second ballot on November 25, 2007, he lost against the green liberal Verena Diener .

On October 26, 2007, Maurer announced his resignation as party president of the SVP in March 2008. Toni Brunner was elected as his successor on March 1, 2008. In mid-August 2008, Maurer was elected President of the Zurich SVP.

After the resignation of Federal Councilor Samuel Schmid , the SVP parliamentary group nominated Christoph Blocher and Ueli Maurer for the 2008 Federal Council election on November 27, 2008 . On December 10, 2008, Maurer was elected to the Federal Council in the third ballot with only one vote ahead of the demolition candidate Hansjörg Walter . From 2009 to 2015 Maurer was head of the Federal Department of Defense, Civil Protection and Sport (DDPS).

On December 5, 2012, Maurer was elected Federal President for 2013 with 148 out of 237 possible and 202 valid votes .

In the general election on December 9, 2015 , Maurer was re-elected with 173 of 210 valid votes in the first ballot. In 2016 he moved from the DDPS to the Federal Department of Finance (FDF).

Visits abroad as Federal President

2013

date	place	Main reason
February 1st and 2nd	Munich ( Germany )	Participation in the Munich Security Conference
February 8-10	Schladming ( Austria )	Visit to the Alpine World Ski Championships Meeting with the Austrian Federal President Heinz Fischer
19th of February	Vaduz ( Liechtenstein )	Meeting with the Liechtenstein Prime Minister Klaus Tschütscher
May 5th and 6th	Vatican City ( Vatican City )	Audience with Pope Francis and participation in the swearing-in of new Swiss Guards
3rd of June	Vilnius ( Lithuania )	Meeting with the Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaitė
July 16-21	Beijing ( People's Republic of China )	Meeting with President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Li Keqiang
the 9th of September	Innsbruck ( Austria )	Participation in the meeting of four German-speaking heads of state
October 23-25	New York City ( United States / UN )	Speech to the General Assembly of the United Nations
November 18	Pristina and Suhareka ( Kosovo )	Meeting with the Kosovar President Atifete Jahjaga and a visit to Swisscoy
December 10th and 11th	Pretoria and Johannesburg ( South Africa )	Attending the funeral services for former South African President Nelson Mandela

2019

date	place	Main reason
11th January	Vienna ( Austria )	Meeting with Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen and Federal Chancellor Sebastian Kurz
January 23	Schaan ( Liechtenstein )	Participation in the ceremony for the 300th anniversary of the Principality of Liechtenstein
April 12th and 13th	Washington, DC ( United States )	Participation in the spring meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank
April 22-29	Shanghai and Beijing ( People's Republic of China )	State visit; Meeting with President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Li Keqiang Participation in the second Belt and Road Forum Meetings with government and financial industry representatives
10th of May	Helsinki ( Finland )	Meeting with President Sauli Niinistö and Acting Prime Minister Juha Sipilä as well as Parliament President Antti Rinne
May 14th	Warsaw ( Poland )	Meeting with President Andrzej Duda
May 16	Washington, DC ( United States )	Meeting with President Donald Trump
June 3rd and 4th	Linz ( Austria )	Participation in the meeting of German-speaking heads of state
June 8-10	Fukuoka and Tokyo ( Japan )	Participation in the meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bank governors as well as meeting with the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe
August 26th and 27th	Mondorf-les-Bains ( Luxembourg )	Participation in the meeting of German-speaking finance ministers
September 23rd and 24th	New York City ( United States / UN )	Participation in the General Assembly of the United Nations
October 18th and 19th	Washington, DC ( United States )	Participation in the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank
October 26th and 27th	Dubai and Abu Dhabi ( United Arab Emirates )	Meeting with Prime Minister Muhammad bin Raschid Al Maktum
October 28th and 29th	Riyadh ( Saudi Arabia )	Meeting with King Salman ibn Abd al-Aziz
November 8th	Brussels ( Belgium )	Participation in a meeting of the finance and economy ministers of the EU and EFTA
21st November	Moscow ( Russia )	Meeting with President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev
22nd of November	Nur-Sultan ( Kazakhstan )	Meeting with President Qassym-Shomart Toqayev and Minister Minister Asqar Mamin
November 29th	Zagreb ( Croatia )	Meeting with President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović and Prime Minister Andrej Plenković

family

Little is known about Maurer's personal life. He presented his family to the public for the first time at his reception as the newly elected Federal Councilor in his place of residence in Wernetshausen in the Hinwil community. His wife Anne-Claude, b. Peter grew up in Ghana as the daughter of Swiss missionaries . The two married in 1976 and together have six children, four sons and two daughters. They met in Seattle , where they worked as an au pair . He himself was on the trail of his grandfather, who once looked for gold in Alaska .

According to his own statement , he spends his holidays mainly in Switzerland for patriotic reasons. Maurer protests against the accusation of racism:

“There is no place for extremists in our party. My wife was born in Ghana and grew up there too. We have a lot of dark-skinned friends and we eat more couscous than raclette in our house . "

criticism

Before his nomination as Federal Councilor, Maurer was regarded within the SVP as a representative of the politics of the “Zurich wing”. During his presidency, the controversial poster campaigns were published with subjects such as the knife, the brown hands reaching for the Swiss passport , and the black sheep being kicked by the national flag. In the run-up to the Federal Council election and after his election, various parties feared that he would not be able to cope with the role change in a collegial authority. As a result, Maurer was accused of placing party interests above national interests.

Others

When Maurer was referred to by Roger Schawinski in a discussion program on Tele24 in 1999 as “Party President by Blocher's grace”, he left the studio in front of the cameras.

In June 2006, Maurer was of alfredo lardelli of forgery accused. The accusations proved untenable and Maurer was acquitted in November of that year.

In 2013, Maurer received the World Telecommunication and Information Society Award from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

Maurer holds the rank of major in the Swiss Army .

In 2019 Ueli Maurer took part in the Bilderberg Conference .

literature

• Editor HLS: Maurer, Ueli. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
• Ueli Maurer in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Web links

Commons : Ueli Maurer  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Ueli Maurer on the website of the Federal Department of Finance FDF
• Ueli Maurer on the website of the Federal Assembly
• Political profile of Ueli Maurer (voting behavior in the National Council, 46th legislature, 1999-2003) ( Memento of December 24, 2010 in the Internet Archive )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Federal Chancellery: The Confederation in Brief , page 63. Published in 2009
2. ↑ From the “bad guy” to the Federal Council , article by Francesco Benini on NZZ online, December 10, 2008
3. ^ Article SF Tagesschau
4. ↑ Press releases SVP ( Memento of the original from October 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) 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. 
5. ↑ “We are the only remaining bourgeois party” Interview from the NZZ on August 7, 2008
6. ↑ Tages-Anzeiger : Maurer on the move to the Federal Council
7. ↑ An exciting Federal Council election. In: swissinfo. December 10, 2008, accessed September 20, 2011 . 
8. ↑ tagesschau.sf.tv: Maurer takes over VBS
9. ↑ Maurer is Federal President, Burkhalter his vice . Tagesschau - Swiss television, December 5, 2012
10. ↑ Only two politicians achieved a worse result . bazonline.ch , December 5, 2012
11. ^ Parmelin becomes Minister of Defense In: Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen , December 11, 2015, accessed on January 2, 2016
12. ↑ St. Galler Tagblatt dated December 19, 2008, after an interview in L'Hebdo
13. ↑ Ueli Maurer reveals the secret of his wife. In: Berner Zeitung . December 18, 2008. Retrieved March 3, 2020.
14. ↑ Ueli Maurer, from SVP soldier to statesman. In: Swissinfo . December 10, 2008. Retrieved April 27, 2011.
15. ↑ Uncomfortable does not mean ineligible. Editorial in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung on December 6, 2008, page 15
16. ↑ Martin Senti: The SVP scores with emotions. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung (online). NZZ Media Group , September 10, 2011, accessed on September 21, 2011 . 
17. ↑ Hubert Mooser: Maurer cracks the jackpot. In: Tagesanzeiger Online. Tamedia AG, September 15, 2011, accessed on September 20, 2011 . 
18. ↑ Hubert Mooser: Federal Councilor Maurer, the great preventer. Before his election to the Federal Council, Ueli Maurer committed himself to the principle of collegiality and concordance: as a Federal Council, however, he puts party interests above state interests. In: Berner Zeitung Online. Espace Media AG, April 2, 2010, accessed September 20, 2011 . 
19. ↑ Video excerpt from Tele24
20. ↑ SDA message  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on Swissinfo .org from June 16, 2006  
21. ↑ Ueli Maurer's acquittal ( Memento from July 22, 2012 in the Internet Archive ). Tages-Anzeiger , November 2, 2006
22. ↑ Ueli Maurer honored by ITU. In: inside-IT from May 3, 2013
23. ↑ Bilderberger Participants 2019. Accessed June 1, 2020 . 

predecessor	Office	successor
Samuel Schmid	Member of the Swiss Federal Council 2009–	-