Anton Hofreiter

Anton "Toni" Hofreiter (born 2 February 1970) is a German biologist and politician.

Anton Hofreiter
Hofreiter in 2014
Leader of the Alliance '90/The Greens in the Bundestag
Assumed office
8 October 2013
Preceded byJürgen Trittin
Chair of the Transport, Construction and Urban Development Committee
In office
8 June 2011 – 8 October 2013
Preceded byWinfried Hermann
Succeeded byMartin Burkert
Member of the Bundestag
for Bavaria
Assumed office
18 September 2005
ConstituencyAlliance '90/The Greens List
Personal details
Born (1970-02-02) 2 February 1970
Munich, Bavaria (Germany)
NationalityGerman
Political partyAlliance '90/The Greens
Alma materLudwig Maximilian University of Munich
ProfessionPolitician, Biologist
WebsiteOfficial Website (German)

Political career

As a member of Alliance '90/The Greens, Hofreiter has been a member of the Bundestag since the 2005 elections. Between 2005 and 2013, he served as member of the Committee on Transport, Building and Urban Development; he served as chairman of the committee from 2011 until 2013. He was also member of the German-Austrian Parliamentary Friendship Group.

Hofreiter has been co-chair of the Green Party's parliamentary group, together with Katrin Göring-Eckardt, since October 2013.[1] He was elected unopposed as the sole candidate of the group’s left faction.[2]

In 2011, Hofreiter joined Gerhard Schick, Hans-Christian Ströbele and Winfried Hermann in their successful 2011 constitutional complaint against the refusal of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government to provide information on the Deutsche Bahn and financial market supervision. In its judgment pronounced in 2017, the Federal Constitutional Court held that the government had indeed failed to fulfil its duty to give answers in response to parliamentary queries and to sufficiently substantiating the reasons.[3]

Political positions

Human rights

Following 2012 reports by Spiegel Online according to which a luxury Boeing 767 belonging to Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko was refitted by Lufthansa Technik in Hamburg with expensive accoutrement to further accommodate Lukashenko's expensive tastes, Hofreiter criticized the company for cooperating with a "dictator who gives orders for the death penalty and violently destroys the opposition".[4]

In January 2015, Hofreiter criticized a decision by police in the eastern city of Dresden to ban an anti-Islam march after death threats toward an organizer, slamming the move as a worrying restriction on freedom of speech.[5] In the ongoing European migration crisis, Hofreiter is an outspoken proponent of a liberal migration policy.[6]

European integration

In a 2014 debate on a reform of the voting rules in the Governing Council of the European Central Bank, Hofreiter strongly criticized calls for a power of veto, saying to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: "Bundesbank chief Jens Weidmann is not Germany's vicegerent in the ECB Council".[7]

Other activities

References
  1. Christina Hebel, Christoph Sydow: Fraktionsspitze: Göring-Eckardt gewinnt Kampfabstimmung bei Grünen. In: Spiegel Online, 8. Oktober 2013.
  2. Quentin Peel (October 8, 2013), Germany Greens set to test waters for possible CDU coalition Financial Times.
  3. The Federal Government’s refusal to provide information on the Deutsche Bahn AG and financial market supervision was unlawful Federal Constitutional Court, press release no. 94/2017 of 7 November 2017.
  4. Quentin Peel (October 8, 2013), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, November 12, 2012.
  5. Harriet Torry and Anton Troianovski (January 19, 2015), Seeing in Crisis the Last Best Chance to Unite Europe The Wall Street Journal.
  6. http://www.stern.de/politik/deutschland/fluechtlingskrise--bund-und-laender-einigen-sich-auf-kostenverteilung-6467130.html
  7. ECB voting rights ‘rotation’ raises fears in Germany EurActiv, June 19, 2014.
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