Markus Söder

Söder has been a member of the Landtag, the state parliament of Bavaria, since 1994. From 2003 to 2007 he was secretary general of the CSU party; in this capacity, he worked closely with then Minister-President and party chairman Edmund Stoiber. During his time in office, he was also part of the CDU/CSU team in the negotiations with the SPD on a coalition agreement following the 2005 federal elections,[1] which paved the way to the formation of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s first government.

Söder has since been member of the Beckstein, Seehofer I and II cabinets. From 2007 to 2008 he was Bavaria's State Minister for Federal and European Affairs, the successor office of Foreign Minister of Bavaria, and from 2008 to 2011 State Minister for Environment and Health.

As finance minister in the state government of Minister-President Horst Seehofer, Söder was also one of the state’s representatives at the Bundesrat, where he served on the Finance Committee.

During his time in office, Söder was put in charge of overseeing the restructuring process of ailing state-backed lender BayernLB in a bid to win approval for an aid package from the European Commission.[2] In 2014, he pushed BayernLB to sell its Hungarian MKB unit to that country's government, ending an ill-fated investment that had cost it a total of 2 billion euros ($2.7 billion) in losses over 20 years.[3] In 2015, Söder and his Austrian counterpart Hans Jörg Schelling agreed a provisional deal that settled the two governments’ array of legal disputes stemming from the collapse of the Carinthian regional bank Hypo Alpe-Adria-Bank International. Under the memorandum of understanding, Austria would pay €1.23 billion to Bavaria. All legal cases relating to the dispute would also be dropped.[4]

Also in 2012, Söder and Minister-President Horst Seehofer filed a lawsuit in the Federal Constitutional Court, asking the judges to back their call for an overhaul of the German system of financial transfers from wealthier states (such as Bavaria) to the country's weaker economies.[5] On Söder's initiative, Bavaria became the first regional government in Volkswagen's home country to take legal action against the carmaker for damages caused by its emissions-test cheating scandal. At the time, Söder argued that the state's pension fund for civil servants had lost as much as 700,000 euros ($780,000) as a consequence of the scandal.[6]

When Seehofer came under pressure after the CSU had suffered heavy losses in the 2017 national elections, he decided to remain party chairman but agreed to hand over leadership of Bavaria to Söder.[7]

• Free State of Bavaria Cabinet

In March 2018, lawmakers formally elected Söder as new Minister-President to replace Horst Seehofer, who had become German interior minister in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s new cabinet. He received 99 of the 169 state deputies’ votes, with 64 voting against – a better result than Seehofer when he began his final term in 2013.[8]

In January 2019, CSU delegates elected Söder to replace Seehofer as their leader with an 87.4 percent majority at a party conference. He was the sole candidate.[9]

Söder was a CSU delegate to the Federal Convention for the purpose of electing the President of Germany in 1999, 2004, 2009, 2010, 2012 and 2017.

In the negotiations to form a coalition government of the Christian Democrats (CDU together with the Bavarian CSU) and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) following the 2009 federal elections, Söder was part of the CDU/CSU delegation in the working group on health policy, led by Ursula von der Leyen and Philipp Rösler.

In the negotiations to form a Grand Coalition of the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats (SPD) following the 2013 federal elections, Söder was part of the CDU/CSU delegation in the working groups on financial policy and the national budget, led by Wolfgang Schäuble and Olaf Scholz, and on bank regulation and the Eurozone, led by Herbert Reul and Martin Schulz.[10]

• Munich Airport, ex officio chairman of the supervisory board
• Nuremberg Airport, ex officio member of the supervisory board, chairman of the supervisory board (since 2017)[11]
• KfW, ex officio member of the board of supervisory directors (2011–2016)[12]
• BayernLB, ex officio chairman of the supervisory board (2011–2012)
• ZDF, ex officio member of the Television Board (2002–2008, 2013–2016)

• Bavarian Research Foundation, ex officio member of the board of trustees
• Deutsches Museum, member of the board of trustees[13]
• University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU), member of the board of trustees
• Staatstheater Nürnberg, member of the board of trustees
• Ifo Institute for Economic Research, member of the board of trustees
• 1. FC Nürnberg, member of the supervisory board (2007–2011), member of the advisory board (since 2011)
• Munich International Film Festival, ex officio member of the supervisory board (2011–2014)

During the Greek government-debt crisis, Söder was among the most vocal in calling for Greece to leave the Eurozone.[14] By 2012, he said in an interview: "Athens must stand as an example that this Eurozone can also show teeth."[15]

In early 2018, Söder reiterated his opposition against any expansion of the eurozone to include countries like Bulgaria and Romania; the introduction of Eurobonds; and the creation of a European finance minister post.[16]

In 2012, under Söder's leadership, Bavaria pledged €500,000 ($687,546) in public funding for the Munich-based Institute for Contemporary History (IfZ) to produce a critical, annotated version of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf for publication in 2015 when the copyright expired. Söder said at the time that the publication would aim to "demystify" Hitler's manifesto. By 2013, however, the Bavarian state government ended its funding for the project.[17]

Throughout the European migrant crisis, Söder has sharply criticized the migrant policies of Angela Merkel several times. He warned of a "huge security gap" that remained because the whereabouts of hundred thousands of migrants was still unclear and he strongly doubted that the integration of so many people could succeed. In Söder's view, the Germans didn't want a multicultural society. Refugees should return to their home countries whenever possible. The dictum "Wir schaffen das" ("We make it") of Chancellor Merkel was "not the right signal", instead he suggested "Wir haben verstanden" ("We have understood").[18]

In 2018, Söder's government enacted the Kreuzpflicht, an obligation to display crosses at the entrance of public buildings. Söder has stated that the crosses are not to be seen as Christian symbols, but as symbols of Bavarian cultural identity.[19]

During his campaign for the 2018 state elections, Söder appealed to traditionalists while also seeking to enhance Bavaria's high-tech "laptops and Lederhosen" reputation with a promise of a new space programme for the state and more high-speed internet access.[20]

In his capacity as Minister-President, Söder has made several foreign trips, including for meetings with President Sahle-Work Zewde of Ethiopia (2019)[21] and President Vladimir Putin of Russia (2020).[22][23]