Birgit Collin-Langen (born 4 September 1956) is a German politician who served as

Member of the European Parliament A Member of the European Parliament (MEP) is a person who has been elected to serve as a popular representative in the European Parliament. When the European Parliament (then known as the Common Assembly of the ECSC) first met in 1952, its ...

(MEP) from 2012 until 2019. She is a member of the Christian Democratic Union, part of the

European People's Party The European People's Party (EPP) is a European political party with Christian-democratic, conservative, and liberal-conservative member parties. A transnational organisation, it is composed of other political parties. Founded by primarily Ch ...

Career

Between 1993 and 1996, Collin-Langen headed the department for legal affairs and human resources at the Investment and Economic Development Bank of Rhineland-Palatinate (ISB). Collin-Langen served as the mayor of

Bingen am Rhein Bingen am Rhein () is a town in the Mainz-Bingen district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. The settlement's original name was Bingium, a Celtic word that may have meant "hole in the rock", a description of the shoal behind the ''Mäuseturm'', k ...

from 1996 to 2012. In this capacity, she also served as vice-president of the

Congress of the Council of Europe The Congress of Local and Regional Authorities is the pan-European political assembly representing local and regional authorities from the forty-six member states of the Council of Europe. Its role is to promote local and regional democracy, imp ...

. Ahead of the 2011 state elections, she was part of

Julia Klöckner Julia Klöckner (born 16 December 1972) is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who served as Federal Minister of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection in the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel from 2018 to 2021. ...

's campaign team and served as shadow minister of justice and internal affairs. In March 2012, Collin-Langen took her seat in the

European Parliament The European Parliament (EP) is one of the legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union (known as the Council and informally as the Council of Ministers), it adopts ...

for

Rhineland-Palatinate Rhineland-Palatinate ( , ; german: link=no, Rheinland-Pfalz ; lb, Rheinland-Pfalz ; pfl, Rhoilond-Palz) is a western state of Germany. It covers and has about 4.05 million residents. It is the ninth largest and sixth most populous of the ...

in place of Kurt Lechner, who had resigned his seat due to age. Between 2012 and 2014, she served on the

Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection The Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO) is a committee of the European Parliament. Work of the committee The committee is responsible for: * coordination at Community level of national legislation in the sphere of th ...

. From 2014, she was a member of the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety. In 2015, she served as her parliamentary group's

rapporteur A rapporteur is a person who is appointed by an organization to report on the proceedings of its meetings. The term is a French-derived word. For example, Dick Marty was appointed ''rapporteur'' by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Euro ...

on the Package Travel Directive (PTD). In addition to her committee assignment, Collin-Langen was a member of the Parliament's delegation to the EU-Armenia and EU-Azerbaijan Parliamentary Cooperation Committees and the EU-Georgia Parliamentary Association Committee. Within her party, Collin-Langen is a member of the CDU leadership in Rhineland-Palatinate under chairwoman

. Since 2001, she has also been serving as chairwoman of the Frauenunion in Rhineland-Palatinate, the women's group of the CDU. In August 2018, Collin-Langen announced that she would not stand in the 2019 European elections but instead resign from active politics by the end of the parliamentary term.

Other activities

University of Applied Sciences Bingen The Bingen Technical University of Applied Sciences (German: ''Technische Hochschule Bingen'') is a university located in Bingen am Rhein, Germany. It was founded in 1897. The University of Applied Sciences Bingen consists of two faculties: the f ...

, Member of the Board of Trustees *

German Association of Towns and Municipalities The German Association of Towns and Municipalities (Deutscher Städte- und Gemeindebund, DStGB) is a German central organisation of the municipal self-government () which represents the interests of 14.000 towns and municipalities belonging to a cou ...

(DStGB), Member of the Presidium

Controversy

In 2013, several members of the European Parliament's India Working Group filed a complaint after Collin-Langen – together MEPs

Lena Kolarska-Bobińska Professor Lena Barbara Kolarska-Bobińska (born 3 December 1947 in Prague) is a Polish sociologist, academic and political figure. Most recently, she served as the Polish Minister of Science and Higher Education from 2013 to 2015. In order to tak ...

and

Kinga Gál Kinga Gál (born 6 September 1970) is a Hungarian politician and Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from Hungary. She is a member of Fidesz. Early life and education Gál was born in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Her education details includ ...

– allegedly used a 50-seat bus to go shopping during an official delegation trip to

Kolkata Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , the official name until 2001) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary business, comme ...

. On 18 June 2015 Collin-Langen resigned from a secondary employment as a member of an advisory committee for the energy company

RWE RWE AG is a German multinational energy company headquartered in Essen. It generates and trades electricity in Asia-Pacific, Europe and the United States. The company is Europe's most climate threatening Company, the world's number two in offsh ...

after criticism from LobbyControl on the publication day of a study that had been published by Lobby Control in collaboration with

Corporate Europe Observatory The Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) is a non-profit research and campaign group whose declared aim is to "expose any effects of corporate lobbying on EU policy making". It is based in Brussels. The team (2021) consists of 13 staff members. ...

and

Friends of the Earth Europe Friends of the Earth Europe (FoEE) is the European branch of the world's largest grassroots environmental network, Friends of the Earth International (FOEI). It includes 33 national organizations and thousands of local groups. The Friends of the ...

. Criticism aimed at her advocating for RWE-friendly positions in the EPCEPHFS.

References

External links

Birgit Collin-Langen
official site

profile at the European Parliament {{DEFAULTSORT:Collin-Langen, Birgit 1956 births Living people People from Trier Mayors of places in Rhineland-Palatinate Christian Democratic Union of Germany MEPs MEPs for Germany 2009–2014 MEPs for Germany 2014–2019 21st-century women MEPs for Germany Women mayors of places in Germany