Ronald Pofalla (born 15 May 1959) is a German lawyer and politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who served as the

Chief of Staff The title chief of staff (or head of staff) identifies the leader of a complex organization such as the armed forces, institution, or body of persons and it also may identify a principal staff officer (PSO), who is the coordinator of the supporti ...

of the German Chancellery and a

Federal Minister for Special Affairs A Federal Minister for Special Affairs (german: Bundesminister für besondere Aufgaben, ) is a member of the German government without portfolio. Early Minister for Special Affairs were assigned different tasks by the Chancellor. For example, Ro ...

from 2009 to 2013, in the

second The second (symbol: s) is the unit of time in the International System of Units (SI), historically defined as of a day – this factor derived from the division of the day first into 24 hours, then to 60 minutes and finally to 60 seconds ...

coalition government A coalition government is a form of government in which political parties cooperate to form a government. The usual reason for such an arrangement is that no single party has achieved an absolute majority after an election, an atypical outcome in ...

Chancellor Chancellor ( la, cancellarius) is a title of various official positions in the governments of many nations. The original chancellors were the of Roman courts of justice—ushers, who sat at the or lattice work screens of a basilica or law cou ...

Angela Merkel. From 2017 to 2022, he was the CEO of the infrastructure department of

Deutsche Bahn The (; abbreviated as DB or DB AG) is the national railway company of Germany. Headquartered in the Bahntower in Berlin, it is a joint-stock company ( AG). The Federal Republic of Germany is its single shareholder. describes itself as the se ...

Early life and education

Pofalla studied

social pedagogy Social pedagogy describes a holistic and relationship-centred way of working in care and educational settings with people across the course of their lives. In many countries across Europe (and increasingly beyond), it has a long-standing tradition a ...

at the

Fachhochschule A ''Fachhochschule'' (; plural ''Fachhochschulen''), abbreviated FH, is a university of applied sciences (UAS), in other words a German tertiary education institution that provides professional education in many applied sciences and applied arts ...

in Kleve. After finishing with a

Diplom A ''Diplom'' (, from grc, δίπλωμα ''diploma'') is an academic degree in the German-speaking countries Germany, Austria, and Switzerland and a similarly named degree in some other European countries including Albania, Bulgaria, Belarus ...

in 1981 he studied law at the University of Cologne. In 1991 he passed the second Staatsexamen. Since that time Pofalla has been licensed to work as a

lawyer A lawyer is a person who practices law. The role of a lawyer varies greatly across different legal jurisdictions. A lawyer can be classified as an advocate, attorney, barrister, canon lawyer, civil law notary, counsel, counselor, solic ...

Political career

Early beginnings

Pofalla has been a member of the CDU since 1975. At first he was engaged in the Junge Union. He was chairman of the JU in the State of North Rhine-Westphalia from 1986 to 1992.

Member of the German Parliament, 1990–2014

During his time in parliament, Pofalla served on the Committee for the Scrutiny of Elections, Immunity and the Rules of Procedure, the Committee on Legal Affairs, the Committee on Labour and Social Affairs and the Committee on Economic Affairs and Technology. From 2004 to 2005 Pofalla was deputy chairman of the CDU/CSU's parliamentary group in the Bundestag under the leadership of Angela Merkel, and served as the Secretary General of the CDU from 2005 to 2009. In the negotiations to form a

of the Christian Democrats and the

Free Democratic Party Free Democratic Party is the name of several political parties around the world. It usually designates a party ideologically based on liberalism. Current parties with that name include: *Free Democratic Party (Germany), a liberal political party in ...

(FDP) following the 2009 federal elections, he led the CDU/CSU delegation in the working group on labour and social affairs; his counterpart of the FDP was Dirk Niebel.

Chief of Staff to the Chancellor, 2009–2013

After the elections, Pofalla succeeded

Thomas de Maizière Karl Ernst Thomas de Maizière (; born 21 January 1954) is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who served as Federal Minister of the Interior from 2009 to 2011 and 2013 to 2018, as well as Federal Minister of Defence f ...

as Chief of Staff to Chancellor Angela Merkel. During his time in office, he was repeatedly criticized for being rude towards other representatives of the Bundestag and other members of the German government. In September 2011 he seriously insulted Wolfgang Bosbach, senior group leader of the CDU/

CSU CSU may refer to: * Channel service unit, a Wide area network equivalent of a network interface card * Chari Aviation Services, Chad, by ICAO airline code * Christian Social Union (UK), an Anglican social gospel organisation * Christian Social Un ...

-group in the Bundestag after an in-house discussion about the enhancement of the European Financial Stability Facility. In the negotiations to form a

following the 2013 federal elections, Pofalla was part of the 15-member leadership circle chaired by Merkel, Horst Seehofer and Sigmar Gabriel. As part of a cabinet reshuffle, he subsequently resigned as head of the Federal Chancellery.

Career in the private sector

In January 2014 it was reported that Pofalla would be joining the management

, the state-owned national rail network of Germany. He had previously worked for the company's subsidiary DB Netz between 2005 and 2009. At Deutsche Bahn, Pofalla took up a "specially created lobbying post" said to carry compensation of more than a million euros a year. His successor in the Bundestag is

Thorsten Hoffmann Thorsten Hoffmann (born 5 February 1961) is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union ( CDU) from Dortmund. From 2015 to 2017, he was a member of the Bundestag. Career In 1980, Hoffmann joined the police service. Two years later, h ...

. After transitioning to the private sector, Pofalla was made co-chairman of the Petersburg Dialogue, a semiofficial German-Russian symposium. From 2018 until 2019, he also served on the German government's so-called coal commission, which was tasked to develop a masterplan before the end of the year on how to phase-out coal and create a new economic perspective for the country's coal-mining regions. In 2022, Pofalla was appointed to the managing board of real estate developer Gröner Group.

Other activities

Corporate boards

* DEVK Rückversicherungs- und Beteiligungs-Aktiengesellschaft, Member of the supervisory board (since 2016) *

Sparda-Bank The Sparda-Banks in Germany are eleven cooperative banks which are consolidated in the Verband der Sparda-Banken e. V. (Union of Sparda-Banks). Traditionally they are specialized in the retail banking business. The eleven, legally independent ban ...

, Member of the Advisory Board * KfW, Member of the supervisory board (2002-2006)

Non-profit organizations

* Bonner Akademie für Forschung und Lehre praktischer Politik (BAPP), Member of the Board of Trustees * Zollverein Coal Mine Industrial Complex, Member of the Board of Trustees (since 2018) * Jewish Museum Berlin, Member of the Board of Trustees * German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), vice-president of the council (2009-2013) *

Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences (german: Hochschule Rhein-Waal) or HSRW, is a young and fast-growing German public university that first opened for the winter semester of 2009/10. It is known to be the most international-oriented universi ...

, Member of the Presidium (2009-2013) * Konrad Adenauer Foundation, Member of the Board (2005-2009) * ZDF, Member of the Television Board (2005-2009)

Political positions

During his time in politics, Pofalla took an active interest in Belarus. In 2012, he publicly condemned the execution of Vladislav Kovalyov and Dmitry Konovalov, both 26, saying this move would further alienate Belarus from Europe. " Lukashenko thus drifts even further away from our European values," he said. "The already heavily burdened relation between Belarus and Europe will be rendered yet more difficult by this." In the context of the Ukraine crisis, Pofalla has commented that "it wasn’t clever of Barack Obama to have downgraded Russia, in connection with the Ukraine conflict, to the level of a regional power."

Controversy

Pofalla caused controversy when German

tabloid Tabloid may refer to: * Tabloid journalism, a type of journalism * Tabloid (newspaper format), a newspaper with compact page size ** Chinese tabloid * Tabloid (paper size), a North American paper size * Sopwith Tabloid, a biplane aircraft * ''Ta ...

Bild ''Bild'' (or ''Bild-Zeitung'', ; ) is a German tabloid newspaper published by Axel Springer SE. The paper is published from Monday to Saturday; on Sundays, its sister paper ''Bild am Sonntag'' ("''Bild on Sunday''") is published instead, which ...

'' revealed that he had bought premium Montblanc writing materials worth 3,307.61 euros for his MP office at the expense of the Bundestag in 2009; at the time, it was the highest recorded order by any parliamentarian.Kate Brady (25 August 2016)
German MPs expenses to be reconsidered following stationery scandal
''

Deutsche Welle Deutsche Welle (; "German Wave" in English), abbreviated to DW, is a German public, state-owned international broadcaster funded by the German federal tax budget. The service is available in 32 languages. DW's satellite television service con ...

''.

References

External links

Ronald Pofalla's website
*

Sustainable Development Sustainable development is an organizing principle for meeting human development goals while also sustaining the ability of natural systems to provide the natural resources and ecosystem services on which the economy and society depend. The des ...