Elmar Brok

Elmar Brok   (politician)
Born	14 May 1946
Nationality	German
Alma mater	University of Edinburgh
Member of	Atlantik-Brücke, Bertelsmann Foundation, Friends of Europe, German Council on Foreign Relations, Open Society Foundations/Reliable allies, Spinelli Group, Transatlantic Policy Network
Party	CDU
lobbyist and European parliament politician  Europa-Union Deutschland/President In office 1999 - 2006 Succeeded by Peter Altmaier

Elmar Peter Brok is a German politician who was Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from 1980 until 2019, who is best known for his role as chairman of the European Parliament Committee on Foreign Affairs and former President of the Union of European Federalists (UEF). Former Chancellor Helmut Kohl once sarcastically summarized Brok's CV: "born, married, MEP."

Career

Brok was initially involved in the Youth Group of the conservative party CDU, and was its deputy federal president from 1973 to 1981.

In June 1980, Brok became a member of the European Parliament. He sat there from 1980 to 2019. From 1999 to 2007 and again in 2012-2017, he was chair of the Committee on Foreign Affairs.

Since the 2009 European elections, he became the foreign policy spokesman for the conservative EPP Group and a member of the EPP Group Executive Board. He was chairman of the inter-parliamentary delegation to the US Congress and chaired the steering group of the Transatlantic Legislators’ Dialogue, actively promoting the TTIP free trade project in European parliaments.

As MEP, Brok was a representative of the European Parliament in the review of the Maastricht Treaty (1994/1995), the Amsterdam Treaty (1996/1997), the Nice Treaty (2000), the EU Constitutional Treaty (2003/2004) and the Lisbon Treaty (2007). From 2001 to 2002 Brok was chairman of the EPP group in the Convention for the Constitution of the European Union.

Legal Corruption

Since 1992, Brok has been head of the Brussels office and responsible for European matters on the board of media conglomerate Bertelsmann. Between 2004 and the end of May 2011, he held the position of Senior Vice President for Media Development at the same company. According to Bertelsmann, Brok received over € 5,000 a month for this lobbyist activity.

He was instrumental in creating the EU copyright directive, which strengthens the position of media companies, including his employer Bertelsmann. In the draft treaty for a constitution for Europe, Brok enforced that the right to intellectual property was absolute and was not subject to any social obligation (Art. II-77 para. 2). The constitutional lawyer Hans Herbert von Arnim has several times described Brok's activity as "legal corruption".

Regime Change in Ukraine

He traveled to Kiev in 2004 in support of the Orange Revolution, a regime change against the winning side after the Ukrainian election.

In December 2012, Brok traveled to Kiev and campaigned for the politician Yulia Tymoshenko, who was then detained for corruption.

In his capacity as Chairman of the European Parliament's Committee on Foreign Affairs, Brok repeatedly traveled to Kiev after November 2013, during the regime change in Ukraine ("Euromaidan") against elected president Victor Yanukovych.

He strongly tried to influence Ukrainian internal politics: "I tell President Yanukovych: ‘The door is open!’” Brok called to Ukraine’s president, describing his refusal to sign the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement: “He sells the future of Ukraine for a short term solution.”...“It is possible to help Ukraine in its difficult economic situation. … The European Parliament will help to make it possible. … You do not need to sell your country.“

In an interview on February 7, 2014, Brok stated that Vitali Klitschko was "the suitable president" and Yatsenyuk "the ideal prime minister" for Ukraine. In a statement to ARD magazine Panorama, he described the role of the extreme right-wing party Svoboda as that of a party that had at least contributed significantly to the overthrow of a dictator and who, regardless its past, is now also committed to the rule of law in Ukraine.

 

Events Participated in

Event	Start	End	Location(s)	Description
Brussels Forum/2006	2006	2006	Belgium Brussels	Yearly discreet get-together of huge amount of transatlantic politicians, media and military and corporations, under the auspices of the CIA and NATO-close German Marshall Fund.
Brussels Forum/2007			Belgium Brussels	Yearly discreet get-together of huge amount of transatlantic politicians, media and military and corporations, under the auspices of the CIA and NATO-close German Marshall Fund.
Brussels Forum/2009	20 March 2009	22 March 2009	Belgium Brussels	Yearly discreet get-together of huge amount of transatlantic politicians, media and military and corporations, under the auspices of the CIA and NATO-close German Marshall Fund.
Brussels Forum/2010	26 March 2010	28 March 2010	Belgium Brussels	Yearly discreet get-together of huge amount of transatlantic politicians, media and military and corporations, under the auspices of the CIA and NATO-close German Marshall Fund.
Brussels Forum/2012	23 March 2012	24 March 2012	Belgium Brussels	Yearly discreet get-together of huge amount of transatlantic politicians, media and military and corporations, under the auspices of the CIA-close German Marshall Fund.
Brussels Forum/2014	21 March 2014	24 March 2014	Belgium Brussels	Yearly discreet get-together of huge amount of transatlantic politicians, media and military and corporations, under the auspices of the CIA-close German Marshall Fund. The theme in 2014 was A World in Transition
Brussels Forum/2015	20 March 2015	22 March 2015	Germany North Rhine-Westphalia Cleve	Yearly discreet get-together of huge amount of transatlantic politicians, media and military and corporations, under the auspices of the CIA-close German Marshall Fund. The 2015 main theme was (R)evolution.
Brussels Forum/2017	23 March 2017	25 March 2017	Belgium Brussels	Yearly discreet get-together of huge amount of transatlantic politicians, media and military and corporations, under the auspices of the CIA-close German Marshall Fund. The overarching theme was "‘End of Complacency – Era of Action?"
Brussels Forum/2018	8 March 2018	10 March 2018	Belgium Brussels	Annual 3 day spooky get-together of transatlantic politicians, media and military and corporations, under the auspices of the CIA and German Marshall Fund. Discussed the "Fight for Economic Equality".
Munich Security Conference/2009	2009	2009	Germany Munich Bavaria	The 45th Munich Security Conference
Munich Security Conference/2010	5 February 2010	7 February 2010	Germany Munich Bavaria	An anti-war demonstration outside described it as "Nothing more than a media-effectively staged war propaganda event, which this year had the purpose of justifying the NATO troop increase in Afghanistan and glorifying the continuation of the war as a contribution to peace and stability."
Munich Security Conference/2011	4 February 2011	6 February 2011	Germany Munich Bavaria	The 47th Munich Security Conference
Munich Security Conference/2012	3 February 2012	5 February 2012	Germany Munich Bavaria	The 48th Munich Security Conference
Munich Security Conference/2013	1 February 2013	3 February 2013	Germany Munich Bavaria	The 49th Munich Security Conference
Munich Security Conference/2014	31 January 2014	2 February 2014	Germany Munich Bavaria	The 50th Munich Security Conference
Munich Security Conference/2015	6 February 2015	8 February 2015	Germany Munich Bavaria	"400 high-ranking decision-makers in international politics, including some 20 heads of state and government as well as more than 60 foreign and defence ministers, met in Munich to discuss current crises and conflicts."
Munich Security Conference/2016	12 February 2016	14 February 2016	Germany Munich Bavaria	The 52nd Munich Security Conference
Munich Security Conference/2017	17 February 2017	19 February 2017	Germany Munich Bavaria	The 53rd Munich Security Conference
Munich Security Conference/2019	15 February 2019	17 February 2019	Germany Munich Bavaria	The 55th Munich Security Conference, which included "A Spreading Plague" aimed at "identifying gaps and making recommendations to improve the global system for responding to deliberate, high consequence biological events."
Munich Security Conference/2020	14 February 2020	16 February 2020	Germany Munich Bavaria	The 56th Munich Security Conference, in 2020, "welcomed an unprecedented number of high-ranking international decision-makers."
Munich Security Conference/2022	18 February 2022	20 February 2022	Germany Munich Bavaria	Slightly less than 1/3 of the 664 of the participants have pages here

Many thanks to our Patrons who cover ~2/3 of our hosting bill. Please join them if you can.