Friedbert Pflüger

Friedbert Pflüger       (politician)
In 2005
Born	6 March 1955 Hanover, Lower Saxony, Germany
Nationality	German
Alma mater	Göttingen, University of Bonn, Harvard Center for International Affairs
Member of	American Council on Germany/Young Leaders/1982, Atlantic Bridge (Germany), Atlantic Council
Student at Harvard under the auspices of Samuel Huntington, selected a Young Leader by the American Council on Germany in 1982, and member of the deep state Atlantic Bridge. Instrumental in setting up an "independent" European Convention to draft the EU Constitutional Treaty. He also promotes "decarbonisation" of the German economy. Attended the 2005 and 2006 Bilderberg meetings.  Parliamentary State Secretary In office 2005 - 2006 Employer Germany/Minister/Defence,  Franz Josef Jung  Member of the Bundestag  In office 1990 - 2006 Preceded by Karl Ahrens, Peter Petersen, Günther Straßmeir  Spokesman and Speechwriter In office 1984 - 1989 Employer Richard von Weizsäcker

Friedbert Pflüger is a German politician. He was a Member of the German Bundestag, where he was foreign policy spokesman of the CDU/CSU Parliamentary Group. He was Secretary of State in the Federal Ministry of Defence 2005–2006. He attended the 2005 and 2006 Bilderberg meetings.

He was a student at Harvard under the auspices of Samuel Huntington, selected a Young Leader by the American Council on Germany in 1982, and is a member of the deep state Atlantic Bridge. He supported the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. He also promotes "decarbonisation" of the German economy.

Education

Friedbert Pflüger was born in Hanover. He studied political science, public and constitutional law and economics in Göttingen, Bonn and at Harvard. He received his Master of Arts degree in 1980 and in 1982 his Dr. phil. degree. His doctoral thesis was directed by Karl Dietrich Bracher and examined US-foreign policy "between idealism and realism". In 1980/81, he was a graduate student associate at the Harvard Center for International Affairs (CFIA) under the auspices of Samuel Huntington^[recruited?]. He also taught a seminar on US human rights policy at Harvard.

Political career

Since 1971, Pflüger was a member of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU). The first political offices he held were as deputy chairman of the European Democrat Students (EDS) from 1976 to 1978 and as federal chairman of the Association of Christian Democrat Students (RCDS) from 1977 to 1978. From 1977 to 1985, Pflüger was also a member of the federal executive committee of the Young Union (JU), the youth organization of the CDU/CSU.

From 1981 to 1984, Pflüger worked for the governing mayor of Berlin, Richard von Weizsäcker. When Weizsäcker became the Federal President of Germany in 1984, Pflüger became his spokesman and speechwriter,[1] a job he kept during all the presidency until 1989. Until today, Pflüger sees von Weizsäcker as a "father figure".

Between 1989 and 1991, Pflüger worked as manager of the Matuschka Group, Berlin, at that time a leading German investment bank.

In the 1990 elections, Pflüger became a member of the Bundestag, which he remained until 2006.

In parliament, Pflüger was disarmament policy spokesman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group from 1994 to 1998. From 1998 to 2002, he was chairman of the Committee on European Affairs. He was instrumental in setting up an "independent" European Convention to draft the EU Constitutional Treaty. In the years from 2002 to 2005, he was foreign policy spokesman of the CDU/CSU Parliamentary Group. Ge strongly advocated the rapid membership of Poland in the EU and NATO among the German public.

In 2003, before invasion of Iraq, he supported a US ultimatum to Saddam Hussein and strongly criticized the attitude of the federal government of Chancellor Schröder. After the invasion, he advocated an administration of Iraq by the United Nations.

Between 2000 and 2010, Plüger was a member of the federal executive committee of the CDU under the leadership of chairwoman Angela Merkel.

In November 2005, he was appointed Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Defence under minister Franz Josef Jung, a position in which he remained until October 2006. During his time in office, he managed to negotiate the continuing cooperation with President Karimov and the Uzbek government to use the Termez airbase by the German armed forces in December 2005.

In March 2006, Pflüger was elected the top candidate of the CDU for that year's state elections in Berlin. After spending almost no time preparing his election campaign, he lost to incumbent Klaus Wowereit of the SPD, as all the polls had indicated. Keeping his promise to remain active in Berlin politics even in case of an electoral defeat, Pflüger assumed the responsibility as the chairman of the CDU Parliamentary Group in the Berlin House of Representatives and gave up his position as a Parliamentary State Secretary.

During his political career, Pflüger wrote books, especially on environment/energy and on foreign and security policy. A New World War? The Islamist Challenge to the West (Ein neuer Weltkrieg? Die islamistische Herausforderung des Westens), which was published in 2004.

Later career

Pflüger founded the strategic consulting firm Pflüger International in April 2009. In June 2022, he sold the majority of his shares to Joachim Lang, who manages the company under the new name Strategic Minds Company GmbH as the sole managing partner. Lang and Pflüger sold the company to Berlin Global Advisors (BGA) in May 2024, and at the same time, Pflüger and his wife re-founded Pflüger International GmbH, both of which have been co-managing directors since then.

Since 2024 he has been managing the company together with his wife Sibylle Pflüger. He is co-Managing Director of the think tank StiftungClean Energy Forum (CEF), founded by his wife and his children. From 2009 to 2021, he was an honorary professor at King's College London, where he was director of the European Centre for Climate, Energy and Resource Security (EUCERS). He then transferred the institute to the University of Bonn, where Pflüger taught climate and energy policy until spring 2024.

Pflüger has been a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Global Energy Center of the Atlantic Council since 2012 and has been Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the industry association Zukunft Gas since 2021. Together with Ralph Dommermuth, he founded the Internet Economy Foundation (IEF) in 2016, and was its chairman until 2023.

Since his book A Planet is Saved (1992), which Joschka Fischer and Klaus Töpfer presented to the public together at the Bonn Press Club, environmental and climate protection have been part of Pflüger's life topics. In January 2022, Pflüger called for the establishment of a climate OSCE, which, following the example of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, should bring all the major power blocs in Europe - such as the European Union, Russia and the United States – together on the topic of "climate protection".

Before the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Pflüger published several open letters in which he warned of a war with the danger of a nuclear escalation, urged for a diplomatic solution and warned about the arming of Ukraine by Western countries. On January 27, 2022, he wrote to the Ukrainian Ambassador Andriy Melnyk. On February 14, 2022, four days before the start of the Munich Security Conference (MSC), he wrote to Wolfgang Ischinger. On 1. In March 2022, he wrote an open letter to Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.

In March 2023, Pflüger testified before the Committee of Inquiry of the state parliament in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania as an expert on the construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in the context of Germany's security of supply. This was met with criticism, as in addition to his journalistic engagement with the topic, Pflüger worked for several years as a consultant for Nord Stream AG.

 

Events Participated in

Event	Start	End	Location(s)	Description
Bilderberg/2005	5 May 2005	8 May 2005	Germany Rottach-Egern	The 53rd Bilderberg, 132 guests
Bilderberg/2006	8 June 2006	11 June 2006	Canada Ottawa	54th Bilderberg, held in Canada. 133 guests
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."

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References

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