Gerd Müller (politician)

Political career

Between 1989 and 1994, Müller was a Member of the European Parliament, where he served on the Committee on Transport and Tourism and on the Joint Assembly of the Agreement between the African, Caribbean and Pacific States and the European Economic Community (ACP-EEC).

Since 1994, Müller has been a member of the German Parliament (Bundestag) following the federal election that year. He served on the committees for foreign and defense policy and was the spokesman on Europe, foreign, and development policy for the CSU group.

Secretary of State at the Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection, 2005–2013

From 2005 to 2013, Müller served as Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection under ministers Horst Seehofer (2005–2008) and Ilse Aigner (2008–2013) in the first and second cabinets of Chancellor Angela Merkel. In this capacity, he was responsible for international relations, third-world development projects, and world food aid programs, among other issues. In 2011, he participated in the first first joint cabinet meeting of the governments of Germany and China in Berlin; his counterpart in the Chinese government at the time was Han Changfu.

Following the 2013 federal elections, Müller was part of the CDU/CSU team in the negotiations with the SPD on a coalition agreement.

Federal Minister of Economic Cooperation and Development, 2013–present

Since 2013, Müller has been Federal Minister of Economic Cooperation and Development in the third cabinet of Chancellor Angela Merkel; he was succeeded as Parliamentary State Secretary by Peter Bleser.

In February 2014, Müller accompanied German President Joachim Gauck on a state visit to India – where they met with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi, among others – and to Myanmar.

In October 2014, Müller co-chaired the Berlin Conference on the Syrian Refugee Situation along with Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres. In November 2014, he and German Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks hosted a conference which raised $10 billion for the Green Climate Fund’s projects to fight global warming.

In August 2015, Müller was part of Chancellor Merkel’s delegation to the first joint cabinet meeting of the governments of Germany and Brazil in Brasília. In January 2016, he participated in the first joint cabinet meeting of the governments of Germany and Turkey in Berlin.

Human rights and development

In April 2014, Müller became the first member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet to publicly confront world football's governing body FIFA over its allocation of the 2022 FIFA World Cup to Qatar, criticizing that the choice contradicted global efforts to tackle climate change and that human rights breaches on the country's stadium construction sites even extended to "slave labor." Later that year, he publicly accused Qatar of funding Islamic State militants, arguing that the country was the "keyword" when it comes to IS financing.

International agriculture

Müller is strongly in favor of extending subsidizing German agriculture for export, which he hopes will lessen the flow of refugees coming to Europe

Military engagement on the African continent

Müller has in the past voted in favor of German participation in United Nations peacekeeping missions as well as in United Nations-mandated European Union peacekeeping missions on the African continent, such as in Somalia – both Operation Atalanta and EUTM Somalia – (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015), Darfur/Sudan (2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016), South Sudan (2011, 2012, 2013, 2015 and 2016), Mali (2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016) the Central African Republic (2014), and Liberia (2015). He abstained from the vote on extending the mandate for Mali in 2016.

Other activities

Personal life

Müller is Catholic and father of two children.