Name Michael Brand Nationality Germany Role German Politician | Children 3 Alma mater University of Bonn | |
Political party German:CDU EU:European People's Party | ||
Michael Brand (born 19 November 1973 in Fulda, Hesse) is a German politician and member of the CDU.
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Political career
A former election observer at the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), Brand has been a directly elected member of the Bundestag since 2005, representing Fulda.
Between 2005 and 2013, Brand was a member of the Committee on the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, where he served as the CDU/CSU parliamentary group’s rapporteur on recycling and waste regulations. From 2009, he also served on the Defence Committee and on the Sub-Committee for Civilian Crisis Prevention.
Since the 2009 federal elections, Brand has been serving on the Committee on Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid; he has been the committee’s chairman since 2014. In addition, he serves as deputy chairman of the Parliamentary Friendship Group for Relations with Bosnia and Herzegovina and as member of the Parliamentary Friendship Group for Relations with the States of South-Eastern Europe (Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia).
Political positions
In April 2015, Brand vigorously criticized German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier for refusing to use the word “genocide” to describe the mass killing of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire, arguing that “the German foreign minister is expected on a national and international level to recognize and name a genocide; [...] especially because of the Holocaust a genocide must not be by-passed or withheld due to cowardice.”
In 2015, a majority of the Bundestag voted in favor of banning assisted suicides performed by associations, on the basis of a proposal put forward by Brand and fellow parliamentarian Kerstin Griese of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). The proposed bill submitted by Brand and Griese had called for "striking a balance" between punishing those who provide suicide assistance and a complete deregulation of the process. The parliamentarians voted in favor of one of the proposals irrespective of their parties' policy on the matter.
In June 2017, Brand voted against Germany’s introduction of same-sex marriage.