Having joined the CDU in 1966, he was deputy chairman of the Bochum branch of the CDU. From 1978–1984, he was deputy leader of a part (Westfalen-Lippe) of the North Rhine-Westphalian branch of the Junge Union, the CDU youth organization. In the 1980 national elections, he was elected to the Bundestag and had kept his mandate continuously until stepping down in 2017. During his tenure in the Bundestag he served (as usual for all MPs) on several committees.[2]
Norbert Lammert in the German Bundestag, 2014
Following the 2005 federal elections in which the CDU became the strongest party and formed a grand coalition with the Social Democratic Party (SPD), Lammert was elected by the Bundestag on 18 October 2005 to replace Wolfgang Thierse of the SPD as its President. Lammert received 564 of 607 votes cast, including most of the SPD's votes. He was reelected to this post by the 17th Bundestag after the 2009 federal election with a similarly good result. In his capacity as president, he chairs the parliament’s Council of Elders, which – among other duties – determines daily legislative agenda items and assigning committee chairpersons based on party representation. Lammert's tenure in office gained him recognition across party lines as he was determined to uphold the honor and importance of the federal parliament while at the same time displaying a dry, sophisticated sense of humor most notably in exchanges with then-chairmen of Die LinkeGregor Gysi.
In the negotiations to form a Grand Coalition of the Christian Democrats (CDU together with the Bavarian CSU) and the SPD following the 2013 federal elections, Lammert was part of the CDU/CSU delegation in the working group on cultural and media affairs, led by Michael Kretschmer and Klaus Wowereit.
When Federal PresidentJoachim Gauck announced in June 2016 that he would not stand for reelection, Lammert was soon mentioned by German and international media as likely successor.[3][4]
In October 2016, Lammert announced that he would not stand in the 2017 federal elections and resign from active politics by the end of the parliamentary term.[5]
Since 2022, following an appointment by ChancellorOlaf Scholz, Lammert has been serving on a three-member panel (alongside Krista Sager and Andreas Voßkuhle) to assess potential conflicts of interest, requiring senior German officials from the chancellor to deputy ministers to observe a cooling-off period if they want to quit the government for a job in business.[6]
Political positions
Role of the parliament
Throughout his tenure, Lammert has not shied from speaking out against the government about potential threats to parliament's role.[7] He became widely respected for upholding parliamentarians' rights, including leading the way in condemning the 1915 Armenian massacres as a Turkish genocide in 2016.[8] In 2011, he questioned why the Bundestag had not been consulted on Chancellor Angela Merkel's decision to close all nuclear plants following Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.[9] He has insisted that members of parliament be consulted fully on the bailout schemes for the euro zone debt crisis.[10]
European integration
In 2012, Lammert said he wants a financial transaction tax to be introduced in as many countries as possible, “at least” in the Eurozone.[11] Later that year, he demanded that the EU not take in new members for the time being because of the European debt crisis and also expressed doubts that Croatia was ready to join;[12] Croatia eventually joined the EU in 2013.
Human rights
Following the Charlie Hebdo shooting in 2015, Lammert criticized Saudi Arabia for condemning the Paris attacks as a violation of Islam, "then two days later letting the blogger Raif Badawi be flogged in public in Jeddah for insulting Islam".[13] Ahead of Egyptian presidentAbdel Fattah el-Sisi's first official visit to Germany in June 2015, Lammert announced that he would not meet the former army chief, citing "an unbelievable number of death sentences".[14]
In June 2017, Lammert voted against Germany’s introduction of same-sex marriage.[16]
Controversy
Party financing
In December 2010, Lammert imposed on the CDU a fine of 1.2 million euros ($1.6 million) for breaching party donation rules, for party funding violations in the western state of Rhineland-Palatinate at the time of the regional election in 2006.[17]
Plagiarism allegations
In July 2013, an anonymous internet blogger, using the name of Robert Schmidt, accused Lammert of having plagiarized other works when writing his dissertation.[18] Lammert rejected this reproach and asked the University of Bochum to check his dissertation; he also published it via internet. High-ranking politicians of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and of the German Green Party underlined that there should be no condemnation(s) in advance.[19]
In November 2013 the university finished a thorough investigation and came to the conclusion that, although the dissertation contained "avoidable shortcomings in the citations", those did not constitute plagiarism.[20]
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