Olaf Scholz


Olaf Scholz is a German politician serving as Federal Minister of Finance and Vice Chancellor under Chancellor Angela Merkel since 14 March 2018. He served as First Mayor of Hamburg from 7 March 2011 to 13 March 2018 and Acting Leader of the Social Democratic Party from 13 February to 22 April 2018.
A member of the Bundestag from 1998 to 2001 and again from 2002 to 2011, Scholz was Minister of the Interior of Hamburg under First Mayor Ortwin Runde from May to October 2001 and general secretary of his party under chairman and chancellor Gerhard Schröder from 2002 to 2004. He served as Federal Minister of Labour and Social Affairs in Merkel's first Grand Coalition from 2007 to 2009 and leader of the SPD in Hamburg from 2000 to 2004 and again from 2009 to 2018.
Together with former Brandenburg state representative Klara Geywitz, he received most votes in the first round of the 2019 election for the newly introduced dual leadership of his party, but lost with 45% in the ensuing run-off to the winners Norbert Walter-Borjans and Saskia Esken.

Early life and education

Born in the northwestern city of Osnabrück, Scholz grew up in Hamburg's Rahlstedt district and studied at the University of Hamburg to become a lawyer specializing in labour law.

Political career

A former vice president of the International Union of Socialist Youth, Scholz represented Hamburg Altona in the Bundestag between 1998 and 2001 as well as between 2002 and 2011. From May to October 2001, he was Minister of the Interior of Hamburg under First Mayor Ortwin Runde and from 2002 to 2004 he was Secretary-General of the SPD; he resigned from that office when Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, facing disaffection within his own party and hampered by persistently low public approval ratings, announced that he would step down as chairman of the Social Democratic Party.
Scholz served as the SPD parliamentary group's spokesperson on the inquiry committee investigating the German Visa Affair in 2005. Following the federal elections later that year, he served as First Parliamentary Secretary of the SPD parliamentary group. In this capacity, he worked closely with the CDU parliamentary floor manager Norbert Röttgen to manage and defend the grand coalition led by Chancellor Angela Merkel in parliament. He also served as member of the Parliamentary Oversight Panel, which provides parliamentary oversight of Germany's intelligence services BND, MAD and BfV. In addition, he was a member of the parliamentary body in charge of appointing judges to the Highest Courts of Justice, namely the Federal Court of Justice, the Federal Administrative Court, the Federal Fiscal Court, the Federal Labour Court, and the Federal Social Court.
Scholz succeeded Franz Müntefering as Federal Minister of Labour and Social Affairs in the first cabinet of Chancellor Angela Merkel, when Müntefering left office in November 2007.
Following the 2009 elections, Scholz served as deputy chairman of the SPD parliamentary group. Between 2009 and 2011, he served on the group's Afghanistan/Pakistan Task Force. In 2010 he also participated in the annual Bilderberg Meeting in Sitges, Spain.

First Mayor of Hamburg, 2011–2018

On 20 February 2011 the Social Democrats led by Scholz won the 2011 Hamburg state election with 48.3% of the votes, resulting in 62 out of 121 seats in the Hamburg Parliament. Scholz resigned as a member of the seventeenth Bundestag on 11 March 2011 shortly after his election as First Mayor; Dorothee Stapelfeldt, also a Social Democrat, was made Deputy First Mayor.
In his capacity as mayor, Scholz represented Hamburg and Germany internationally. On 7 June 2011, Scholz attended the state dinner hosted by President Barack Obama in honor of Chancellor Angela Merkel at the White House. As host of Hamburg's annual St. Matthias' Day banquet for the city's civic and business leaders, he has invited several high-ranking guests of honour to the city, including Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault of France, Prime Minister David Cameron of the United Kingdom, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada. From 2015 until 2018, he also served as Commissioner of the Federal Republic of Germany for Cultural Affairs under the Treaty on Franco-German Cooperation.
In 2013, Scholz opposed a public initiative aiming at a complete buyback of energy grids Hamburg had sold to utilities Vattenfall Europe AG and E.ON decades before; he argued this would overburden the city, whose debt pile stood at more than 20 billion euros at the time.
Scholz participated in the exploratory talks between the CDU, CSU and SPD parties to form a coalition government following the 2013 federal elections. In the subsequent negotiations, he led the SPD delegation in the financial policy working group; his co-chair from the CDU/CSU was Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble. Alongside fellow Social Democrats Jörg Asmussen and Thomas Oppermann, Scholz was considered a possible successor to Schäuble in the post of finance minister at the time.
In a paper compiled in late 2014, Scholz and Schäuble proposed redirecting revenue from the so-called solidarity surcharge on income and corporate tax to subsidize the federal states’ interest payments.
Under Scholz’ leadership, the Social Democrats handily won the 2015 state elections in Hamburg, receiving around 47 percent of the vote. His coalition government with the Green Party – with Green leader Katharina Fegebank serving as Deputy First Mayor – was sworn in on 15 April 2015.
In 2015, Scholz led Hamburg's bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympics at an estimated budget of 11.2 billion euros, competing against Los Angeles, Paris, Rome and Budapest; the citizens of Hamburg, however, later rejected the candidacy in a referendum, with more than half voting against the project.
In 2015, Scholz – alongside Minister-President Torsten Albig of Schleswig-Holstein – negotiated a restructuring deal with the European Commission that allowed the German regional lender HSH Nordbank to offload 6.2 billion euros in troubled assets – mainly non-performing ship loans – onto its government majority owners and avoid being shut down, saving around 2,500 jobs.

Federal Minister of Finance, 2018–present

On 14 March 2018, Olaf Scholz became Federal Minister of Finance.
Within the first months in office, Scholz became one of Germany's most popular politicians with an approval rating of close to 50 percent.

Political positions

Within his party, Scholz is widely regarded as part of the conservative wing.
After the 2017 national elections, Scholz was publicly critical of party leader Martin Schulz’s strategy and messaging, releasing a paper titled “No excuses! Answer new questions for the future! Clear principles!” With his proposals for reforming the party, he was widely interpreted to position himself as a potential challenger to Schulz within the SPD. In the weeks after his party first started weighing a return to government, Scholz urged compromise and was one of the SPD members more inclined toward another grand coalition.
Since taking office as minister of finance, Scholz has been committed to a continued goal of no new debt and limited public spending. In 2018, he suggested the creation of a Europe-wide unemployment insurance system to make the eurozone more resilient to future economic shocks. He also wants to introduce a financial transaction tax.

Other activities

International organizations

When Die Tageszeitung interviewed Scholz, then serving as secretary general of the ruling SPD, during a 2003 party conference, he later demanded massive changes and threatened to pull the entire piece. When the editors said they would go ahead and publish it without authorization, Scholz warned that the paper would be excluded from all future SPD background talks. The newspaper published the interview with all of Scholz's answers blacked, and the paper's editor-in-chief Bascha Mika condemned his behavior as a "betrayal of the claim to a free press, a betrayal of the journalist's self-definition, a betrayal of the reader."
Scholz was criticized for his handling of the riots that took place during 2017 G20 summit in Hamburg; Mayor Scholz apologized to residents, but refused to resign.

Personal life

Olaf Scholz is married to Britta Ernst ; they have no children. She is also a politician.
The couple lived in Hamburg's Altona district before moving to Potsdam in 2018.