Before the EU elections, the focus is on Brussels: Eric Beißwenger is said to be the top lobbyist there as Bavaria's new European Minister.
Munich – Creating a funding application for an agricultural business is not a closed book for Eric Beißwenger. The CSU politician is familiar with the practical effects of European policy with all its absurdities. The smart 51-year-old, who has been Bavaria's European Minister since November, ran his own organic farm in Bad Hindelang for 25 years.
“We had Bullerbü farming,” smiles the politician. He has embarked on an unusual career. The man from Mannheim comes from a farm, but his father recommended that his son train as a banker. But the son was not enthusiastic about the world of finance. “It was always my desire to do agriculture.” Since his wife had also studied agriculture, the couple looked for a piece of land and found it in Bavaria.
CSU European Minister Beißwenger: An organic farmer from Mannheim!
In 1997, the couple bought a farm with ten hectares of land in the Swabian town of Unterjoch, right on the Tyrolean border. Beißwenger was 25 at the time. “The farm was far too small to be viable,” so they got creative in all directions: renovated the listed house, built holiday apartments, offered horse-drawn carriage rides, kept over 100 bee colonies, a few sheep, chickens , geese, horses, free range pigs. There is also an alpine pasture and a farm shop. The new residents were watched closely – especially since the revived business mutated into the first organic farm in the community in 1999.
As a farmer you have to be flexible – and open to new tasks. This is how Beißwenger came to politics. In 2008 he was elected to the local council via the local list. A little later he joined the CSU – an organic farmer from Mannheim! The exotic person made progress step by step: in 2011 he became local chairman in Bad Hindelang and district chairman of the SME Union. He has been a member of the state parliament since 2013 – ten years later he is a minister under Markus Söder.
Beißwenger sees himself neither as the third agriculture minister after Michaela Kaniber (CSU) and the self-proclaimed farmer advocate Hubert Aiwanger (Free Voters), nor as the second economics minister alongside Aiwanger. Bavaria's chief lobbyist or foreign minister – with these titles he sees his task well described.
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“Agricultural, environmental and economic issues are playing an increasingly important role in Brussels,” says the minister. His job is to “step in when necessary” and the bureaucracy does somersaults. Beißwenger does not suffer from overconfidence. He prefers to stack a little deeper and describes himself as “a little cog in the machine.”
He is in Brussels every week and also meets for discussions in advance of decisions. These background discussions do not make headlines; diplomacy is required here. Economic development is very important – after all, Bavaria is the sixth largest economy in Europe and relies on exports. What is surprising, however, is that he appears largely alone and not in a duet with Economics Minister Aiwanger. “I have never met him on my trips abroad,” says Beißwenger meaningfully.
Between appointments in Brussels and Berlin, European business trips and background discussions, Beißwenger grounded himself on the farm in Unterjoch. Pure traction. He's already got everything in place at home. The eldest son has been running the farm for two years. The 25-year-old has reorganized the business and converted it into a sheep farm. He manages the landscape with 480 ewes – for example under photovoltaic areas.
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Be it economic policy, reducing bureaucracy or the new EU agricultural policy – Beißwenger wants to shape it. He is for animal welfare-friendly stables, but against an animal welfare tax (“an ideological animal tax that only makes meat more expensive”). Agricultural support must remain – because social services such as landscape management, cheap food and environmentally friendly production “also have to be paid for”.
As an ardent European, he has not yet caught the attention of the opposition. Ludwig Hartmann, long-time parliamentary group leader of the Green Party, considers him to be a good networker. Hartmann explains with regional proportionality that the organic farmer, who was rarely seen as a member of parliament, has moved up to Söder's cabinet: “Markus Söder needed someone from Swabia.” Hartmann demands that Beißwenger be passionate about Europe: “Europe is the most beautiful gift, ours Parents made us.”
Bavaria's chief lobbyist in Brussels thinks less about headlines and more strategically – Germany needs to act more cleverly and place officials in the EU apparatus so that “we can create our own signature”. Greece, Italy and Spain did this much more skillfully. Networking is everything in Europe – and so Bavaria's European Minister is reviving old traditions. This year, a maypole will be set up again in the Bavarian representation in Brussels, Maibock will be served and an Oktoberfest will be celebrated. And Bavarian foreign and economic policy is pursued – by the organic farmer and banker from the Allgäu mountain village.
Claudia Möllers
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