Jürgen Rüttgers

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Jürgen Rüttgers

Jürgen Rüttgers (born June 26, 1951 in Cologne) is a German politician (CDU) and Minister-President of North Rhine-Westphalia, widely known for his views on immigration and the famous phrase "Kinder statt Inder" ("children instead of Indians") which was a media interpretation of "Statt Inder an die Computer müssen unsere Kinder an die Computer" ("instead of Indians in front of computers, our children must be in front of computers"), at a time when immigrants from India were feared to come by the thousands to Germany. His opinions on the superiority of the Christian religion, which he expressed in a TV talk-show were also a reason for headlines lately.

In the state parliament (Landtag) election 2005, Jürgen Rüttgers was the opposition Christian Democratic Union's front-runner for the second time. The former minister for education, science, research and technology in Chancellor Helmut Kohl's Cabinet in 1994 to 1998 has headed the CDU in the state since 1999 and has been its leader in state parliament since the last election. Rüttgers has also been one of the CDU's deputy party chairmen since 2000.

After CDU and FDP won a majority of seats in the election on May 22, 2005, they formed a coalition to take over government from the former SPD and Green party coalition led by Peer Steinbrück. Rüttgers was elected Prime Minister (Ministerpräsident) on June 22.

Jürgen Rüttgers is in collaboration with Luigi Berlinguer (Italy), Claude Allegre (France) and Baroness Tessa Blackstone (UK) one of the heads of the "Sorbonne declaration", the joint declaration on harmonisation of the architecture of the European higher education system, in May 25 1998. That was the Intro to the "Bologna process".

Dr. Rüttgers holds degrees in Law and History from the University of Cologne and a Dr. Jur. (Ph.D.) in law (1979). He became a member of K.D.St. V. Rappolstein Köln, a Catholic student fraternity that is member of the Cartellverband.