Michael Grosse-Brömer

Michael Grosse-Brömer in 2014

Michael Grosse-Brömer (born 12 October 1960 in Oberhausen) is a German politician and a member of the Bundestag for the German Christian Democratic Union.

Early life and education

Grosse-Brömer is a lawyer and civil law notary.

Political career

Michael Grosse-Brömer alongside Volker Kauder, Gerda Hasselfeldt and Max Straubinger at the Bundestag, 2014

Grosse-Brömer was first elected to the Bundestag in 2002. Between 2003 and 2004, he was one of 32 members of the Commission on the modernization of the federal state, which had been established to reform the division of powers between federal and state authorities in Germany. Within the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, Grosse-Brömer joined the leadership committee in 2006.

Following the 2009 federal elections, Grosse-Brömer assumed leadership of the Christian Democrats from Lower Saxony. In 2010 he became justicar of the parliamentary group of the CDU; before then he had served as speaker on judicial law. In 2012 he succeeded Peter Altmaier as First Secretary of the parliamentary group, in this position assisiting the parliamentary group's chairman Volker Kauder.

Since 2009, Grosse-Brömer has also been member of the parliament’s Council of Elders, which – among other duties – determines daily legislative agenda items and assigning committee chairpersons based on party representation. Since 2014, he has been serving on the Committee on the Election of Judges (Wahlausschuss), which is in charge of appointing judges to the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany.^[1]

Following the 2013 federal elections, Grosse-Brömer was part of the CDU/CSU team in the negotiations with the SPD on a coalition agreement.

Political views

On social policy

Following a 2013 decision by the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany, which ruled that gays and lesbians should be allowed to adopt children already adopted by their partners, Grosse-Brömer told German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung that as a result of the “clear tendency in the decisions of the Federal Constitutional Court, we should move as quickly as possible to implement the necessary constitutional right of equality.”^[2] Grosse-Brömer later devised a compromise on legally binding rules to ensure more women sit on corporate boards after some of his parliamentary group’s lawmakers, led by Labor Minister Ursula von der Leyen, threatened to vote for the opposition-sponsored proposal to reserve as many as 40 percent of board seats for women. Under the agreement, at least 30 percent of the supervisory board of publicly traded companies must be reserved for women from 2020.^[3]

On economic policy

In a 2013 German debate about moving towards tighter regulation of executive pay, Grosse-Brömer expressed his hope that transparency and shareholder scrutiny would be enough to put a stop to pay excesses and rejected a legal cap on payouts.^[4] Speaking on plans to create a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership in 2014, he told the Financial Times that “[t]he biggest advantage is that when the EU and the US make this deal, it will include standards which can be applied worldwide.”^[5]

On foreign policy

In the debate on international sanctions during the 2014 pro-Russian unrest in Ukraine, Grosse-Brömer supported tighter measures, saying said it was “right” to push for more sanctions on Russia and that “sanctions that have been held out must also be implemented.”^[6] On Ukraine’s president Petro Poroshenko’s 2014 plan to hold a referendum on his country joining NATO, Grosse-Brömer swiftly commented: “NATO membership for Ukraine isn’t on the agenda at this point.”^[7]