Former German Vice-Chancellor and a leading figure in the German Green Party

Joschka Fischer was German foreign minister and vice chancellor from 1998 to 2005. His political career began in the state of Hesse where in 1991 he became the first-ever Green Party minister on the state level holding the portfolios of the environment and energy. In 1994, Fischer entered federal politics and became co-chairman of the Greens Party’s federal parliamentary faction.

Fischer belongs to the realist camp of the party and has personified a maverick form of European left politics - at once principled, pragmatic, pro-American and strongly pro-EU. As foreign minister, he stood against German popular opinion and faced down the majority of Green Party members who opposed German military participation in the Kosovo campaign, arguing against pacifism in the face of genocide and ethnic cleansing. But, as the Iraq war loomed, he clashed memorably with US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and positioned himself as the one of the few outspoken critics of the Iraq invasion of 2003.

Joschka Fischer has been one of the most influential leaders of the German Green Party. He led his party into the European political mainstream during the 1998 federal election forming social democrat-green coalition on the federal level. Under Fischer’s leadership, the green party expanded its voice in the coalition in the 2002 federal election achieving its best voting result to date. In addition to his familiarity with the classical green portfolio issues of energy and climate, Fischer is an internationally respected commentator on foreign and security policy issues.

From September 2006 until 2007, Joschka Fischer was a senior fellow at the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination and a visiting professor at Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, both at Princeton University. He has also spoken at other American universities on various topic in foreign affairs and international relations.

Since 2008, Fischer has been employed with the Albright Group, a Washington, DC, consulting firm led by Madeleine Albright

Fischer currently runs an advisory firm in Berlin and is senior strategic counsel with The Albright Group LLC in Washington DC. Fischer serves on the Board of Directors of the International Crisis Group and as Co-Chair of the Executive Board of the European Council on Foreign Relations. He is also a consultant to BMW advising on developing a sustainable and environmentally friendlier business strategy.

He is the author of several books and his political commentaries are published widely.

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Related Categories

• International Leaders
• Corporate Social Responsibility
• Climate & Environment
• European Speakers
• German Speakers
• Deutsche Referenten

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