After diplomatic training, Lambsdorff served on the German Policy Planning Staff (together with Jorgo Chatzimarkakis, his contemporary and fellow FDPMEP) before becoming director of the Bundestag office of former German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel, after the FDP left government in 1998.[3]
2003–04: Political Department, Russia Desk in the German Federal Foreign Office
Political career
Member of the European Parliament, 2004–2017
Lambsdorff was first elected to the European Parliament in 2004 and was confirmed in 2009 and 2014. Held in high regard, he was widely viewed as a possible successor to Graham Watson as leader of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Group in the parliament, but the post went instead to Guy Verhofstadt.[3] From 2011, Lambsdorff chaired the 12-member German FDP delegation in the European Parliament, before subsequently being elected Leader of the European Liberals and Democrats Group in 2014.
In January 2014, at the FDP Convention in Bonn, Lambsdorff was elected as his party's lead candidate for the European Parliament elections receiving a resounding 86.2% of the vote.[9]
From 2014, Lambsdorff served as one of the fourteen Vice Presidents of the European Parliament who sit in for the president in presiding over the plenary. In this capacity, he was also in charge of representing the parliament at multilateral bodies, including the United Nations and the World Trade Organization, as well as of the parliament's contacts with European business associations.[10] In addition, he was a member of the Democracy Support and Election Coordination Group (DEG), which oversees the Parliament's election observation missions.[11]
Member of the German Bundestag, 2017–2023
Lambsdorff has been a member of the German Bundestag since the 2017 national elections. Throughout his time in parliament, he served as one of six deputy chairpersons of the FDP parliamentary group under the leadership of its successive chairs Christian Lindner (2017-2021) and Christian Dürr (since 2021), where he oversaw the group's activities on foreign policy.[12] From 2022, he also was a member of the Parliamentary Oversight Panel (PKGr), which provides parliamentary oversight of Germany's intelligence services BND, BfV and MAD.[13]
In addition, Lambsdorff chaired the German-Israeli Parliamentary Friendship Group.
Following the 2017 state elections in North Rhine-Westphalia, Lambsdorff was part of the FDP team in the negotiations with Armin Laschet's CDU on a coalition agreement. He led his party's delegation in the working group on European affairs; his co-chair of the CDU was Matthias Kerkhoff.[14]
In March 2024, Lambsdorff – alongside other EU ambassadors – attended the funeral of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.[16] Also in March 2024, Russia's foreign ministry summoned Lambsdorff again after Russian media published an audio recording of senior German military officials discussing weapons for Ukraine and a potential strike by Kyiv on a bridge in Crimea.[17]
Political positions
European integration
Lambsdorff has become increasingly critical of an accession of Turkey to the European Union and publicly declared that accession talks should be suspended until the Turkish government returns to the direction of the EU.[18][19] In 2011, he accused Prime MinisterRecep Tayyip Erdoğan of using "gunboat rhetoric" in his statements about Israel, adding that "with a strident anti-Israel course, it isn't making any friends in Europe."[20] On the 2014 post-election protests in Turkey, he commented: "There are more journalists in jail [in Turkey] than in China or Iran and now the Prime Minister wants to close down YouTube and Twitter because people are saying things he doesn't like."[21] When Erdoğan, then in his position as President of Turkey, disparaged German president Joachim Gauck as a "pastor" in 2014, Lambsdorff demanded that "the negotiations [on EU accession] should be put in a deep freeze."[22]
Following British Prime MinisterDavid Cameron's veto of EU-wide treaty change to tackle the European debt crisis in 2011, Lambsdorff was quoted by German weekly Der Spiegel as saying: "It was a mistake to admit the British into the European Union."[23]
Following the 2014 European elections, Lambsdorff openly rejected Pierre Moscovici's nomination as European Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs, Taxation and Customs, stating that Moscovici should be held accountable for France's rising deficit and worsening economic situation.[27]
Language
In December 2014, Lambsdorff proposed that the English language should be mastered by servants of the public administration, and should later become an official language of Germany, in addition to German. According to Lambsdorff, as experienced in other countries with a good knowledge of English in public institutions, this should help to attract more skilled migrants to prevent labor shortage, to ease business for investors and to establish a more welcoming culture.[28] As evaluated by a representative YouGov survey, 59 percent of all Germans would welcome the establishment of English as an official language in the whole European Union.[29]
German European Security Association (GESA), Member (2006-2015)[38]
Personal life
Lambsdorff coat of arms
Count Alexander Lambsdorff is a member of the Baltic branch of the noble Lambsdorff family; his family branch emigrated from Westphalia to the Baltic region in the early 15th century and was recognised as noble in Courland in 1620. The family owned large estates in modern-day Latvia and Estonia, and family members distinguished themselves as military officers in the service of the Russian Empire. One of Alexander Lambsdorff's ancestors, Count Matthias von der Wenge Lambsdorff, was a Russian general and was conferred the hereditary comital title in 1817 by Alexander I of Russia.[citation needed] In 1880 the family was authorised by royal licence to use the titles Baron of the Wenge and Count of Lambsdorff in the Kingdom of Prussia. His father, Hagen Graf Lambsdorff (born 1935), was the first German Ambassador to Latvia from 1991 and later Ambassador to the Czech Republic from 1999 to 2001; his uncle, Otto Graf Lambsdorff (1926–2009), was a prominent liberal politician and Federal Minister for Economic Affairs from 1977 to 1982.
Regarding personal names: Until 1919, Graf was a title, translated as 'Count', not a first or middle name. The female form is Gräfin. In Germany, it has formed part of family names since 1919.
It is equivalent to the noble rank of earl (female form: countess).
