Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor of Germany
In the federal elections of 2009, Westerwelle committed his party to a coalition with Dr Merkel's CDU/CSU, ruling out a coalition with Social Democrats and Greens, and led his party to unprecedented 14.6%. In accordance with earlier announcements, he formed a coalition government with CDU/CSU. On October 28, he was sworn in as Foreign Minister and Vice-Chancellor, becoming the head of the Foreign Office. In 2010 he announced he wouldn't be taking his male partner to hostile countries.
His deputies at the Foreign Office are Werner Hoyer and Cornelia Pieper as Ministers of State. Hoyer previously held the same office in the Cabinet Kohl V.
By May 2011 however his party had collapsed in several states, including Rhineland-Palatinate and Bremen where they failed to secure the 5% threshold necessary for a seat in parliament. Westerwelle then stepped down as party leader. By July the party was only receiving 3% support in opinion polls, a record low, reflecting what political insiders had called his "last stand" in January, comparing Westerwelle and his party to Captain Ahab and the Pequod.
In July 2011 Westerwelle was the President of the United Nations Security Council as he headed the German delegation to the United Nations.
Read more about this topic: Guido Westerwelle
Famous quotes containing the words foreign minister, foreign, minister, vice, chancellor and/or germany:
“We are apt to say that a foreign policy is successful only when the country, or at any rate the governing class, is united behind it. In reality, every line of policy is repudiated by a section, often by an influential section, of the country concerned. A foreign minister who waited until everyone agreed with him would have no foreign policy at all.”
—A.J.P. (Alan John Percivale)
“Most of our occupations are low comedy.... We must play our part duly, but as the part of a borrowed character. Of the mask and appearance we must not make a real essence, nor of what is foreign what is our very own.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“But, my dear, you cannot live in isolation from the human race, you know.”
—John Clifford, U.S. screenwriter, and Herk Harvey. Minister (Stan Levitt)
“Authority, though it err like others,
Hath yet a kind of medicine in itself,
That skins the vice o’ the top.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“No woman in my time will be Prime Minister or Chancellor or Foreign Secretary—not the top jobs. Anyway I wouldn’t want to be Prime Minister. You have to give yourself 100%.”
—Margaret Thatcher (b. 1925)
“We are fighting in the quarrel of civilization against barbarism, of liberty against tyranny. Germany has become a menace to the whole world. She is the most dangerous enemy of liberty now existing.”
—Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919)