Karl A. Lamers

Karl A. Lamers is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), currently serving as Deputy Chairman of the Defence Committee of the German Parliament and as President of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. Lamers became a member of the CDU and its youth division, the Junge Union (JU), in 1975. From 1981 to 1986 he acted as Deputy State Chairman of the Junge Union Baden-Württemberg under its State Chairman GüntherOettinger, who later became Minister-President of the state of Baden-Württemberg and is currently serving as European Commissioner for Energy. Since 2003, Lamers is Honorary Chairman of the CDU division of Heidelberg after being its Chairman from 1985 to 2003 and a member of the Municipal Council of Heidelberg 1987 to 1995. In 1994, Lamers got elected to the Bundestag for the first time by directly winning the Heidelberg constituency. In 1998 and 2002 he won a seat through his placing on the CDU Party List of Baden-Würrtemberg in Germany´s mixed member proportional representation voting system. Lamers directly won his constituency again in 2005 and 2009, receiving 36,1 % of the votes in 2009. Lamer was elected Deputy Chairman of the Defence Committee of the Bundestag in 2005 and is still holding this office. He has been a member of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly since 1998 and was elected its President in Warsaw on 16 November 2010. Lamers also acts as President of the Atlantic Treaty Association since 2008, succeeding Robert E. Hunter, who held the office from 2003 to 2008.