© BDEW/Scheuring

A former state secretary with the German health ministry succeeds a former state secretary for the chancellor – albeit not politically but in a lobby group. Hildegard Müller, who became a member of the German parliament in 2002 and worked closely with Chancellor Angela Merkel between 2005 and 2008, stepped down from her post as chair of the German Association of Energy and Water Industries (BDEW) at the end of January this year. In October 2008, the former head of the youth organization of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union at federal level took the much debated step of switching from politics into business and has since lobbied for 1,800 energy companies, including the German big four. On May 1, 2016, she took on a job at one of the four big players, RWE, and will assume “a management board position in a corporation,” as the Essen-based company put it. There, she is believed to make a fine addition to the team and considerably strengthen and advance the energy provider’s agenda during its difficult restructuring process by allegedly heading a new subsidiary primarily dealing with electricity from renewable sources.

The new person at the helm of the BDEW is Stefan Kapferer, another well-connected politician, but from the Free Democrats. The now 50-year-old went in 2011 from the federal health ministry to the ministry of economy, before leaving for Paris in October 2014 to take on the position of deputy secretary-general of the OECD.

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