User:Hourslong/Peter Paziorek

Peter Paul Paziorek (born May 29, 1948 in Gelsenkirchen, Buer, Germany) is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). He was Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister of Food and Agriculture from 2005 to 2007 and member of the German Bundestag from 1990 until August 31, 2007.

Life
After attending secondary school, Paziorek transferred to the Schalker Gymnasium and passed his Abitur in 1968. He then studied law at the Ruhr University Bochum, which he completed with the first state examination. After his legal clerkship, he also passed the second state examination in 1976. In the same year, he joined the City of Krefeld as a municipal legal advisor.

In 1979, he joined the North Rhine-Westphalia CDU's local government association as a consultant. Just one year later, he became the town manager of Breckerfeld. In 1983, he received his doctorate in law from the University of Bielefeld with a thesis entitled Mittelbare und unmittelbare Wahl der Landschaftsversammlung in Nordrhein-Westfalen. Paziorek was subsequently the town manager of his hometown of Beckum from 1983 to 1990.

Paziorek played for FC Schalke 04 Basketball in the 1970s, which belonged to the Basketball Bundesliga in the 1970/71 season and merged with the basketball department of FC Schalke 04 in 1974. He was a member of the supervisory board of FC Schalke 04 from 1994 to January 2006 and a member of the honorary council from 2007 to 2013. In the summer of 2013, he was elected to the club's honorary presidium.

Since March 2009, he has been a member of the Board of Trustees of the Schöppingen Artists' Village Foundation.

He is married and has two children.

Political career
Paziorek became a member of the CDU in 1968. From 1990 to 2003, he was deputy chairman of the Münsterland CDU district association. Paziorek was a member of the German Bundestag from 1990 until August 31, 2007. From 2000 to 2005, he was chairman of the working group on the environment, nature conservation and nuclear safety and at the same time environmental policy spokesman for the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the Bundestag. He resigned his seat due to his appointment as District President of Münster.

Peter Paziorek has always been directly elected to the Bundestag from the Warendorf constituency, where he received 50.3% of the first votes in the 2005 Bundestag election.

On November 23, 2005, Paziorek was appointed Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister of Food and Agriculture in the Federal Government led by Chancellor Angela Merkel. On June 5, 2007, the North Rhine-Westphalian state cabinet decided to appoint him to succeed Jörg Twenhöven as District President of Münster on September 1, 2007. Paziorek took early retirement on May 29, 2011 for personal reasons.

On July 6, 2020, Peter Paziorek was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit on Ribbon.