Biography
Reinhard Bütikofer is a Member of the European Parliament for the German Green Party. He is a member of the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy, the Subcommittee on Security and Defense and a substitute member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs. He sits on the Delegation for Relations with the United States as well as the Delegation for Relations with the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. He is also a substitute member of the Delegation for Relations with China. Mr. Bütikofer is a vice-chair and the treasurer of his political group, The Greens/European Free Alliance in the European Parliament. Furthermore, he is delegation speaker for the parliamentarians from the German Green Party (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen).
From 2002 until 2008 Mr. Bütikofer was the national party chairman of the German Green Party. He was secretary general from 1998 until 2002. Prior to that he was the state chairman of the Green Party in Baden-Württemberg. He served as a member of the Baden-Württemberg state parliament from 1988 until 1996. His career with the Green Party began when he was elected to the city council of Heidelberg in 1984. Mr. Bütikofer is a member of the board of the Aspen Institute Berlin, the advisory board of the American Jewish Committee’s Ramer Center in Berlin, the Europe/Transatlantic advisory board of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, the German-Chinese Dialogue Forum, the Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union (NABU), and the European Green Foundation.
Mr. Bütikofer was born in Mannheim, Germany, in 1953 and grew up in Speyer. In 1969-70 he spent a year in Kenosha, Wisconsin. After high school he studied philosophy, history, classical history, and sometimes Sinology, in Heidelberg. He is married and father to three daughters.