After more than 18 years of service, the budget state secretary at the Federal Ministry of Finance, Werner Gatzer, is being put into temporary retirement. The ministry announced this decision by department head Christian Lindner (FDP) on Friday, without stating reasons. Lindner thanked Gatzer for his “decades of service in the Federal Ministry of Finance.” The temporary retirement is set to begin at the turn of the year.
Gatzer’s successor is said to be Wolf Reuter, the current head of the fundamental department at the Federal Ministry of Finance. The ministry stated that financial policy is “facing major challenges that need to be addressed both fiscally and economically.” Reuter is said to bring in “the best qualifications for this purpose.”
Lindner praises Gatzer’s “high personal commitment”
In his unusually long term of office, Gatzer had profiled himself as one of the most influential political officials in the Berlin ministerial bureaucracy. Gatzer, a member of the SPD, served as state secretary to finance ministers from three different parties: the SPD finance ministers Peer Steinbrück and Olaf Scholz, the CDU finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble, and most recently the FDP department head Lindner.
Lindner now highlighted the “high personal commitment” with which Gatzer “had earned merit for our country.” Gatzer had held the position of budget state secretary with a brief interruption since 2005.
