Udo Bullmann


Udo Bullmann is a German politician who has been serving as a member of the European Parliament since 1999. He is a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, part of the Party of European Socialists.

Personal life

Udo Bullmann was born on 8 June 1956 in Giessen, Germany.

Academic career

Bullmann studied political science, sociology, public law, as well as economy. In 1982 he received a M.A. in political science and 1988 the doctorate in social science. From 1989 to 1996 he was a Research Assistant at the University of Giessen. He was a scholarship of the German Research Council from 1994 to 1997 and, from 1994 to 1998 a Visiting Research Fellow at the Department of Government at Strathclyde University in Glasgow, Scotland. The year before being elected to the European Parliament in 1999, he was a university lecturer and Jean Monnet Professor for Studies in European integration at the Justus-Liebig-University of Giessen.

Political career

Since his entry into the Social Democratic Party of Germany in 1979, Bullmann was mostly engaged with the Young-Socialists branch. He was the chairman of the Hesse regional association of the Young-Socialists.

Member of the European Parliament, 1999–present

In 1999 Bullmann was elected to the European Parliament. From 2003, he served as deputy chairman of the SPD group in the European Parliament.
Bullmann's political work focuses on economy and employment, the Lisbon Strategy, the European financial service sector, as well as development politics and regional policy. From 1999, he was a member of the European Parliament's Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs. Between 1999 and 2014, he was also a member of Joint Parliamentary Assembly of the EU and African, Caribbean and Pacific states and an alternate member of the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs. In addition to his committee assignments, Bullmann serves as member of the European Parliament Intergroup on Western Sahara.
In early 2014, the SPD chose Bullmann to be the party list’s number 3 for the 2014 European elections, following Martin Schulz and Birgit Sippel. He also led the German delegation within the S&D Group until 2018.
In March 2018, the S&D Group chose Bullmann as their new leader; he received 86 votes, while his competitor Kathleen Van Brempt got 61 votes. Following the bad result of his own party in the 2019 elections, Bullmann decided not to run again for the leadership; instead, the position went to Iratxe García. Bullmann subsequently became a member of the Committee on Development. In 2020, he also joined the Committee on International Trade.

Role in national politics

In the negotiations to form a Grand Coalition of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats and the SPD following the 2013 German elections, Bullmann was part of the SPD delegation in the working group on banking regulation and the Eurozone, led by Herbert Reul and Martin Schulz. He also participated in similar negotiations following the 2017 elections.

Other activities

See also: 2004 European Parliament election in Germany