Monika Brigitte Gertrud Maria Hohlmeier (née Strauß; born 2 July 1962) is a German politician who has been serving as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) since 2009. She is a member of the Christian Social Union, part of the European People's Party. Between 1998 and 2005 she served as Bavarian State Minister for Education and Cultural Affairs.
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Early life and education
Born in Munich, Bavaria, Hohlmeier is the daughter of former German politician Franz Josef Strauss. She completed a training as a hotel manager.
Political career
Bavarian State Minister for Education and Cultural Affairs, 1998–2005
Between 1998 and 2005, Hohlmeier served as Bavarian State Minister for Education and Cultural Affairs in the government of Minister-President Edmund Stoiber. In 2005, she decided to step down from her office, amid accusations she allowed party votes to be falsified and got jobs for friends; she was replaced by Siegfried Schneider. Already in 2004, Hohlmeier had resigned as head of the Munich branch of the Christian Social Union after she reportedly threatened critics within the party with unspecified revelations about their personal lives. Between 2006 and 2008, she served on the state parliament’s Committee on Budget and Finance.
Hohlmeier was a CSU delegate to the Federal Convention for the purpose of electing the President of Germany in May 2004.
Member of the European Parliament, 2009–present
Hohlmeier has been a Member of the European Parliament since the 2009 European elections. She has since been serving on the Committee on Budgets and the parliament’s delegation for relations with the People's Republic of China. In addition, she has been chairing the Committee on Budgetary Control since 2019.
On the Budget Committee, Hohlmeier serves as the European Parliament’s buildings rapporteur. In 2011, she drafted the relevant reports for a Budget Committee decision on a controversial €38 million purchase of three buildings – one in Strasbourg and two in Brussels – so as to increase office space for MEPs and their staff in the light of the 2013 enlargement of the European Union. On the recommendation of Hohlmeier, the committee in 2013 approved signing a 12-year lease on a German-owned 40,000 square meters office building at Brussels’ Square de Meeûs. She has also served as the parliament’s rapporteur on the budget of the European Union in 2015 (along with Eider Gardiazabal Rubial) and in 2020.
On the Committee on Budgetary Control, Hohlmeier notably authored the parliament's 2021 resolution condemning Prime Minister Andrej Babiš of the Czech Republic for conflicts of interest regarding EU subsidies paid to his Agrofert agricultural conglomerate.
In previous terms, Hohlmeier was a member of the Special Committee on Organized Crime, Corruption and Money Laundering (2012-2013) and the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (2014-2019). On the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs, she served as the EPP group's spokesperson from 2014 until 2019. In 2012, she also served as rapporteur on the Directive on Attacks against Information Systems.
In early 2014, the CSU chose Hohlmeier to be the party list’s number 3 for the 2014 European elections, following Markus Ferber and Angelika Niebler.
In addition to her committee assignments, Hohlmeier has been a member of the European Parliament Intergroup on Biodiversity, Countryside, Hunting and Recreational Fisheries (since 2014) and the MEPs Against Cancer group (since 2019).
Other activities
Corporate boards
BayWa, Member of the Supervisory Board (2013–2026)
TSV 1860 München, Member of the Supervisory Board (1999-2007)
Non-profit organizations
Christliches Jugenddorfwerk Deutschlands (CJD), Member of the Board of Trustees
European Academy of Bavaria, Member of the Board of Trustees
Friends of Waldsassen Abbey, Chairwoman
Frischluft, Member of the Board of Trustees
German European Security Association, Member of the Board of Trustees
Hanns Seidel Foundation, Member
Marianne Strauß Stiftung, Deputy Chairwoman of the Board of Trustees
Nathalie Todenhöfer Stiftung, Member of the Board of Trustees
Controversy
In early 2020, Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš personally attacked Hohlmeier when she led a six-member delegation of the European Parliament’s Committee on Budgetary Control to Prague and investigated possible irregularities and conflicts of interest in the distribution of European Union funding in the Czech Republic.
Personal life
In Brussels, Hohlmeier has been sharing an apartment with fellow parliamentarian Sabine Verheyen since 2009.
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany, Hohlmeier contracted the virus and fell sick in October 2020, but later recovered.