Experts
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Roderich Kiesewetter has been a member of the German Bundestag since the 2009 federal election. In the Bundestag, Kiesewetter is a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee and vice-chairman of the Subcommittee on Disarmament, Arms Control and Non-proliferation. In his parliamentary group, he is spokesman for disarmament and the prevention of civil crises. Within the Committee on Foreign Affairs, he is the rapporteur of his group on the Balkans, the Mediterranean and the Maghreb countries; previously, he also covered energy policy. During the negotiations to form a coalition government following the 2013 federal elections, Kiesewetter was part of the CDU/CSU delegation within the working group on foreign affairs, defense policy and development cooperation, led by Thomas de Maizière and Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Between 2014 and 2015, Kiesewetter represented the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in an interparty commission headed by former Defense Minister Volker Rühe to review the country's parliamentary rules on military deployments. From April 2014, he was a member of the German parliamentary committee investigating the NSA spying scandal; he resigned from the body in January 2015, citing an increased need to focus on his duties in the Foreign Affairs Committee. In addition to his committee assignments, Kiesewetter is a member of the Parliamentary Friendship Group for relations with Bosnia and Herzegovina. Since 2019, he has been a member of the German delegation to the Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly. In February 2013, Kiesewetter accompanied the President of the Bundestag Norbert Lammert to Morocco for meetings with the President of the House of Representatives, Karim Ghellab, the President of the Assembly of Councillors, Mohamed Cheikh Biadillah, Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane and Foreign Minister Saad-Eddine El Othmani. At the beginning of 2015, he joined German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier on official trips to Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria; later the same year, he also accompanied him on a trip to Cuba; it was the first time a German foreign minister had visited the country since German reunification in 1990.
