Keynote Speaker: Boris Palmer

“In our country, bureaucratic rules seem to be set in concrete more firmly than some bridges. We should work together to ensure that this changes.”

Boris Palmer, then a member of the Green Party in the Stuttgart state parliament, was elected Mayor of Tübingen in the first round of voting on October 22, 2006 and took office on January 11, 2007.
On October 19, 2014 and October 23, 2022, he was re-elected in the first ballot.
His third term of office began on January 11, 2023 and will last eight years.

Palmer began his university studies in Tübingen in 1993.
In 1994 he successfully passed the Graecum examination, in 1997 he studied in Sydney (Australia), and in 1999 he completed his studies in mathematics and history with the first state examination.

Boris Palmer continued the political commitment that he was born with as a student newspaper editor and as an environmental and transport officer for the General Student Committee during his studies.
At the University of Tübingen, he was involved in the introduction of the semester ticket for students and the night bus networks in Tübingen and Reutlingen.

In March 2001, Boris Palmer won a seat in the Stuttgart state parliament as a Green candidate for the Tübingen constituency.
He served there for one legislative term as environmental and transport policy spokesman.
In 2004, he ran for the office of Lord Mayor of Stuttgart and achieved 21.5 percent of the vote.
His partisanship in favor of CDU incumbent Wolfgang Schuster before the second round of voting, in which Palmer no longer took part, caused a sensation.
After his re-election to the state parliament in March 2006 with a record result of 32 percent in the city of Tübingen, Boris Palmer became deputy chairman of the Green parliamentary group in the state parliament.

In his speech to the citizens, he announced that he would make local climate protection the central theme of his term of office.
His vision is blue growth: prosperity and quality of life without overburdening nature and the climate.
In 2008, Palmer launched the climate protection campaign “Tübingen goes blue”.
In spring 2009, Palmer’s first book was published with the title “Eine Stadt macht blau – das Tübinger Klimaschutzmodell”.
In July 2019, the Tübingen municipal council decided that Tübingen should be climate-neutral in terms of energy-relatedCO2 emissions by 2030.

In summer 2017, Palmer’s book “We can’t help everyone: A Green on integration and the limits of resilience” was published.
This was followed in fall 2019 by the book “First the facts, then the morals: Why politics must start with reality”.
Numerous appearances on TV programs and reports in the print media have made him known far beyond the city limits.
During the coronavirus pandemic, Boris Palmer advocated a “Tübingen way” that protects at-risk groups and allows as much normality as possible.

In May 2023, Boris Palmer declared his resignation from the Alliance 90/The Greens party.
He has been non-party since then.

At the BetonTage, he will give a lecture on “Against the bureaucracy of construction” in the opening plenary session on March 11, 2025.

© Photo: Gudrun de Maddalena

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