Lars Patrick Berg

Lars Patrick Berg (born January 22, 1966) is a politician of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and a Member of the European Parliament. He is member of two Catholic student fraternities, and reserve lieutenant colonel of the German army (Bundeswehr). Berg is married and lives in Heidelberg.

Education

As the son of an Englishwoman and a German, Berg grew up bilingually in the Böblingen area. He attended the prestigious Jesuit College in St. Blasien, and calls himself a Catholic in his CV.1 After his military service he studied Eastern European and medieval history in Tübingen, Heidelberg and Munich, and subsequently worked in the corporate world in Herrenberg and Frankfurt. From 2007 to 2009 he completed a postgraduate course in international energy economics at the University of Leipzig and at its partner university in Moscow. He then worked as a freelance PR consultant. Since his student days he has been a member of the Catholic student fraternities AV Guestfalia Tübingen and KDStV Arminia Heidelberg.2

Career in the AfD

Berg has been a member of the Alternative for Germany since March 2013. From 2013 to 2014 Berg was press spokesman for the Sigmaringen district office. He then worked as AfD press spokesman at the European Parliament in Brussels. He was a member of the AfD Baden-Württemberg state executive committee from April 2013 to October 2014 and from July 2015 to March 2016, and was elected to the state parliament of Baden-Württemberg in the March 2016 state election. There he was the spokesman for interior affairs of the AfD parliamentary group and a member of the Committee on Home Affairs, Digitisation and Migration and the Committee on Europe and International Affairs.

As a member of the state parliament, Berg advocated for increased security, rallied against environmental measures, and was behind a a series of parliamentary inquiries that reveal his Islamophobia. One focus of his political work in the constituency was the preservation of the police headquarters in Tuttlingen, which was to be closed as part of a police reform in 2012.3 He also spoke out in favor of a continued damming of the Danube in the summer months in the Tuttlingen area.4 Among other things, Berg's parliamentary inquiries dealt with illegal border crossings between Baden-Württemberg and Switzerland as well as France,5 the number of child marriages,6 and Salafism in Germany,7 which he described as "an acute threat to our democracy." In the 16th parliamentary term of the state parliament he was responsible for the second highest number of such parliamentary inquiries of all members of parliament.8

European Parliament

In May 2019, he was elected a Member of the European Parliament and became a member of the AfD delegation of the Identity and Democracy parliamentary group.

On the occasion of the reshuffle of the Italian government from the Conte I to the Conte II cabinet, Berg praised the policy of former interior minister Matteo Salvini (Lega). He stated that rescue at sea in the Mediterranean was "absolutely worth supporting," but the people captured should subsequently be taken to North African countries. In Europe, the majority of those rescued could neither earn a living in the long term nor integrate. "The emergency breaking under Salvini was okay," he said.9

According to his profile on the website of the European Parliament, Berg is active in the following EP committees:10

Member

AFET Committee on Foreign Affairs
DROI Subcommittee on Human Rights
SEDE Subcommittee on Security and Defence
DMAG Delegation for relations with the Maghreb countries and the Arab Maghreb Union, including the EU-Morocco, EU-Tunisia and EU-Algeria Joint Parliamentary Committees

Substitute

LIBE Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs
D-ME Delegation to the EU-Montenegro Stabilisation and Association Parliamentary Committee
DSCA Delegation to the EU-Armenia Parliamentary Partnership Committee, the EU-Azerbaijan Parliamentary Cooperation Committee and the EU-Georgia Parliamentary Association Committee
D-CN Delegation for relations with the People's Republic of China

On his European Parliament profile Berg states to have the following assistants:11

Accredited assistants

Stephen Bryan ATKINSON
Gundula FALCH
Stephan Alexander SCHWARZ

Local assistants

Moritz BRODBECK
Daniel LINDENSCHMID

Paying agents

Rosmarie SCHMIDT

Extra-parliamentary activities

Berg serves as deputy chairman of the board of trustees of the "Baden-Württemberg Development Cooperation Foundation" (Stiftung Entwicklungs-Zusammenarbeit Baden-Württemberg)12 and as deputy chairman of the AfD-affiliated "Desiderius Erasmus Foundation" (Desiderius-Erasmus-Stiftung).