Miguel Ãngel MartÃnez MartÃnez
Miguel Ángel Martínez Martínez (born 30 January 1940 in Madrid ) is a Spanish politician of the Social Democratic PSOE and member of the European Parliament. He was active in a number of international socialist organizations as well as in inter-parliamentary bodies.
Life
Martínez studied in Madrid, Toulouse and Vienna, and rose up early in the international socialist organizations career, their activity in Spain was banned at that time still the Franco regime. In 1964, he was Deputy Secretary-General of the International Union of Socialist Youth, 1966, he was the Vice Chairman and Secretary General of the International Falcon Movement. In 1973 he was commissioner for trade union training at the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions.
After the end of Franco's dictatorship and the transition to democracy Martínez was elected in the first free elections in 1977 for the PSOE in the province of Ciudad Real in the Spanish Parliament, where he served continuously until 1999. In 1980 he became a member of the Executive Committee of the PSOE - UGT close in the province of Ciudad Real, a year later PSOE Secretary General in Castilla -La Mancha. In 1987 he was elected to the executive committee of the PSOE spain wide.
In addition, Martinez was still active internationally and led various inter-parliamentary bodies: From 1983 to 1992 he was Vice President and then to 1996, President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council and from 1986 to 1996 Vice- President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Western European Union. From 1997 to 1999 he was chairman of the Inter-Parliamentary Union.
In the European elections of 1999 Martinez was first elected to the European Parliament, to which he belongs since then as a member of the Socialist Group. Since 2001 he has been Vice -President of the Joint Parliamentary Assembly ACP countries and the EU. He is also a 2009 member of the Delegation for relations with the Pan-African Parliament, the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development and the Petitions Committee and Vice President of the Parliament since the European elections.
Awards
For his activities Martínez was awarded the gold medal of the Comenius University in Bratislava and an honorary doctorate from Moscow University, the University of Cluj and the University of Aberdeen. In addition, the Spanish Order for Services to the Constitution ( 1988), the Grand Cross of Civil Merit (1996) and 1999, the Grand Cross of the Orden de Isabel la Católica, confer the highest award of the Spanish state, it were. He also received other awards in over thirty countries.