Michael Piazolo


Michael Piazolo is a German Free Voter Politician, Lawyer and Political Scientist. In 2018 he was appointed as the Bavarian State Minister for Culture and Education in Prime Minister Söder’s second Cabinet.

Life

Piazolo’s father was a department chair in the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Culture. Piazolo attended Karls-Gymnasium Stuttgart from 1969 until 1979, after which he studied law at the Ludwig-Maximilian-University of Munich. From 1981 until 1982 he studied Law and Political Science in the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. He resumed his studies at LMU from 1983 until 1985. From 1985 until 1988 he was a Law clerk at the district court Fürstenfeldbruck, at the University Speyer and the German Consulate General in New York.
In 1989 Piazolo worked as an advisor in the Department of Legal Affairs at the Munich Goethe-Institute. In 1990 he spent the summer semester at the University of Virginia. He was awarded a doctorate in Jurisprudence in 1992 by the University of Regensburg. From 1991 until 2006, Piazolo was an instructor in the :de:Akademie_für_Politische_Bildung|Academy of Political Education in Tutzing, where he wrote many books and booklets on Constitutional, State, and European Law for the Academy as well as for the :de:Landeszentrale_für_politische_Bildung|Bavarian State Center for Political Education. Since 1994 he has been a lecturer at the Munich School of Politics. In 1994/1995 he became managing director of the Independent Commission for the Review of Conflicts of Interest in Offices and Mandates. From 1996 until 2000, Piazolo was the Coordinator of an EU-Project called Eurofamilia. In 2003 he was employed at the University of Augsburg, where he worked as an associate professor until 2006. From 2006 to 2008 he was a professor at the :de:Fachhochschule_für_Verwaltung_und_Rechtspflege_Berlin|University of Applied Sciences Berlin. Afterwards, from 2008 to 2013 he was a professor for European Studies at the Munich University of Applied Sciences.
Piazolo is Roman Catholic.

Politics

Piazolo has been a member of the Free Voters since 2001. He became the Party’s Munich City Chairman in 2005 and in 2006 he became a vice chair of the party. In 2008 Piazolo was elected to the Munich City Council. In September that year he was elected to the Bavarian Parliament, whereby he resigned from his office in the city council. He is also the Spokesperson for Higher Education of the Free Voters Parliamentary Faction, Speaker for Federal and European Affairs, as well as the Speaker for Cultural Politics. From 2013 until 2018 he was a member of the Committee for Higher Education, Research, and Culture. He was an initiator of the successful Referendum against Tuition Fees in Bavaria in 2013. Piazolo has served as the State Minister for Education and Culture since 2018 in Prime Minister Söder’s Cabinet.

Works