Jens Stoltenberg
Jens Stoltenberg ( listen (help·info); born 16 March 1959) is a Norwegian politician who is the 13th Secretary General of NATO. He served as Prime Minister of Norway from 2000 to 2001 and again from 2005 to 2013. In March 2014, Stoltenberg was appointed by NATO's North Atlantic Council to be the treaty organization's secretary general and chairman of the North Atlantic Council, succeeding Anders Fogh Rasmussen. Stoltenberg assumed his position on 1 October 2014. A member of the Labour Party, Stoltenberg was first elected to Parliament in 1993 for the Oslo constituency. He served as state secretary in the Ministry of the Environment from 1990 to 1991 and as Minister of Industry from 1993 to 1996 in the Brundtland's Third Cabinet, respectively. Following the resignation of Gro Harlem Brundtland in 1996, Thorbjørn Jagland became prime minister, while Stoltenberg was appointed Minister of Finance, an office he held until October 1997 when Jagland and the entire government resigned as a consequence of its 36.9 ultimatum. While in parliamentary opposition, Stoltenberg served in the standing committee on energy affairs. He became the parliamentary leader and prime minister candidate for the Labour Party in February 2000. Following a motion of no confidence against the Bondevik's First Cabinet, Stoltenberg was appointed Prime Minister in March 2000. The policies of the first Stoltenberg cabinet were markedly inspired by Tony Blair's New Labour and saw the most widespread privatisation by any Norwegian government to that date. After poor results in the 2001 parliamentary election, and the subsequent fall of his government on 19 October 2001, Stoltenberg successfully challenged Thorbjørn Jagland for the party leadership in 2002, serving as leader of the Labour Party from 2002 to 2014, and led the party to victory in the 2005 election by forming a Red-green alliance government with the Centre Party (Sp) and the Socialist Left Party (SV), taking office on 17 October 2005. He was re-elected in 2009 for a second term as Prime Minister, but lost the election for a third term in 2013. He submitted his resignation on 14 October 2013 and left office 2 days later. From 2013, he served as a UN special envoy on climate change (global warming), and has previously chaired the UN High-Level Panel on System Wide Coherence and the High-Level Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing. Stoltenberg has been described as a cautious politician belonging to the right wing of social democracy. In foreign policy, Stoltenberg has been noted as a strong proponent of Norwegian membership of the European Union. In security policy, he favours both increased military spending and dialogue. Stoltenberg is a member of the Global Commission for the Economy and Climate.