CPCE and CEC pay tribute to his services to the voice of the churches in the EU Institutions – Move from Brussels to the Evangelical Academy Bad Boll on 1st September 2010.

Press Release 11/2010

The Revd Dr Dieter Heidtmann, representative for social and economic questions of CEC, the Conference of European Churches, and CPCE, the Community of Protestant Churches in Europe, has been appointed by the Protestant Church in Württemberg as Director of Studies for Economic Politics and Ethics in the Evangelical Academy in Bad Boll with effect from 1st September 2010.

Since 2004 Heidtmann has been responsible for representing CPCE in the CEC Commission for Church and Society in Brussels. This represents the joint voice of the European churches to the European institutions. In the framework of his CEC mandate Heidtmann has accompanied items of European Union legislation important to the churches, among others the new EU Treaty, the Service Guidelines or the new EU economic strategy “EU 2020”. For CPCE he has also advised on a number of European memoranda, among others on intercultural dialogue and the responsibility of the churches for human rights. Dieter Heidtmann was also responsible for leading through the CPCE Doctrinal Conversation on “New Social Challenges for the Protestant Churches”.

The CPCE General Secretary, Michael Bünker, and the Director of the CEC Commission for Church and Society, Rüdiger Noll, paid tribute to Heidtmann’s services to the joint voice of the churches over against the political institutions of the European Union. Beyond that he had also had a decisive share in the successful cooperation between the CPCE and the CEC on issues of social ethics. “We shall badly miss Dieter Heidtmann in this role. But we want to continue our cooperation in this form with a suitable successor”, both emphasized.

With the establishment of the working area of “Ethics and European Politics” the CPCE fulfilled a commission by its General Assembly of 2001 in Belfast to develop the presence of the protestant churches on the European level in cooperation with the CEC Commission for Church and Society. With the building up of the Expert Group on Ethics which Heidtmann coordinated, CPCE has also possessed since 2006 an important advisory forum on the forming of ethical opinion.

Today in the Chapel of the Resurrection in the midst of the European institutions in Brussels Heidtmann took leave officially of his previous position.

Brussels/Vienna/Berne, 29th June 2010

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At present 105 Protestant churches in Europe (including five South-American churches originating from Europe ) belong to the Community of Protestant Churches in Europe (CPCE). Lutheran, Reformed, United and Methodist along with pre-Reformation churches such as Hussites and Czech Brethren grant each other pulpit and table fellowship on the basis of the Leuenberg Agreement of 1973. The Secretariat is housed in the Severin-Schreiber-Gasse 3, A-1180 Vienna, office@leuenberg.eu, tel. +43.1.4791523.900, fax .110 The CPCE press officer is Dipl.theol. Thomas Flügge (Bern), tel. +41.31.3702502, t.fluegge@leuenberg.eu.

29.06.2010 Thomas Flügge

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