Martin Schulz (born 20 December 1955) is a German politician who was a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from Germany from 1994 to 2017 and a Member of the Bundestag (MdB) from 2017 to 2021. During his tenure he was Leader of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats from 2004 to 2012, President of the European Parliament from 2012 to 2017 and Leader of the Social Democratic Party from 2017 to 2018. In November 2016, Schulz announced he would not seek a third term as President of the European Parliament, but instead would stand in 2017 as the SPD candidate for the German Chancellorship. In January 2017, Sigmar Gabriel announced he would not stand for re-election as party leader and as the SPD candidate for the German Chancellorship, Gabriel recommended Schulz as his replacement. After the elections of September 2017, which resulted in a postwar low for the SPD, Schulz declared the end of the existing Grand coalition under Angela Merkel and explicitly refused to serve in a Merkel government. On 7 February 2018, coalition talks concluded and Schulz announced he would succeed Sigmar Gabriel as Foreign minister and leave his party chairmanship to Andrea Nahles. After heavy public and internal criticism, Schulz decided not to enter the new cabinet. On 13 February 2018 Schulz stepped down as party chair. Early life Martin Schulz was born in the village of Hehlrath, which is now a part of Eschweiler in western Rhineland, near the Dutch and Belgian borders, as one of five children. His father, Albert Schulz, was a local policeman and belonged to a social democratic family; his mother, Clara, belonged to a conservative Catholic family and was active in the Christian Democratic Union. Having grown up in the border area between Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, Schulz has relatives in all three countries. After four years at primary school, from 1962 to 1966, Schulz attended the Heilig-Geist (Holy Spirit) gymnasium, a private Roman Catholic school run by the Holy Ghost Fathers (or Spiritans), in Broich (now Würselen), a district of the town of Broichweiden, for nine years. As a teenager, he went to France on a school exchange programme. He left school without passing his Abitur after failing the 11th grade twice. From 1975 to 1977 Schulz then trained to be a bookseller. The next two years he worked for a number of publishing houses and bookshops.