Anders Fogh Rasmussen

Biography

Anders Fogh Rasmussen was born in 1953 in Ginnerup in Jutland, the son of a farmer. He attended Viborg Cathedral School and studied economics at Aarhus University, graduating in 1978, the same year he was first elected to the Folketing for the liberal party Venstre.

In Poul Schlüter's conservative-led governments he was minister of taxation from 1987 and also minister of economic affairs from 1990. He resigned both posts in 1992 after a commission of inquiry found he had given parliament inaccurate information about deferred payments. In 1993 he published a book arguing for a minimal state, though his views later moved towards the centre. He became leader of Venstre in 1998.

After Venstre became the largest party in the November 2001 election, he formed a centre-right minority coalition with the Conservative People's Party, relying on the Danish People's Party, and won further elections in 2005 and 2007. His governments froze tax rates, tightened immigration rules, merged municipalities and replaced the counties with five regions, and sent Danish forces to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. During the 2005-2006 crisis over Jyllands-Posten's cartoons of Muhammad he refused to meet ambassadors from Muslim countries and called it Denmark's worst international crisis since the Second World War.

In April 2009 he resigned as prime minister to become Secretary General of NATO, serving until 2014. He later founded the consultancy Rasmussen Global and the Alliance of Democracies Foundation and has worked as an adviser to financial firms.