Jens Stoltenberg facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Jens Stoltenberg
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Stoltenberg in 2024
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| 13th Secretary General of NATO | |
| In office 1 October 2014 – 1 October 2024 |
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| Deputy | Alexander Vershbow Rose Gottemoeller Mircea Geoană |
| Preceded by | Anders Fogh Rasmussen |
| Succeeded by | Mark Rutte |
| 34th Prime Minister of Norway | |
| In office 17 October 2005 – 16 October 2013 |
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| Monarch | Harald V |
| Preceded by | Kjell Magne Bondevik |
| Succeeded by | Erna Solberg |
| In office 17 March 2000 – 19 October 2001 |
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| Monarch | Harald V |
| Preceded by | Kjell Magne Bondevik |
| Succeeded by | Kjell Magne Bondevik |
| Leader of the Opposition | |
| In office 16 October 2013 – 14 June 2014 |
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| Prime Minister | Erna Solberg |
| Preceded by | Erna Solberg |
| Succeeded by | Jonas Gahr Støre |
| In office 19 October 2001 – 17 October 2005 |
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| Prime Minister | Kjell Magne Bondevik |
| Succeeded by | Erna Solberg |
| Leader of the Labour Party | |
| In office 10 November 2002 – 14 June 2014 |
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| Deputy | Hill-Marta Solberg Helga Pedersen |
| Preceded by | Thorbjørn Jagland |
| Succeeded by | Jonas Gahr Støre |
| Minister of Finance | |
| In office 25 October 1996 – 17 October 1997 |
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| Prime Minister | Thorbjørn Jagland |
| Preceded by | Sigbjørn Johnsen |
| Succeeded by | Gudmund Restad |
| Minister of Industry and Energy | |
| In office 7 October 1993 – 25 October 1996 |
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| Prime Minister | Gro Harlem Brundtland |
| Preceded by | Finn Kristensen (as Minister of Industry) |
| Succeeded by | Grete Faremo (as Minister of Petroleum and Energy) |
| Member of the Norwegian Parliament | |
| In office 1 October 1993 – 30 September 2017 |
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| Deputy | Anders Hornslien Inger Lise Husøy Ragnar Bøe Elgsaas Truls Wickholm Håkon Haugli |
| Constituency | Oslo |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 16 March 1959 Oslo, Norway |
| Political party | Labour |
| Spouse |
Ingrid Schulerud
(m. 1987) |
| Children | 2 |
| Parents | Karin Heiberg Thorvald Stoltenberg |
| Alma mater | University of Oslo (Cand.oecon.) |
| Awards | |
| Signature |  |
| Website | |
| Military service | |
| Allegiance |  Norway |
| Branch/service |  Norwegian Army |
Jens Stoltenberg ( born 16 March 1959) is a Norwegian politician who served as the 13th secretary general of NATO from 2014 to 2024. A member of the Norwegian Labour Party, he was previously the 34th prime minister of Norway from 2000 to 2001 and again from 2005 until 2013.
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Early life
Stoltenberg was born 16 March 1959 in Oslo, into the Stoltenberg Norwegian family, the family name derived from Stoltenberg where an ancestor once lived. His father, Thorvald Stoltenberg (1931–2018), was a prominent Labour party politician and diplomat who served as an ambassador, as defence minister and as foreign minister. His mother, Karin Stoltenberg (née Heiberg; 1931–2012), was a geneticist who served as state secretary in multiple governments during the 1980s. Marianne Heiberg, married to former foreign minister Johan Jørgen Holst, was his maternal aunt. Jens lived in SFR Yugoslavia from 1961 to 1964 while his father worked at the Norwegian embassy.
Stoltenberg attended primary school at Oslo Waldorf School, and upper secondary school at Oslo Cathedral School. He served his mandatory military service with the Army's Infantry Training Centre at Evjemoen in Aust-Agder. After leaving the army, Stoltenberg enrolled at the University of Oslo, graduating in 1987 with the cand.oecon. degree in economics. The title of his thesis was Makroøkonomisk planlegging under usikkerhet. En empirisk analyse ("Macroeconomic planning under uncertainty. An empirical analysis").
Stoltenberg's first steps into politics came in his early teens, when he was influenced by his sister Camilla, who at the time was a member of the then Marxist–Leninist group Red Youth. Opposition to the Vietnam War was his triggering motivation. Following heavy bombing raids against the North Vietnamese port city of Hai Phong at the end of the Vietnam War, he participated in protest rallies targeting the United States Embassy in Oslo. On at least one occasion embassy windows were broken by stone-throwing protesters. Several of Stoltenberg's friends were arrested by the police after these events.
Journalistic career (1979–1990)
From 1979 to 1981, Stoltenberg was a journalist for Arbeiderbladet. From 1985 to 1989, he was the leader of the Workers' Youth League. From 1989 to 1990, he worked as an Executive Officer for Statistics Norway, Norway's central institution for producing official statistics. He also worked part-time as an hourly paid instructor at the University of Oslo during this period. Between 1990 and 1992, he was leader of the Oslo chapter of the Labour Party.
Political career
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Stoltenberg started his career in government as a state secretary in the Ministry of the Environment in 1990 and was elected to the Storting in 1993. He served as Minister of Industry and Energy from 1993 to 1996 and Minister of Finance from 1996 to 1997.
Prime Minister of Norway
Stoltenberg was prime minister from 2000 to 2001, was leader of the Labour Party from 2002 to 2014, and served as prime minister for a second time from 2005 to 2013.
He has been described as a cautious politician, belonging to the right-wing of social democracy. When he became prime minister in 2000, he was portrayed as the "Norwegian Tony Blair", and his policies were inspired by Blair's New Labour agenda; his first government oversaw the most widespread privatisation by any Norwegian government to that date. Stoltenberg said he was both inspired by and wanted to learn from Blair's policies.
While Stoltenberg was prime minister, Norway's defence spending increased steadily, with the result that Norway today is one of the NATO allies with the highest per capita defence expenditure. Stoltenberg has also been instrumental in modernising the Norwegian armed forces, and in contributing forces to various NATO operations.
Stoltenberg is a supporter of enhanced trans-Atlantic cooperation ties. He has also always been a supporter of Norwegian membership in the European Union.
He took an international role during the financial crisis by promoting international financial cooperation. Both nationally and internationally, Stoltenberg emphasised the enormous costs the financial crisis had in the form of a high unemployment rate, and appealed for better international coordination, the balance between austerity and economic growth stimulus, active labor market measures for young people, and investments for increased innovation. Norway came out of the financial crisis with the lowest unemployment rate in Europe.
Stoltenberg through his governing advocated that international agreements with global taxes or quotas are the most effective means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. At the UN Climate Change Conference 2009, a separate proposal on the preservation of rainforests with funding from rich countries, advanced by Stoltenberg and Brazilian Pres. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2009 obtained support from among others U.S. President Barack Obama during COP15 in Copenhagen.
The summit in Copenhagen ended without a binding agreement, but before the subsequent COP16 in Cancún, Stoltenberg succeeded then-British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in the leadership of the committee dealing with the financing of climate actions in developing countries, also consisting of Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. Under a separate forest and climate conference in Oslo in May 2010, a proposal was presented to a number of countries, with final delivery of the report in autumn 2010.
In January 2014 Jens Stoltenberg became United Nations Special Envoy on Climate Change. During the meeting there he met with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as well as UN Framework Convention director Christiana Figueres and both Achim Steiner and Helen Clark of the United Nations Development Programme.
Stoltenberg has been an advocate for having all the world's children vaccinated against infectious diseases. He was a board director of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) from 2002 to 2005 and was awarded the Children's Health Award in 2005.
United Nations Special Envoy (2013–2014)
In 2011, Stoltenberg received the United Nations Foundation's Champion of Global Change Award, chosen for his extraordinary effort toward meeting the Millennium Development Goals and bringing fresh ideas to global problems. In 2019, his term as Secretary General of NATO was extended for another two years. Earlier the same year, Stoltenberg had allocated 150 million Norwegian kroner of the foreign aid budget to the same foundation, which led to criticism.
In 2013, Stoltenberg served as a UN special envoy on climate change (global warming), and he chaired the UN High-Level Panel on System Wide Coherence and the High-Level Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing.
NATO Secretary General (2014–2024)
In 2014, he was named as the 13th secretary general of NATO, and his term was subsequently extended four times by the NATO heads of state and government. As the second longest-serving high-ranking official in NATO history, Stoltenberg has worked to expand the alliance into Eastern Europe and to strengthen the alliance's military capabilities, and his tenure coincided with the largest increase in NATO defense spending since the Cold War.
On 18 June, it was announced Hungary and Slovakia had agreed to allow outgoing Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte to succeed Stoltenberg as Secretary General. He was officially selected by the North Atlantic Council on 26 June, and succeeded Stoltenberg on 1 October.
Post-NATO career aspirations
In December 2021, it was reported that he sought the governorship of Norges Bank, Norway's central bank. Stoltenberg confirmed on 14 December that he had applied for the position, and specified that he had told the Ministry of Finance that he could not ascend to the position before his term as NATO Secretary-General has expired on 1 October 2022.
His appointment was officially announced on 4 February 2022. However, after a NATO summit in March 2022, Stoltenberg accepted a renewed term of one year to continue as NATO secretary-general and thereby resigned as incoming central bank governor. Acting Governor Ida Wolden Bache was instead given the term that Stoltenberg was meant to take on.
Munich Security Conference
On 8 October 2024 it was announced that Stoltenberg will be the next chairman of the Munich Security Conference and will assume his role in February 2025.
Personal life
Stoltenberg is married to diplomat Ingrid Schulerud and they have two children: a son, Axel Stoltenberg (born 1989) who is studying Chinese at the Shanghai Jiaotong University and daughter Anne Catharina Stoltenberg (born 1992) who is a part of Smerz, an experimental pop and electronic music duo signed to XL Recordings.
He has one living sister, Camilla, a medical researcher and administrator who is one year older than he; and one late sister, Nini, four years younger, who died in 2014. .....
He prefers to spend his summer vacations at his family's cottage on the Hvaler Islands in the Oslofjord. An avid outdoorsman, he rides his bike often and during the winter season he is an active cross-country skier. In December 2011, in order to mark 100 years since Roald Amundsen reached the south pole on skis, Stoltenberg journeyed to Antarctica.
Although being portrayed as an atheist for most of his adult life, and declining membership in the formerly official Church of Norway, Stoltenberg has stated that he does not consider himself an atheist. He explained: "Although I am not a member of any denomination, I do believe that there is something greater than man. Some call it God, others call it something else. For me, it's about understanding that we humans are small in relation to nature, in relation to the powers that are bigger and stronger than man can ever comprehend. I find that in a church."
Honours and medals
National honours and medals
- Norway: King Harald V's Jubilee Medal 1991–2016 (2016)
Foreign honours
Belgium: Grand Cordon of the Order of Leopold (2024)
Czech Republic: Member 3rd Class of the Order of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (2024)
Estonia: Member 1st Class of the Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana (2019)
Germany: Grand Cross 1st Class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (2024)
Latvia: Member 1st Class of the Order of the Three Stars (2024)
Lithuania:
- Grand Cross of the Order of Vytautas the Great (2019)
- Grand Cross of the Order of the Cross of Vytis (2023)
Montenegro: Member 2nd Class of the Order of the Republic of Montenegro (2017)
Netherlands: Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Orange-Nassau (2024)
Ukraine: Member 1st Class of the Order of Prince Yaroslav the Wise (2023)
United States of America:
- Presidential Medal of Freedom (2024)
- Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service (2024)
Spain: Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Isabella the Catholic (2024)
Sweden: Commander Grand Cross of the Order of the Polar Star (2024)
Images for kids
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Stoltenberg with US Secretary of State John Kerry in Brussels, December 2014
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Stoltenberg with UK
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Stoltenberg and Montenegro's Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic attend a NATO foreign ministers meeting on 19 May 2016.
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Stoltenberg and Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydło in Warsaw, 31 May 2016
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Stoltenberg visits NATO units in Tapa, Estonia in 2017.
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A meeting of NATO heads of States and governments on 11 July 2018 in Brussels
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Stoltenberg at a NATO Plenary Session with US President Donald Trump and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson in December 2019
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Stoltenberg with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in Kabul, Afghanistan, February 2020
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Stoltenberg with Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev during a NATO summit on 14 June 2021]]
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Stoltenberg and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez in Madrid, 8 October 2021]
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Stoltenberg and Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin in Helsinki, 25 October 2021
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Stoltenberg and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the 2021 UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow
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Western leaders met in Brussels for a round of emergency summits of NATO, the European Council and the G7 to discuss the Russo-Ukrainian War, 23 March 2022.
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Stoltenberg with Anthony Albanese, Fumio Kishida, Jacinda Ardern and Yoon Suk-yeol at the 2022 Madrid summit
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Stoltenberg and US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at The Pentagon on 2 June 2022
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Stoltenberg with Finnish ambassador to NATO Klaus Korhonen and Swedish ambassador to NATO Axel Wernhoff at the membership application submission ceremony in Brussels, 18 May 2022
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Stoltenberg and Israeli President Isaac Herzog in Brussels, 26 January 2023
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Stoltenberg with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Giorgia Meloni, Joe Biden, Rishi Sunak and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at the 2023 Vilnius summit
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See also
In Spanish: Jens Stoltenberg para niños
