Michael Jäger comes a little later to the agreed meeting. On the way he had to quickly pick up his daughter, she had asked him to do so at short notice. That goes very well with Jäger’s everyday life: no two days are the same, and priorities often have to be set anew. “The variety is what’s exciting,” he says. The 60-year-old simply cannot delegate many things because the task is tied to him as a person. Personal trust is an important aspect in all his activities as a networker, lobbyist and tax and finance expert. As Vice-President of the Association of Taxpayers in Germany and in his other activities, Neubiberger has already initiated so much that he was honored with the Cross of Merit last year and most recently with the Medal of Honor of his home community.
Since 2019, Jäger, who studied business administration, has been the vice president of the taxpayers’ association for the interests of practically all employees, and since 2015 also as vice president of the state association. In his function, he is primarily responsible for association communication and membership recruitment. Since 1996 he has also served as Secretary General of the European Taxpayers’ Association and heads its office in Brussels. The President of the Bavarian Taxpayers’ Association, Rolf Baron von Hohenhau, who is also President of the European Taxpayers’ Association, had asked him. As so often, things seem to have worked out for him.
Since 2011, Jäger has also been Managing Director of the European Economic Senate, an elite network of leading entrepreneurs and companies. The value basis of this organization is to act according to the principle of the “honorable businessman”. In addition to the usual work of a managing director, Jäger wants to make his networks available to the district. He also runs the company “Jaeger Euroconsult”, with which he advises and supports individual companies in financial and tax matters.
As if all that weren’t enough, the father of three holds various honorary posts: For example, he is a member of the board of European journalists, was a member of the Neubiberg municipal council for the CSU, is a member of the East-West Economic Forum in Bavaria and sits on the association’s advisory board “Lichtblicke Seniorenhilfe”, which helps pensioners who are in need through no fault of their own.
Michael Jäger also often meets politicians: here in Munich in 2017, the then EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker at an awards ceremony.
(Photo: private)
To work tirelessly, to get involved was something he was practically born with. His father ran the company Erdgasvertrieb Jäger in Neubiberg, a large employer in the community for a long time. What it means to be an entrepreneur, the son learned from his father. Work also on weekends, no holidays for years. Later, when the managing uncle was no longer able to run the company alone due to illness, Jäger took care of the liquidation of the company as an unpaid managing director. “So I know the concerns of companies, whether it’s about investments or loans,” says the 60-year-old. What runs as a common thread through all his activities: “I try to help through the exchange,” he says. And he likes to do that seven days a week, “because my heart is there.” He was particularly involved when he and other supporters, such as the Greens politician Theresa Lödermann, managed to get the EU export premium for slaughter cattle abolished. “It’s been the most soul-fulfilling thing,” he says.
Helping is important to him. Recently, a Ukrainian businesswoman whom he knows from lecture tours complained to him that the interest was ruining her. These would currently be more than 44 percent for a loan. Rebuilding a company after the war under such circumstances would be difficult. Jäger wants to work to ensure that the businesswoman’s lenders suspend interest for a year.
In 2006 in Brussels, Michael Jäger held talks with Slovakia’s Finance Minister at the time, Ivan Miklos, about the success of the introduction of the “flat tax” in 2004, which Jäger helped promote.
(Photo: private)
He is also committed to Ukraine in other ways. As a representative of the European Economic Senate, he managed to be authorized by Ukraine’s defense minister to conduct negotiations with companies on the country’s food and aid supplies. In Slovakia, a few years ago, he campaigned for tax law to be simplified and for the “flat tax” to be introduced, a single tax rate for everyone. “It’s always about initiating positive solutions together,” he says.
The Neubiberger devotes the time he has left with all this to his family – his wife and three children. “There are certainly better fathers than me, but I always try to be there when I’m needed,” he says. Every morning he treats himself to the “luxury”, as he calls it, of going for a walk with the family dog, Marlie.
How does he manage all this? He speaks quickly, can do several things at the same time, as he says. “I work when the others sleep, and I only need four and a half hours of sleep.” The 60-year-old explains his motivation with his experience in handball, which he practiced as a competitive sport for many years and to which he is still connected today as the trainer of the men’s team at TSV Vaterstetten. “Each individual is important, but you can only win as a team.”