Fritz F. Pleitgen is President of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU). Before taking up this post in October 2006, he was active since September 2002 as EBU Vice-President. He also currently represents the German Association of Public Broadcasting Corporations, (ARD) as their International Representative. Prior to this he spent 12 years as the Director-General of Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR), the largest broadcasting-corporation in Germany. 

Fritz F. Pleitgen was born on March 21, 1938. Initially a newspaper journalist, he joined WDR in 1963 as a reporter for the main news programme of the ARD. In 1970 he was appointed ARD-correspondent in Moscow. He became Head of the ARD Studio in East Berlin in 1977. In 1982 he moved to the U.S., where he took over the ARD Studio in Washington. He held this post for five years and then became Head of the ARD Studio in New York. He returned to the WDR headquarters in Cologne in 1988 to become Editor-in-Chief of WDR television and head of the politics and current affairs section. During this period he won great acclaim for his reports on German reunification and the collapse of the Soviet Union. He was appointed Radio Director in 1994 before becoming Director General in 1995. 

Fritz F. Pleitgen still regularly appears in television programmes of WDR and ARD both as presenter and reporter. He is also active as President of Ruhr 2010 Ltd., which is responsible for organising the events for the Ruhr region as European Capital of Culture in 2010.