Katarina Barley

Katarina Barley
Federal Minister of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth
Incumbent
Assumed office 02 June 2017
Chancellor	Angela Merkel
Preceded by	Manuela Schwesig
Member of the Bundestag
Incumbent
Assumed office 2013
Personal details
Born	(1968-11-19) 19 November 1968 Cologne, West Germany (now Germany)
Citizenship	German
Nationality	Germany
Political party	German: Social Democratic Party EU: Party of European Socialists
Alma mater	University of Marburg
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Katarina Barley (born 19 November 1968 in Cologne) is a German lawyer and politician. She has served as a member of the Bundestag since 2013 and as the Secretary-General of the Social Democratic Party of Germany from 2015 to 2017. Since 2 June 2017, she is the Federal Minister of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth in the federal Cabinet of Angela Merkel.

Background

Barley's father was a British-born journalist who worked with the English-language service of Germany's international broadcaster, the Deutsche Welle, and her mother was a German physician.

Education and early career

Barley studied at the University of Marburg and the University of Paris-Sud. She holds a doctoral degree in law. Supervised by Bodo Pieroth, her thesis was on the constitutional right of citizens of the European Union to vote in municipal elections.

Barley worked as a lawyer in Hamburg before taking a position as assistant to constitutional judge Renate Jaeger in Karlsruhe in 2001. From 2008, she was a judge and later worked as an adviser on bioethics to the Rhineland-Palatinate State Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection before being elected to Parliament in 2013.

Political career

In her parliamentary work, Barley represents the constituency of Trier for the Social Democratic Party of Germany.

Barley served as a member of the parliament’s Council of Elders, which – among other duties – determines daily legislative agenda items and assigning committee chairpersons based on party representation. She was also a member of the parliamentary body in charge of appointing judges to the Highest Courts of Justice, namely the Federal Court of Justice (BGH), the Federal Administrative Court (BVerwG), the Federal Fiscal Court (BFH), the Federal Labour Court (BAG), and the Federal Social Court (BSG). In 2014, she was appointed to serve on the Committee on the Election of Judges (Wahlausschuss), which is in charge of appointing judges to the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany. On the Committee on Legal Affairs and Consumer Protection, she served as her parliamentary group's rapporteur on voluntary euthanasia.

In 2014, Barley briefly served as a member of the Committee on the Affairs of the European Union. In addition to her committee assignments, she is a member of the German-British Parliamentary Friendship Group.

Within the SPD parliamentary group, Barley belongs to the Parliamentary Left, a left-wing movement. In 2015, she was proposed by party chairman Sigmar Gabriel to succeed Yasmin Fahimi in the role of general secretary of the SPD, one of the party's most senior positions. From March 2017, she served under the leadership of Martin Schulz and managed the launch of the party’s campaign for the national elections.

In May 2017, Schulz announced that Barley would succeed Manuela Schwesig as Federal Ministry of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth for the remainder of the legislative term until the elections. She was appointed on 2 June.

Other activities

• ZDF, Member of the Television Board (since 2016)
• German Association for Small and Medium-Sized Businesses (BVMW), Member of the Political Advisory Board (since 2016)
• Institute for European Politics (IEP), Member of the Board of Trustees
• Wilhelm Dröscher Prize, Member of the Board of Trustees
• Trier University of Applied Sciences, Member of the Board of Trustees
• ver.di, Member

Personal life

Barley is formerly married and has two sons.

External links

Media related to Katarina Barley at Wikimedia Commons