Thursday, December 02, 2021
State Secretaries and Ministers
You are behind Habeck, Baerbock and Lindner
As state secretaries, state ministers and parliamentary state secretaries, they will take on key roles in the traffic light government. The first names from the ministries of the Greens and Liberals are already known – an overview.
The departments of the Ampelkoalition are distributed: The SPD will take over six ministries in addition to the Chancellery, five departments will go to the Greens and four to the FDP. And while the Social Democrats do not want to announce the names of their ministers until next week, it is already clear with their government partners who will head which house: the soon-to-be Vice Chancellor and still incumbent Green leader Robert Habeck, for example, will be Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection , his co-chair Annalena Baerbock is moving to the Foreign Office and the head of the FDP, Christian Lindner, will take over the powerful finance department.
Also known are some personal details that will not be in the front row of the future federal government, but play central roles in the green and yellow ministries – for example in the preparation of laws. This means state secretaries, parliamentary state secretaries and state ministers. Who will support Habeck, Baerbock and Lindner? And what are the tasks of these posts? A first overview.
Ministry of Economy and Climate Protection
Four permanent state secretaries are planned for Robert Habeck’s ministry. In doing so, the Greens relies on political heavyweights: the head of the office and coordinator of the Vice Chancellor should be the experienced budget politician and former Hamburg Senator for the Environment Anja Hajduk will. The other state secretaries are the European politician and Attac co-founder Sven Giegold, Patrick Graichen from the think tank Agora Energiewende and the State Secretary for Finance in Schleswig-Holstein, Udo Philipp, set.
Giegold’s move to Berlin is quite surprising. The 52-year-old was his party’s top candidate in the recent European elections, he is the economic policy spokesman for his group in Brussels and is also considered a financial expert. In recent years he has repeatedly taken a media-effective position on numerous issues of European politics, for example in the debate about the so-called golden passports. In the future, he will probably have to appear quieter in the row behind Habeck.
State secretaries are the top officials in a federal ministry – the highest officials in the state. You are responsible for personnel and coordinate the specialist departments in a department where, for example, legislative proposals are prepared and implemented.
Also the Green Federal Managing Director Michael Kellner Habeck is to follow in the newly structured ministry – the 44-year-old will be Parliamentary State Secretary, as will the European politician Franziska Brantner as well as environmental and economic politicians Oliver Krischer.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
The future Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock will be the expert on arms exports Katja Keul, the defense politician Tobias Lindner and the European politician Anna Lührmann stand by as ministers of state. State ministers and parliamentary state secretaries must belong to the Bundestag, support the ministers in their political tasks and can also act as ministers’ deputies, for example in the Bundestag or at political events. They take care of contacts with the parliamentary groups and the Federal Council, but also – especially in the case of the Federal Foreign Office – abroad.
Ministry of Finance
The designated finance minister Christian Lindner brings the FDP finance politicians Katja Hessel and Florian Toncar as parliamentary state secretaries in the Federal Ministry of Finance. The Nuremberg MP Hessel previously headed the finance committee of the Bundestag. Toncar has been the financial policy spokesman for the FDP parliamentary group and was chairman of the Wirecard investigative committee. According to “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” should also Steffen Saebisch become a permanent state secretary in the Ministry of Finance. He is still managing director of the FDP-affiliated Friedrich Naumann Foundation.
The FDP parliamentary group is to be led in the future by the Lower Saxony MP Christian Dürr. Lindner proposed the 44-year-old finance expert to the FDP parliamentarians as his successor, as the future finance minister announced on Twitter. FDP party vice-vice president Johannes Vogel is also to take on a management role in the parliamentary group as the new first parliamentary managing director – he would then succeed Marco Buschmann, who is to become the federal minister of justice in the traffic light government.
These names are also known
The following politicians are planned as future parliamentary state secretaries in the other three ministries:
- Food and Agriculture (Greens): Ophelia Nick and Manuela Rottmann
- Family, senior citizens, women and youth (Greens): Ekin Deligöz and Sven Lehmann
- Environment and consumer protection: Bettina Hoffmann and Chris Kühn
- Transport and Digital (FDP): Daniela Kluckert, Oliver Luksic and Michael Theurer
- Justice (FDP): Benjamin Strasser
- Education and Research (FDP): Jens Brandenburg and Thomas Sattelberger
The party congresses of the SPD and FDP still have to approve the coalition agreement, with the Greens still running a member vote until Monday. The aim of the traffic light parties is to elect Olaf Scholz as Federal Chancellor next week.