Katarina Barley | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Official portrait, 2024 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Vice President of the European Parliament | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Assumed office 3 July 2019 Serving with See List | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| President | David Sassoli Roberta Metsola | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Minister of Justice and Consumer Protection | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| In office 14 March 2018 – 27 June 2019 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Chancellor | Angela Merkel | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Preceded by | Heiko Maas | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | Christine Lambrecht | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Minister of Labour and Social Affairs | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Acting | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| In office 28 September 2017 – 14 March 2018 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Chancellor | Angela Merkel | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Preceded by | Andrea Nahles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | Hubertus Heil | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Minister of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| In office 2 June 2017 – 14 March 2018 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Chancellor | Angela Merkel | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Preceded by | Manuela Schwesig | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | Franziska Giffey | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| General Secretary of theSocial Democratic Party | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| In office 11 December 2015 – 2 June 2017 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Leader | Sigmar Gabriel Martin Schulz | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Preceded by | Yasmin Fahimi | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | Hubertus Heil | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Personal details | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Born | (1968-11-19)19 November 1968 (age 57) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Citizenship |
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Political party | SPD (since 1994) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Spouse | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Children | 2 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Education | University of Marburg Paris-Sud University University of Münster | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Signature |  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Website | Official website | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Katarina Barley (born 19 November 1968) is a German politician and lawyer who has been aMember of the European Parliament since 2019, serving as one of itsVice-Presidents. She served asFederal Minister of Justice and Consumer Protection in thefourth Cabinet of Angela Merkel.[1] Prior to that, she had served asFederal Minister of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth and since 28 September 2017 also as the actingFederal Minister of Labour and Social Affairs, both until 14 March 2018.[2]
A member of theSocial Democratic Party of Germany, Barley served as a member of theBundestag from 2013 until 2019 and was Secretary-General of her party from 2015 to 2017. She holds law degrees from France and Germany and a doctorate in European law, and formerly worked as a corporate lawyer with the law firm Wessing &Berenberg-Gossler in Hamburg, as a judge and as a governmental legal adviser. Barley holds citizenship of both Germany and Britain.[3]
Barley was born and grew up inCologne;[4] her father was an English-born journalist who worked with the English-language service of Germany's international broadcaster, theDeutsche Welle, and her mother was a German physician.[5] From birth, she only held British citizenship and acquired German citizenship some years later.[6] She is fluent in German, English, and French.[7]
Barley's father (born 1935) was originally fromLincolnshire.[8][9] She said her father grew up in a working-class family on a very small and simple farm that lacked electricity, and that he was awarded a scholarship to attend university after being discovered as a talented pupil by his teacher; however after being turned down by theUniversity of Cambridge, he decided as a matter of principle to turn his back on British universities and move toWest Germany to attend university instead; he first moved toHanover and later toWest Berlin, where he found society to be more egalitarian and progressive. In Germany he met Barley's mother and was employed as a journalist with Deutsche Welle's English service inCologne after graduating. Her mother (born 1940) belonged to an upper-middle-class family from eastern Germany and was the daughter of an engineer in theautomotive industry; her family fled the Red Army in 1945 and came asrefugees fromStalinism to western Germany.[8] Barley has said that she had a happy childhood, but that she grew up with a strong sense ofsocial justice, influenced by her parents' experiences. Although neither of her parents were born in that part of Europe, she identifies culturally as aRhinelander.[6][10]
Barley studied at theUniversity of Marburg and theUniversity of Paris-Sud. She graduated with a French law degree (Diplôme de droit français) in 1990 and a German law degree in 1993. In 1998, she earned a doctoral degree inEuropean law at theUniversity of Münster. Supervised byBodo Pieroth, herthesis was on the constitutional right ofcitizens of the European Union to vote in municipal elections.
Barley was called to the bar in 1998 and worked as a lawyer with the major Hamburg corporate law firm Wessing &Berenberg-Gossler (nowTaylor Wessing, following the merger with a British law firm) until 1999. She then worked as a legal adviser for the state government ofRhineland-Palatinate until 2001, when she became an assistant to constitutional judgeRenate Jaeger inKarlsruhe.[11] She worked inLuxembourg as a German representative to the Maison de la Grande Région/Haus der Großregion, a cooperation forum for Luxembourg and neighbouring German, French and Belgian regions, from 2005 to 2006.
From 2007 to 2008, Barley was a judge of theTrier district court and at theWittlich local court. From 2008 to 2013 she was an adviser onbioethics to the Rhineland-Palatinate State Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection. She left this position when she was elected to Parliament in 2013.[12]
Barley joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany in 1994.[9] In her parliamentary work, Barley represented the constituency ofTrier for theSocial Democratic Party of Germany. Barley served as a member of the parliament'sCouncil 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 theFederal Court of Justice (BGH), theFederal Administrative Court (BVerwG), theFederal Fiscal Court (BFH), theFederal Labour Court (BAG), and theFederal 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 theFederal Constitutional Court of Germany. On the Committee on Legal Affairs and Consumer Protection, she served as her parliamentary group'srapporteur onvoluntary 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 belonged to theParliamentary Left, a left-wing movement.[13]
In 2015, Barley was proposed by party chairmanSigmar Gabriel to succeedYasmin Fahimi in the role of general secretary of the SPD, one of the party's most senior positions.[14] Since March 2017, she served under the leadership ofMartin Schulz and managed the launch of the party's campaign for thenational elections.
In May 2017, Schulz announced that Barley would succeedManuela Schwesig asFederal Minister of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth for the remainder of the legislative term until the elections.[15] She was appointed on 2 June. She additionally became actingFederal Minister of Labour and Social Affairs on 28 September 2017, whenAndrea Nahles stepped down to become the parliamentary leader of the SPD.[16] On 9 March 2018, Barley was named by Andrea Nahles andOlaf Scholz to succeed Heiko Maas as Minister of Justice and Consumer Protection in thefourth coalition government under the leadership ofChancellorAngela Merkel, sworn in on 14 March 2018.[17]
In October 2018, the SPD announced that Barley would be the party's lead candidate for the2019 European elections.[18] Since becoming aMember of the European Parliament, Barley has been serving as one of itsVice-Presidents; in this capacity, she has been part of the Parliament's leadership under PresidentsDavid Sassoli (2019–2022) andRoberta Metsola (since 2022).[19] She also joined theCommittee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs, where she is a member of the Democracy, Rule of Law & Fundamental Rights Monitoring Group.[20] Since 2021, she has been part of the Parliament's delegation to theConference on the Future of Europe.[21] In addition to her committee assignments, Barley is a member of theEuropean Parliament Intergroup on LGBT Rights.[22]
Barley is a member of theEuropa-Union Deutschland.[23] In October 2018, she demanded to end the border controls at the German-Austrian border that Germany introduced as a reaction to theEuropean migrant crisis "soon" to ensure a "workingEuropean Single Market". She called for a "European solution" and protection of the European external borders instead.[24]
In a joint letter initiated byNorbert Röttgen andAnthony Gonzalez ahead of the47th G7 summit in 2021, Barley joined some 70 legislators from Europe and the US in calling upon their leaders to take a tough stance on China and to "avoid becoming dependent" on the country for technology includingartificial intelligence and5G.[25]
Barley has repeatedly criticized the Hungarian prime ministerViktor Orbán, and called Orbán a "cowardly dictator".[26][27] She has criticiseddemocratic backsliding and the undermining of therule of law inHungary andPoland.[28] During an interview for theDeutschlandfunk Radio, Barley called for withholding EU subsidies and specifically for "starving" Orbán financially, stating that "he needs the money. And if we say, you won't get any money, then in the end, I think, he will have to give in at one point or another."[28] The Polish prime minister’s chief of staffMichał Dworczyk said that Barley’s comments were "shameful" and evoked "the worst possible historical associations". He went on to quip that "Germans indeed have experience in starving and persecution".Mateusz Morawiecki, the thenprime minister of Poland, said on the words of Barley that it was a "diplomatic scandal" and that "Germans should remember starvations and genocides [caused by them]."[29][30][31][32]
Barley gave a few exclusive interviews toRussia Today German,Vladimir Putin's propaganda channel, legitimizingRT as a journalistic media outlet, and many other politicians across the political spectrum also did the same, raising concerns aboutRussian disinformation and its influence on democracy in Germany. In one of theRussia Today interviews from April 2019, she said: "We maintain a close relationship with Russia. ... Russia has always been our partner and will remain so. ... But of course we are very critical on some points [citing the annexation of Crimea as an example]."[33][34]
Barley's former husband Antonio, a lawyer, is a dual Spanish and Dutch citizen with a Spanish father and a Dutch mother; they met when they both studied in Paris and have two sons.[46][9][47][10] Since 2018, Barley has been in a relationship withMarco van den Berg,[48] they married in 2020.[49]
Wir müssen ihn [Orbán] aushungern finanziell. Er braucht auch das Geld. Und wenn wir sagen, dann kriegst du auch kein Geld, dann wird er am Ende an der ein oder anderen Stelle, denke ich, auch einlenken müssen.[We have to starve him [Orbán] financially. He needs the money. And if we say, you won't get any money, then in the end, I think, he will have to give in at one point or another.]
Media related toKatarina Barley at Wikimedia Commons| Political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Minister of Justice and Consumer Protection 2018–2019 | Succeeded by |
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| People | |
