PERSON: Annalena Baerbock

Minister of Foreign Affairs

Annalena Charlotte Alma Baerbock (born 15 December 1980) is a German politician of the Alliance 90/The Greens party serving as Germany’s minister for foreign affairs since 2021.

From 2018 to January 2022, Baerbock served as co-leader of Alliance 90/The Greens, alongside Robert Habeck. She was the party’s candidate for chancellor in the 2021 federal election, making her the first such candidate for the Greens and, after Angela Merkel, only the second woman to be selected by a party as its candidate for chancellor by a major German political party. However, after the backlash she received due to a series of scandals involving her acts of plagiarism and exaggeration of her professional background in her CV, Olaf Scholz from SPD secured the chancellery instead.

After the election, the Greens formed a traffic light coalition led by Olaf Scholz, and Baerbock was sworn in as Germany’s first female foreign minister on 8 December 2021.

Born in Hanover, West Germany, in 1980, Baerbock attended the University of Hamburg and the London School of Economics and Political Science. She was first elected to the Bundestag in 2013. From 2012 to 2015, she was a member of the party council of Alliance 90/The Greens and from 2009 to 2013, the leader of her party’s group in the state of Brandenburg.

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