The family ministry is to be headed by a female minister in the future. “It will be a woman,” says Green party leader Ricarda Lang about the successor to Anne Spiegel, who has resigned. The Greens have the right to propose in the traffic light coalition. Your party has so far filled their cabinet posts equally, and that will remain the case, said Lang. A proposal will be made “promptly”.
That should probably happen this week. There is “now a need to clarify this question quickly,” said Lang on RTL/ntv. “I don’t think that we will be dealing with this question after Easter.” The office is of great importance to the Greens, as it is accompanied by “insane modernization opportunities”.
The successor question also plays a role in the two-day retreat of the Greens federal executive in Husum in Schleswig-Holstein. Actually, the main focus should be on energy issues. But after Spiegel’s resignation, the Greens now have to appoint a new minister just four months after the traffic light coalition took office.
The search is not easy. There is already speculation about names such as former parliamentary group leader Anton Hofreiter or Bundestag Vice President Katrin Göring-Eckardt, who came up empty-handed when the government was formed in December. In terms of internal party logic, the argument against Göring-Eckardt is that, unlike Spiegel, she is one of the realos in the party and not part of the left wing. Against Hofreiter speaks that he is a man.
The parliamentary group leader of the Greens in the Bundestag, Britta Haßelmann, says: “Anyone who knows the Greens knows how important the quota is to us and how important it is that women are represented in top positions. We will also do that in the question of the decision consider.”
In the past decades, the Family Ministry has always been led by women. The last man at the top was Heiner Geißler from 1982 to 1985. He was followed by Rita Süssmuth, Ursula Lehr, Hannelore Rönsch, Claudia Nolte, Christine Bergmann, Renate Schmidt, Ursula von der Leyen, Kristina Schröder, Manuela Schwesig, Katarina Barley, Franziska Giffey, Christine Lambrecht and finally Anne Spiegel. The later Chancellor Angela Merkel was Minister for Women and Youth from 1991 to 1994, today this part is part of the family department.
Spiegel announced her resignation on Monday after it became known that in the summer of 2021, when she was Environment Minister for Rhineland-Palatinate, she left for a four-week family vacation in France ten days after the devastating flood.
Spiegel is apparently entitled to a transitional allowance
The heads of the traffic light coalition paid tribute to Spiegel for their step. For Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) and his government, it was the first ministerial resignation. “I enjoyed working with Federal Minister Anne Spiegel,” said the chancellor, whose cabinet before resigning consisted of as many female ministers as ministers.
When she took office as Minister for Family Affairs last December, Spiegel named the fight against child poverty and the introduction of so-called basic child security as priority political goals. Spiegel recently moved to Berlin with her family. She does not have a Bundestag mandate, but is apparently entitled to a transitional allowance. “Anyone who leaves the cabinet gets a transitional allowance of 75,600 euros after one day in office as a minister,” said the deputy chairman of the Association of Taxpayers, Michael Jäger picture-Newspaper.