Katja Keul
Katja Keul | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Katja Keul in 2013 | |
| Member of the Bundestag | |
| Assumed office 2009 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 30 November 1969 West Berlin (now Germany) |
| Political party | Greens |
| Alma mater | University of Heidelberg |
Katja Keul (née Fehsenfeld, born 30 November 1969) is a German lawyer and politician of Alliance 90/The Greens. She has been a member of the Bundestag, the German parliament, since the 2009 German federal election.
Education and early career
The daughter of a development aid worker, Keul was born in Berlin. She attended schools in Mostaganem, Höxter, Geneva, Jacksonville, Florida, and Nienburg/Weser. From 1989 to 1994 she studied law at the University of Heidelberg and has been working as a lawyer since 1997.[1]
Political career
Keul has been a member of the Green Party since 2006.[2]
Keul has been a member of the German Bundestag since the 2013 elections, representing the Nienburg II – Schaumburg constituencey. In parliament, she has since been serving on the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Committee on Defense. From 2014 until 2017, she was also part of the parliament’s Council of Elders, which – among other duties – determines daily legislative agenda items and assigns committee chairpersons based on party representation. Following the 2017 elections, she also joined the Subcommittee on Disarmament, Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. She has been serving as her parliamentary group's spokesperson on legal affairs since 2013.
In addition to her committee assignments, Keul is a member of the German-American Parliamentary Friendship Group. She has been a member of the German delegations to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe since 2014 and to the Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly since 2019.[3]
On 7 June 2011, Keul was among the guests invited to the state dinner hosted by President Barack Obama in honor of Chancellor Angela Merkel at the White House.[4][5]
In 2019, Keul co-founded a cross-party support group for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.[6][7]
Other activities
- German Bar Association (DAV), Member
- EastWest Institute, Member of the Parliamentarians Network for Conflict Prevention[8]
- German Cyclist’s Association (ADFC), Member
- German Federation for the Environment and Nature Conservation (BUND), Member
- German Foundation for International Legal Cooperation (IRZ), Member[9]
- International Association of Lawyers against Nuclear Arms (IALANA), Member
Political positions
In 2014, Keul – alongside fellow Green Party parliamentarians Claudia Roth and Hans-Christian Ströbele – lodged a complaint before the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany, arguing that it was unconstitutional for the government to keep the Bundestag in the dark about planned arms deals because it prevented the parliament from fulfilling its role of keeping the government in check. The court ruled that while the government did not have to disclose information about planned defense exports, it did have an obligation to provide the Bundestag with details, on request, once specific arms deals had been approved.[10]
In 2016, Keul and Volker Beck submitted a compensatory draft law to all parliamentary groups in the German Parliament, urging them to remove Paragraph 175 in the penal code, which criminalized homosexual acts.[11]
References
- ^ Axel Wagner (September 12, 2013), Die Rockerin Schaumburger Nachrichten.
- ^ "Deutscher Bundestag – Katja Keul". Deutscher Bundestag (in German). Retrieved 2019-10-10.
- ^ Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly Deutscher Bundestag.
- ^ Expected Attendees at Tonight's State Dinner Office of the First Lady of the United States, press release of 7 June 2011.
- ^ White House state dinner for Germany: The guest list (#statedinner) Washington Post, June 7, 2011.
- ^ Parlamentskreis Atomwaffenverbot gegründet Office of Katja Keul MP, press release of September 12, 2019.
- ^ Tobias Schulze (September 11, 2019), Parlamentskreis für den Verbotsvertrag: Auch CDUler gegen Atombomben Die Tageszeitung.
- ^ Members EastWest Institute, Parliamentarians Network for Conflict Prevention.
- ^ Members German Foundation for International Legal Cooperation (IRZ).
- ^ German court rules against more disclosure in arms deals Deutsche Welle, October 21, 2014.
- ^ Repeal of old anti-gay law urged in Germany Deutsche Welle, August 8, 2016.