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Katja Keul

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Katja Keul
Katja Keul in 2013
Minister of State
Incumbent
Assumed office
2021
Serving with
ChancellorOlaf Scholz
MinisterAnnalena Baerbock
Preceded byMichelle Müntefering
Member of the Bundestag
Incumbent
Assumed office
2009
Personal details
Born (1969-11-30) 30 November 1969 (age 55)
West Berlin
(now Germany)
Political partyGreens
Alma materUniversity of Heidelberg
Signature

Katja Keul (née Fehsenfeld, born 30 November 1969) is a German lawyer and politician of Alliance 90/The Greens who has been serving as a member of the German Bundestag since the 2009 elections, representing the Nienburg II – Schaumburg district. In addition to her work in parliament, she has been Minister of State at the Federal Foreign Office in the government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz since 8 December 2021.

Education and early career

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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

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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 constituency. In parliament, she served on the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Committee on Defense from 2013 until 2021. During that time, she served as her parliamentary group's spokesperson on legal affairs. 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 joined the Subcommittee on Disarmament, Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.[citation needed]

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]

In the negotiations to form a so-called traffic light coalition of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Green Party and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) following the 2021 German elections, Keul was part of her party's delegation in the working group on children, youth and families, co-chaired by Serpil Midyatli, Katrin Göring-Eckardt and Stephan Thomae.[8]

In October 2024, Keul announced that she would not stand in the 2025 federal elections but instead resign from active politics by the end of the parliamentary term.

Other activities

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Political positions

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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.[13]

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.[14]

References

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  1. ^ Axel Wagner (12 September 2013), Die Rockerin Schaumburger Nachrichten.
  2. ^ "Deutscher Bundestag – Katja Keul". Deutscher Bundestag (in German). Retrieved 10 October 2019.
  3. ^ Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly Deutscher Bundestag.
  4. ^ Expected Attendees at Tonight's State Dinner Office of the First Lady of the United States, press release of 7 June 2011.
  5. ^ White House state dinner for Germany: The guest list (#statedinner) The Washington Post, 7 June 2011.
  6. ^ Parlamentskreis Atomwaffenverbot gegründet Office of Katja Keul MP, press release of 12 September 2019.
  7. ^ Tobias Schulze (11 September 2019), Parlamentskreis für den Verbotsvertrag: Auch CDUler gegen Atombomben Die Tageszeitung.
  8. ^ Britt-Marie Lakämper (21 October 2021), SPD, Grüne, FDP: Diese Politiker verhandeln die Ampel-Koalition Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung.
  9. ^ Board of Trustees German Foundation for Peace Research (DSF).
  10. ^ Board of Trustees German Federal Cultural Foundation.
  11. ^ Members EastWest Institute, Parliamentarians Network for Conflict Prevention.
  12. ^ Members German Foundation for International Legal Cooperation (IRZ).
  13. ^ German court rules against more disclosure in arms deals Deutsche Welle, 21 October 2014.
  14. ^ Repeal of old anti-gay law urged in Germany Deutsche Welle, 8 August 2016.
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