Berlin Very few had expected her: The Green finance politician Lisa Paus is to become the new Federal Minister for Family Affairs. This was confirmed to the Handelsblatt on Thursday by party circles. Previously, several other media had reported about it. The decision should be announced on Thursday afternoon, it said.
Like her predecessor Anne Spiegel, Paus belongs to the left wing of the party. She is 53 years old, comes from North Rhine-Westphalia and has been a member of the Bundestag since 2009. According to faction circles, she is not the “classic family politician”. The graduate economist is an expert in economic and financial policy.
However, the Greens give her credit for campaigning for basic child security, for example. In addition, she is an “excellent parliamentarian,” according to the parliamentary group.
The fact that she has no experience in comparable positions is considered only a minor flaw in Green circles. “Even Annalena Baerbock has never managed a large department and is now doing a great job,” it says. Paus also carried out her task as parliamentary group leader “responsibly”.
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Paus now has some urgent tasks that don’t allow for a long period of training. The ministry is responsible for the care of women and children who have fled from Ukraine.
Paus succeeds Anne Spiegel, who announced her resignation on Monday. She was accused of a four-week family vacation shortly after the flood disaster in the Ahr Valley in 2021. At that time, as Rhineland-Palatinate’s Environment Minister, she was also responsible for civil protection.
Paus is an experienced financial politician
So far, Paus has made a name for herself primarily as a financial politician. She was spokeswoman for the Federal Working Group on Economics and Finance of the federal party at the end of the 1990s. She also devoted herself to these issues during her time in the Berlin House of Representatives, of which she was a member for ten years. In the last legislative period, she was spokeswoman for financial policy.
Spiegel announced her resignation on Monday.
(Photo: imago images / Torsten Silz)
One of their most important projects was fighting so-called share deals. For years, investors in Germany were able to take advantage of a tax loophole by not buying companies in full, but only in large parts. This cost the state billions in revenue. In fact, Paus managed to largely close the loophole.
Another important topic for her was the fight against financial inequality in Germany. Paus spoke out several times for the introduction of a wealth tax. She is also considered an important voice in the Greens parliamentary group. In meetings with the financial politicians of the other parties, she often takes the floor and leads the discussions, other members of the Bundestag report.
After last year’s federal elections, Paus rose to become the parliamentary group vice president of the Greens. Thematic priorities: finance, household, economy, work and social affairs. At the same time, she continued to oversee reporting on the subject of banking regulation. It is considered unusual for members of the parliamentary group executive committee to also report to the committees at the same time.
Difficult successor search
The fact that the choice finally fell on Paus may also have been due to the lack of alternatives. Prominent names were out of the question for the post because of party proportional representation. Katrin Göring-Eckardt, for example, who was already traded in the coalition negotiations as family minister, was calculated to have a chance.
However, unlike Spiegel, it belongs to the Realo wing. From the Greens’ point of view, the balance of power with the left wing in the cabinet would be gone. Anton Hofreiter again – a prominent left-wing voice in the party – could not be, however, because the Greens wanted to fill the ministry with a woman to maintain gender parity.
“We have a lot of conversations – in the board meeting, in the stairwell, wherever we get to it,” said Omid Nouripour on Monday, who has been at the helm of the Greens together with Ricarda Lang since the end of January. The personnel hit the party largely unprepared, which also made the search more difficult.
More: Search for a successor for Anne Spiegel – “It will be a woman”