Svenja Schulze

Schulze joined the SPD in 1988[3] and served as county spokesperson for North Rhine-Westphalia from 1988 to 1989, then as a member of the Socialist College Association and chair of the AStA at the University of Bochum. From 1993 to 1997, Schulze was North Rhine-Westphalia's regional leader of Jusos.

From 1996 to 2002 and again from 2006 to 2018, Schulze served on the leadership of the SPD in North Rhine-Westphalia.[1]

From 3 June 1997 to 1 June 2000 and again from 22 October 2004, Schulze was a member of the State Parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia.[1] She last moved in for Frank Baranowski, who had been elected Lead Mayor of Gelsenkirchen. In the 2005 and 2010 elections she was again elected to the state parliament.[1] From 2005 until 2010, she served as her parliamentary group's spokesperson on environmental policy and consumer protection.[4][5]

In 2007, Schulze took over the chairmanship of the SPD sub-district Münster from Christoph Strässer and held it until 21 May 2011.

After 2010 state elections, Minister-President Hannelore Kraft appointed Schulze as State Minister of Innovation, Science and Research of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia (Cabinet Kraft I). With the abolition of tuition fees in North Rhine-Westphalia, Schulze launched one of the government's major political projects. During her term, the so-called "nuclear sphere affair" regarding the AVR reactor in Jülich occurred. At the election on 13 May 2012, she won the direct mandate in the Münster II constituency and was directly elected to the state legislature with 40.1 percent. On 21 June 2012, she was appointed again as State Minister of Innovation, Science and Research in the Cabinet Kraft II.

From 2017 until 2018, Schulze served as Secretary General of the SPD North Rhine-Westphalia, in this capacity supporting interim chairman Michael Groschek.[6] On 8 December 2017, she was elected to the SPD national board, under the leadership of chairwoman Andrea Nahles.[7] On the following day she was also elected to the SPD Presidium.[8]

In the negotiations to form a fourth coalition government under Chancellor Angela Merkel following the 2017 federal elections, Schulze was part of the working group on education policy, led by Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, Stefan Müller and Hubertus Heil. On 9 March 2018, she was nominated by the party executive committee of the SPD as Minister of the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety in the new government.[9] When Germany held the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union in 2020, she chaired the meetings of its Environment Council.[10]

During her time in office, Schulze helped implement the Merkel government's 2019 agreement on the introduction of a carbon price for key sectors such as transport and a €54 billion spending package to encourage companies and households to reduce their carbon emissions.[11] She later oversaw the introduction of 2021 legislation under which farmers in Germany would have to gradually reduce their use of glyphosate and stop using it completely from 2024 in order to preserve clean habitats for insects.[12] Later that year, she led the government's efforts to raise Germany's target for reducing carbon emissions by 2030 from 55 per cent to 65 per cent and to achieve carbon neutrality by 2045, five years earlier than initially planned.[13][14]

In October 2020, Schulze announced that she would run for a parliamentary seat in the 2021 national elections.[15] In the elections, she stood in Münster but came in third place. She was elected on the state list.

In the negotiations to form a so-called traffic light coalition of the SPD, the Green Party and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) following the elections, Schulze was part of her party's delegation in the working group on climate protection and energy policy, co-chaired by Matthias Miersch, Oliver Krischer and Lukas Köhler.[16]

• KfW, Ex-Officio Member of the Board of Supervisory Directors (since 2018)[17]
• NRW.BANK, Member of the Parliamentary Advisory Board (2017–2018)

• Business Forum of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, Member of the Political Advisory Board (since 2020)[18]
• ZDF, Member of the Program Committee (since 2019)[19]
• German Research Foundation (DFG), Member of the Joint Committee (2010–2017)
• Max Planck Society, Member of the Senate (2010–2017)
• Heinrich Hertz Foundation, chairwoman of the Board of Trustees (2010–2017)
• North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts, Deputy Chairwoman of the Board of Trustees (2010–2017)
• German United Services Trade Union (ver.di), Member[1]
• IG Bergbau, Chemie, Energie (IG BCE), Member[1]
• Arbeiterwohlfahrt, Member
• Naturschutzbund Deutschland (NABU), Member
• Slow Food, Member
• "Frauenzeiten", co-founder