Christine Lambrecht

Christine Lambrecht (born 19 June 1965) is a German senior politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) who served as the German Federal Minister of Defence in the government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, from 2021 to 2023.

Lambrecht joined the SPD in 1982 and was a member of the Viernheim City Council from 1985 till 2001, of which she was the chair in the years 1997 till 2001.

Lambrecht attended the Albertus-Magnus-Gymnasium in Viernheim, in the German state of Hesse, and in 1984 she passed her Abitur.

Additionally she was a member of the Bergstraße County Council from 1989 until 1997.

After this she studied law at the Universities of Mannheim and Mainz, where she graduated in 1992 and completed an internship at State Court in Darmstadt.

Lambrecht first became a Member of the Bundestag in the 1998 elections.

From 1998 until 2002 she was the member for Bergstraße, however, she lost against her CDU challenger in the 2002 federal election and has subsequently always been elected via the SPD Hessian state list.

In parliament, she has served on the Committee on Legal Affairs, the Committee on Sports and on the Council of Elders, which sets the agenda for the parliamentary sessions.

Lambrecht was seen as being on the left wing of the SPD parliamentary group.

From 2002 until 2005 and from 2013 until 2017, Lambrecht served on the parliamentary body in charge of appointing judges to the Highest Courts of Justice, namely the Federal Court of Justice (BGH), the Federal Administrative Court (BVerwG), the Federal Fiscal Court (BFH), the Federal Labour Court (BAG), and the Federal Social Court (BSG).

Following the 2009 elections, Lambrecht became her parliamentary group's spokesperson on legal affairs.

She previously held various roles within the SPD Parliamentary Group, including as a Deputy Leader (from 2011 to 2013) and from December 2013 to September 2017 as first parliamentary secretary of the SPD parliamentary group.

In 2011, she was elected as a deputy leader of the SPD parliamentary group, under the leadership of chairman Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

She was a deputy leader of the group till her election as first parliamentary secretary of the SPD parliamentary group after the 2013 federal election.

In the ensuing negotiations to form a third coalition government under Chancellor Angela Merkel, she was part of the SPD delegation in the working group on internal and legal affairs, led by Hans-Peter Friedrich and Thomas Oppermann.

In the negotiations to form Merkel’s fourth coalition government following the 2017 federal elections, Lambrecht was part of the working group on financial policies and taxes, led by Peter Altmaier, Andreas Scheuer and Olaf Scholz.

In Merkel's fourth cabinet, she joined the federal government as one of two Parliamentary State Secretaries serving under Finance Minister Olaf Scholz.

In response to the burning of an Israeli flag at a demonstration in 2017, Lambrecht led efforts in 2020 to make the destruction of foreign state flags, including that of the European Union, and the denigration of national anthems punishable by a fine and up to three years in prison.

In Chancellor Angela Merkel's administration, Lambrecht previously served as Minister of Justice and Consumer Protection (2019–2021), Minister for Family Affairs (2021) and as one of two Parliamentary State Secretaries at the Federal Ministry of Finance (2018– 2019).

On 19 June 2019 it was announced that Lambrecht would succeed justice minister Katarina Barley on the 1 July 2019, after the latter moved to Brussels to serve in the European Parliament.

During Lambrecht's time in office, German authorities fined Facebook 2 million euros for under-reporting complaints about illegal content on its social media platform in breach of the country’s law on internet transparency.

In December 2019, she proposed a law requiring internet service providers like Gmail or WhatsApp to handover personal data including passwords upon request.

In September 2020, Lambrecht announced that she would not stand in the 2021 federal elections but instead resign from active politics by the end of the parliamentary term.

In May 2021, Lambrecht additionally took on the portfolio of the Federal Minister for Family Affairs, Women, and Youth, after Franziska Giffey resigned in reaction to her plagiarism affair.

Lambrecht was named Federal Minister of Defence in the cabinet of Olaf Scholz, taking office on 8 December 2021.

At the time, German defence forces were in a very bad condition.

In one of her first speeches, Lambrecht asked for more money for the German army.

Referring to many deficiencies in the materiel, she said that the army was too often ridiculed for helicopters that did not fly and guns that did not hit.

Indeed, Lambrecht was not exaggerating as it had been known for years that the army was lacking 20-30 billion euros worth of ammunition.

Early in her tenure, Lambrecht and Germany as a whole were severely criticized for their very sluggish response to requests by Kyiv for military aid in face of the threatening Russian invasion.

In January 2022 Lambrecht and much of the German public opinion eschewed weapons in favor of non-lethal items.

In the end, Lambrecht offered 5,000 helmets and a field hospital and said that it was "a clear signal that Germany was behind Ukraine".

Lambrecht probably intended it as such, but the offer was received very differently.

Ukraine's capital's mayor, Vitaly Klitschko dismissed it as "a joke".

In Germany itself reactions were no less critical.

Many media thought that Germany was the laughing stock of international politics and was proving itself to be unreliable.

Criticism centered on Lambrecht's actions, and the incidents that she had caused while barely two months in office.

In early February Lambrecht oversaw efforts to send up to 350 more German troops to Lithuania, reinforcing a German-led NATO Enhanced Forward Presence combat unit deployed there to deter a Russian attack on the Baltic states.

After the start of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February, Scholz held his Zeitenwende speech on 27 February.

Immediately after this speech, the ministry of defense requested 250 firms to mobilize every resource in order to make the Bundeswehr combat ready as soon as possible.