Claudia Roth

Claudia Benedikta Roth (born 15 May 1955) is a German politician (Alliance 90/The Greens).

She began her artistic work, which she always regarded as also being political, in the 1970s as a trained artistic director at a theatre in Memmingen.

She then worked at the municipal theatre in Dortmund and the Hoffmanns-Comic-Teater, and subsequently began managing the political rock band "Ton Steine Scherben" until 1985, when the band disbanded due to the band's high debt burden.

She came into contact with the Green party on election campaign tours.

In 1985, she became press spokesperson for the Green Party's parliamentary group in the Bundestag, despite being a newcomer to this line of work.

In West Germany's 1989 European elections, Roth was elected for the first time as a Member of the European Parliament for the Greens.

Roth served as a member of the new Committee on Civic Liberties and Internal Affairs, the Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Sub-Committee on Human Rights.

In addition, she was a member of two committees of inquiry in the European Parliament, namely the Committee of Inquiry into Racism and Xenophobia and the Committee of Inquiry into Links between Organized Crime and Drugs, as well as of the EC-Turkey Joint Parliamentary Committee.

From 1989 to 1990, Roth briefly served as deputy chairperson of the Green Group in the European Parliament.

In the 1994 European elections, Roth was again elected to the European Parliament as a lead candidate of Alliance 90/The Greens.

In 1995, she expressed doubts about Prime Minister Tansu Çiller's ability to bring about human rights reforms as a condition for a European Union–Turkey Customs Union.

She was chairperson of the Green Group in the European Parliament until 1998, first alongside co-chairman Alexander Langer (1994–1995) and later Magda Aelvoet (1995–1998).

During this second term as an MEP, she was again a member of the European Parliament Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs, the Sub-Committee on Human Rights and the EC-Turkey Joint Parliamentary Committee, of which she was elected deputy chairperson.

She also remained involved with the Committee on Foreign Affairs as a substitute member.

Claudia Roth ended her work as an MEP when she became part of the Alliance 90/The Greens parliamentary group in the Bundestag after the 1998 German federal election.

She became a member of the Committee on the Affairs of the European Union and a substitute member of the Committee on Internal Affairs of the German Bundestag.

Furthermore, she was elected chairperson of the newly established Committee on Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid.

On 9 March 2001, Roth was elected Federal chairperson of Alliance 90/The Greens at the party conference in Stuttgart and resigned as a Member of the Bundestag at the end of March 2001 as a result.

At the same time, she was spokesperson of the Alliance 90/The Greens on women's affairs.

In the 2002 national elections, Roth was elected to the Bundestag as Bavarian lead candidate for Alliance 90/The Greens.

Since then, she has been a member of the Bundestag's Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Committee on Cultural and Media Affairs.

She is also cultural affairs spokesperson for the Alliance 90/The Greens parliamentary group in the Bundestag and chairperson of the German-Turkish Parliamentary Friendship Group.

Between March 2003 and October 2004, in Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's second cabinet, Roth served as the Federal Government Commissioner for Human Rights Policy and Humanitarian Aid at the Federal Foreign Office.

She was one of the two party chairs from 2004 to 2013 and previously served as one of the vice presidents of the Bundestag.

She is currently serving as Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media [de] in the government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz since 2021.

Roth was born in Ulm, Germany.

Roth became federal chairperson of Alliance 90/The Greens again in October 2004 and was re-elected as such several times, most recently in November 2010.

Roth served as deputy chairwoman of the German-Iranian Parliamentary Friendship Group between 2005 and 2009 and held the same office in the German-Turkish Friendship Group between 2005 and 2013.

In 2012, she failed to become the number-one woman in the campaign for the 2013 national elections.

After this defeat she was unsure to run again for the position of leader of the party's board.

Fellow party member Volker Beck started a support campaign in favour of her in social media networks and called it candystorm.

The party members subsequently re-elected Roth with 88.5 percent backing.

Roth was elected as Vice-President of the German Bundestag on 22 October 2013.

In addition, she is a member of the parliament's Council of Elders, which – among other duties – determines daily legislative agenda items and assigning committee chairpersons based on party representation.

She also serves as a member of the Committee on Economic Cooperation and Development as well as of the Sub-Committee on Cultural Relations and Education Policy.

In addition, she is a member of the Art Advisory Board of the German Bundestag.

In June 2013, Roth was at the surroundings of the Taksim Square when the police intervened to evacuate Gezi Park and was among those affected by the tear gas fired by security officers.

In the unsuccessful negotiations to form a coalition government with the Christian Democrats – both the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU) – and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) following the 2017 national elections, Roth was part of the 14-member delegation of the Green Party.

In the negotiations to form a so-called traffic light coalition of the Social Democrats (SPD), the Green Party and the FDP following the 2021 federal elections, she led her party's delegation in the working group on cultural affairs and media; her co-chairs from the other parties are Carsten Brosda and Otto Fricke.

Since her time at the European Parliament, Roth has regularly criticized the European Union's "determination to hold Turkey at bay."