Jens Spahn

Jens Georg Spahn (born 16 May 1980) is a German politician who served as Federal Minister of Health in the fourth cabinet of Chancellor Angela Merkel from 2018 to 2021.

Spahn was born on 16 May 1980 in Ahaus, North Rhine-Westphalia.

He grew up with his two younger siblings in the village of Ottenstein in the north of Westmünsterland.

Spahn became a member of the Junge Union Deutschlands (JU) in 1995, aged 15.

He went on to join the CDU in 1997.

Spahn graduated in 1999 from the Episcopal Canisius school in Ahaus.

He was the chair of the Borken district JU from 1999 to 2006.

Spahn has been a member of the Ahaus City Council since 1999.

In 2001 he completed an apprenticeship as a banker at the Westdeutsche Landesbank, and worked until 2002 as a bank clerk.

A member of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), he has been the member of the lower house of the federal parliament, the Bundestag (Mitglied des Deutschen Bundestages, MdB), for Steinfurt I – Borken I since 2002.

At the time of his election in 2002, Spahn – at age 22 – was the youngest member of the CDU in the German parliament.

Spahn first became a member of parliament in the 2002 elections.

He has since won three consecutive elections in 2002, 2005 and 2009 in the constituency of Steinfurt I – Borken I. In 2005, he obtained 51.2% of first preference votes.

In 2003, Spahn began studying political science and law at the University of Hagen.

In 2005, he also took up the chair of the Borken district CDU, which numbers 6,500 members.

From November 2005, Spahn served as the vice-chair of the CDU/CSU working group on health policy, while at the same time chair of the CDU–CSU parliamentary group in the Committee of Health.

Between 2005 and 2013, Spahn served as deputy chair of the German–Dutch Parliamentary Friendship Group.

He was also a member of the CDU–CSU–SPD coalition working group, which brought about the 2007 health reform.

In 2008, he obtained a bachelor's degree, followed by a master's degree in the same field in 2017.

In the 27 September 2009 election, Spahn won again with 44.5% of the primary vote, earning a direct mandate.

Since 2009, he has been chair of the working group on health and health policy as well as the spokesman of the CDU–CSU parliamentary group on health policy.

Spahn was a substitute member of the Budget Committee.

He is part of the "Young Group" of the CDU–CSU parliamentary group.

Spahn co-founded a cross-party group of young MPs pushing for the integration of intergeneration equity as a national objective into Germany's Basic Law.

In negotiations to form a government following the 2013 federal elections, Spahn led the CDU–CSU delegation in the health working group; his co-chair from the SPD was Karl Lauterbach.

In December 2014 Spahn unexpectedly stood for a place on the CDU's ruling council against health minister Hermann Gröhe, in a contest widely seen as crystallizing the generational tensions within the party.

His election bid was backed by the then 72-year-old finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble.

Shortly before the vote at the annual CDU party conference, Gröhe withdrew his candidacy and Spahn was elected.

Since 2014, he has been its chair.

He has since then served in the 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th and currently in the 20th Bundestags and is one of the main sponsors of pension reform in Germany.

In 2015, Spahn became Parliamentary State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Finance under minister Wolfgang Schäuble in the third cabinet of Chancellor Angela Merkel.

At the ministry, he oversaw the German government's annual budget.

He was a member of the Committee of Health of the 17th Bundestag and the CDU/CSU parliamentary group's spokesperson on health.

He served as Minister of Health during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany.

When Chancellor Angela Merkel stated her intention not to seek re-election for the CDU party leadership in 2018, Spahn announced his intention to stand for election as her successor in December 2018.

He was eliminated in the first round of voting; the position instead went to Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer.

He has been mentioned as a possible replacement for Angela Merkel as Chancellor, and stood in the CDU leadership campaign in 2018 after Merkel announced that she would not seek re-election as party leader.

However, the 157 votes he secured, despite being more than expected, was insufficient for him to qualify for the second round of voting, which was won by Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer.

Following Kramp-Karrenbauer's decision to resign in February 2020, he announced that he would not run for the party's leadership but instead endorse candidate Armin Laschet.

His alliance with Laschet proved successful, as his ally became CDU party leader on 16 January 2021 and candidate for chancellor of the CDU/CSU party alliance on 19 April 2021.