Brigitte Zypries

Brigitte Zypries (born 16 November 1953) is a German lawyer and politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). Between 2017 and 2018, she served as Minister for Economics and Energy in the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel; she was the first woman to hold that office in German history.

Zypries had previously been Parliamentary State Secretary since December 2013, charged with the coordination of Germany's aviation and space policies. She was Federal Minister of Justice of Germany from 2002 to 2009 and State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of the Interior from 1998 to 2002.

Zypries studied law at the University of Giessen from 1972 to 1977, and took her first legal state exam in 1978. Then followed in-service training in the regional court district of Gießen, and in 1980 the second state exam. Until 1985 she worked at the University of Giessen.

Following the 1998 federal elections, in the first cabinet of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, Zypries became State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of the Interior under Otto Schily. From September 1999, she chaired the State Secretary Committee for the management of the Federal Government program "Modern State – Modern Administration".

Following the 2002 federal elections, Zypries became Federal Minister of Justice in the second cabinet of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, succeeding Herta Däubler-Gmelin. Between 2007 and 2009, she was also one of 32 members of the Second Commission on the modernization of the federal state (Föderalismuskommission II), which had been established to reform the division of powers between federal and state authorities in Germany.

In 2003, Zypries represented the German government before the Federal Constitutional Court when the Free Democratic Party challenged a German law allowing authorities to eavesdrop on conversations in private homes. While law-enforcement officials and the government argue that the law helps fight organized crime and terrorism, opponents contend it violates constitutional privacy guarantees and has not allowed authorities to crack a single major case.

In 2005, the German government suffered a major setback in its efforts to combat terrorism after the Federal Constitutional Court ruled that the country's implementation of the European Arrest Warrant was unconstitutional. The court said the EU idea was compatible with Germany's constitution, but that the law drafted by Zypries was sloppily written and did not go far enough in framing the leeway offered to prosecutors by the European Arrest Warrant. Just hours after the ruling, German police released terrorism suspect Mamoun Darkazanli, who had been held awaiting extradition to Spain where he is believed to have been linked to al-Qaida activities. When German economics minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg decided to outsource the drafting of new bankruptcy legislation in 2009, Zypries criticized that Guttenberg wasted taxpayers' money and that it was the responsibility of her ministry, not his, to oversee the preparation of the legislation. In 2010, the Constitutional Court ruled that a law requiring telecommunications companies to retain data from telephone, email and Internet traffic is unconstitutional; the law had been introduced by Zypries as implementation of an EU guideline.

In the negotiations to form a government following the 2005 federal elections, Zypries led the SPD's delegations in the working groups on justice, consumer protection, and internal affairs; her co-chairs from the CDU/CSU were Wolfgang Bosbach, Horst Seehofer and Wolfgang Schäuble, respectively.