Malu Dreyer

She is the first woman to hold this office. She served a one-year-term as the president of the Bundesrat from 1 November 2016 – 2017, which made her the deputy to the president of Germany while in office. She was the second female president of the Bundesrat and the sixth woman holding one of the five highest federal offices in Germany.

Malu Dreyer MdBR
Dreyer in 2023
Minister-President of Rhineland-Palatinate
Incumbent
Assumed office 16 January 2013
Deputy	Eveline Lemke Volker Wissing Anne Spiegel Katharina Binz
Preceded by	Kurt Beck
Leader of the Social Democratic Party
Acting
In office 3 June 2019 – 6 December 2019 Serving with Thorsten Schäfer-Gümbel, Manuela Schwesig
General Secretary	Lars Klingbeil
Preceded by	Andrea Nahles
Succeeded by	Norbert Walter-Borjans Saskia Esken
Deputy Leader of the Social Democratic Party
In office 7 December 2017 – 6 December 2019 Serving with Olaf Scholz, Manuela Schwesig, Ralf Stegner Natascha Kohnen, Thorsten Schäfer-Gümbel
Leader	Martin Schulz Andrea Nahles
Preceded by	Aydan Özoğuz
Succeeded by	Anke Rehlinger
President of the Bundesrat
In office 1 November 2016 – 31 October 2017
First Vice President	Stanislaw Tillich
Preceded by	Stanislaw Tillich
Succeeded by	Michael Müller
Minister of Labour, Health and Social Affairs of Rhineland-Palatinate
In office 15 March 2002 – 15 January 2013
Minister-President	Kurt Beck
Preceded by	Florian Gerster
Succeeded by	Alexander Schweitzer
Member of the Landtag of Rhineland-Palatinate for Trier
In office 18 May 2006 – 1 August 2016
Preceded by	Christoph Grimm
Succeeded by	Sven Teuber
Personal details
Born	Marie-Luise Dreyer (1961-02-06) 6 February 1961 (age 63) Neustadt an der Weinstraße, Rhineland-Palatinate, West Germany
Political party	Social Democratic Party (1995–)
Spouse	Klaus Jensen
Alma mater	Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz
Website	malu-dreyer.de

Dreyer was born the second of three children of a principal and a teacher. Following a year as an exchange student at Claremont High School in California in 1977, and her final Abitur exams at the Käthe-Kollwitz-Gymnasium Neustadt in 1980, Dreyer started her English studies and Roman Catholic theology at the University of Mainz. The following year she switched majors to jurisprudence and graduated with the first Staatsexamen in 1987 and the second Staatsexamen three years later with an excellent academic record.

From 1989, Dreyer worked at the University of Mainz as a research assistant to Professor Hans-Joachim Pflug. In 1991 she received her appointment as a probationary judge, and later as a prosecutor in Bad Kreuznach.

SPD politician since 1995

Dreyer joined the SPD in 1995 and was mayor of the city of Bad Kreuznach from 1995 to 1997. From 1997 she was head of department for social affairs, youth and housing in the state capital of Mainz. Having served as State Minister of Social Affairs, Labor, Health and Demography since 2002, she was the designated successor of incumbent Minister-president Kurt Beck, who announced his upcoming resignation from the post on 28 September 2012. She was officially elected on 16 January 2013.

As one of Rhineland-Palatinate's representatives at the Bundesrat, Dreyer serves on the Committee on Foreign Affairs and on the Committee on European Union Affairs.

In the negotiations to form a Grand Coalition of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU together with the Bavarian CSU) and the SPD following the 2013 federal elections, Dreyer was part of the SPD delegation in the working group on cultural and media affairs, led by Michael Kretschmer and Klaus Wowereit.

In the 2016 state elections, Dreyer managed to convert her high personal approval ratings into a 36.2% win against her opponent Julia Klöckner, improving her party's 2011 result by half a percentage point. In electing Dreyer, the electorate voted to keep the SPD in office for their sixth consecutive term.

During her second term in office, Dreyer's government decided to sell the state's 82.5 percent stake in the loss-making Frankfurt–Hahn Airport in western Germany to Chinese conglomerate HNA Group.

In late 2017, SPD members elected Dreyer to the party's national leadership for the first time as a vice chair. In the negotiations to form a fourth coalition government under Merkel following the 2017 federal elections, she led the working group on health policy, alongside Hermann Gröhe and Georg Nüßlein.

Dreyer was nominated by her party as delegate to the Federal Convention for the purpose of electing the President of Germany in 2022.

Following the 2017 national elections, Dreyer warned against another grand coalition and favoured a minority government.

• ZDF, chairwoman of the Board of Directors, since 2017
• Max Planck Society, Member of the Senate
• Central Committee of German Catholics, Member
• Deutsches Museum, Member of the Board of Trustees
• Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES), Member
• Fritz Walter Foundation, Member of the Advisory Board
• Stiftung Mainzer Herz, Member of the Board of Trustees
• Stiftung Rheinland-Pfalz für Kultur, chairwoman of the Board of Trustees
• European Foundation for the Speyer Cathedral, Member of the Board of Trustees

•   2023 Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany

Since 2004, Dreyer has been married to Klaus Jensen [de; fr], a fellow SPD politician and a former mayor of Trier, who had been widowed three years earlier.

She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1994. This inhibits her physical movement. She made her illness public in 2006, and, when travelling she now always takes her "Rolli" (wheelchair) along, for covering longer distances.