Sigmar Gabriel was Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy from 2013 to 2017 as well as Vice-Chancellor from 2013 to 2018 and served as Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs from 2017 to 2018. On June 26, 2019, Mr. Gabriel was elected Chairman of Atlantik-Brücke by Atlantik-Brücke’s members.

Mr. Gabriel has been politically active since 1976. Born in Goslar, he began his political career in a socialist youth organization and joined the SPD in 1977. Trained as a high school educator, he assumed various responsibilities in adult education and became a member of Lower Saxony’s parliament over the course of the 1980s. During the subsequent decade, among other positions, he held the post of chair of the environmental committee of Lower Saxony’s parliament and was a member of the SPD executive committee.

He served as prime minister of Lower Saxony from 1999 to 2003, and he was a directly elected member of Germany’s Lower House of Parliament from 2005 until 2019, taking over the post of environmental minister in 2005 as well. Mr. Gabriel, who represented the Salzgitter-Wolfenbüttel district in the German parliament, occupied the position of SPD chairman from 2009 until 2017.