Nicola Beer (born 23 January 1970) is a German lawyer and politician of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) who has been serving as a vice president of the

European Investment Bank The European Investment Bank (EIB) is the European Union's investment bank and is owned by the 27 member states. It is the largest multilateral financial institution in the world. The EIB finances and invests both through equity and debt sol ...

since 2024, under the leadership of president Nadia Calviño. Earlier in her career, Beer was a

Member of the European Parliament A member of the European Parliament (MEP) is a person who has been Election, elected to serve as a popular representative in the European Parliament. When the European Parliament (then known as the Common Assembly of the European Coal and S ...

from 2019 to 2023, where she served as one of its Vice-Presidents. She previously was a member of the

Bundestag The Bundestag (, "Federal Diet (assembly), Diet") is the lower house of the Germany, German Federalism in Germany, federal parliament. It is the only constitutional body of the federation directly elected by the German people. The Bundestag wa ...

from 2017 to 2019 and part of her party's leadership.

Early life and career

Beer finished highschool with a bilingual degree in German and French in 1989. She went on to study law at the University of Frankfurt from 1991 until 1997.

Political career

Career in state politics

Beer became a member of the FDP in 1991. She was first elected as member of the State Parliament of Hesse in the 1999 state elections. Between 2008 and 2009, she served as deputy chairperson of the FDP parliamentary group, under the leadership of chairman Jörg-Uwe Hahn. In the cabinets of minister-presidents Roland Koch and Volker Bouffier, Beer served as State Secretary for European Affairs at the Hessian State Ministry of Justice between 2009 and 2012. In this capacity, she represented Hesse on the European Committee of the Regions. Between 2012 and 2014 she was State Minister of Education and Cultural Affairs in Hesse. During her time in office, Beer was one of several politicians, professors and teachers who successfully pushed for German public schools offering classes in Islam to primary school students using state-trained teachers and specially written textbooks.

Career in national politics

Beer was a FDP delegate to the Federal Convention for the purpose of electing the

President of Germany The president of Germany, officially titled the Federal President of the Federal Republic of Germany (),The official title within Germany is ', with ' being added in international correspondence; the official English title is President of the F ...

in 2004, 2009, 2010, 2012 and 2017. In late 2013, incoming FDP chairman Christian Lindner nominated Beer for the office of Secretary General; on 7 December 2013 she got elected (with 84.3% of all votes. At the political convention of the FDP on 15 May 2015 she got reelected with 88.4% of all votes.

Member of the German Parliament, 2017–2019

Ahead of the 2017 elections, Beer was elected to lead her party’s campaign in the state of Hesse. In the – unsuccessful – negotiations to form a

coalition government A coalition government, or coalition cabinet, is a government by political parties that enter into a power-sharing arrangement of the executive. Coalition governments usually occur when no single party has achieved an absolute majority after an ...

with the Christian Democrats – both the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the

Christian Social Union in Bavaria The Christian Social Union in Bavaria ( German: , CSU) is a Christian democratic and conservative political party in Germany. Having a regionalist identity, the CSU operates only in Bavaria while its larger counterpart, the Christian Democra ...

(CSU) – and the

Green Party A green party is a formally organized political party based on the principles of green politics, such as environmentalism and social justice. Green party platforms typically embrace Social democracy, social democratic economic policies and fo ...

, she was part of her party's delegation. She later became a member of the Committee on Education, Research and Technology Assessment.

Member of the European Parliament, 2019–2023

In September 2018, Beer announced that she would lead the FDP list and run for a parliamentary seat in the 2019 European elections. Led by

Margrethe Vestager Margrethe Vestager (; born 13 April 1968) is a Denmark, Danish politician who formerly served as Executive Vice President of the European Commission for A Europe Fit for the Digital Age between December 2019 and November 2024 in the Von Der Leye ...

, she was among the seven-strong “Team Europe” that the centrist

Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party The Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party (ALDE Party) is a European political party composed of 76 national-level parties from across Europe, mainly active in the European Union. The ALDE Party is affiliated with Liberal Interna ...

picked to spearhead its pro-EU, liberal campaign ahead of the elections. Shortly before the vote, she joined 70 current and former EU leaders – including all the main parties’ lead candidates – calling for a female president of the

European Commission The European Commission (EC) is the primary Executive (government), executive arm of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with a number of European Commissioner, members of the Commission (directorial system, informall ...

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and a gender-balanced leadership. Following her election, Beer was part of a cross-party working group in charge of drafting the European Parliament's four-year work program on digitization. In parliament, she served as a

Vice-President A vice president or vice-president, also director in British English, is an officer in government or business who is below the president (chief executive officer) in rank. It can also refer to executive vice presidents, signifying that the vi ...

; she was part of its leadership under Presidents David Sassoli (2019–2022) and

Roberta Metsola Roberta Metsola (; ; born 18 January 1979) is a Malta, Maltese politician who has served as the president of the European Parliament since January 2022. She is a member of Malta's Nationalist Party (Malta), Nationalist Party (PN) and the European ...

(2022–2023). She also joined the

Committee on Industry, Research and Energy A committee or commission is a body of one or more persons subordinate to a deliberative assembly or other form of organization. A committee may not itself be considered to be a form of assembly or a decision-making body. Usually, an assembly o ...

, where she has served as

rapporteur A rapporteur is a person who is appointed by an organization to report on the proceedings of its meetings. The term is a French-derived word. For example, Dick Marty was appointed ''rapporteur'' by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Eur ...

on the Critical Raw Materials Act. From 2021, she was part of the Parliament's delegation to the Conference on the Future of Europe. From 2019 to 2023, Beer served as one of the three deputies of Christian Lindner in his capacity as FDP chairman. In the negotiations to form a so-called

traffic light coalition In German politics, a traffic light coalition () is a coalition government of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Free Democratic Party (FDP) and Alliance 90/The Greens. It is named after the parties' traditional colours, respectively red, y ...

of the

Social Democrats Social democracy is a social, economic, and political philosophy within socialism that supports political and economic democracy and a gradualist, reformist, and democratic approach toward achieving social equality. In modern practice, s ...

(SPD), the Green Party and the FDP following the 2021 federal elections, Beer led her party's delegation in the working group on European affairs; her co-chairs from the other parties were Udo Bullmann and Franziska Brantner.

Later career

In 2023, Beer was nominated by the government of

Chancellor Chancellor () is a title of various official positions in the governments of many countries. The original chancellors were the of Roman courts of justice—ushers, who sat at the (lattice work screens) of a basilica (court hall), which separa ...

Olaf Scholz Olaf Scholz (; born 14 June 1958) is a German politician who served as the Chancellor of Germany from 2021 to 2025. A member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, Social Democratic Party (SPD), he previously served as Vice-Chancellor of Ge ...

to become one of the vice-presidents of the

(EIB).

Other activities

* International Martin Luther Foundation, Member of the Board of Trustees (since 2018) * Association of Private Higher Education Institutions (VPH), Member of the Board of Trustees (since 2015) * World Vision Deutschland, Member of the Board of Trustees (since 2015) * Heraeus Bildungsstiftung, Member of the Advisory Board (since 2014) * Deutsche Industrieforschungsgemeinschaft Konrad Zuse, Member of the Senate * Deutsche Stiftung Frauengesundheit, Member of the Board of Trustees *

Hessenpark The Hessenpark is an open-air museum in Neu-Anspach (near Wehrheim-Obernhain), Hesse, Germany. It was founded in 1974 by the Hesse State Government headed by Albert Osswald (Social Democratic Party of Germany, SPD). The museum showcases half-timb ...

, Member of the Advisory Board * Max Planck Institute for European Legal History, Member of the Board of Trustees * Museum of World Cultures, Member of the Board of Trustees * Stiftung Lesen, Member of the Board of Trustees * German-French Lawyers’ Association (DFJ), Member * German-Israeli Association (DIG), Member * Johanniter-Unfall-Hilfe (JUH), Member *

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, Member of the Television Council (2015-2016)

Political positions

Beer has repeatedly publicly denied the consensus of climate science on extreme weather events.Bernhard Pötter
FDP-Generalsekretärin Nicola Beer: Mit Klima-Fake-News nach Brüssel
taz.de. 26 Januar 2019, accessed on 5 September 2021. In German. For example, Beer spoke in a tweet in 2017 of the "alleged occurrence of more extreme weather events" using the

hashtag A hashtag is a metadata tag operator that is prefaced by the hash symbol, ''#''. On social media, hashtags are used on microblogging and photo-sharing services–especially Twitter and Tumblr–as a form of user-generated tagging that enable ...

"#Fakenews". In a statement, Beer described the "causality of extreme weather situations and climate change" as "scientifically refuted". In contrast to Beer's statement, the greater magnitude and probability of "extreme weather events" has been deemed to be linked to human activity since the

IPCC Sixth Assessment Report The Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the United Nations (UN) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the sixth in a series of reports which assess the available scientific information on climate change. Three Working Groups (WGI, II, ...

. Beer has been an outspoken proponent of

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocea ...

’s

independence Independence is a condition of a nation, country, or state, in which residents and population, or some portion thereof, exercise self-government, and usually sovereignty, over its territory. The opposite of independence is the status of ...

; in 2022, she made an official trip to Taipeh and met with

President President most commonly refers to: *President (corporate title) * President (education), a leader of a college or university *President (government title) President may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Film and television *'' Præsident ...

Tsai Ing-wen Tsai Ing-wen (; pinyin: ''Cài Yīngwén''; born 31 August 1956) is a Taiwanese politician and legal scholar who served as the seventh president of the Republic of China (Taiwan) from 2016 to 2024. A member of the Democratic Progressive Party ...

Personal life

Beer is a mother of

twin Twins are two offspring produced by the same pregnancy.MedicineNet > Definition of Twin Last Editorial Review: 19 June 2000 Twins can be either ''monozygotic'' ('identical'), meaning that they develop from one zygote, which splits and forms two ...

s. In 2001, she separated from the children's father, fellow FDP politician Volker Stein.Thomas Remlein (28 September 2016)
Der Ruf nach Nicola Beer wird lauter
'' Frankfurter Neue Presse''. Since 2018, she has been married to lawyer Jürgen Illing.

References

Literature

* Beer, Nicola, Internationales Biographisches Archiv 36/2012 from 4 September 2012, in Munzinger-Archive (Beginning of the articl
available for free

External links

Nicola Beers Homepage (German)

CV at the FDP-parliamentary group in Hesse

on Parliamentwatch {{DEFAULTSORT:Beer, Nicola Women members of state parliaments in Germany 1970 births Politicians from Wiesbaden Members of the Landtag of Hesse Living people MEPs for Germany 2019–2024 Free Democratic Party (Germany) MEPs Members of the Bundestag for the Free Democratic Party (Germany) Female members of the Bundestag Members of the Bundestag 2017–2021 21st-century women MEPs for Germany