Jakob von Weizsäcker (born 4 March 1970) is a German economist and politician of the

Social Democratic Party The name Social Democratic Party or Social Democrats has been used by many political parties in various countries around the world. Such parties are most commonly aligned to social democracy as their political ideology. Active parties Form ...

(SPD) who has been serving as State Minister of Finance in the

government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a State (polity), state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive (government), execu ...

of Minister-President of the Saarland

Anke Rehlinger Anke Gabriele Rehlinger (''née'' Moos; born 6 April 1976) is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) serving as the minister-president of Saarland and President of the Bundesrat. After her party won the 2022 state elections ...

since the 2022 state elections. Weizsäcker previously served as head of the Secretariat of the

G20 The G20 or Group of 20 is an intergovernmental forum comprising 19 sovereign countries, the European Union (EU), and the African Union (AU). It works to address major issues related to the global economy, such as international financial stabil ...

Joint Finance-Health Task Force on Pandemic Preparedness in 2022 and as the chief economist of the

German Ministry of Finance The Federal Ministry of Finance (, ; abbreviated BMF) is the cabinet-level finance ministry of Germany, with its seat at the Detlev-Rohwedder-Haus in Berlin and a secondary office in Bonn. History In German politics, the Ministry of Finance besi ...

under minister

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 ...

from 2019 to 2022. Before, he 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 ...

(MEP) from

Thuringia Thuringia (; officially the Free State of Thuringia, ) is one of Germany, Germany's 16 States of Germany, states. With 2.1 million people, it is 12th-largest by population, and with 16,171 square kilometers, it is 11th-largest in area. Er ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

for the

8th European Parliament The eighth European Parliament was elected in the 2014 European Parliament election, 2014 elections and lasted until the 2019 European Parliament election, 2019 elections. Major events * 22–25 May 2014 ** 2014 European Parliament election, Ele ...

(2014–2019).

Education

After attending

Atlantic College UWC Atlantic (formally the United World College of the Atlantic, and often referred to by its original name, Atlantic College) is an Private schools in the United Kingdom, independent boarding school in the Vale of Glamorgan in south Wales. Fo ...

in Wales, Weizsäcker studied at

Bonn University The University of Bonn, officially the Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn (), is a public research university in Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was founded in its present form as the () on 18 October 1818 by Frederick Will ...

and worked for Aktion Sühnezeichen Friedensdienste in Poland instead of military service. He completed his university studies in France at ENS Lyon and what is today known as the

Paris School of Economics The Paris School of Economics (PSE; French: ''École d'économie de Paris'') is a French research institute in the field of economics. It offers MPhil, MSc, and PhD level programmes in various fields of theoretical and applied economics, incl ...

, graduating with a Maîtrise in physics and a

Diplôme d'études approfondies A Master of Advanced Studies (MASt or MAS), or Master of Advanced Study, is a postgraduate degree awarded in various countries. Master of Advanced Studies programs may be non-consecutive programs tailored for "specific groups of working professio ...

in economics.

Career

Early career

Weizsäcker started work as a research fellow with Jean-Charles Hourcade at CIRED in Paris and then with

Hans-Werner Sinn Hans-Werner Sinn (born 7 March 1948) is a German economist who served as President of the Ifo Institute for Economic Research from 1999 to 2016. He currently serves on the German ministry of economy’s advisory council. He is Professor Emeri ...

at the

Center for Economic Studies The Center for Economic Studies (CES) is an independent institute within the Faculty of Economics of the University of Munich (LMU). It promotes the international exchange of knowledge and ideas in public finance and other areas of economics. CES ...

in Munich. After stints at a venture capital firm and as a visiting scholar at the

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...

Department of economics, he joined the German Ministry for Economic Affairs in 2001 as private secretary to Parliamentary State Secretary Siegmar Mosdorf. From 2002 to 2005, he worked for the

World Bank The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and Grant (money), grants to the governments of Least developed countries, low- and Developing country, middle-income countries for the purposes of economic development ...

in Washington, D.C., and

Dushanbe Dushanbe is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Tajikistan. , Dushanbe had a population of 1,564,700, with this population being largely Tajiks, Tajik. Until 1929, the city was known in Russian as Dyushambe, and from 1929 to 1961 as St ...

. In 2005-2010 he was a resident fellow of the think-tank Bruegel in Brussels. With his work on migration policy, he coined the term Blue Card for a European scheme to attract high-skilled immigrants. From 2010 to 2014, Weizsäcker headed a department at the State Ministry of Economic Affairs in Thuringia. In 2013, he and Maximilian Steinbeis founded the ''Glienicker Gruppe'', a group of pro-European lawyers, economists and political scientists, together with

Henrik Enderlein Henrik Enderlein (13 September 1974 – 28 May 2021) was a German economist and political scientist. He was president and professor of political economy at the Hertie School in Berlin and founding director of the Jacques Delors Centre at the He ...

Marcel Fratzscher Marcel Fratzscher (born January 25, 1971) is a German economist and professor at Humboldt-University of Berlin. Since February 2013 he has been president of the Berlin-based economic research institute DIW Berlin. He was previously head of Inter ...

Clemens Fuest Clemens Fuest (born 23 August 1968) is a German economist who has been President of the Ifo Institute for Economic Research and director of the Center for Economic Studies at the University of Munich (LMU) since 2016. Education and career Fu ...

and others.

Member of the European Parliament, 2014–2019

In the 2014 European elections, Weizsäcker was elected to the

European Parliament The European Parliament (EP) is one of the two legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union (known as the Council and informally as the Council of Ministers), it ...

where he was a member of the

Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs The Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) is a committee of the European Parliament which is responsible for the regulation of financial services, the free movement of capital and payments, taxation and competition policies, oversight ...

. Weizsäcker's legislative files included bank structural reform and too-big-to-fail rules for

clearing house Clearing house or Clearinghouse may refer to: Banking and finance * Clearing house (finance) * Automated clearing house * ACH Network, an electronic network for financial transactions in the U.S. * Bankers' clearing house * Cheque clearing * Cl ...

s (CCPs). In 2016, the parliament voted in favour of his non-binding report on the regulation of virtual currencies such as

bitcoin Bitcoin (abbreviation: BTC; Currency symbol, sign: ₿) is the first Decentralized application, decentralized cryptocurrency. Based on a free-market ideology, bitcoin was invented in 2008 when an unknown entity published a white paper under ...

and

blockchain The blockchain is a distributed ledger with growing lists of Record (computer science), records (''blocks'') that are securely linked together via Cryptographic hash function, cryptographic hashes. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of th ...

. In addition to his committee assignments, Weizsäcker also was a member of the parliament’s delegation for relations with

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

Career in government

In January 2019, Weizsäcker resigned from the European Parliament upon his nomination as chief economist for the

. When

Jens Weidmann Jens Weidmann (born 20 April 1968) is a German economist who served as president of the Deutsche Bundesbank between 2011 and 2021. He also served as chairman of the Board of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). Before moving to the Bunde ...

announced his resignation as president of the

Deutsche Bundesbank The Deutsche Bundesbank (, , colloquially Buba, sometimes alternatively abbreviated as BBk or DBB) is the National central bank (Eurosystem), national central bank for Germany within the Eurosystem. It was the German central bank from 1957 to 19 ...

in 2021, the ''

Financial Times The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and also published digitally that focuses on business and economic Current affairs (news format), current affairs. Based in London, the paper is owned by a Jap ...

'' mentioned Weizsäcker as one of the leading contenders to succeed him. He served briefly as head of the Secretariat of the G20 Joint Finance-Health Task Force on Pandemic Preparedness in 2022. On 25 April 2022 Weizsäcker became State Minister of Finance in the

of Minister-President of the Saarland

. As one of his state's representatives at the Bundesrat, he has since been serving on the Finance Committee and on the Committee on Cultural Affairs. In the negotiations to form a ''

Grand Coalition A grand coalition is an arrangement in a multi-party parliamentary system in which the two largest political party, political parties of opposing political spectrum, political ideologies unite in a coalition government. Causes of a grand coali ...

'' under the leadership of

Friedrich Merz Joachim-Friedrich Martin Josef Merz (; ; born 11November 1955) is a German politician serving as Chancellor of Germany since 6 May 2025. He has also served as Leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) since January 2022, leading the CDU/CSU ...

's Christian Democrats ( CDU together with the Bavarian

CSU CSU may refer to: Universities and university systems United States * Columbia Southern University, in Orange Beach, Alabama * California State University system * Colorado State University, in Fort Collins, Colorado * Connecticut State Univers ...

) and the SPD following the 2025 German elections, von Weizsäcker was part of the SPD delegation in the working group on public finances, led by Mathias Middelberg,

Florian Oßner Florian Oßner (born 5 July 1980) is a German politician of the Christian Social Union (CSU) who has been a member of the Bundestag since the 2013 German federal election. Political career Oßner became member of the Bundestag after the 2013 ...

and Dennis Rohde.

Other activities

* Jacques Delors Centre at

Hertie School The Hertie School (until 2019 Hertie School of Governance) is a German private, independent graduate school for governance (public policy, international affairs and data science) located in Berlin. Hertie School is accredited to confer master's ...

, Member of the Advisory Board (since 2019) * Business Forum of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, Member of the Political Advisory Board (since 2018) * ECONtribute at Reinhard Selten Institute (RSI), Member of the Scientific and Policy Advisory Board *

Ifo Institute for Economic Research The Ifo Institute for Economic Research is a Munich-based research institution. Ifo is an acronym from Information and Forschung (research). As one of Germany's largest economic think-tanks, it analyses economic policy and is known for its mon ...

, Member of the Board of Trustees * Leibniz Institute for Financial Research, Member of the Board of Trustees * ''Progressives Zentrum'', Member of the Circle of FriendsCircle of Friends
Progressives Zentrum.

Personal life

Weizsäcker is married, with four children. A member of the prominent Weizsäcker family, he is the son of environmentalist and politician

Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker (born 25 June 1939) is a German scientist and politician ( SPD). He was a member of the German Bundestag and served as co-president of the Club of Rome jointly with Anders Wijkman from 2011 – 2019. Family A membe ...

, grandson of the physicist and philosopher

Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker Carl Friedrich Freiherr von Weizsäcker (; 28 June 1912 – 28 April 2007) was a German physicist and philosopher. He was the longest-living member of the team which performed nuclear research in Nazi Germany during the Second World War, un ...

and grandnephew of former German president

Richard von Weizsäcker Richard Karl Freiherr von Weizsäcker (; 15 April 1920 – 31 January 2015) was a German politician ( CDU), who served as President of Germany from 1984 to 1994. Born into the aristocratic Weizsäcker family, who were part of the German nobili ...

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Weizsacker, Jakob von 1970 births Jakob MEPs for Germany 2014–2019 People educated at Atlantic College People educated at a United World College Living people University of Bonn alumni Bruegel (think tank) people