Yasmin Fahimi


Yasmin Fahimi is a German politician and was from January 2014 to December 2015 the general secretary of the Social Democratic Party.

Early life and education

Fahimi's Iranian father died in a car accident before she was born, her mother is German. She studied chemistry at the University of Hannover from 1989 to 1998.

Early career

Between 1998 and 2014, Fahimi worked in various capacities at the IG Bergbau, Chemie, Energie. From 2012, she also served as founder and board member of the Innovationsforum Energiewende, a group convening unions and companies from the energy sector and energy-intensive industries.

Political career

Fahimi has been a member of the Social Democratic Party since 1984. She was a member of the federal executive board of the party's youth organization and from 2009 to 2013 deputy chairwoman of the SPD in Hannover.
In a special party conference on January 26, 2014 Fahimi was elected with 88,5 % of the votes to be Secretary General of the SPD under party chairman Sigmar Gabriel, and therefore successor of Andrea Nahles. By late 2015, Gabriel replaced her with Katarina Barley.
From 2016 until 2018, Fahimi served as State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs under the leadership of minister Andrea Nahles. In this capacity, she oversaw the ministry's activities on occupational safety and health; Old Age Security; matters concerning people with disabilities; and international employment and social policy.
In November 2016, Fahimi announced that she would run for a parliamentary seat in the 2017 national elections. In the Bundestag, she serves on the Committee on Education, Research and Technology Assessment. As deputy member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, she is her parliamentary group's rapporteur on relations to Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Malta. In addition to her committee assignments, she has been chairing the German-Brazilian Parliamentary Friendship Group since 2018. Within the SPD parliamentary group, she belongs to the Parliamentary Left, a left-wing movement.

Other activities