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 Fo ...

(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. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government ...

of Minister-President of the Saarland

Anke Rehlinger Anke Gabriele Rehlinger (''né'' Moos; born 6 April 1976) is a German lawyer and politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) who has served as the Minister-President of Saarland since 25 April 2022. After her party won the 2022 state elect ...

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

G20 The G20 or Group of Twenty is an intergovernmental forum comprising 19 countries and the European Union (EU). It works to address major issues related to the global economy, such as international financial stability, climate change mitigation ...

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 (german: Bundesministerium der Finanzen), 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. The current Federa ...

under minister

Olaf Scholz Olaf Scholz (; born ) is a German politician who has served as the chancellor of Germany since 8 December 2021. A member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), he previously served as Vice Chancellor under Angela Merkel and as Federal Minister ...

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 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 Steel Commu ...

(MEP) from

Thuringia Thuringia (; german: Thüringen ), officially the Free State of Thuringia ( ), is a state of central Germany, covering , the sixth smallest of the sixteen German states. It has a population of about 2.1 million. Erfurt is the capital and lar ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG),, is a country in Central Europe. It is the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany lies between the Baltic and North Sea to the north and the Alps to the sou ...

for the

8th European Parliament The eighth European Parliament was elected in the 2014 elections and lasted until the 2019 elections. Major events * 22–25 May 2014 ** Elections to the Eighth Parliament. * 1 July 2014 ** First meeting (constitutive session) of the Eighth Pa ...

(2014-2019).

Education

After attending

Atlantic College Atlantic College (formally the United World College of the Atlantic; alternatively styled UWC Atlantic College, UWCAC, or UWCA) is an independent boarding school in the Vale of Glamorgan in south Wales. Founded in 1962, it was the first of t ...

in Wales, Weizsäcker studied at

Bonn University The Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn (german: Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn) is a public research university located in Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was founded in its present form as the ( en, Rhine U ...

and worked for

Aktion Sühnezeichen Friedensdienste Actium or Aktion ( grc, Ἄκτιον) was a town on a promontory in ancient Acarnania at the entrance of the Ambraciot Gulf, off which Octavian gained his celebrated victory, the Battle of Actium, over Antony and Cleopatra, on September 2, 31 ...

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, inclu ...

, graduating with a Maîtrise in physics and a

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

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 economy ministry’s advisory council. He is Professor Emeritus ...

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 land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

Department of economics, he joined the German Ministry for Economic Affairs in 2001 as

private secretary A private secretary (PS) is a civil servant in a governmental department or ministry, responsible to a secretary of state or minister; or a public servant in a royal household, responsible to a member of the royal family. The role exists in t ...

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 grants to the governments of low- and middle-income countries for the purpose of pursuing capital projects. The World Bank is the collective name for the Inte ...

in Washington, D.C. and

Dushanbe Dushanbe ( tg, Душанбе, ; ; russian: Душанбе) is the capital and largest city of Tajikistan. , Dushanbe had a population of 863,400 and that population was largely Tajik. Until 1929, the city was known in Russian as Dyushambe (ru ...

. In 2005-2010 he was a resident fellow of the think-tank

Bruegel Brueghel or Bruegel () was the name of several Dutch/Flemish painters from the Brueghel family: * Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525–1569), the most famous member of the family and the only one to sign his paintings as "Bruegel" without the ''H'' ...

in Brussels. With his work on migration policy, he coined the term

Blue Card Blue is one of the three primary colours in the RYB colour model (traditional colour theory), as well as in the RGB (additive) colour model. It lies between violet and cyan on the spectrum of visible light. The eye perceives blue when obse ...

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 Intern ...

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. Career Between 2008 and 201 ...

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 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 adop ...

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; sign: ₿) is a decentralized digital currency that can be transferred on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network. Bitcoin transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a public di ...

and

blockchain A blockchain is a type of distributed ledger technology (DLT) that consists of growing lists of records, called ''blocks'', that are securely linked together using cryptography. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, ...

. 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 ( Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the ...

Career in government

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

. When Jens Weidmann announced his resignation as president of the

Deutsche Bundesbank The Deutsche Bundesbank (), literally "German Federal Bank", is the central bank of the Federal Republic of Germany and as such part of the European System of Central Banks (ESCB). Due to its strength and former size, the Bundesbank is the most ...

in 2021, the ''

Financial Times The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and published digitally that focuses on business and economic current affairs. Based in London, England, the paper is owned by a Japanese holding company, Nikke ...

'' 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.

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's Friedrichstraße. Hertie School is according t ...

, 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 widely known for it ...

, 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 2011 – 2019. Family A member of ...

, 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 Germany during the Second World War, under ...

and grandnephew of former German president Richard von Weizsäcker.

References

{{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