Germany’s chancellor-designate announces key Cabinet picks

BERLIN (AA) - Germany’s chancellor-designate Olaf Scholz on Monday named women to the key government positions, fulfilling his election campaign promise of a gender-balanced Cabinet.

The Social Democrat leader named Christine Lambrecht, the country’s current justice minister, as defense minister.

Nancy Faeser, an experienced politician, will become the country’s first female interior minister.

Scholz told reporters that four out of seven ministerial positions of Social Democrats (SPD) in the new coalition government will be filled by women.

He named Svenja Schulze, the current environment minister, as the development minister. Klara Geywitz, a prominent figure of Social Democrats, will take up the new post of minister for housing.

The SPD’s coalition partner the Greens also named female politicians to key positions in the new government.

Annalena Baerbock, the Greens’ co-chairwoman, will become Germany’s next foreign minister, and Steffi Lemke will run the Environment Ministry.

The three-party coalition government of the SPD, Greens and the liberal Free Democrats, will be sworn in by the federal parliament on Wednesday.

Scholz's SPD narrowly won the Sept. 26 elections against Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats, and hammered out a coalition agreement with the two smaller parties last month.

After 16 years in power, Merkel did not run in the election, and said she will leave active politics once the new government takes office.