Social Democrat Franziska Giffey elected Berlin’s new mayor

Berlin (dpa) – Social Democrat Franziska Giffey has been elected the new mayor of Berlin, receiving 84 of 139 votes in the German capital’s House of Representatives on Tuesday.

Giffey now heads a coalition government for the city made up of her centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), the Greens and the hard-left Die Linke (The Left) party.

The former family minister in Angela Merkel’s last government, Giffey replaces her party colleague Michael Mueller as mayor. Mueller, who chose not run again after running Berlin for seven years, is now a member of the Bundestag, the German parliament.

Known in Germany as a red-green-red coalition due to the colours of the three parties involved, Berlin’s new state government has a total of 92 seats in the 139-seat House of Representatives.

Giffey was sworn in as mayor immediately after winning the vote before being taken to Berlin’s city hall where she is to appoint the 10 senators who will govern the city with her. The senators are to be sworn in at the House of Representatives later on Tuesday.

In addition to the mayor, the SPD will have four senators, while its coalition partners the Greens and the Left will both have three. Composed of seven women and four men, Giffey’s Senate is more female than ever before. The senators and Giffey are expected to meet for their first meeting on Tuesday evening.

The SPD, the Greens and the Left have governed together in Berlin since 2016, but new faces predominate in the new Senate. Berlin now has a female mayor for the first time – and for the first time since reunification in 1990 – a city leader from the former East Germany.

Originally from the town of Frankfurt an der Oder on the German-Polish border, Giffey made her name as mayor of the Berlin district of Neukoelln from 2015 to 2018.

In 2018, she became federal family minister, but was forced to resign in May this year following allegations of plagiarism that cost her her doctorate.