Niels Annen

German politician and member of the SPD

Niels Annen (born 6 April 1973) is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) who has been serving as Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development in the coalition government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz since 2021. He served as Minister of State at the Federal Foreign Office from 2018 to 2021 in the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel. He has served as member of the Bundestag since 2013. After his first term in the Bundestag from 2005 to 2009, Annen was a Senior Transatlantic Resident at the German Marshall Fund in Washington between 2010 and 2011. From 2011 until 2013 he worked for the department for International Policy Analysis of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Berlin. Annen has served on the executive board of the SPD since 2003 after being chairman of the Young Socialists, the youth organization of the SPD, from 2001 to 2004.

Born to a works council member of Lufthansa, Annen graduated from high school in 1992. In 2009, Annen obtained a bachelor's degree in history from the Humboldt University of Berlin, with a thesis on the resettlement of Baltic Germans during World War 2. Subsequently, he obtained a master's degree in International Public Policy from the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D. C. in 2011. Besides his native language German, Annen speaks English and Spanish fluently.

Annen served as national chairman of the SPD's youth organization from 2001 to 2004.

Annen was elected to the Bundestag, the German federal parliament, at the 2005 election, representing the district Hamburg Eimsbüttel. focusing largely on the German engagement in Afghanistan and the Middle East. Within the committee he has served on the Subcommittee for Arms Control and Non Proliferation as well as the Subcommittee for the United Nations. Between 2005 and 2009, he also served as Deputy Chairman of the German Spanish Parliamentary Friendship Group. Under controversial circumstances Annen was deselected for the 2009 election, losing a primary election to Danial Ilkhanipour by 45 votes to 44. Annen returned to the Bundestag at the 2013 election, regaining the Hamburg Eimsbüttel district from the CDU. He soon re entered the leadership of the Parliamentary Left in 2014. He also serves as chairman of the Parliamentary Friendship Group for Relations with the States of South Asia, including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Between 2014 and 2015, he represented his parliamentary group in a crossparty committee headed by former defense minister Volker Rühe to review the country's parliamentary rules on military deployments. Within the SPD, Annen serves as chairman of the SPD's Commission for International Politics, alongside Martin Schulz. In the negotiations to form a coalition government under the leadership of Chancellor Angela Merkel following the 2017 federal elections, he was part of the working group on foreign policy, led by Ursula von der Leyen, Gerd Müller and Sigmar Gabriel. Annen co chaired the SPD's national conventions in Dortmund (2017) Wiesbaden (2018) and Berlin (2019).

In March 2018, Annen was appointed Minister of State at the German Federal Foreign Office in the fourth Merkel Cabinet, alongside Michael Roth and Michelle Müntefering.

Annen is an advocate of continued German commitment in Afghanistan and has visited the country on multiple occasions during both of his terms in the Bundestag. In 2014, he voted in favor of continuing German participation in ISAF. In April 2014, Annen accompanied Norbert Lammert as well as fellow members of the German Parliament Marieluise Beck and Hans Peter Uhl on a visit to Pakistan, where they met with President Mamnoon Hussain, Chairman of the Senate Nayyar Hussain Bukhari and Interior Minister Nisar Ali Khan. In April 2015, Annen went on another trip to the region with the German South Asian Parliamentary Group. In Afghanistan, the group met with delegates of both the upper and lower houses of parliament A central point of discussion in both countries was the security in the region.

Annen has frequently expressed dissatisfaction with the information provided by NATO headquarters. Following statements by the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), General Philip M. Breedlove, on troop advances on the border between Russia and Ukraine in early 2015, Annen publicly complained that "NATO in the past has always announced a new Russian offensive just as, from our point of view, the time had come for cautious optimism." He added that "we parliamentarians were often confused by information regarding alleged troop movements that were inconsistent with the information we had." In 2008, Annen called on the United States to remove all nuclear weapons stored in military bases in Germany after a U. S. Air Force report found that safety standards at most sites for nuclear weapons in Europe fall well short of Pentagon requirements. In July 2015, Annen joined Germany's Foreign Minister Frank Walter Steinmeier on a trip to Cuba; it was the first time a German foreign minister had visited the country since German reunification in 1990.

Annen has in the past voted in favor of German participation in United Nations peacekeeping missions as well as in United Nations mandated European Union peacekeeping missions on the African continent, such as in Somalia – Operation Atalanta (2014) and EUTM Somalia (2015 and 2016) –, Darfur/Sudan (2013, 2014, 2015, 2017 and 2018), South Sudan (2013, 2014, 2015, 2017 and 2018), the Central African Republic (2014) and Mali – both MINUSMA (2014, 2017 and 2018) and EUTM Mali (2015 and 2018).

Regarding the conflict in Ukraine Annen has advocated for continued dialogue with the Russian Federation in order to facilitate "good neighbourly relations." However, he supported economic sanctions against Russia as well as its exclusion from the G7 saying that "Russia un invited itself" with the internationally wrongful annexation of Crimea. Moreover, he supported the absence of Chancellor Angela Merkel from the festivities for the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Russia on 9 May 2015 stating that "the political conditions for a German participation in the festivities are currently not fulfilled." Annen also responded angrily to statements by U. S. Senator John McCain who alleged that Germany was pursuing appeasement policies akin to those of the 1930s. Furthermore, he stated that "nobody in Europe did as much to support peace in Europe as Steinmeier and Merkel" (the German Foreign Minister and Chancellor) and demanded a public apology from the Senator.

Annen has made public statements about the transnational conflict against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. In an interview with Das Parlament on 15 September 2014, he underlined the relevance of the conflict for Germany, stating that the risk of terrorist attacks had risen as the result of German IS fighters returning from the battlefield. Moreover, he supported the supply of German arms to the Kurdish Peshmerga forces claiming that he was well aware of the danger of future misuse of the weapons but saw no other way to help defend the city of Erbil from IS forces. In April 2014, Annen visited the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan to learn more about the plight of Syrians fleeing the violence in the ongoing Syrian civil war that erupted in 2011.

In 2014, news media revealed that Annen had not paid taxes for his second home in Berlin during his first term as a member of the Bundestag from 2005 to 2009.