Annegret Kramp -Karrenbauer: “I’m happy” – AKK after your retreat

In retrospect, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer is surprised. Many years of the Saarland Minister and Prime Minister, then CDU Federal Chair and Defense Minister-until she left professional policy at the end of 2021. “Sometimes it seems surreal to me that I was there for so long. And I am amazed at what has happened in time,” she says in Trier of the German Press Agency.

After the cut, she had “very quickly” arrived in the new reality, says the 62-year-old. What is she particularly enjoying? “My personal freedom when it comes to time.” Spontaneously going to have breakfast with the husband or making longer trips by motorhome through Germany and Northern Europe – something like that was previously unthinkable. “I appreciate the gain in quality of life: I enjoy my private life and I am happy.”

Politics remains their passion

The current policy lets Kramp-Karrenbauer, who is often also called with her initial AKK, but does not go. “This is a real passion, and of course it remains. I pursue everything political,” says the Saarlander, who is at home in Püttlingen. However, it is not one of those “who are on the sidelines and as soon as they are no longer in office, start to give other clever advice”.

Kramp-Karrenbauer is involved in volunteering: from the local level as chair of the association unemployed self-help Püttlingen until the international level as spokeswoman for the Europeans in the US Denkfabrik Cepa (Center for European Policy Analysis). In addition, she has been President of the German Volkshochschulverband for years and has been the managing director of the German Children’s and Youth Foundation (DKJS) since 2024.

Not back to professional policy

Kramp-Karrenbauer does not see a return to professional policy. And adds with a view to their time in federal politics: “Of course I made mistakes.” That is why it “just happened that I ended my political career without ultimately I came to the office that I would have liked”.

By this she means the office of Chancellor: Kramp-Karrenbauer had given up a candidacy for chancellor in February 2020 and announced her resignation as a party leader (since the end of 2018).