Germany's top climate diplomat leaves environment ministry to lead international climate foundation
Clean Energy Wire
[UPDATE adds statements by Flasbarth, ECF representatives]
Jochen Flasbarth, one of Germany’s most senior international climate action negotiators, will leave his position in the country’s environment ministry and become the head of the European Climate Foundation (ECF), the ministry told Clean Energy Wire. The state secretary had applied for his retirement from office by 5 November, the ministry said.
"I’m honoured to be joining ECF at such an important moment," Flasbarth said in a statement published by the foundation. "The task ahead for Europe is to maintain and strengthen support for climate ambition across societies in every member state and beyond," he added.
Flasbarth will succeed on the ECF’s current chief executive, former French climate negotiator Laurence Tubiana, who has led the organisation since 2017. The ECF is a Dutch-based international philanthropic foundation financed by donors including Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Robert Bosch Foundation. It finances a wide range of climate action projects across Europe and has also supported Clean Energy Wire and its sister project klimafakten.de with long-term grants.
ECF supervisory board chair, Kate Hampton, said the foundations new chief executive “shares ECF’s commitment to civil society, our sense of urgency and a people-centred understanding of the climate transition.” Flasbarth had repeatedly shown his commitment to European collaboration on climate and its role as a global frontrunner but also acted as an advocated for a people-centred energy transition that keeps supply secure and affordable.
Environment minister Carsten Schneider in an internal e-mail said the state secretary had shaped the country’s climate diplomacy “in a unique way” during his time at the ministry, where he started his first position as a department leader in 2003, newspaper Handelsblatt reported.
Flasbarth will start his position at the organisation with offices in The Hague, Brussels, Berlin, Paris and other European cities in early 2027. The state secretary will be succeeded by Heike Henn, who currently heads the department for international climate policy, the ministry said.
Jennifer Tollmann, executive director at NGO Germanwatch, told Clean Energy Wire that the state secretary’s job change would give the ECF “an enormously experienced strategist” at a challenging time for civil society work. She said Flasbarth could help to develop more “innovative, diverse and effective” climate activism in Europe but also pointed at the gap that the parting climate diplomat leaves behind in the ministry and especially in his party, the Social Democrats (SPD). However, Tollmann added that Flasbarth’s successor Henn also is known as an experienced strategist and networker.
Flasbarth has played a key role in shaping German climate and energy transition policy, as well as international cooperation on these issues for many years. German media have called him "shadow environment minister" and "captain of German climate diplomacy." As a former head of the NGO NABU and of Germany’s Federal Environment Agency (UBA), Flasbarth looks back at a long career in environmental protection. He has worked as state secretary in the environment ministry since 2013, moved to the same role in the development ministry in 2021, and returned to the environment ministry in May 2025. Flasbarth has led Germany’s delegation at the UN climate conference COP several times, and represented the country at the first Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels, held outside the COP framework earlier this year. At the conference in Santa Marta, Colombia, he told Clean Energy Wire “I am quite sure: the transition away from fossil fuels is unstoppable.”
The move of one of Germany’s most experienced climate diplomats to the influential European foundation comes at a time of increasing pressure for international climate negotiations due to budget constraints and a range of other threats to international security, especially the ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and Iran. Flasbarth will leave his position ahead of the upcoming COP31 in Antalya, Turkey, where countries are set to debate a roadmap on phasing out fossil fuels.
German media highlighted that Flasbarth’s move could lead to discussions about a possible conflict of interests, as he could benefit in his new role from contacts and knowledge he gained during his time as state secretary.