Germany's top climate diplomat leaves environment ministry to lead international climate foundation

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, confirming previous media reports. Germany’s 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 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. 

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 leaves the environment ministry already in early November this year and will be succeeded by Heike Henn, who currently heads the department for international climate policy, the ministry said. 

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.