Julia Klöckner (born 16 December 1972) is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who served as Federal Minister of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection in the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel from 2018 to 2021.

From 2002 to 2011 she was a Member of Parliament for Kreuznach in the German Bundestag and, from 2009 to February 2011, she was a parliamentary undersecretary in the Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection.

After her intermediate examination, Klöckner worked, with special permission, from 1994 to 1998 as a religious education teacher at a primary school in Wiesbaden, and then began her practical training as a journalist.

[5] From 1998 to 2002, Klöckner worked in the department of regional culture at SWR television in Mainz as a freelancer and, from 2000 to 2002, she was editor of the magazine, weinwelt ("Wine World").

[26][27] On 29 October 2009, Klöckner was appointed as a Parliamentary State Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture under Minister Ilse Aigner.

[36][37] On 4 December 2010 she achieved first place in the state list for the 2011 elections at the party conference of the Rhineland-Palatinate CDU Association in Ramstein-Miesenbach, gaining 99.6% of the votes.

[43] On 4 December 2012 she was elected as one of five deputy chairpersons of the national CDU party with 92.92% of the votes (once again the best result),[44] serving alongside Volker Bouffier, Armin Laschet, Thomas Strobl and Ursula von der Leyen.

Following the 2013 federal elections, Klöckner was part of the CDU/CSU team in the negotiations with the SPD on a coalition agreement for the third government of Chancellor Angela Merkel.

[45] In addition, Klöckner is the patron of the Rhineland-Palatinate State branch of the German Association for Muscular Dystrophy,[57] the German Multiple Sclerosis Association of Bad Kreuznach, the Friends of the Christian Hospice Movement in Bad Kreuznach, Ambulance Service,[58] of the multi-generational home in Idar-Oberstein[59] and the AKTION NIERE ("Kidney Action") Foundation.

[60] Klöckner is an honorary member of the German Language Campaign,[61] ambassador for the Lützelsoon Foundation that supports children suffering from cancer and other issues together with their families,[62] the initiator and a judge of the Prize for Consumer Journalism under the patronage of former President of Germany, Roman Herzog.

[64] Klöckner herself has benefited from a CDU gender quorum introduced in 1996, as it provided her a good position on the party's candidate list in for the 2002 federal elections.

[65] In 2013, she demanded a legally enforced quota calling on publicly traded companies to have women hold a minimum of 30 percent of the seats on their supervisory boards, starting in 2020.

[67][68] When news media in 2014 revealed images purporting to show security guards abusing asylum seekers at a shelter in western Germany, Klöckner said the incident should prompt a review of the country's refugee policy and infrastructure.

[45] In late 2014, Klöckner spoke out in favour of banning the burka, arguing that the German constitution emphasized that women and men were of equal value and that "looking at people's faces" also belonged to the culture of an open society.

"[72] During the German presidential election, Klöckner prematurely reported on Twitter the results of the vote by the Federal Assembly from the official electoral polling commission (Zählkommission).

[73][74] About 15 minutes before the official announcement of the election result, she tweeted a reference to the last day of the German football premier league season: #Bundesversammlung Leute, Ihr könnt in Ruhe Fußball gucke.

In the clip, Klöckner congratulates Nestle Germany leader Marc-Aurel Boersch for Nestlé's contributions in the wider context of a nation-wide initiative for voluntarily commitments of the food industry to reduce fat, sugar and salt in their products.