Alumnus in the European Parliament: Bayreuth, Berlin, Brussels

When Malte Gallée answers the phone, he is on the train from Strasbourg to his home country. "I've just finished my first week of meetings and all that's happened has been so amazing," the 28-year-old enthuses. He gets straight back onto his main topics. "I am now on the Environment Committee and the Committee for the Internal Market and Consumer Protection. I am also the Green shadow rapporteur for the new EU Battery Regulation. It's all very exciting, because laws are made here that apply to the whole of Europe. For example, we are working on a Europe-wide deposit system for batteries. In other words, a circular economy for the whole of Europe," he says enthusiastically. He cannot deny that this is, of course, time-consuming. "But you don't become an MEP every day."

Rewinding: election campaigns in 2018 and 2019. At the time, Malte Gallée was studying Philosophy and Economics in Bayreuth and running for 22nd place on the Green Party list for the European Parliament. He was not really devoting much time to his studies at the time. "I think I studied P&E in record time," he says with a laugh. "At least I don't know anyone else who took twelve semesters to get their bachelor's degree." Running for the European Parliament was one reason why it took him "a little" longer to do. Another was that he financed his studies himself. "I just worked a lot, so it might have taken longer, but I also spent a lot of time on the benches on campus talking about God and the world." That's another reason why he looks back fondly on his time at the University of Bayreuth.

After the election, it was clear that Malte Gallée would not make it into the European Parliament directly. As the first person to move up, however, his chances of getting to Brussels or Strasbourg were quite high. "Somehow you feel like you're on standby," he says. In 2019 and 2020, he went on do an internship in the EU Parliament, only to be officially told in December 2021 that he would be entering the Parliament after all. As a replacement for Sven Giegold, who was appointed State Secretary in the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection. "Of course, those are some very big shoes to fill," says Malte Gallée. "But I am not trying to fill them, but rather to make my own mark."