Draft:Verena Mertens

Verena Mertens (born 20 November 1981) is a German politician and member of the European Parliament representing Germany since July 2024. She is a member of the Christian Democratic Union, part of the European People's Party.

Before Mertens went into politics, she was Director of Criminal Investigation at the North Rhine-Westphalia police force.

Academic career
Mertens graduated from high school in Schloß Neuhaus in 2001 and then studied law at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster until 2006. Following her legal clerkship at the Higher Regional Court of Düsseldorf from 2007 to 2009, she completed the Second State Examination in Law from 2001 to 2003, while also completing the specialised foreign language training for lawyers in English law (FFA) at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster.

From 2009, she worked as a lawyer in the field of construction law at the law firm Leinemann & Partner Rechtsanwälte in Düsseldorf before joining the higher police enforcement service of the NRW police in 2010. In 2011, she worked in the personnel department of the Ministry of the Interior and Municipal Affairs of North Rhine-Westphalia in Düsseldorf. From 2012 to 2015, she was head of the command centre of the Hazard Prevention/Operations Directorate at Gütersloh District Police Authority. She then took on various management roles in the North Rhine-Westphalia state police force. She was Head of the Economic Crime Department at the NRW State Criminal Police Office in Düsseldorf, Head of the Criminal Investigation Department for State Security at Bielefeld Police Headquarters and Head of the Traffic Directorate at Lippe District Police Authority. From 2020 until her election to the European Parliament, she was Head of the Crime Directorate and Deputy Head of Department at the Paderborn District Police Authority.

Mertens also worked as a lecturer for constitutional law and intervention law at the North Rhine-Westphalia University of Applied Sciences for Police and Public Administration.

Political career
Verena Mertens joined the Junge Union and the CDU in 1999. She was co-founder and from 1999 to 2006 chairwoman of the Elsen branch of the Junge Union Paderborn. From 2008 to 2009, she was a member of the state executive of the Junge Union NRW.

Mertens is a member of the Paderborn district executive and the East Westphalia-Lippe district executive of the CDU.

In May 2023, Mertens was nominated by the CDU Paderborn as a European candidate from East Westphalia-Lippe. On 3 February 2024, she was elected to fourth place on the state list for the 2024 European elections at a state representatives' meeting of the CDU North Rhine-Westphalia in Dortmund. She was elected to the European Parliament in the election on 9 June.