the federal Bundestag, serving seven months before losing re-election in the SPD landslide the same year. In 1999, she was an advisor to Peter Müller, then chairman of the CDU parliamentary group in the Landtag of Saarland and later Minister-President. That same year she became a chairwoman of the Women's Union. State Minister 1999–2011 Kramp-Karrenbauer was elected to the Landtag of Saarland in 1999. She served as Minister of the Interior in the government of Peter Müller; the first woman to hold that office in Germany. She took on more responsibilities in 2004, and changed roles in 2007 following a cabinet reshuffle, becoming Minister of Education and again in 2009, becoming Minister of Labor in the so-called Jamaica coalition government. In 2008, she was elected chairwoman of the Kultusministerkonferenz. Throughout her time in state government, she also served at various times as minister responsible for women, sports, family, and culture. In the negotiations to form a coalition government following the 2009 federal election, Kramp-Karrenbauer was part of the CDU–CSU delegation in the working group on education and research policy, led by Annette Schavan and Andreas Pinkwart. Minister-President of Saarland 2011–2018 In 2011, after months of difficult negotiations with the coalition partners, the Free Democratic Party and The Greens, Kramp-Karrenbauer was elected Minister-President of the Saarland in a special session of parliament, replacing Müller, who resigned to become a judge at the Federal Constitutional Court. Shortly afterwards, she ended the coalition and triggered an election, blaming the party for "dismantling itself" and arguing that the three-party coalition had lost the necessary "trust, stability, and capacity to act". Kramp-Karrenbauer and the CDU won the state election soon afterwards, in what was widely regarded as the first electoral test of Chancellor Angela Merkel's crisis-fighting policy since the beginning of the European debt crisis; meanwhile, the FDP was ejected from the state parliament after taking just 1.2% of the vote. Under Kramp-Karrenbauer's leadership, the CDU won 40.7% of the vote in the 2017 state elections, up from 35.2% in 2012. While serving as Minister-President, Kramp-Karrenbauer, who speaks French, was also Commissioner of the Federal Republic of Germany for Cultural Affairs under the Treaty on Franco-German Cooperation between 2011 and 2014. She continued to be a member of the German-French Friendship Group that was set up by the upper chambers of the German and French national parliaments, respectively the Bundesrat and the Senate. Furthermore, as