Verena Mertens

A daughter of a police officer, Mertens was born on 20 November 1981 in Salzkotten in the district of Paderborn, in North Rhine-Westphalia.^[3] She graduated from high school in the Schloß Neuhaus part of Paderborn in 2001 and then studied law at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, now the University of Münster, until 2006. Between 2001 and 2003, she took specialist foreign-language training for lawyers in English law (FFA) at the Westphalian Wilhelms University. After completing her state law examinations she pursued legal training at the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court from 2007 to 2009.^[4]

From 2009, Mertens worked as a lawyer in the field of construction law at the Leinemann Partner law firm in Düsseldorf, before joining the North Rhine-Westphalia police in 2010. In 2011, she worked in the department for personnel matters in the Ministry of the Interior and Local Government of North Rhine-Westphalia, in Düsseldorf. From 2012 to 2015, she was head of the management office of the Directorate for Danger Prevention/Operations in the Gütersloh District Police Authority. She then took on various management positions in the North Rhine-Westphalia state police. She was head of the Economic Crime Department in Düsseldorf, head of the Criminal Investigation Department in the Bielefeld Police Headquarters and head of the Traffic Directorate of the 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 worked part-time as a lecturer in constitutional law and intervention law at the University of Police and Public Administration of North Rhine-Westphalia.^[5]