Brigitte Haas

Brigitte Haas was born on December 27, 1964 in Vaduz, the capital of Liechtenstein, and grew up in the neighbouring municipality of Schaan ^[1]. She came of age in a country undergoing quiet but profound change. During her teenage years Liechtenstein women still could not vote in national elections; that right arrived only through the referendum of 1984, when Haas was nineteen ^[2].

Her schooling followed a practical route rather than a straight academic one. She completed commercial training between 1980 and 1983 and entered working life immediately afterwards ^[1]. Only later, from 1987 to 1990, did she earn the Swiss federal baccalaureate (Matura Type E), the qualification that opened the door to university study ^[1].

Haas pursued law while already established in her career, studying at the University of Zurich from 1995 and receiving her licentiate in law (lic. iur.) in 2001 ^[1]. That combination of vocational grounding and legal training shaped the profile she would carry into public life: a jurist with first-hand knowledge of administration and commerce rather than a career politician.

Haas began work in the Liechtenstein national administration in 1984, holding assistant and clerical posts across several offices during her first years ^[1]. The principality's civil service is small, and junior staff often gain broad exposure to government business early; Haas moved through varied roles between 1984 and 1990.

From 1991 to 1995 she served as personal assistant to the chief of the national police, a position that placed her close to the operational side of the state ^[1]. She then spent five years, from 1995 to 2000, as a training manager responsible for apprentices within the administration, work that ran in parallel with her law degree in Zurich ^[1].

Her final posting in government service came in 2000 and 2001, when she worked as a project officer in the unit coordinating Liechtenstein's participation in the European Economic Area ^[1]. EEA membership, in force since 1995, defines much of the country's economic and legal relationship with Europe, and the experience gave Haas direct familiarity with the treaty framework she would later manage as head of government.

In 2001 Haas joined the Liechtenstein Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LIHK), the association representing the principality's industrial and export firms, as deputy managing director ^[1]. Liechtenstein's economy is unusual for a microstate: manufacturing and industry generate a large share of national output, and companies such as Hilti and Ivoclar employ workforces far larger than the resident population might suggest ^[3]. The chamber therefore carries real weight in national policy debates.

Haas spent eighteen years as deputy before being appointed managing director in 2019, a post she held until 2025 ^[1]. In that role she was the chamber's public face on questions of labour supply, cross-border commuting, taxation, and the country's access to European and Swiss markets. Anyone assembling the Brigitte Haas facts will notice how unusual her route to power was: she built her reputation in economic advocacy rather than in parliament.

Alongside her professional duties she took on civic commitments. She served on the board of the Historical Society of Liechtenstein from 2005 to 2014, sat on the vocational baccalaureate commission from 2004 to 2020, spent two years on the board of the national women's shelter, and was vice president and for a time interim president of the TAK theatre in Schaan between 2012 and 2020 ^[1].

Haas was long associated with the Patriotic Union (Vaterländische Union, VU), one of the two parties that have dominated Liechtenstein politics since the 1930s, though she had not held elected office ^[2]. When Prime Minister Daniel Risch of the VU announced that he would not seek a second term, the party turned to Haas as its candidate for head of government in the February 2025 general election ^[4].

The campaign centred on themes she knew well from the chamber: pension finances, the health system, relations with Switzerland and the European Economic Area, and the shortage of skilled workers. On February 9, 2025 the Patriotic Union won 10 of the 25 seats in the Landtag, making it the largest party, while its traditional partner, the Progressive Citizens' Party (FBP), fell to 7 seats and the opposition Democrats for Liechtenstein rose to 6 ^[4]. Turnout exceeded 76 percent, a level typical of the principality's intensely local democracy ^[4].

The result answered the question international observers were suddenly asking, namely who is Brigitte Haas: the woman about to make history in one of Europe's last countries never to have had a female head of government. The VU and FBP renewed their decades-old coalition, and Haas was confirmed as the incoming prime minister ^[4].

Haas was sworn in on April 10, 2025, becoming the first female prime minister in Liechtenstein's history, forty-one years after women in the principality gained the national franchise ^[5]. News agencies across Europe noted the milestone, since Liechtenstein had been the last country in Europe to enfranchise women and one of the last without a woman at the head of its government ^[5].

As Regierungschefin she leads the five-member collegial government and holds the Ministry for General Government Affairs and Finance, the portfolio traditionally kept by the head of government ^[1]. Her cabinet governs in coalition with the FBP under the distinctive dual system in which executive authority is shared between the elected government and the reigning prince, currently exercised by Hereditary Prince Alois ^[3].

Any assessment of Brigitte Haas achievements in office must remain provisional, since her term began only in 2025. Her stated early priorities reflected the campaign: securing the long-term financing of pensions, containing health costs, safeguarding the financial centre's reputation, and maintaining stable relations with Switzerland and the EEA ^[4]. Her background as an economic association director marks a departure from predecessors drawn mainly from banking, academia, and party politics.

Haas is married to Hubert Ospelt and has continued to live in the Schaan and Vaduz area where she grew up ^[1]. She is a cousin of Wolfgang Haas, who served as the first Archbishop of Vaduz after the diocese was created in 1997 ^[2]. In a country of fewer than 41,000 people such family connections across public life are common, and she has kept her private life largely out of the press.

Her significance is easiest to see in historical perspective. Liechtenstein's women waited until 1984 for the vote, until 1993 for the first female government councillor, and until 2025 for a woman to lead the government ^[2]. A Brigitte Haas biography is therefore also a compressed history of political participation in the principality: she was a schoolgirl without future voting rights, then a civil servant, then an economic lobbyist, and finally the head of government within a single working life.

Whether her tenure reshapes policy or simply normalises female leadership in Vaduz, her appointment closed a conspicuous gap in European politics. For a state that markets stability as its chief asset, the peaceful, almost routine manner of that transition may prove as telling as the milestone itself ^[5].