German minister, Annette Schavan, to fight plagiarism claim

The Education Minister has yesterday that she would not resign after a university found she had plagiarised parts of her thesis, but would instead to fight the ruling.

Annette Schavan, 57, is a close ally of the Chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the second cabinet minister to lose a doctorate because of plagiarism. Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg resigned as Defence Minister in 2011 after it emerged that he copied large parts of his thesis.

Düsseldorf’s Heinrich Heine University voted to remove Ms Schavan’s doctorate after a thorough review of her 1980 thesis. She has always denied the allegations and said she would take legal action.