Berlin, June 11 (IANS) The PhD degree of former German Minister for Family Affairs Franziska Giffey had her doctoral was revoked after an investigation into her 2010 doctoral thesis on European politics found evidence of plagiarism, the Free University of Berlin (FU Berlin) announced.

The reason to revoke the title was "deception about the independence of her scientific performance", the FU Berlin said on Thursday.

Giffey resigned from her ministerial post in May.

In the thesis on the European Commission's (EC) policy on civil society participation, texts and references from other authors were copied without sufficient identification.

"I accept this decision," Giffey said in a statement on Thursday.

However, the former Minister reiterated that she had written the thesis to the best of her knowledge and regretted "any errors that I may have made in the preparation of the paper".

Despite losing her academic title, Giffey did not announce her withdrawal from politics and is set to continue her campaign as a leading candidate for the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in the regional elections in Berlin in September.

--IANS ksk/