Alexander Radwan

Alexander Gamal Radwan (born 30 August 1964 in Munich) is a German lawyer, engineer and politician of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU). He has been a directly elected member of the Bundestag since the 18th Bundestag convened on 22 October 2013, and he represents the Upper Bavarian constituency of Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen – Miesbach, listed as constituency 222 in the 21st Bundestag.

The Bundestag biography lists him as Roman Catholic and unmarried. In a 2021 profile he said that his father had come from Egypt and that, under the nationality rules then in force, the father’s citizenship had also applied to a child born in Munich, while his mother was a Bavarian Catholic teacher. He took the Abitur in 1983 at the technical branch of the Staatliche Fachoberschule München and in 1987 qualified as a Diplom-Ingenieur (FH) in vehicle technology, specialising in aircraft, at the Munich University of Applied Sciences. He then studied law at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, passed the second state examination and was admitted as a Rechtsanwalt in 1995.

Until 1999 he worked, latterly as a department head, for an international company in the information and telecommunications sector. From 1999 to 2008 he was a Member of the European Parliament, and from 2004 to 2008 economic-policy spokesman of the European People’s Party group; from 2005 to 2011 he was treasurer of the CSU. He sat in the Bavarian Landtag from 2008 to 2013 before moving to Berlin. His constituency office is in Rottach-Egern, in the district of Miesbach.

In the 2013 federal election he succeeded Ilse Aigner as the CSU candidate in the Starnberg constituency, which then also covered Miesbach and Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen, and won it with 54.1 percent of the first votes. After the boundaries were redrawn he held Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen – Miesbach with 47.6 percent in 2017 (62,465 votes) and 41.3 percent in 2021 (55,501 votes). At the 2025 election he was returned with 46.4 percent (65,481 votes), ahead of the Alternative for Germany candidate Ingo Jochen Hahn on 16.5 percent, with turnout at 85.5 percent.

In the 21st Bundestag he is a full member of the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Committee on European Union Affairs, a deputy member of the Finance Committee, head of the German delegation to the Inter-Parliamentary Union and a deputy member of the delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. He also chairs the parliamentary group for Arabic-speaking states of the Near and Middle East. Beside the mandate he is of counsel to the Munich firm Waigel Rechtsanwälte; the Bundestag disclosure lists pre-tax monthly earnings of €1,500 until 30 September 2025 and €5,500 from 1 October 2025. In July 2023 he and the CSU deputy Andreas Scheuer voted in the European affairs committee for an AfD motion to take an energy-efficiency bill off the agenda; Radwan said afterwards that he had mistaken the motion for one tabled by his own group.

Early life and education

Family and upbringing

Alexander Gamal Radwan was born on 30 August 1964 in Munich. His father was an Egyptian electrical engineer who had come to Germany in 1954; his mother was a Bavarian Catholic teacher from Altötting. Gamal is an Arabic given name, and Radwan an Egyptian surname. In 2021 he told the Süddeutsche Zeitung that he was in fact a "born Egyptian" (gebürtiger Ägypter), because, he said, a child's citizenship then followed the father regardless of birthplace.

The same newspaper reported that his father converted in order to marry, obtained German citizenship through the courts and joined the Christian Social Union; a 2012 profile dated the naturalization to 1974 and described him as Roman Catholic and a long-standing CSU member. Radwan has said the naturalization dragged on and that an Egyptian engineer at the Tegernsee was, about fifty years earlier, regarded as exotic, while also saying the family never met hostility because of that background. His mother later recalled taking him, still a baby, to the Bavarian interior ministry in Munich over the father's naturalization.

He grew up in the district of Munich and in the Tegernsee valley in Upper Bavaria, and the family home is in Rottach-Egern, where he still lives. A 2012 profile said politics was always present at the table there, and Radwan has said his father was already in the CSU before he himself knew that a Schüler-Union existed. He has described his father's origin as simply a fact of childhood and youth, and he does not speak Arabic: his father never taught him the language, which he has said he regrets. In 2013 his parents were living in the same multi-family house in Rottach-Egern; by 2021 his father had died a few years earlier and his mother, then 88, still lived in the house. Parliamentary biographies list Radwan himself as Roman Catholic.

As a pupil in the early 1980s he joined debates, often heated, on nuclear energy, the environment and the NATO Double-Track Decision. He later said that in those years he already felt closer to the Union, and that this put him in a minority at school.

Engineering and legal studies

In 1983 he passed the Abitur at the Staatliche Fachoberschule München, technical branch. From 1983 to 1987 he studied vehicle engineering with a specialization in aircraft (Fahrzeugtechnik, Fachrichtung Luftfahrzeuge) at the Fachhochschule München, now the Munich University of Applied Sciences, and graduated as a Diplom-Ingenieur (FH). A 2015 Bundestag portrait described the same course as mechanical engineering with an aircraft specialization.

He then read law at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich from 1987 until the second state examination in 1995, and was admitted as a Rechtsanwalt that year. While a student he joined the Junge Union and the CSU. The Bundestag portrait dates the entry to 1988 and says he became district chairman of the Junge Union in Miesbach at 24; the same text also says he was 19 in the year he joined, which does not match a 1964 birth date. The CSU curriculum vitae lists the Miesbach chairmanship as 1988–1994, while a 2012 newspaper profile dated it to 1989. He has said that conservative arguments found little support among his fellow students, and that as a Referendar he worked in Brussels.

Legal and professional career

Telecommunications work and admission to the bar

The Bundestag biography, drawn from members' own statements, records legal studies from 1987 to 1995 at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, completed with the second state examination, and admission as a Rechtsanwalt in 1995. It lists his occupation before he entered the Bundestag as a lawyer in Munich. The same biography says that until 1999 he was an employee, latterly a department head, of an international information and telecommunications company, which it does not name. A Haus der Bayerischen Geschichte entry that cites his website dates that job to 1996–1999, immediately before his term in the European Parliament.

Law-firm roles and declared income

That entry describes him as of counsel at GSK Stockmann + Kollegen from 2002 to 2015 and at Waigel Rechtsanwälte since 2016. The archived disclosure for the 18th electoral term records paid work as a lawyer for GSK Stockmann & Kollegen in Munich until 31 December 2015, in the monthly band Stufe 1, plus a further monthly Stufe 1 entry for one client and a Stufe 2 entry for a second client until 31 July 2015. From 1 January 2016 it lists him as a lawyer for Waigel Rechtsanwälte, again monthly Stufe 1, with another client entry at Stufe 1. In January 2016 JUVE reported that Christian Waigel had left GSK Stockmann + Kollegen's Munich office with several colleagues, including his father, former federal finance minister Theo Waigel, to form the firm Waigel with the name partners of Klotz und Waigel; the text published outside the paywall does not name Radwan.

In August 2015 the Münchner Merkur, using Abgeordnetenwatch totals drawn from the banded disclosures, reported side income of between €110,000 and €280,000 since 2013, and said he explained the sources without giving one total. In written answers the paper published in April 2021, he said he was of counsel, was "in keinem Mandat tätig", and advised on European-law questions and their application in national law, so that in his view conflicts of interest did not arise. He said he had worked at the firm before the Bundestag mandate and wanted to keep the contact if he left politics, and he put the Waigel payment at €1,500 a month plus value-added tax. The 21st-Bundestag disclosure, dated 27 October 2026 on the parliament's site, lists Waigel Rechtsanwälte, of counsel, as profit before tax of €1,500 a month until 30 September 2025 and €5,500 a month from 1 October 2025. The archived 20th-term disclosure shows only the €1,500 figure.

Financial supervision

On 19 April 2018 the Bundestag adopted, by a large majority and with Die Linke abstaining, the joint nomination in Drucksache 19/1318 of members of the administrative council (Verwaltungsrat) of the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin). Radwan was one of the two CDU/CSU nominees, with Hans Michelbach as alternate. The Merkur reported that the 17-member body decides the authority's budget and supervises its management. The 20th-term disclosure records the Verwaltungsrat membership as ending on 17 March 2022; the current biography no longer lists it. He told the Merkur in 2021 that BaFin had separately appointed him trustee (Vertrauensmann) at LBS Bayerische Landesbausparkasse and set the fee; that disclosure shows the role, at €7,945.16 gross a year, ending on 31 July 2023.

Career in the CSU

Junge Union and local offices

Radwan dates his entry into the Junge Union, the youth organization of the CDU and the Christian Social Union (CSU), to 27 October 1983, and his membership of the CSU to 1 January 1988. On the same account he was district chairman of the Junge Union in the Miesbach district from 1988 to 1994, and from 2002 to 2008 chaired the Miesbach section of the non-partisan Europa-Union Deutschland. A profile published on 5 September 2005 likewise recorded that he had joined the CSU in 1988. From 1994 to 1999 he chaired the Junge Union in Upper Bavaria.

His Bundestag biography places him on the CSU executive in Rottach-Egern and on the Upper Bavaria regional executive, and on the Miesbach district council since 2002. The register of outside offices still lists that council seat. In February 2014 he became acting chairman of the CSU district association in Miesbach after Jakob Kreidl resigned under pressure from the party leadership. At an extraordinary delegates' meeting in Hausham on 30 April, 131 of 148 delegates voted for him, with 11 votes against. At a delegates' assembly in Miesbach in September 2021 the board's nominees, including Radwan as returning chairman, passed by a large majority; the Münchner Merkur described the votes as a formality. The party curriculum vitae still lists the district chairmanship as dating from 2014.

Mittelstandsunion

From 2002 to 2016 he was chairman of the Mittelstands-Union in Upper Bavaria and a member of its executive for Bavaria. The Bundestag biography still gives the same chairmanship as open-ended from 2002. In October 2014 the Upper Bavaria assembly re-elected him unanimously, confirmed Monika Schützeichel, Gerhard Knill and Bernhard Kösslinger as deputies, and added the Landtag member Karl Straub to the board. By a Landsberg meeting reported on 27 June 2016, Kösslinger was already described as chairman of the Mittelstands-Union's district association there and of its Upper Bavaria association.

Treasurer and party executive

Ahead of the congress of 3 September 2005, the Merkur reported that Radwan would stand for one of two co-equal treasurerships because Adolf Dinglreiter was not running again, while Thomas Bauer would remain the other finance chief, and that a contest was to be avoided two weeks before the federal election. On 5 September 2005 the Nordwest-Zeitung called the member of the European Parliament from Rottach-Egern the new treasurer and quoted his aim of giving the party "eine solide Basis." The Bundestag biography dates the treasurership, and membership of the party executive, to 2005–2011. Holding one of the two treasurerships also carried a seat on the presidium.

In late September 2011 the Merkur reported that party chairman Horst Seehofer had confirmed Ulrike Scharf, then chair of the Frauen-Union in Upper Bavaria, as nominee for one of the two posts. Radwan, it wrote, was regarded as professionally uncontroversial and had been expected to stay, but had to make way so that women could be appointed under the 40 percent quota. At the congress in Nuremberg on 8 October 2011, about 680 delegates elected Scharf with 92.5 percent. The paper called her one of those who had brought in that quota, introduced the year before, and noted that a treasurer sits on the presidium.

In January 2014, on Seehofer's proposal, he became chairman of the Versorgungsbeirat, which the Merkur described as heading the Versorgungswerk for CSU employees' pensions, including a periodic review of how those pensions develop. The post co-opted him back onto the executive and gave him a consultative role on finance in the presidium. The party biography dates that chairmanship to 2014–2022 and lists him, since 2014, on the executive and in the presidium for financial questions, as a co-opted member. His own site instead dates a chairmanship of the Versorgungswerk to 2014–2021, and the Bundestag biography still says, with no end date, that he has chaired the Versorgungswerk since 2014.

From 2014 to 2017 he chaired the CSU Bundeswahlkreiskonferenz for Bundestag constituency 224, Starnberg. After the constituencies were redrawn, a conference in Königsdorf, reported in November 2017, confirmed him as chairman with 100 percent of the vote. The constituency then comprised the district associations of Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen and Miesbach. It was numbered 223 at the 2017 federal election and 222 at the 2025 election.

Member of the European Parliament

Election and mandate

Alexander Radwan was a member of the European Parliament for Germany from 20 July 1999 until 2 December 2008, sitting for the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU) in the Group of the European People's Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats (EPP-ED). The CSU, which stood only in Bavaria, placed him ninth on its list at both the elections of 13 June 1999 and 13 June 2004. In 1999 the list took 2,540,007 votes — 64.0 per cent in Bavaria and 9.4 per cent nationally — and 10 of Germany's 99 seats; in 2004 it took 2,063,900 votes, 8.0 per cent nationally and 57.4 per cent in Bavaria, and nine seats. Ninth place was elected both times.

The fifth term ended on 19 July 2004 and the sixth began the next day. On 3 December 2008 Parliament recorded that he had resigned with effect from that day and declared the seat vacant. In April 2008 the CSU in Miesbach had nominated him for the direct mandate in the Landtag of Bavaria that Jakob Kreidl was leaving on becoming Landrat; the Bundestag biography records Radwan as a Landtag member from 2008 to 2013.

Economic and monetary affairs

He was a full member of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs from 21 July 1999 for nearly both terms, with only short breaks when the committee was reconstituted.

On 15 April 2002 that committee made him rapporteur on bank capital adequacy while the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision was finishing Basel II (procedure 2001/2257(INI)). Report A5-0258/2003 was adopted in committee on 8 July 2003 and by Parliament on 2 September.) It welcomed the accord's principles but said costs were still unassessed, regretted the lack of an EU study of finance for small and medium-sized enterprises, and sought lower SME risk weights through the retail threshold, more attention to start-ups, and a lower weight for mortgage bonds than Basel proposed. Parliament added that procyclical effects remained and asked for another macroeconomic study before the rules took effect. It objected that the framework had been fixed without a parliamentary mandate, and wanted power to call back implementing rules under the procedure associated with Alexandre Lamfalussy. Against United States plans to limit the advanced methods to very few banks, it argued for broad EU application so supervision stayed comparable.

In August 2003, during a third European Commission consultation, Agence Europe reported that Radwan and Ingo Friedrich still found "serious faults" in the charges for SME and start-up loans. On 21 September 2004 he became rapporteur for the recasts transposing Basel II, on credit institutions (2004/0155(COD)) and on the capital adequacy of investment firms and credit institutions (2004/0159(COD)).)) Report A6-0257/2005, adopted in committee on 13 July 2005, compromised on cross-border consolidation, intra-group and institutional-protection lending, and data retention, and withheld the Commission's detailed implementing powers until Parliament's role was clear. At first reading on 28 September 2005 Parliament set those powers to lapse after two years, and by 1 April 2008 at the latest, unless both legislators renewed them. The Council accepted the amendments. Directives 2006/48/EC and 2006/49/EC, signed on 14 June 2006, offered a simple, intermediate or advanced approach and preferential capital treatment for SME lending.

On 15 May 2006 he was appointed rapporteur on International Financial Reporting Standards and the governance of the International Accounting Standards Board (2006/2248(INI)). The committee adopted the report on 29 January 2008; A6-0032/2008 was tabled on 5 February, and on 24 April Parliament passed the resolution by 373 votes to 21, with 13 abstentions.) It noted that Regulation (EC) No 1606/2002 had made the private IASB and its foundation a de facto lawmaker for listed companies' consolidated accounts, and called for public oversight by legislators and supervisors, transparent trustees, and impact assessments covering financial stability. Citing the 2007 subprime mortgage crisis, it asked the IASB to limit fair value, which it said could be costly and unrealistic without a market price. It found the draft IFRS for SMEs far too complex for most European firms, said the board had no political mandate to write it, and asked the Commission not to adopt it until an ordinary EU consultation was finished. Commissioner Charlie McCreevy backed stronger public supervision and earlier EU influence.

Group roles and delegations

For 2004 to 2008 the Bundestag biography lists him as economic-policy spokesman of the EPP group. He was an ordinary EPP-ED member from 20 July 2004 and a member of the group's bureau from 31 August 2004 until he left. The biography also lists him, from 2002 to 2008, as chair of the group's parliamentary working circle on the Mittelstand; a September 2008 invitation issued with the Robert Schuman Foundation identified him as president of that SME Circle.

From October 1999 he sat on the delegation for the Mashreq countries and the Gulf, and from 20 September 2004 he was vice-chair of the Mashreq delegation. He was a substitute for relations with the People's Republic of China and, from 16 September 2004, on the delegation to the Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Assembly, and from 18 January 2006 a substitute on Constitutional Affairs.

Bavarian Landtag

Election in Miesbach

Radwan left the European Parliament to seek a seat in the Landtag of Bavaria. The Christian Social Union (CSU) in the district of Miesbach nominated him for the direct mandate in Stimmkreis 120 after Jakob Kreidl, the sitting member, became Landrat on 1 May 2008; Monika Hohlmeier was the district’s second-vote candidate. The constituency covered Landkreis Miesbach and, from Landkreis Rosenheim, Bad Feilnbach and Feldkirchen-Westerham.

On 28 September 2008 he won with 22,166 first votes, 43.1 percent. Christine Negele of the Social Democratic Party was second, on 6,885 votes (13.4 percent); Lorenz Weidinger of the Free Voters had 6,211, Peter Rutz of Alliance 90/The Greens 6,081, and Josef Scheben of the Free Democratic Party 5,553. Statewide the CSU took 43.4 percent and 92 of 187 seats, short of an absolute majority for the first time since 1958. He sat for the CSU from 20 October 2008 to 7 October 2013 as the member for Miesbach.

He did not stand for the Landtag in 2013. In a CSU swap, federal agriculture minister Ilse Aigner was to run in Miesbach while Radwan sought the Bundestag constituency she was vacating. On 2 December 2012 delegates in Aufhofen elected him the direct candidate for constituency 224, Starnberg–Miesbach–Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen, by 126 of the 131 delegates. She was to lead the CSU list in Upper Bavaria after the party’s 2008 losses. On 1 February 2013 delegates chose her unanimously for Stimmkreis 120. Radwan, from Rottach-Egern, said the change was agreed and that he viewed leaving after one term “with one laughing and one crying eye,” having worked on the Bavarian budget but expecting new tasks in Berlin.

Committees and state issues

From 4 December 2008 until he left, he served on the Committee on the State Budget and Financial Questions (Ausschuss für Staatshaushalt und Finanzfragen) and the Committee on Federal and European Affairs (Ausschuss für Bundes- und Europaangelegenheiten). The CSU also lists him in its working groups on tourism and on defence policy (Arbeitsgruppe Wehrpolitik).

On 26 April 2012 he spoke for the CSU on the European Stability Mechanism and the fiscal compact, backing a CSU–FDP motion to link them. He argued for a compact modelled on Germany’s debt brake, continued International Monetary Fund involvement, and a Bundestag say over the rescue fund. Asked whether a lending capacity of 500 billion euro was a ceiling, after an earlier figure of 211 billion had been cited, he said 500 billion was the current position.

In March 2009 he and Kreidl asked economics minister Martin Zeil to keep the Bayerische Oberlandbahn in the district after mid-2013 without retendering the Bayrischzell and Lenggries branches; Zeil said rail operators in Bavaria had to face competition. In March 2010, when local CSU members feared water-protection zones would make municipalities share planning powers with Stadtwerke München, deputy Otto Hünnerkopf said he would take up the case with Radwan. In July 2012 parents wrote to Radwan opposing a plan that would have given Grundschule Miesbach classes of 27 and 28 pupils and the smaller Parsberg school classes of 17.

Bundestag elections and constituency

Direct mandates since 2013

Alexander Radwan has held a direct seat in the Bundestag at every federal election since 2013, each time for the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU). Ahead of the 2013 election the Münchner Merkur reported a swap inside the party: Ilse Aigner, then federal minister of food, agriculture and consumer protection and the sitting member, was to stand for the Landtag of Bavaria in the Miesbach constituency, while Radwan, a member of the Landtag from 2008 to 2013 and a resident of Rottach-Egern, was nominated to succeed her. Delegates of constituency 224, meeting in Aufhofen in the municipality of Egling, chose him with 126 of 131 votes.

On 22 September 2013 the CSU candidate in constituency 224, Starnberg, received 97,383 first votes, 54.1 percent of the valid total. The Social Democratic Party of Germany was second, with 17.6 percent. Turnout was 74.3 percent of 245,379 eligible voters. The Returning Officer's results page names the winning party rather than the candidate; the Merkur later recorded that the direct mandate went to Radwan. His Bundestag biography dates his membership from October 2013; the 18th Bundestag's constituent sitting was on 22 October.

At the election of 24 September 2017, in the redrawn constituency 223, the CSU won 62,465 first votes, 47.6 percent. With the count complete, the Merkur reported Radwan at 47.59 percent, ahead of Karl Bär of Alliance 90/The Greens on 13.57 percent and Hannes Gräbner of the SPD on 11.27 percent. Turnout was 80.1 percent of 165,527 eligible voters. The published change against 2013, −8.8 points, is not the gap between 54.1 and 47.6 percent: the seats were drawn differently, and 47.6 lies 6.5 points, not 8.8, below the 2013 result.

On 26 September 2021 Radwan was returned in constituency 223 with 55,501 first votes, 41.3 percent, 6.3 points below 2017. The Greens were second on 15.5 percent; with 267 of 268 precincts in, the Merkur named Bär as runner-up and reported that he entered on the state list. Turnout was 81.7 percent. At the election of 23 February 2025 the same territory, renumbered constituency 222, returned Alexander Gamal Radwan with 65,481 first votes, 46.4 percent, 5.1 points above 2021. Dr. Ingo Jochen Hahn of the Alternative for Germany was the first unsuccessful candidate, with 16.5 percent (23,291 votes); the Greens followed on 14.8 percent. Turnout was 85.5 percent of 165,895 people entitled to vote.

The Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen – Miesbach constituency

Constituency 222, Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen – Miesbach, covers the whole districts of Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen and Miesbach in Upper Bavaria. For the 2025 election the Federal Returning Officer recorded 38 municipalities and an area of 1,976.9 square kilometres. On 31 December 2023 the population was 226,500, a density of 114.6 inhabitants per square kilometre, of whom 13.7 percent were foreign nationals. At the end of 2022, 92.6 percent of the land was vegetation or water and 7.4 percent settlement or transport.

Map of constituency 223, Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen – Miesbach, for the 2021 federal election.

In 2013 the seat was constituency 224, Starnberg: both of those districts plus thirteen municipalities of the Starnberg district, including Starnberg, Tutzing, Herrsching am Ammersee and Gilching. The rest of that district sat in constituency 222, Munich-Land. From 2017 the two southern districts alone formed constituency 223, and the Starnberg district moved into constituency 224, Starnberg – Landsberg am Lech, with the Landsberg am Lech district and Germering in Fürstenfeldbruck. Eligible voters fell from 245,379 in 2013 to 165,527 in 2017. The area was unchanged in 2021. For 2025 it was renumbered 222, and 223 became Starnberg – Landsberg am Lech. On 30 June 2023, trade, hospitality and transport accounted for 26.4 percent of socially insured jobs, manufacturing 31.7 percent, and agriculture, forestry and fishing 1.1 percent.

Constituency work

The Bundestag lists Radwan's constituency office at Valepper Straße 28, 83700 Rottach-Egern. The same biography records that he chaired the CSU conference for federal constituency 224 (Starnberg) from 2014 to 2017 and the conference for constituency 223 (Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen–Miesbach) from 2017.

Before the election of 23 February 2025 the Münchner Merkur asked the direct candidates in constituency 222 about infrastructure in the region. Radwan named as his first priority the extension of the Munich S7 from Wolfratshausen to Geretsried, and said both Deutsche Bahn and the federal transport ministry needed to speed the project up. He also said he would press for electrification of the Bayerische Regiobahn lines to Lenggries, Tegernsee and Bayrischzell. Of the northern bypass of Bad Tölz, he told the paper that a scheme he had long argued for was close to the start of construction.

Finance and European economic policy

Finance Committee

Alexander Radwan was an ordinary member of the Bundestag Finance Committee in the 18th legislative period (2013–2017) and the 19th (2017–2021). A members’ list archived in September 2014 places him on the CDU/CSU bench, with Lothar Riebsamen as his substitute. Abgeordnetenwatch records the same ordinary membership for both terms and no Finance Committee seat in the 20th period (2021–2025). In the 21st Bundestag, from 25 March 2025, the official biography lists him only as a deputy member of the Finance Committee; his full seats are on the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Committee on European Union Affairs.

In the 19th period he was also a deputy member of the third committee of inquiry into the Wirecard collapse. On banking legislation the Christian Social Union group named him, with Sepp Müller, as a rapporteur for the Risikoreduzierungsgesetz, the 2020 bill transposing the EU banking package.

European Union affairs

He has been an ordinary member of the Committee on the Affairs of the European Union since the 20th legislative period and remained one in the 21st. By October 2024 the CSU group described him as its European-policy spokesman in the Bundestag. In a debate on 7 June 2024 he listed the capital market among the files the European Union should advance, and said the governing parties wanted a commissioner “who looks the other way on the Stability and Growth Pact.”

On 23 October 2024, after reports that Germany might breach the reformed pact, he called a breach a “bitter defeat” for Finance Minister Christian Lindner, who had cast himself in Brussels as a hardliner, and said inconsistent application would endanger the EU’s “stability culture.” He likened the risk to 2003, when, he argued, an SPD-led government avoided an EU warning and eased later breaches.

The committee also took up EU-related domestic bills. On 5 July 2023 it considered, in an advisory role, the draft Energieeffizienzgesetz (printed paper 20/6872), drawn up against a proposed revision of the EU Energy Efficiency Directive. The CDU/CSU rapporteur on that item was Ralph Brinkhaus.

Banking, the euro and small business

As a member of the European Parliament from 1999 to 2008 he had been rapporteur for Basel II and for International Financial Reporting Standards. In the Bundestag the same field returned as debate on the banking union, the euro and the burden of regulation on smaller lenders.

On 8 June 2018, on a European deposit-insurance scheme, he said the legal basis had to stay national, that non-performing loans and sovereign exposures had to fall first, and he quoted then Deutsche Bundesbank president Jens Weidmann. He also tied market stability to European Stability Mechanism checks on the Stability and Growth Pact.

At first reading on 8 October 2020 he said post-crisis rules had worked in the pandemic, because buffers could be used flexibly, but that proportionality still had “room at the top.” He asked that relief for promotional and state development banks be written into German law, and that small banks face different requirements from large ones. He questioned letting a bank judge its own supervisory board, and called a €50,000 minimum denomination for retail investors excessive for a small lender such as UmweltBank.

After the Finance Committee approved the bill on 4 November 2020, Radwan described it as the EU banking package, which he attributed to the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision as a response to the financial crisis. Small institutions, he said, did not create systemic risks comparable to those of large firms and needed a lower standard, which his group said it had strengthened. Antje Tillmann, in the same statement, said banks below €5 billion in assets would get lighter disclosure, while large banks would hold loss-absorbing buffers of at least 8 percent of assets so that owners and creditors, not taxpayers, bore losses.

On 26 June 2025 Radwan opened the CDU/CSU case for Bulgaria adopting the euro on 1 January 2026. The Bundestag adopted printed paper 21/567, agreeing with the government on the European Commission proposal to lift Bulgaria’s derogation; the AfD voted against. He said the euro remained attractive and stable enough that further states wanted to join, that the European Central Bank and the Commission had found Bulgaria ready, and that entry was a start, not an end: the Commission should keep enforcing the Stability and Growth Pact.

Foreign affairs and parliamentary diplomacy

Foreign Affairs Committee and CSU roles

In the 21st Bundestag, Alexander Radwan is a full member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and of the Committee on European Union Affairs, and a deputy member of the Finance Committee and of the Subcommittee on Foreign Cultural and Education Policy. The Christian Social Union (CSU) Landesgruppe lists him as its policy spokesperson for foreign affairs. Its chronology records that the Landesgruppe named ten such spokespersons in July 2025 and assigned him foreign affairs, after he had been its European-policy spokesperson in the previous electoral term.

On 10 October 2025 the Münchner Merkur reported that the CDU/CSU group had made him its rapporteur for the Near and Middle East on the Foreign Affairs Committee. He said he would go to Qatar that weekend on a Körber-Stiftung trip at which Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani was expected, and that Germany and Europe were “currently left out” of influence in the region.

Arabic-speaking states of the Middle East

Bundestag parliamentary groups are cross-party bodies without their own rules; members may join at most three, chairs follow the strength of the parliamentary groups, and the practice grew out of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, in which Germany has taken part since 1951. Multilateral groups may invite partners twice in a legislative period and make two trips to a partner region. The group for Arabic-speaking states of the Near and Middle East covers Bahrain, Iraq, Yemen, Jordan, Qatar, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the United Arab Emirates and a working group on Palestine. Radwan chairs the group. The Merkur reported in October 2025 that he had just been elected, that it then had about thirty members from every parliamentary group, and that he took up the post as the son of an Egyptian father, with closer contact to Syria and the Gulf states as the stated aim.

The Bundestag delegation led by Alexander Radwan during talks in the United Arab Emirates in February 2026.

That February he led a delegation to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, announced for 8–15 February and later dated 8–18 February. With him were Lukas Krieger (CDU/CSU), Lamya Kaddor (Alliance 90/The Greens), Mareike Hermeier (The Left) and Maximilian Krah (AfD). Talks covered human rights, climate policy, the economy and energy, and Syria, Iran, Yemen and the Gaza Strip. In Saudi Arabia the group met representatives from Yemen and visited the Gulf Cooperation Council, then invited Gulf ambassadors to Berlin. Radwan said the war with Iran had raised the Gulf’s weight for Germany, and likened the visit to recent trips by Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Economy Minister Katherina Reiche.

Inter-Parliamentary Union and the OSCE

The Inter-Parliamentary Union says it facilitates parliamentary diplomacy. Radwan leads the Bundestag delegation; Rolf Mützenich (SPD) is deputy, with further full members from the CDU/CSU, AfD, Greens and Left. At the 152nd Assembly in Istanbul, 15–19 April 2026, he was scheduled to speak in the general debate on hope, peace and justice for future generations. He later said the meeting had taken up the Persian Gulf war among Iran, Israel and the United States, the Strait of Hormuz and Sudan, and that Germany had met the United Kingdom, Ukraine and Gulf delegations. He also said the chancellor had pledged German help with mine clearance at Hormuz once the fighting stopped.

The 153rd Assembly met in Arusha, Tanzania, from 5 to 9 October 2026, with Radwan due to speak on good governance and on inclusion, trust and opportunity in communities. He said he had raised a detainee in Tanzania after elections marked by confrontation and repression, and had linked the Ukraine war and the break in Hormuz traffic to the risk of famine if Ukrainian grain and Gulf fertilisers could not move. The delegation met Australia, Ukraine, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, and the assembly elected Milton Dick, Speaker of the Australian House of Representatives, as IPU president.

He is a deputy member of the delegation to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, which Tobias Winkler (CDU/CSU) leads. Its autumn meeting, 7–9 October 2026 in Andorra la Vella, Andorra, addressed “New challenges, joint answers: strengthening cooperation in the OSCE area,” including a Mediterranean Forum on the Middle East. The published German delegation under Winkler did not include Radwan, who that week led the IPU delegation in Arusha.

Political positions and controversies

Migration and the AfD firewall

On 5 July 2023, in the Bundestag committee on European Union affairs, Radwan and fellow Christian Social Union member Andreas Scheuer voted for an Alternative for Germany motion to take the Energieeffizienzgesetz off the agenda after the draft was circulated at short notice. Der Spiegel called it the first time CDU/CSU members had voted with the AfD in a Bundestag committee. The Union had itself sought to remove the item. Radwan said he had backed three similar motions and assumed the first, the AfD’s, was the Union’s, because the Union had objected first. Scheuer told Bayerischer Rundfunk the motions had been confused and that “an elephant is being inflated.” Julian Pahlke of Alliance 90/The Greens wrote that this was no mistake: only the AfD motion was voted on, and the Union tabled its own afterwards “as a rescue attempt.” Radwan told the Deutsche Presse-Agentur that his father had immigrated from North Africa more than 60 years earlier and that imputing common cause with the AfD was “unsurpassable in its absurdity.” He called that an attempt to brand coalition critics as right-wing, said he backed the Union ban on cooperation with the AfD, and said he would be the first to resist if the ban were touched.

In March 2024, after reports of mass-deportation plans from a November 2023 meeting in Potsdam attended by AfD politicians, Radwan said his first thought was that the plans were aimed at him too, because they included German citizens. He called the AfD’s conduct “peace-endangering and destructive,” said he wanted firmer federal asylum policy, and said he backed protests against extremism of both right and left.

On 29 January 2025 the Bundestag adopted, by 348 votes to 344 with 10 abstentions, a non-binding CDU/CSU resolution after the killings in Magdeburg and Aschaffenburg. It called for permanent border controls, turning back attempted illegal entries—including asylum claims without valid documents outside European free movement—and faster detention and deportation. Christian Lindner said the Free Democrats would vote yes even if the AfD did too. Chancellor Olaf Scholz said the plans would break European law and that Friedrich Merz was knowingly accepting AfD support. Former chancellor Angela Merkel said it was wrong, “knowingly for the first time,” to enable a majority with AfD votes. Radwan told the Süddeutsche Zeitung he had voted for the motion because he considered it right, and that positions should not depend on who else agreed. The “firewall” toward the AfD, the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht and Die Linke still stood, he said: no cooperation with “ethno-nationalist, pro-Russian, racist, antisemitic and inhumane” parties. Two days later the Union’s Zustrombegrenzungsgesetz failed, 338 votes to 349. He also called migration “extremely urgent”: illegal entrants should be removed, procedures sped up where workers were needed, and integration had been too naive.

Economy, energy and security

In April 2022, about fifty days into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Radwan told a CSU meeting he saw no quick end to the war. That July he said Vladimir Putin was using hunger as a weapon and feared only losing power. After visits to firms, schools and farms he set aside Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Zeitenwende and spoke of Germany “arriving in reality”: security paid for by the United States, cheap goods from China and energy from Russia were over, and a “values-based foreign policy” might isolate Germany commercially. He wanted room for start-ups, less bureaucracy, and a “joint exertion” to preserve prosperity despite labour shortages and shorter hours.

On 18 March 2025, in the last sitting of the 20th Bundestag, Radwan voted for a Basic Law amendment that removed defence and security spending from the debt brake and created a €500 billion fund for additional infrastructure and for climate neutrality by 2045. He said Germany and Europe no longer knew how they could rely on the United States and had to build military capabilities “massively and quickly,” taking “responsibility for peace and freedom” into their own hands, including civil protection, hospital cybersecurity and supplies in a crisis.

Other offices and personal life

Honorary posts

The Bundestag publishes offices members must declare under its rules of conduct. Radwan’s entry, as shown on 27 October 2026, lists three functions in public-law bodies: member of the Kuratorium of the Rosenheim Technical University of Applied Sciences, on which the university’s own list also places him; member of the Kreistag of Miesbach, a local seat the biography dates from 2002 and that is otherwise covered with his party offices; and member of the Sparkassenverband Bayern advisory board on fundamental savings-bank policy in Munich. Of these, only the savings-bank advisory board is shown as paid, at 2,500 euros gross a year.

The same disclosure lists unpaid association and foundation posts: co-opted board member of the Deutsch-Arabische Freundschaftsgesellschaft in Berlin; advisory-board member of the Deutsch-Mosambikanische Gesellschaft; member of the Kuratorium of the Fraunhofer Society’s Institute for Building Physics; board member of the Kangaroo Group in Brussels; chair of the Stiftungsrat of the Pfarrer Walter Waldschütz Foundation in Holzkirchen; managing board member of the Studiengesellschaft für Mittelstandsfragen; member of the Stiftungsrat of the Tegernseer Bürgerstiftung; and member of the presidium of the Wirtschaftsbeirat der Union and chair of its Forum Berlin on international politics. The foundation’s own account names him chair of that Stiftungsrat.

A Christian Social Union curriculum vitae dates the Wirtschaftsbeirat presidium to 2002 and the Berlin forum to 2015, the Mittelstandsgesellschaft to 2004, the Waldschütz chair to 2013, the friendship-society board to 2014, the Mozambican and Tegernsee posts to 2017, and the Fraunhofer Kuratorium to 2020. It also lists five roles that do not appear in the October 2026 disclosure, so that register does not confirm they continue: trustee since 2016 of Young Egyptian Economic Leaders (Global Project Partners); co-opted member since 2016 of the Freundeskreis Krankenhaus Agatharied; individual member since 2016 of the assembly of the Diocesan Council of Catholics of the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising; trustee since 2017 of the Technical University of Berlin Campus El Gouna, linked there to the Sawiris Foundation for Social Development; and, since 2018, member of the administrative board of the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority.

Private life

The Bundestag biography, based on his own information, describes Radwan as Roman Catholic and unmarried. He lives in Rottach-Egern on the Tegernsee. A Süddeutsche Zeitung portrait of 10 September 2021 reported that his mother, then 88, lived in the house, that his father had died a few years earlier, and that the household included a dog, Clara. It also reported a partner, indicated by a ring he had begun to wear, about whom he would say only “Privat ist privat.”

His father was from Egypt and his mother a Bavarian Catholic teacher from Altötting; he has connected that background with a wider view of other societies, alongside the disclosed role in the German-Arab Friendship Society.

A 2013 Münchner Merkur profile, which placed him and his parents in one multi-family house there, described hobby chess, a collection of Asterix albums (a favourite being Asterix in Switzerland), and a Labrador, Klara, then his fourth dog.