Alexander Throm

Alexander Richard Throm (born 8 September 1968 in Heilbronn) is a German lawyer and politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). He has represented constituency 267, Heilbronn, in Baden-Württemberg, in the Bundestag since 2017, and since December 2021 he has been the interior-policy spokesman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group. In the 21st Bundestag he is an ordinary member of the Committee on Internal Affairs and of the Parliamentary Control Committee.

According to his Bundestag biography, he studied law at the University of Mannheim, passed the first state examination in 1993, and finished his legal clerkship at the Heilbronn regional court with the second state examination in 1995. He has practised as a lawyer since 1995 and in 2001 co-founded the Heilbronn firm THSB Throm, Hauser, Strobl, von Berlichingen, from which he continues to receive a profit distribution. The same biography records that he sat on the Heilbronn city council from 1994 until March 2022 and was a member of the Landtag of Baden-Württemberg from 2011 to 2016.

He entered the Bundestag in place of Thomas Strobl, a partner in the same firm, who left the Heilbronn seat to become interior minister of Baden-Württemberg. In the 2017 federal election Throm won the constituency with 64,591 first votes, or 35.3 percent, ahead of Josip Juratovic of the Social Democratic Party on 23.2 percent, at a turnout of 76.6 percent. In 2021 the CDU’s first-vote share there was 27.8 percent (50,299 votes), with the SPD second on 24.3 percent. In 2025 Throm was returned with 67,516 first votes, 35.0 percent, 7.2 percentage points above the 2021 CDU figure, ahead of Jürgen Kögel of the Alternative for Germany on 25.1 percent; turnout was 81.6 percent.

On 23 December 2021, already identified as the CDU/CSU interior spokesman, he told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that federal and state security and justice authorities had to act to avert harm from the impending release of imprisoned terrorists, pointing to the attacks in Vienna and Dresden the year before. A July 2025 profile in the Staatsanzeiger quoted his formula that humanity and order had to be combined, and reported that he had helped shape the migration policy carried out from May 2025 by federal interior minister Alexander Dobrindt. The same account said the Bundestag elected him on 26 June 2025 to the Parliamentary Control Committee, in succession to Roderich Kiesewetter, to oversee the intelligence services.

Early life, education and legal career

Schooling and legal training

Alexander Throm was born on 8 September 1968 in Heilbronn, Baden-Württemberg. In 1988 he passed the Abitur at the Wirtschaftsgymnasium in Heilbronn. A speaker curriculum published for a Berlin congress names that school as the Wirtschaftsgymnasium of the Gustav-von-Schmoller-Schule. The Gustav-von-Schmoller-Schule is a municipal commercial-school centre at Frankfurter Straße 63 in Heilbronn, and its courses include a Wirtschaftsgymnasium, the business track of the vocational Gymnasium.

From October 1988 he studied law at the University of Mannheim and passed the first state examination in 1993. He then completed the Referendariat, the practical legal traineeship that in Germany follows the first state examination, at the Landgericht Heilbronn, and passed the second state examination in 1995. The congress curriculum dates that traineeship from April 1993 to April 1995 and his admission as a Rechtsanwalt to July 1995. The Bundestag lists his profession as Rechtsanwalt in Heilbronn.

Law firm and specialist practice

In September 2001 Throm founded a law firm in Heilbronn under the name THSB – Throm, Hauser, Strobl, von Berlichingen. On 19 March 2021 the practice was entered in the partnership register at the Amtsgericht Stuttgart as Throm, Hauser, Strobl, von Berlichingen Rechtsanwälte Partnerschaftsgesellschaft mbB, number PR 721037. The entry gives the seat as Ferdinand-Braun-Straße 26, 74074 Heilbronn, states the object as the joint practice of law, and provides that each partner may represent the firm alone. Throm appears in that register under the name Alexander Richard Throm, together with Thomas Strobl and Götz Wolf Dittrich Harry von Berlichingen among the named partners.

The Deutsche Anwaltauskunft, the lawyer search of the German Bar Association (Deutscher Anwaltverein), lists further lawyers at the firm, including Dietrich Hauser, Rosel Götz-Hermann and Benjamin Trick, as well as Strobl and von Berlichingen. The same entry describes Throm as a Fachanwalt für Arbeitsrecht and a Fachanwalt für Bau- und Architektenrecht, with listed fields of employment law, architects’ law, construction law, and commercial and company law. It also records English as a professional language and membership of the association’s working group on construction and real-estate law. His congress curriculum dates the construction-and-architects title to October 2005 and the employment-law title to July 2007.

Those designations are specialist titles that a regional Rechtsanwaltskammer may authorize under the Fachanwaltsordnung of the Bundesrechtsanwaltskammer. The ordinance requires particular theoretical knowledge, usually shown by a specialist course and written tests, and a prescribed amount of casework handled personally and independently; a lawyer may hold at most three such titles and must complete annual continuing education while using one. The partnership’s own site presents employment law and construction and real-estate law among the matters handled from the Heilbronn office for private clients, trades and mid-sized businesses.

Local politics in Heilbronn

City council and deputy mayor

Alexander Throm's municipal career in Heilbronn began in the youth organisation of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU). He joined the Junge Union in 1984 and the CDU in 1986. In 1994 he entered the city council, the Gemeinderat, as the youngest councillor the local CDU had yet had. He became deputy chair of the CDU council group in 1996, its first deputy chair in 1999, and its chair from 2003 until 2018, with the Bundestag biography dating the end of that chairmanship to March 2018.

From 2004 to 2019 the same biography, which the Bundestag compiles from members' own disclosures, lists him as first deputy of the Oberbürgermeister elected from the council. That post is not one of the city's full-time deputies. Heilbronn's charter provides for three professional Beigeordnete as the principal stand-ins for the Oberbürgermeister, the first styled Erster Bürgermeister and the other two Bürgermeister, and separately for two deputies whom the council chooses from its own members. Those council deputies act only if the Oberbürgermeister and all the Beigeordnete are unable to do so.

He kept the council seat after entering the Landtag of Baden-Württemberg in 2011 and the Bundestag in 2017. Near the end of his municipal service he still sat on the administrative committee and on the administrative board of the Kreissparkasse Heilbronn. On 11 April 2022 Oberbürgermeister Harry Mergel formally took leave of him after 27 years as a CDU councillor. Throm had asked to be released from the honorary mandate because of new federal duties. Mergel associated his council years with the Bundesgartenschau, the Stadtbahn, and municipal support for children, young people and families, including the fee-free kindergarten. Uwe Mettendorf took the seat, and Mergel presented Throm with a Kiliansmännle made by the artist Heinrich Brummack. The parliamentary biography dates the council mandate from 1994 to March 2022.

Party offices in the city and district

From 2006 to 2018 Throm chaired the CDU Stadtverband Heilbronn, the party organisation in the city. At its annual meeting on 5 February 2018 the association, which described itself as having about 500 members, elected Verena Schmidt, a 40-year-old commercial employee from Heilbronn-Biberach, as his successor with 75 of 77 votes, one against and one abstention; she was the third woman in the post, after the former state secretary Johanna Lichy and the former councillor Helga Drauz. Throm, then 49, told the meeting that a change of government in Stuttgart, what he called a failed renewal of the CDU, and the loss of the direct mandate at a Landtag election had made the nearly twelve years difficult, and said the association had stood together when it mattered.

The CDU Kreisverband draws its members from both the city and the Landkreis Heilbronn. On 20 October 2017 the Heilbronner Stimme reported that Bernhard Lasotta would no longer stand for the CDU chairmanship. On 25 November 2017 the paper reported that Throm was leading the district association. He was confirmed on 30 November 2019 at a district conference in the Seetalhalle in Bad Friedrichshall, where 132 voting members were present and he received 111 votes, 90.24 percent of the valid ballots. The Bundestag biography continues to list him as chair of the CDU Kreisverband Heilbronn, an office it dates from 2017.

Baden-Württemberg state parliament

Election and committee work

At the Baden-Württemberg Landtag election of 27 March 2011, Alexander Throm of the Christian Democratic Union won the direct mandate in constituency 18, Heilbronn. Under the delimitation published by the state statistical office, the constituency comprises the urban district of Heilbronn and the municipalities of Flein, Leingarten, Nordheim and Talheim. He received 22,854 votes, 37.0 percent of 61,797 valid votes, on a turnout of 62.3 percent among 100,619 eligible voters; the Social Democratic Party of Germany took 26.4 percent and Alliance 90/The Greens 21.5 percent. The statistical office recorded him as the CDU member elected, and he sat in the 15th Landtag of Baden-Württemberg in Stuttgart until 2016.

On 13 March 2016 the CDU vote there fell to 14,954, or 22.7 percent of 65,958 valid votes, and Susanne Bay of the Greens won the direct seat with 17,874 votes (27.1 percent). Turnout was 66.2 percent (66,732 of 100,841 eligible). Second mandates from the constituency went to Rainer Hinderer of the SPD (9,875 votes, 15.0 percent), Nico Weinmann of the Free Democratic Party (6,732 votes, 10.2 percent) and Rainer Podeswa of the Alternative for Germany (12,036 votes, 18.2 percent). Throm was not among those returned; the Bundestag biography dates his Landtag membership to 2011–2016.

The Landtag’s June 2011 committee list (Drucksache 15/2) named him a full member of the Interior Committee, chaired by Heiler (SPD), and of the Committee on Europe and International Affairs, chaired by Hofelich (SPD). His Bundestag biography, based on his own information, records the same memberships.

EnBW inquiry committee

On 6 December 2010, under Minister-President Stefan Mappus (CDU), the wholly state-owned Neckarpri GmbH bought the 45.01 percent stake in EnBW held by Électricité de France International, at €41.50 a share, or €4,669,479,113.50 for 112,517,569 shares. The contract included a directly enforceable state guarantee for Neckarpri’s liabilities, and the Landtag was not consulted first. Finance Minister Willi Stächele approved the unbudgeted commitment under the emergency power in Article 81 of the state constitution. The government said EDF had refused a parliamentary reservation, that secrecy was required, and that speed was needed to limit speculation and keep EnBW a Baden-Württemberg company.

On 6 October 2011 the Staatsgerichtshof upheld applications by the Green and SPD groups in case GR 2/11. It held that the finance minister and the government had violated the Landtag’s budget right under Article 79, and that Article 81 applies only where there is great urgency, which had not been shown. Market movements, secrecy and conditions set by the other party did not, the court said, let the government take budget measures reserved to parliament. On 15 December 2010 the Landtag had passed a supplementary budget retrospectively authorizing guarantees for Neckarpri of up to €5.9 billion.

On a motion of the Greens and the SPD, the Landtag set up an investigative committee on 14 December 2011 into the Neckarpri purchase and its consequences. Constituted on 21 December 2011, the 15-member committee sat 30 times and finished on 4 June 2014, having heard 51 witnesses and eight experts, including Mappus, Dirk Notheis, Gleiss Lutz lawyer Martin Schockenhoff and former EnBW chief executive Hans-Peter Villis. The plenary debated the report of about 1,500 pages on 26 June 2014; the factions’ assessments differed, and the CDU and the FDP/DVP each filed a minority opinion.

On 19 February 2013 CDU Obmann Volker Schebesta resigned, saying reports of his contacts with Mappus were harming the CDU members’ work; he denied having questioned witnesses at Mappus’s request. Chairman Ulrich Müller (CDU) also left after acknowledging that he had passed committee documents to Mappus. The CDU proposed Throm, a lawyer already on the committee, as its new Obmann, and Klaus Herrmann as chairman. Herrmann chaired the committee to the end of its work, and the Bundestag biography lists Throm as the CDU’s Obmann.

In the 26 June 2014 debate Throm, for the CDU, said the repurchase should not have been carried out as it was: 13 days was too short for an orderly public-sector procedure, and bypassing the Landtag was unconstitutional not only because the court had said so. He accused Gleiss Lutz of lowering its test from whether the emergency route was lawful to whether it was merely arguable, and said the price could not finally be settled. Hans-Ulrich Sckerl, for the Greens, called the deal an abuse of power and the price of about €4.7 billion clearly excessive and damaging to taxpayers, and said the then CDU and FDP/DVP groups had failed to control their own government.

Bundestag elections in Heilbronn

The constituency and the 2017 and 2021 elections

Constituency 267 Heilbronn is a Bundestag constituency in northern Baden-Württemberg. For the 2025 election it comprised the independent city of Heilbronn and 31 municipalities of Landkreis Heilbronn, among them Neckarsulm, Eppingen, Bad Rappenau, Möckmühl and Weinsberg; the district's other municipalities belong to constituency 266, Neckar-Zaber.

The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) had held the seat for a long period: before the 2021 election, SWR described the party as having provided the directly elected member since 1976. Thomas Strobl had sat for the CDU since 1998 and held constituency 267 by direct mandate. He left at the end of 3 June 2016, after becoming Baden-Württemberg's interior minister; Iris Ripsam filled the seat for the rest of that term. On 19 November 2016 the Heilbronn CDU nominated Alexander Throm, then 48, with 370 of 711 votes (52 percent). Local reporting presented him as Strobl's successor in the constituency and named Josip Juratovic as the Social Democratic Party (SPD) candidate.

In 2017 the CDU won with 64,591 first votes, 35.3 percent, 16.1 percentage points below its 2013 share. The SPD was second with 42,455 votes (23.2 percent) and the Alternative for Germany (AfD) third with 28,575 (15.6 percent); the Free Democratic Party (FDP) took 9.6 percent and Alliance 90/The Greens 8.1 percent. Turnout was 76.6 percent of 242,553 eligible voters. Second votes put the CDU on 32.1 percent, the SPD on 17.7 percent and the AfD on 16.4 percent. The biography for the 19th electoral term records him as directly elected for constituency 267, and the new Bundestag met on 24 October 2017.

His lead narrowed in 2021. The Federal Returning Officer's final figures gave the CDU 50,299 first votes, 27.8 percent, down 7.5 points, and the SPD 43,887 votes, 24.3 percent. SWR reported that the direct mandate went to Throm, and its constituency preview named Juratovic for the SPD, Michael Georg Link for the FDP and Franziska Gminder for the AfD. The FDP took 13.7 percent of first votes, the AfD 12.8 percent and the Greens 12.7 percent. Turnout was 75.9 percent of 240,951 eligible voters. Second votes put the CDU on 23.9 percent, the SPD on 22.6 percent, the FDP on 16.2 percent, the AfD on 13.2 percent and the Greens on 13.0 percent. The archived biography for the 20th term again lists the mandate as directly elected in constituency 267.

The 2025 election

The vote on 23 February 2025 was the first under the Federal Elections Act as amended on 17 March 2023, which caps the Bundestag at 630 seats allocated by second votes. A party candidate who leads a constituency is seated only if the seat is covered by that party's second-vote entitlement in the Land (Zweitstimmendeckung); otherwise the constituencies with the lowest first-vote shares stay vacant, and there is no longer a direct mandate in the pre-2023 sense. On 30 July 2024 the Federal Constitutional Court upheld that coverage rule. It found the five-percent threshold, as then drafted, incompatible with the Basic Law, but left it in force so that a party under five percent is excluded only if its candidates also failed to finish first in at least three constituencies.

On 20 February 2025 SWR reported that even a first-place finish in Heilbronn might leave Throm without a seat. In the final constituency result he is listed as Alexander Richard Throm (CDU), with 67,516 first votes, 35.0 percent, up 7.2 points. Jürgen Kögel of the AfD was runner-up on 25.1 percent, or 48,360 votes, up 12.3 points. The SPD fell to 15.5 percent, the Greens to 8.6 percent, Die Linke rose to 6.0 percent and the FDP fell to 5.1 percent. Turnout was 81.6 percent of 238,592 eligible voters, 5.7 points above 2021. Second votes gave the CDU 29.4 percent and the AfD 25.5 percent.

SWR reported that the 35.0 percent win was clear, but that before midnight it still appeared Throm would be a constituency winner without a mandate, and that he secured what the broadcaster called the CDU's last direct mandate in Baden-Württemberg only after the count showed the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) had missed the five-percent threshold. Nationally the BSW took 4.981 percent of second votes and did not enter the 21st Bundestag. The official list of those elected records Throm as returned for constituency 267 with 35.0 percent. SWR also reported that Kögel entered on the AfD state list, and that the wider Heilbronn-Franken region would send seven members to Berlin rather than eleven.

Roles in the Bundestag

Interior committee and group spokesman

Alexander Throm has been a member of the Bundestag since 24 October 2017, when the 19th electoral term opened, and has sat through the 19th, 20th and 21st terms as the directly elected member for constituency 267, Heilbronn. He sits for the Christian Democratic Union in the CDU/CSU parliamentary group.

In the 19th Bundestag the archived biography lists him as an ordinary member of the Committee on Internal Affairs and Homeland (Ausschuss für Inneres und Heimat) and of the Committee for the Scrutiny of Elections, Immunity and the Rules of Procedure. He was a deputy member of the committees on building, housing, urban development and municipalities; on legal affairs and consumer protection; and on economic cooperation and development. The same record names him as the CDU/CSU Obmann, the group’s lead member, on the interior committee. On 28 October 2020 his Bundestag office stated that the CDU/CSU deputies had elected him to that post in succession to Armin Schuster, who was leaving to become president of the Federal Office of Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance.

The Bundestag describes that committee’s remit as running from immigration and asylum policy to civil protection and disaster relief, and gives its current strength as 42 members. The committee scrutinises the Federal Ministry of the Interior and the federal authorities under it, prepares major bills before the plenary votes on them, and holds expert hearings.

For the 20th term, 2021–2025, the archived biography records only one ordinary committee seat, again on internal affairs, and states that from December 2021 he was the CDU/CSU group’s spokesman on interior policy. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung used that title on 23 December 2021 when it quoted him on Union calls for plans covering the release of imprisoned terrorists.

The biography published for the 21st term still describes him as interior-policy spokesman since December 2021 and lists an ordinary seat on the interior committee. The CDU/CSU group’s profile pairs the spokesman role with the chair of its interior working group, and also places him in the group’s local-government association, its circle for expellees, resettlers and German minorities, and its parliamentary circle for small and medium-sized business.

Investigative and oversight bodies

In the 19th term Throm also served on the Bundestag’s first committee of inquiry, appointed under Article 44 of the Basic Law. On 1 March 2018 the Bundestag unanimously set up the committee to investigate the attack of 19 December 2016 on a Christmas market at Breitscheidplatz in Berlin, in which twelve people were killed and at least 65 were injured. Its task was to build an overall picture of the attack and of how the responsible authorities had acted, and to recommend changes in the work of those authorities and in support for the bereaved and the injured.

The committee’s own report lists Throm as an ordinary CDU/CSU member from 25 September 2019, the date on which Armin Schuster both resigned the chair and left the committee. The report, Drucksache 19/30800, is dated 21 June 2021 and runs to 1,873 pages; that day the chair, Klaus-Dieter Gröhler, handed it to Bundestag President Wolfgang Schäuble. On 24 June 2021 the plenary debated the report, and Throm spoke for the CDU/CSU, addressing victims and relatives present in the chamber. The house then adopted unanimously the recommendation that the report be taken note of.

In the 21st term he entered the Parliamentary Control Committee (Parlamentarisches Kontrollgremium). A motion by the CDU/CSU and SPD of 24 June 2025, invoking Article 45d of the Basic Law, proposed a panel of nine members to control the intelligence activity of the Federation. The groups’ slate of 25 June named Throm as one of three CDU/CSU candidates. At the sitting of 26 June 2025, with 630 members of the House and a required majority of 316, he received 477 votes in favour, 53 against and 44 abstentions, with 13 invalid ballots among 587 cast, and was declared elected with five other candidates; the nominees of the AfD and of Die Linke did not reach the majority. The panel constituted itself the same day, with Marc Henrichmann as chair and Konstantin von Notz as deputy. It oversees the Federal Intelligence Service (Bundesnachrichtendienst), the Military Counterintelligence Service (Militärischer Abschirmdienst) and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz). Under the statute governing the panel, the federal government must inform it comprehensively about the services’ general activity and about matters of particular importance, and the panel may require reports on further matters. The current Bundestag biography lists Throm as an ordinary member.

Migration and asylum policy

Borders, asylum procedure and returns

Alexander Throm, interior-policy spokesman of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Christian Social Union (CSU) in the Bundestag, argued for less irregular migration to Germany, faster decisions and more returns, against the traffic-light coalition and later under Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

After the August 2024 attack in Solingen, talks between Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the Union failed. Interior minister Nancy Faeser (Social Democratic Party) offered faster Dublin transfers, with detention, where another European Union state was responsible; the Union said that was not wider rejection, and the coalition went on alone. Throm expected a "Dominoeffekt" if other states stopped people travelling on to Germany. Poland and Austria objected; Austrian minister Gerhard Karner refused returns of people turned away in Germany. Throm told Die Welt the cuts should cover everyone obliged to leave, including the merely tolerated, leaving "nur noch ein Überbrückungsgeld" aside from health cases.

On 7 May 2025, hours into office, Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt (CSU) intensified checks and allowed the Federal Police to turn back asylum seekers other than pregnant women, children and other vulnerable people. On 2 June the Berlin administrative court, in an unappealable interim ruling, held unlawful the same-day return to Poland of three Somalis stopped at Frankfurt (Oder): the Dublin procedure was required, and neither a danger to public order nor Article 72 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union had been shown. Throm said the rulings lacked "allgemeine Wirkung" and that "Die Zurückweisungen müssen fortgesetzt werden."

In February 2023 he asked Faeser to restart removals of offenders and Islamist Gefährder to Afghanistan. He wrote that Turkey was already flying Afghans home and that Kabul airport was open, called the Taliban "ein schwieriger Ansprechpartner", and said inaction would accept "weitere Gefahren für die hiesige Bevölkerung." Removals had been suspended since the Taliban takeover in August 2021. After Bashar al-Assad fell, the coalition agreed returns to Syria starting with offenders and suspects; the first such deportation since 2011 was on 23 December 2025. In March 2026 Throm called returns "notwendig und richtig" and said Syria must take its citizens back if it wanted reconstruction aid.

In April 2023 the CDU/CSU sought a standing test for safe countries of origin, citing a 2019 law on Georgia, Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia that had failed in the Bundesrat. Before the December 2022 Chancen-Aufenthaltsrecht vote he told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung the labour market was already "weit offen" and the bill would reward hidden identities: "Wir müssen schon aus eigenen Interessen wissen, wer sich hier aufhält." He rejected the Spurwechsel for rejected asylum seekers in work as a signal to come "egal ob mit oder ohne Schutzanspruch". On 12 April 2024 parliament authorised a payment card (Bezahlkarte) limiting cash benefits and foreign transfers; the CDU/CSU voted no, Detlef Seif and Kai Whittaker objecting to the missing €50 cash cap and lack of priority for the card.

On 27 June 2025 parliament suspended, for two years, family reunification for subsidiary protection, by 444 votes to 135. A quota of 1,000 relatives a month, covering about 380,000 people, mostly Syrians, was replaced by hardship cases only; Refugee Convention status was untouched. Throm said there was no legal entitlement, that section 22 of the Residence Act already covered hardship and had been upheld in court, and that reunification was "ein erheblicher Pullfaktor" for people "die ursprünglich illegal nach Deutschland gekommen sind".

European asylum reform

In August 2023 he called the EU asylum deal then being negotiated "ein kleiner Schritt in die richtige Richtung" but "nicht die große Lösung": border procedures and capacity were too small, and reluctant states would pay rather than take people. Without "ein gewisses Mindestmaß an Solidarität", he said, Germany needed national measures; he accused the government of adding incentives, including a worldwide Western Balkans work route, instead of using visas and aid as leverage.

The Council adopted the Pact on Migration and Asylum on 14 May 2024; the main rules applied from 12 June 2026. In August 2026 Throm said that if Italy kept refusing take-backs it would "sprengen" the new system, only weeks old, forcing Germany to intensify controls and risking a chain reaction. Spiegel, citing Matteo Villa, said Rome had taken back 15 people since 2023 against nearly 35,000 German requests, and listed Spain and Greece among states that had let travellers move on.

Debate and criticism

Greens group leader Britta Hasselmann called the turn-backs a "rechtlich höchst zweifelhaften nationalen Alleingang", ordered "allen Bedenken und Einwänden zum Trotz". SPD interior politician Lars Castellucci said the ministry had neither coordinated with partners nor found a legally secure route. After Pro Asyl supported the Somalis, Throm said it had "eine Grenze überschritten"; co-director Karl Kopp spoke of a campaign of "verleumderischen Falschbehauptungen" and said the group defended asylum seekers' dignity.

Clara Bünger (Die Linke) called the law "grausame Symbolpolitik", and Marcel Emmerich (Alliance 90/The Greens) "unbarmherzig". SPD speakers described an unwanted two-year compromise that kept hardship cases; the Alternative for Germany backed the bill and said the coalition had copied it, while Dobrindt said the government did not stand for radicalisation. Bishop Christian Stäblein, Protestant refugee commissioner, told Der Tagesspiegel that long separation contradicted charity. In September 2026 researcher David Schiefer called it "absurd" as a curb on illegal migration, the old cap having been 12,000 a year. Throm called a decade of reception "eine übergroße humanitäre Leistung" that had to be scaled back; Tagesschau reported Union talk of going past summer 2027.

At a June 2025 meeting of the Evangelical Church in Germany, Diakonie, Caritas and Pro Asyl, Throm said aid groups were "ein wichtiger, aber nicht alleiniger Teil der Zivilgesellschaft", while polls showed the majority "ganz anderer Meinung". He said the CDU had "Positionen nachgeschärft" since Angela Merkel rejected turn-backs in 2015 over EU rules, and called free counsel in deportation detention "eine der Übertreibungen der Ampel". Polat and Bünger opposed ending that aid, and also the freeze and the rejections.

Internal security and criminal justice

Surveillance and police powers

Court rulings frame the data-retention line of Alexander Throm and the CDU/CSU Bundestag group. On 2 March 2010 the First Senate of the Federal Constitutional Court held that the 2007 traffic-data storage duty breached Article 10 of the Basic Law for lack of security, limits on use, transparency and remedies. On 20 September 2022 the European Court of Justice again barred general retention of traffic and location data, while leaving room for IP-address retention and for freezing data after a specific serious offence. In February 2023 the Constitutional Court said those rules could no longer be applied; the Federal Administrative Court agreed in August 2023.

On 5 December 2024 the Bundestag debated a CDU/CSU bill (printed paper 20/13366) for three-month retention of IP addresses and port numbers, and for restoring cell-site queries; Union speakers called quick-freeze an "Etikettenschwindel." Green MP Limburg recalled the 2010 judgment and said retention would hit every citizen; the FDP wanted a judicial freeze only in a concrete case, and the AfD opposed blanket storage. The 2025 CDU/CSU–SPD agreement then promised that three-month IP and port duty. After Justice Minister Stefanie Hubig accepted it, the Chaos Computer Club called it suspicionless mass surveillance; spokesman Linus Neumann said it undermined trust in digital infrastructure.

In December 2023 Throm said planned control receipts for Federal Police checks would put officers under a general suspicion, and that the government lagged on technology; he called for automatic facial recognition. That draft also provided an anonymous number on uniforms. On his own site he rejects that duty and the receipts, says the federal police commissioner should be abolished, and calls for Tasers, body-worn cameras including inside homes, tougher penalties, and wider ankle monitoring of men who use violence against women. When Uli Grötsch was elected commissioner on 14 March 2024, Throm called the post mistrust of the police and cited the delayed arrest of former Red Army Faction member Daniela Klette.

On 10 July 2026 the Bundestag passed a new Federal Police Act with CDU/CSU and SPD votes; the Greens and the Left voted no and the AfD abstained. It allows real-time facial recognition in a special danger, such as an urgent threat to life, and the use and disabling of drones. Throm said stations "must not be places of fear." Irene Mihalic of the Greens cited legal doubts about biometric real-time surveillance; Clara Bünger of the Left said area-wide surveillance would become normal. The Chaos Computer Club and 13 other groups demanded withdrawal of bills for matching faces in internet photos; spokesman Matthias Marx called that permanent mass surveillance.

Extremism, terrorism and organized crime

On 30 June 2026 Throm said powers of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the Federal Intelligence Service would be rewritten that year, "the largest security offensive in Germany's recent history." He said left-wing extremism, right-wing extremism and Islamism were increasing and remained "latently high," and that the services had been "reined in too tightly." The same report put 2025 politically motivated offences at about 86,000, up two percent, most violent ones attributed to suspected right-wing extremists. After a killing in Stade he said absolute security was impossible and the motives were still unclear.

The cabinet adopted the draft on 12 August 2026. In a defined "special threat" the domestic service could divert cyberattacks, disrupt weapons supply chains and plant misleading information; both services would gain AI analysis and online searches—covert access to a phone and its stored data—and the domestic service could enter homes to install spyware. Targeted killing is excluded, and prior control would sit with an Independent Control Council rather than the ordinary courts used for police online searches. At the hearing, Mainz lawyer Matthias Bäcker called a provision "so obviously unconstitutional" because secret operational interference was police work. Franziska Görlitz of the Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte said parts were unconstitutional and that the line between watching services and intervening police was being torn down. The Federal Data Protection Commissioner warned of "considerable surveillance pressure."

On 23 December 2021 the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported that many convicted terrorists faced release the next year and that the CDU/CSU wanted a nationwide count and uniform release plans. After a July 2026 attack beside Berlin's Christopher Street Day, Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt proposed ankle monitors as the standard for Gefährder and preventive detention; Green justice senator Anna Gallina said the crime should be examined first.

After Die Linke won the 20 September 2026 election to the Berlin House of Representatives, Throm told Welt TV on 23 September that the Berlin party had "obviously very, very close links" with organized crime and was a "veritable security risk" for the city and perhaps the country—his allegation, not a court finding. He called police cuts and abolition of the domestic intelligence service dangerous, and said "almost unrestrained migration," with antisemitism and hostility to Israel, for which he called the party "virtually an activist," formed a "melange." If it supplied the governing mayor, he said, agencies should reconsider sharing sensitive data with Berlin. Lead candidate Elif Eralp and federal chair Ines Schwerdtner had said they stood for the protection of Jewish life.

Other public roles and positions

Civil protection

On 14 December 2023 Alexander Throm, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) member of the Bundestag for Heilbronn, was elected in Stuttgart president of the THW-Landesvereinigung Baden-Württemberg e.V. The association lists him as president, with Christian Leuchter and Harald Schwertle as vice-presidents.

The post is not the presidency of the federal Technisches Hilfswerk. Founded in Stuttgart on 7 March 1987 and led by a president since mid-2006, the Landesvereinigung says it represents local helper and support associations, about 11,000 volunteers and 93 local branches, comments on rules affecting emergency response, and belongs to the THW-Bundesvereinigung and the board of trustees of the Stiftung THW. It describes the Technisches Hilfswerk as a federal agency under the Federal Ministry of the Interior and more than 99 percent volunteer, and states that its own purposes are charitable support for civil and disaster protection and for youth work in that agency. Since July 2023 the agency's president has been Sabine Lackner.

A welcome signed by Throm says the association's concern is those volunteers, including at serious road accidents, storms, environmental disasters and in housing refugees.

Corporate and civic offices

The 2019 annual report of Südwestdeutsche Salzwerke AG records Throm as a supervisory-board member until 21 August 2019, identified as a Heilbronn city councillor, a self-employed lawyer and a member of the Bundestag, at a company in which the city and the state of Baden-Württemberg each held, at least indirectly, 49.0 percent of the share capital. The report shows 10,000 euros in fixed pay for his partial year, with no committee or attendance fees, states that he had declared the pay would be passed on under the City of Heilbronn's rules, and notes that he was excused from both board meetings during that tenure. The same report lists a further supervisory-board seat, at Bundesgartenschau Heilbronn 2019 GmbH, until 31 July 2019. Disclosures published for the Bundestag's 19th electoral term date both the Salzwerke mandate and the Bundesgartenschau mandate to the end of September 2019.

He also sat on the administrative board of Kreissparkasse Heilbronn, which its 2022 report describes as a public-law institution under the Baden-Württemberg Sparkassen Act, sponsored by the district of Heilbronn and several municipalities including the city. The report lists "Alexander Throm, MdB, Rechtsanwalt, Heilbronn" and states that the membership ended on 31 March 2022.

Separately from those seats, the Heilbronner Stimme reported on 18 December 2018 that Throm had criticised an agreement among member states of the European Union, the European Parliament and the European Commission on carbon-dioxide limits for new cars. Under the agreement, fleet-average emissions were to be 37.5 percent lower than in 2021, above a Commission proposal of 30 percent that the federal government had initially also supported for cars and vans. He said such decisions endangered Germany as a car-making location and jobs in a region whose economy depended on them, and that he had no understanding for what he called an excessive EU demand.

Personal life and financial disclosures

Family

Alexander Richard Throm was born on 8 September 1968 in Heilbronn. The biography published by the German Bundestag, which states that personal particulars rest on members' own information, records that he is Protestant, married and has two children. It does not name his spouse or his children and gives no private address. The Federal Returning Officer's roll of those elected in 2025 lists him as Alexander Richard Throm, born in 1968, of the Christian Democratic Union, for constituency 267. The Bundestag gives his occupation as Rechtsanwalt (lawyer), with the practice in Heilbronn.

Outside income and shareholdings

Under the code of conduct in section 45 of the Members of the Bundestag Act (Abgeordnetengesetz), a member must notify the President of the Bundestag of paid work alongside the mandate and of holdings above 5 percent in capital or partnership companies, other than a partnership used only for private letting. Notice is due within three months of taking the seat and within three months of any later change. Income above 1,000 euros in a month, or otherwise above 3,000 euros in a calendar year, is published on the Bundestag website; where the receipts are turnover, profit before tax is shown instead, and a client covered by professional secrecy is identified by sector rather than by name.

For the 21st electoral term the published entry is a monthly profit distribution of 1,000 euros from THSB Throm Hauser Strobl von Berlichingen Rechtsanwälte PartGmbB in Heilbronn, described as his work as a lawyer. Clients appear only by number and branch: mould-making (client 3), an energy-supply company (client 5), timber construction (client 28) and a private individual (client 67) for 2025 and 2026; a district craft association (Kreishandwerkerschaft, client 18) and housing construction (client 33) for 2026; and window and facade construction (client 65) for 2025. Abgeordnetenwatch carries the same distribution, recorded on 30 June 2025, and the same client list, last changed on 9 October 2026.

The filing also records shareholdings in HMI Forderungs Treuhand GmbH, Heilbronn, and in the THSB partnership. No separate sum is given for the partnership; readers are referred to the profit distribution already published as outside income, and no income figure is stated for the HMI holding.

In the 20th electoral term the same firm was disclosed at 3,000 euros a month until 31 July 2024 and at 1,000 euros a month from 1 August 2024. In the 19th term, when such income was still published in numbered bands rather than exact euro amounts, the monthly profit appeared as Stufe 2 and, from August 2021, as Stufe 1, with residual profits for 2019 in Stufe 6 (the 2018 residual), for 2020 in Stufe 5 (the 2019 residual) and for 2021 in Stufe 6 (the 2020 residual). That filing also showed a shareholding in T.E.A.M. tomara GmbH, Heilbronn, until 18 March 2021.