# Andrea Lindholz

# Andrea Lindholz

Andrea Lindholz (born 25 September 1970 in Bonn) is a German lawyer and a politician of the [Christian Social Union in Bavaria](/organizations/christian-social-union-in-bavaria) (CSU). She has sat in the Bundestag since 2013 for the constituency of Aschaffenburg in Bavaria. On 25 March 2025, at the constitutive sitting of the 21st Bundestag, she was elected one of its vice presidents.

She passed the Abitur in 1991, studied law at Goethe University Frankfurt from 1991 to 1994 and at the University of Würzburg from 1994 to 1995, and took the first state examination in 1995. A legal traineeship at the Aschaffenburg regional court and the Würzburg administrative court followed, and she passed the second state examination in 1999. Since 2000 she has practised as a self-employed lawyer in Aschaffenburg, and since 2007 she has been a certified specialist in family law. The Bundestag’s biography lists her as Roman Catholic, married, and the parent of one child.

Lindholz joined the CSU and its women’s organisation in 1998. From 2002 she was a municipal councillor in Goldbach and a councillor of the rural district of Aschaffenburg, and from 2008 to 2014 she was deputy district administrator. She won the Aschaffenburg direct mandate for the first time in 2013.

In the 19th Bundestag the Committee on Internal Affairs constituted itself on 31 January 2018 with Lindholz as chair of the 45-member body. The parliament’s account of her work names internal security, civil and disaster protection, asylum policy, data protection and the intelligence services; she was a member of the Parliamentary Oversight Panel and chaired the scrutiny body under Article 13(6) of the Basic Law, which reviews acoustic surveillance of the home. On 13 December 2021 the CDU/CSU parliamentary group elected her a deputy chair responsible for legal and interior policy, expellees, resettlers and German minorities. At the federal election of 23 February 2025 she was returned with 67,597 first votes, 43.8 percent, ahead of Joachim Josef Rausch of [the Alternative](/organizations/the-alternative) for Germany (AfD) on 18.4 percent, with turnout in the constituency at 85.7 percent. In the secret ballot for vice president she received 425 votes in favour, 132 against and 53 abstentions; [Josephine Ortleb](/people/josephine-ortleb), Omid Nouripour and Bodo Ramelow were elected alongside her, under President [Julia Klöckner](/people/julia-klockner).

After a knife attack in Aschaffenburg in January 2025, Lindholz, described by Deutschlandfunk as the CDU/CSU group’s interior spokesperson, said that migration in recent years had overwhelmed the authorities and argued that violent offenders with mental illness should receive more attention, including in light of the attack in Magdeburg.

## Early life, education and legal career

### Childhood and schooling

Andrea Lindholz was born on 25 September 1970 in Bonn and is Roman Catholic. The Munzinger biographical archive gives her birth name as Andrea Milnik and describes her as the eldest of four siblings. Citing an interview she gave to *[Die Welt](/organizations/die-welt)* on 18 May 2021, it also records her own statement that she was "strictly brought up," and states that the family moved to Aschaffenburg while she was a child. A 2022 profile in *Das Parlament*, the newspaper published by the Bundestag, calls her the daughter of Rhinelanders and writes that the move followed her father's appointment to a post as a doctor in Aschaffenburg, in Lower Franconia, Bavaria; from then on, the profile says, she was Bavarian. A Bundestag portrait of July 2014, based on her own account, identifies that father as a general practitioner who also served on a municipal council.

In 1991 she passed the Abitur, the qualification for university entrance, at the Hanns-Seidel-Gymnasium in Hösbach, in the district of Aschaffenburg. The 2022 *Das Parlament* profile reports that service as a student spokesperson (*Schülersprecherin*) and as treasurer of a riding club had accompanied her through her youth. The same profile says she was politically interested early. As a schoolgirl she campaigned for aerosol sprays free of chlorofluorocarbons and looked at [the Greens](/organizations/the-greens), but found them "too one-sided." The Free Democratic Party, she said, was out of the question, because "its one-sided economic way of looking at things is too much the focus." The 2014 Bundestag portrait records a related but distinct recollection: environmental protection and the financial equality of women had particularly appealed to her, and for a short time she was a member of Greenpeace.

### University and state examinations

After leaving school she studied law, from 1991 to 1994 at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main and from 1994 to 1995 at the Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg. She passed the first state examination in law (*Erstes juristisches Staatsexamen*) in 1995. She then completed the *Referendariat*, the practical stage of German legal training, at the Landgericht Aschaffenburg, the regional court, and at the Verwaltungsgericht Würzburg, the administrative court. In 1999 she passed the second state examination (*Zweites juristisches Staatsexamen*). The Bundestag biographies that carry these dates note that members supply the underlying personal data themselves. The 2014 portrait adds that she took the second examination while she had a small child, and that she afterwards set up in practice on her own.

### Family-law practice

In 2000 Lindholz established herself as a self-employed lawyer (*Rechtsanwältin*) in Aschaffenburg. Family law and inheritance law (*Familienrecht* and *Erbrecht*) have been the stated focus of the practice, and since 2007 she has held the specialist title *Fachanwältin für Familienrecht*. Munzinger summarises the same step as setting up an independent office in those two fields and working from 2007 as a specialist in family law. The title is not part of ordinary admission as a lawyer. Under the *Fachanwaltsordnung* of the Bundesrechtsanwaltskammer, the German Federal Bar, it requires several years of admission and practice, proof of special practical experience in cases handled personally and without instruction, and theoretical knowledge well beyond standard training, usually shown by a specialist course. Family law and inheritance law appear on that list as separate designations; the title recorded for Lindholz is the family-law one. The 2014 portrait describes the pre-parliamentary work in similar terms: in an Aschaffenburg firm she had been responsible above all for family-law and inheritance-law cases.

She has continued that legal work alongside the Bundestag mandate she has held since 2013. The Bundestag's biography still lists her as a self-employed lawyer in Aschaffenburg and as a family-law specialist. Abgeordnetenwatch, which republishes members' disclosures, records freelance practice as a lawyer among paid activities beside the mandate, including for the term that began in 2025, and a participation in the partnership Rechtsanwälte Lindholz GbR in Goldbach. For the 20th electoral term the Bundestag published profit distributions from that partnership of 10,000 euros in 2022, 10,953 euros in 2023, 5,000 euros in 2024 and 2,000 euros in 2025. Under the rules of conduct printed with those figures, the sums are gross amounts, including compensation and benefits in kind, and do not deduct the member's own expenses.

## Local politics and the CSU

### Party offices

Lindholz's party career has been based in the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU) in Lower Franconia. The Kreisverband Aschaffenburg-Land, which organises the CSU in the rural district around the independent city of Aschaffenburg, dates its foundation to 13 October 1945 and, after Bavaria's territorial reform, also took in the former Alzenau association. She joined the branch in the market municipality of Goldbach in 1998. From 1999 to 2003 she chaired the Young Union for Goldbach and neighbouring Hösbach, and from 1999 she sat on the district executive.

She was deputy district chair from 2005 to 2019 and has been chair since 2019. On the evening of 9 May 2019, at a delegates' assembly in Hösbach, 176 delegates elected her with 98 percent of the vote. Peter Winter of Waldaschaff, chair since 2007, did not stand again; the meeting named him honorary chair. Judith Gerlach, then described as Bavaria's digital minister, succeeded her as a deputy chair. Lindholz has also belonged to the CSU Bezirksvorstand, the regional executive, since 2003.

A parallel set of offices ran through the Frauen-Union. The Bundestag biography lists her as its Aschaffenburg-Land chair from 2007 to 2019, honorary district chair since 2019, and a member of the Bavarian state executive since 2009. Her curriculum vitae adds the district executive from 1998, the deputy district chair from 2003 to 2007 and the Lower Franconia executive from 2001, and dates the state seat to 2009–2011 and again from 2014. In a 2014 Bundestag interview she said environmental protection and women's financial equality had drawn her into politics, that she had briefly belonged to Greenpeace, and that her CSU work had run above all through the Frauen-Union.

### Goldbach, the district council and the deputy Landrat

Goldbach, in the district of Aschaffenburg, covers 1,096 hectares. The CSU had long dominated its council. At the election of 3 March 2002 that ended. The chronicle of the local Freie Wählergemeinschaft (FWG) records that Thomas Krimm unseated the CSU mayor Kurt Fleckenstein by 2,925 votes (57.17 percent) to 2,191 (42.83 percent), and that the FWG became the largest group, with 11 seats to 10 for the CSU and three for the SPD—breaking what the chronicle called a CSU absolute majority of more than forty years. That year Lindholz was elected to the Goldbach council, where she sat until 2014, and to the district council (Kreistag), an honorary seat she has held since 2002.

On 2 March 2008 she stood for the CSU for mayor against Krimm. Of 7,964 eligible voters, 5,026 voted (64.1 percent). The FWG chronicle records that Krimm carried all 18 polling districts, with 3,711 votes (73.8 percent) to her 1,315 (26.2 percent), and that the FWG then held 13 council seats and half the vote, while the CSU fell to nine seats and 37.1 percent. She later called the loss a severe disappointment—"only someone who has lived through it knows how much it hurts"—and said that election soon afterwards as deputy Landrätin "let the wound heal quickly."

The new Kreistag met at the start of May 2008. The *Main-Echo*, reporting that session, named Lindholz with Rosel Heeg and Valentin Weber as councillors who would represent the Landrat. The Bundestag biography records her as first deputy (*erste Stellvertretende des Landrats*) from May 2008 to April 2014. The Landrat in that term was Ulrich Reuter (CSU). The *Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung* reported that he had taken 68.7 percent in 2008 and was re-elected on 16 March 2014 with 69.7 percent, against 30.4 percent for the SPD's Wolfgang Jehn, on a turnout of 55.2 percent. She described expanded childcare, and a multigenerational house (*Mehrgenerationenhaus*) which she said she had helped propose in 2008 and which was then being built, as district work drawn from her own experience.

When the term ended she left the Goldbach council and the deputy's office but remained a district councillor. Since 2020 she has, in that capacity, sat on the assembly of the hospital association (*Krankenhauszweckverband*) Aschaffenburg-Alzenau.

## Bundestag elections

### Candidacy and the 2013 election

Andrea Lindholz has represented the federal constituency of Aschaffenburg in the Bundestag since 2013. For the elections of 2013, 2017 and 2021 it was numbered 247; for the election of 23 February 2025 it was numbered 246. In each official delimitation it consisted of the independent city of Aschaffenburg and the rural district of Aschaffenburg, both in Lower Franconia, Bavaria. For 2025 the Federal Returning Officer recorded 33 municipalities, 761.3 square kilometres and a population of 243,400 at the end of 2023.

Each voter has two votes. The first is cast for a constituency candidate. Until 2021 the candidate with the most first votes received a direct mandate and entered the Bundestag on that basis, irrespective of the second votes, which are cast for a state list and set the proportional distribution of seats. From 2025, after a 2023 amendment of the Federal Elections Act, a party candidate wins a constituency seat only with both a first-vote plurality and coverage by the party's second-vote allocation (Zweitstimmendeckung). Lindholz was also on the Bavarian list of the Christian Social Union (CSU)—14th in 2017 and sixth in 2021—but the seat she took was the constituency result.

She became the CSU candidate in place of Norbert Geis. At a nomination meeting in Haibach on the evening of 1 October 2012 she defeated him, in a runoff, by 87 delegate votes to 71. Geis had been seeking an eighth Bundestag candidacy; defeat ended a membership of parliament that, by the 2013 election, would have lasted 26 years. Marianne Krohnen, mayor of Geiselbach, and Thorsten Rollmann of Großostheim had already been eliminated, with 13 and nine votes. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) nominated Andreas Parr on 23 July 2012 with nearly 96 percent of delegates from its city and district organizations; he was 27th on the Bavarian SPD list.

On 22 September 2013, 184,171 people were eligible and turnout was 71.3 percent. Of 128,900 valid first votes, Lindholz received 67,591 (52.4 percent), 9.7 points above the CSU share in the constituency in 2009. Parr and the SPD were second with 32,308 votes (25.1 percent), a margin of 35,283 votes. Alliance 90/The Greens took 8.0 percent and the Free Democratic Party 3.3 percent. The CSU led the second vote with 47.7 percent, below its first-vote share.

### Results from 2017 to 2025

On 24 September 2017, 183,362 people were eligible and turnout rose to 79.0 percent. Lindholz won 68,708 of 142,890 valid first votes (48.1 percent), down 4.4 points. The SPD candidate Alexander Mosca Spatz was second with 23,660 votes (16.6 percent). [Alternative for Germany](/organizations/alternative-for-germany) (AfD) was third on 10.5 percent, ahead of the Greens (9.2 percent) and the FDP (8.0 percent). The CSU's second-vote share was 38.4 percent.

On 26 September 2021 her first-vote share was the lowest of the four elections, though the margin remained large. Turnout was 80.4 percent of 182,652 eligible voters. She received 59,269 of 145,538 valid first votes (40.7 percent), down 7.4 points. The SPD candidate Tobias Rainer Wüst was second with 24,893 votes (17.1 percent), 34,376 behind. The Greens took 13.5 percent, the AfD 9.6 percent and the FDP 8.0 percent. The CSU list received 31.4 percent of second votes, 9.3 points below her first-vote share.

The same city-and-district territory was numbered 246 in 2025. On 23 February 2025, 181,144 people were eligible and turnout reached 85.7 percent. Lindholz received 67,597 of 154,337 valid first votes (43.8 percent), up 3.1 points. The runner-up was Joachim Josef Rausch of the AfD, with 28,438 votes (18.4 percent). The SPD fell to 12.3 percent and the Greens to 11.8 percent. On the second vote the CSU led with 38.0 percent and the AfD followed with 19.0 percent. The Federal Returning Officer recorded her as elected in the constituency, which in 2025 required the plurality to be covered by second votes. From 2013 to 2021 the SPD had been the runner-up; in 2025 that place passed to the AfD, while her first-vote share recovered from the 2021 low and turnout rose from 71.3 to 85.7 percent.

## Parliamentary offices, 2013–2021

### Committees and the NSA inquiry

Lindholz took her seat in the Bundestag with the 18th electoral term, which opened on 22 October 2013. At the interior committee’s constitutive sitting in January 2014, Wolfgang Bosbach of the [Christian Democratic Union](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany) (CDU) was again designated chair of the 37-member body; Lindholz was one of its 18 CDU/CSU members. She was also an ordinary member of the Committee on European Union Affairs and a substitute member of the Committee on Cultural and Media Affairs. Her interior work, as a Bundestag profile described it, covered internal security, civil protection and disaster relief, migration and asylum, data protection and the intelligence services.

On 20 March 2014 the Bundestag unanimously set up an eight-member committee of inquiry, on a motion of all groups (Drucksache 18/843), into surveillance in Germany by foreign services, above all the [National Security Agency](/organizations/national-security-agency), and into the German services’ role. Clemens Binninger (CDU) was the designated chair and Patrick Sensburg the Union whip; the other Union members were not yet named. By July 2014 the Bundestag described Lindholz, newly elected for Aschaffenburg, as one of the eight since March. She opposed hearing [Edward Snowden](/people/edward-snowden) in Germany, citing a United States extradition request. On 9 June 2016 the mandate was extended to aspects of the Federal Intelligence Service’s strategic signals intelligence, and on 28 June 2017 Sensburg, by then chair, delivered the roughly 1,800-page report (Drucksache 18/12850) to Bundestag President [Norbert Lammert](/people/norbert-lammert). The 18th-term biography lists Lindholz as an ordinary member of the inquiry.

### Chair of the Committee on Internal Affairs

On 29 January 2018 the CDU/CSU parliamentary group elected Lindholz, of the Christian Social Union, as its candidate for the interior chair, with 196 votes (91.2 per cent). The Bundestag had established 23 standing committees on 17 January. On 31 January the Committee on Internal Affairs and Community (Ausschuss für Inneres und Heimat) constituted itself under Vice-President Thomas Oppermann of the Social Democratic Party, and Lindholz was designated chair of the 45-member body. In the previous term it had been chaired by Bosbach and then by Ansgar Heveling, both of the CDU.

*Andrea Lindholz (CDU/CSU) at the interior committee, in the Bundestag photograph published when she became chair on 31 January 2018.*

On 21 February the committee, in a secret ballot, elected [Jochen Haug](/people/jochen-haug) of the Alternative for Germany as deputy chair, by 24 votes to six, with 15 abstentions. The secretariat later described the added “Heimat” remit as [social cohesion](/drivers/social-cohesion) and equivalent living conditions. The committee held 154 sittings, including 62 public hearings and 30 special sittings, and put 228 recommended resolutions to the plenary; of 117 bills referred to it as lead committee, 57 became law. The main legislative work was residence and asylum law and security statutes on the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the BND; a federal-police bill passed the Bundestag but failed in the Bundesrat. The Bremen affair at the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, the pandemic from March 2020, and the July 2021 floods each produced special sittings.

In the same term she was a substitute member of the committees on legal affairs and consumer protection and on cultural and media affairs, of the Joint Committee under Article 53a of the Basic Law, and of the first committee of inquiry. Her curriculum vitae identifies that inquiry as the investigation of the [2016 Berlin truck attack](/facts/2016-berlin-truck-attack).

### Intelligence oversight bodies

The Parliamentary Oversight Panel is separate from the departmental committee. Article 45d of the Basic Law provides for a Bundestag body to control federal intelligence activity. It supervises the BND, the [Military Counterintelligence Service](/organizations/military-counterintelligence-service) and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution; the government must keep it informed of the services’ general activities and of events of particular importance. On 18 January 2018 the Bundestag established the nine-member panel; election required 355 votes, a majority of members. Stephan Mayer (CSU) was elected with 560 votes, and the members chose Armin Schuster (CDU) as chair the same day. After Mayer became a parliamentary state secretary, the plenary on 21 March 2018 elected Lindholz in his place (Drucksache 19/1281), with 562 votes in favour, 60 against and 33 abstentions. The archived list for the term still names her as an ordinary member, with [Roderich Kiesewetter](/people/roderich-kiesewetter) as chair.

On 1 March 2018 the Bundestag unanimously established the nine-member panel under Article 13(6), for the protection of the inviolability of the home, electing Mayer, Axel Müller and Marian Wendt for the CDU/CSU. Article 13 permits acoustic surveillance of a home only in narrow cases, and paragraph 6 requires an annual government report on which a Bundestag panel exercises parliamentary control. On 22 March 2018 Lindholz was elected to Mayer’s seat. Her curriculum vitae lists her as that panel’s chair for the 19th term, while the Bundestag’s archived member list records her only as one of the nine ordinary members and does not display a chair. The panel is not the G 10 Commission, which the Parliamentary Oversight Panel appoints and which decides, independently and free of instruction, whether restrictions of postal and telecommunications secrecy by the three federal services are necessary and permissible.

## Leadership in the CDU/CSU parliamentary group

### Deputy chair, 2021–2025

The [2021 German federal election](/facts/2021-german-federal-election) put the CDU/CSU into opposition to Chancellor [Olaf Scholz](/people/mig-olaf-scholz) and the Social Democratic–Green–FDP traffic-light coalition. On 13 December 2021 the CSU group in the Bundestag, under [Alexander Dobrindt](/people/alexander-dobrindt), designated Andrea Lindholz, Dorothee Bär and Ulrich Lange as deputy chairs of the joint CDU/CSU parliamentary group. The same day the full group, still chaired by [Ralph Brinkhaus](/people/ralph-brinkhaus), elected its executive board. Lindholz, the member for Aschaffenburg, was assigned legal affairs and interior policy, together with expellees, resettlers and German minorities (*Vertriebene, Aussiedler und deutsche Minderheiten*).

In that division of labour [Günter Krings](/people/gunter-krings) chaired the legal working group and [Alexander Throm](/people/alexander-throm) the working group on interior affairs and homeland; Lindholz’s post was the political lead above those spokespeople. The Bundestag’s biography for the 20th electoral term lists her as a substitute member of the Committee on Internal Affairs and of the Committee on Legal Affairs. [Friedrich Merz](/people/friedrich-merz) succeeded Brinkhaus as group chairman on 15 February 2022. Lindholz remained a deputy chair for the rest of the term.

An early test of the opposition role was the chair of the Interior Committee. Chairs are allocated by the size of the parliamentary groups, and after the traffic-light parties had chosen other committees the post fell to the Alternative for Germany. Lindholz, who had chaired the committee in the previous term, told *[Der Spiegel](/organizations/der-spiegel)* that she found it inconceivable for a party parts of which were under observation by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution to supply the chair, and that she would vote against an AfD candidate and urge her colleagues to do the same. From July 2024 she was also a full member of the Parliamentary Oversight Panel and the CDU/CSU *Obfrau* there, the group’s lead member on the body that oversees the federal intelligence services. The deputy chairmanship was an office of the 20th Bundestag and ended with that electoral term in 2025.

### Coalition negotiations

After the snap 2025 German federal election of 23 February, the CDU, the CSU and the SPD agreed an exploratory paper by early March and opened formal coalition talks on 13 March. Sixteen working groups, 256 people in all, were to draft the contract. The CSU sent Lindholz, with [Silke Launert](/people/silke-launert) and Bavarian interior minister Joachim Herrmann, into working group 1, “Interior, law, migration and integration,” and said the groups had about ten days before a steering round that included party chairman Markus Söder, Dobrindt and Bär. The *Rheinische Post* reported that Krings led the CDU side of that group, Lindholz spoke for the CSU, and the SPD deputy group chair Dirk Wiese led the [Social Democrats](/organizations/social-democrats).

Migration and the powers of the security authorities were the contested core. Going into the talks, the Union and the SPD still differed on whether asylum seekers could be turned back at the border after neighbouring states had merely been informed, or only with their consent. A roughly 20-page closing paper of the working group, which the *Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung* said it had seen, included the line that Germany would take “a different, more consistent course in migration policy.” On 25 March *Der Spiegel* reported that the interior and migration negotiators had promised a “security offensive” and wider powers for the authorities, while leaving important details unsettled between the specialists. Those open points went to the party leaders. On 9 April 2025 the Union and the SPD announced agreement on a coalition contract, after migration, tax and pensions had stayed in dispute until late in the negotiations.

## Domestic security, intelligence and data policy

### Policing and internal security

As chair of the Bundestag Committee on Internal Affairs, and later as a deputy chair of the CDU/CSU group, Lindholz argued that police needed powers over encrypted communication comparable to those they had offline. In October 2019 she told the *Rheinische Post* that without source telecommunications surveillance and online searches, investigating extremist networks was becoming “increasingly a matter of pure chance.” She said “Revolution Chemnitz” had been uncovered only by chance, and that the authorities must not be denied those instruments.

On 24 June 2025 the Federal [Constitutional Court](/organizations/constitutional-court) treated that kind of live interception as a very serious interference with the confidentiality and integrity of IT systems and with telecommunications secrecy. It voided section 100a of the Code of Criminal Procedure for offences punishable by at most three years, and held the online-search power in section 100b incompatible with the duty to name the right a statute restricts, though that provision continues until it is replaced.

After the 2024 knife attack in Mannheim, Lindholz called for a ban on carrying knives ready to hand in crowds, including stations and trains, so police could act preventively. She told the *Rheinische Post* that nobody needed such knives there, and that serious knife assaults had risen by about 10 percent.

### Data retention and communications surveillance

General data retention had already been cut back in court. On 2 March 2010 the Federal Constitutional Court struck down the 2007 duty to store traffic data. On 20 September 2022 the [Court of Justice of the European Union](/organizations/justice-cjeu) treated general retention of traffic and location data as contrary to EU law, while leaving a narrower opening for IP addresses. On 14 August 2023 the Federal Administrative Court held that sections 175 and 176 of the Telecommunications Act could not be applied. On 30 April 2024, in *La Quadrature du Net* (C-470/21), the European court allowed general retention of IP addresses against criminal offences in general if it cannot yield precise conclusions about private life, in particular by separating IP addresses from civil-identity data.

Lindholz treated that opening as a reason to legislate. On 5 December 2024 she spoke for the CDU/CSU on printed paper 20/13366, which would have required providers to keep IP addresses and, where needed to identify a subscriber, port numbers for three months, for serious crime and serious threats to public security, without mobile location data. She said the government had ignored the case law, cited 54,000 child- or youth-pornography cases and 22,000 dropped leads from deleted provider data, and dismissed “quick freeze”—saving data only after a concrete suspicion—as unusable.

The FDP called three months a legal high risk and backed quick freeze. Greens said suspicionless storage would cover every citizen. The AfD treated child-abuse cases as a pretext for surveillance, while parts of the SPD accepted some IP storage inside the court’s limits but warned that three months exceeded the suspended German rules. The drafts went to the Legal Affairs Committee.

While she chaired the Interior Committee, the coalition rewrote subscriber-data disclosure (*Bestandsdatenauskunft*) after a 2020 ruling limiting state access. At the 25 January 2021 hearing, heise reported, most experts warned that queries for usage data and passwords would likely fail again in Karlsruhe. The Bundestag passed it with CDU/CSU and SPD votes, extending defined queries, including access credentials, to federal police and the intelligence services. Lindholz wrote that it met the court’s “very clear” requirements, citing the murder of Walter Lübcke.

On 25 March 2021 she defended the amended Act on the Federal Intelligence Service, required by the court’s May 2020 judgment. She called it a paradigm shift—foreigners abroad could in some cases invoke Basic Law rights, and journalists and lawyers were in principle shielded—and described the new Independent Control Council as its core. The CDU/CSU and SPD voted in favour; the other groups voted against. Heise reported that the law also allowed intrusion into foreign networks and online searches abroad, and raised the scannable share of global networks from 20 percent to 30 percent.

### Civil protection and the THW

The federal agency, the Bundesanstalt Technisches Hilfswerk, is separate from the THW-Bundesvereinigung e.V., the association of helpers and supporters, which represents volunteers toward politics and does not command operations. Lindholz has written that she has belonged to the Aschaffenburg local chapter since 2014.

*The board of the THW helpers’ association after the November 2021 election in Bonn: Ralph Dunger, [Martin Gerster](/people/martin-gerster), Andrea Lindholz and Christian Herrmann.*

Delegates at the association’s 35th federal assembly in Bonn in November 2021 elected her a vice president with 95.1 percent of the vote, beside the new president, Martin Gerster. She called the post an obligation to give volunteers a political voice after the pandemic and the 2021 floods. The Bundestag register records the office as ending on 18 April 2026. She did not stand again; [Marc Henrichmann](/people/marc-henrichmann) succeeded her and Gerster was re-elected. The agency, whose president Sabine Lackner holds a separate office, thanked her.

In February 2024 she told *t-online* that Germany was “shockingly poorly prepared” for civil defence, a federal task distinct from disaster relief run by the Länder. She blamed Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, said responsibilities in war were still unclear, and called for more equipment funding and a civilian personnel reserve.

## Migration and asylum policy

### Positions after 2015

On 15 October 2015 Lindholz spoke for the Christian Social Union in the Bundestag on the Asylverfahrensbeschleunigungsgesetz of the Christian Democratic Union–Social Democratic Party coalition. Police, soldiers, municipal staff and volunteers, she said, could not sustain the effort; relieving municipalities was the priority. Passed that day by 475 votes to 68, with 56 abstentions, it took effect on 1 November 2015. Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière said it made Albania, Kosovo and Montenegro safe countries of origin, sped up procedures and cut benefits where removal was refused.

She named five aims: faster decisions, fewer *Fehlanreize*, enforced departure, easier housing, and integration help only for those likely to stay. About 80,000 applications from Kosovo and Albania that year, she said, were rejected in 99 per cent of cases, against removal of only about 10 per cent of those required to leave. Arrivals of up to 10,000 a day would not be stopped by the law, she argued, and municipalities in Bavaria were at their limit. She agreed with Chancellor [Angela Merkel](/people/angela-merkel) that there was "keinen Schalter", but said border protection had been "quasi aufgegeben": guarding the frontier was a duty, not hostility, and she favoured controls, refusals of entry and the EU border procedure rather than sealing Germany off.

### The Scholz government and border controls

As a CDU/CSU deputy chair, Lindholz opposed residence and labour rules under Olaf Scholz. On 2 December 2022 she said the Chancen-Aufenthaltsrecht created false incentives and should focus on people actually entitled to protection. It offered 18 months to tolerated persons who on 31 October 2022 had lived in Germany for five years without a conviction. Her line was "Erst Identitätsklärung, dann Chance, und nicht umgekehrt." She said it rewarded deception about identity and raised an age limit from 21 to 27 for a group she called mostly young men. Removals, she said, were refused "aus ideologischen Gründen".

It passed by 371 votes to 226, with 57 abstentions. Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said it ended chains of toleration for people already part of society; Green MP [Filiz Polat](/people/filiz-polat) called it a change churches, unions and business had sought.

In November 2023 n-tv reported that she called easier work access for refugees "grob falsch", saying that, a week after a cabinet decision on returns, it would hinder deportation and reward the wrong group. The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees recorded 217,774 first-time asylum applications in 2022, 329,120 in 2023 (up 51.1 per cent) and 229,751 in 2024 (down 30.2 per cent).

On 28 January 2025 a CDU/CSU motion called the Dublin Regulation, open borders under the Schengen Agreement and Eurodac "erkennbar dysfunktional". It demanded permanent controls on every German border, a "faktisches Einreiseverbot" regardless of an asylum claim for people outside free movement without valid documents, detention of those due for removal, and more deportations, including to Afghanistan and Syria.

### The Aschaffenburg attack and the 2025 debate

At about 11:45 on 22 January 2025 a 28-year-old Afghan national attacked five children with a kitchen knife in Schöntal park in Aschaffenburg. A two-year-old boy was killed and a two-year-old girl wounded; a 41-year-old man who intervened was killed, and a 72-year-old man and a 59-year-old woman were hurt. The suspect was arrested within minutes, and a judge ordered psychiatric placement the next day.

He had arrived in November 2022 and sought asylum. Interior minister Joachim Herrmann said a Dublin procedure was not finished in time. After writing in early December 2024 that he would leave via the Afghan consulate general, he was ordered out and stayed. He was still in psychiatric care, had been noticed three times for violence, and had been admitted and released. No Islamist motive was found.

Lindholz, the local member, told Deutschlandfunk the next day that migration policy had failed and that migration was "nicht mehr beherrschbar". Grief, she said, was mixed with what she called justified questions about why a man required to leave was still there; mentally ill violent offenders had to be watched more closely; and the park's knife ban was useless if it was not enforced. Scholz demanded an explanation "mit Hochdruck" and rejected what he called misplaced tolerance. Alliance 90/The Greens and the Free Democrats asked for a full inquiry; [Alice Weidel](/people/alice-weidel) of the Alternative for Germany demanded deportations; [Sahra Wagenknecht](/people/sahra-wagenknecht) held Scholz co-responsible.

On 29 January the Bundestag adopted Drucksache 20/14698 by 348 votes to 344, with 10 abstentions. It does not bind the government. Scholz told Friedrich Merz that the plans broke European law and that AfD votes breached the refusal to make common cause with the extreme right. Merz said a majority "in der Mitte" was the SPD and Greens' to give. Robert Habeck said the Union meant to "Recht brechen, um Recht zu verändern"; Christian Lindner said his party would vote yes anyway. Weidel called the text an AfD copy, and [Lars Klingbeil](/people/lars-klingbeil) a historic error.

On 30 October 2025 the Landgericht Aschaffenburg found him *schuldunfähig* because of paranoid schizophrenia and ordered indefinite psychiatric detention. The judgment is final. He admitted both killings. The boy was described as of Moroccan origin and the man who died intervening as German. He had been required to leave since the end of 2024.

## Vice-presidency of the Bundestag

### Election on 25 March 2025

The Bundestag constituted its 21st term on 25 March 2025. [Gregor Gysi](/people/gregor-gysi) of [Die Linke](/organizations/die-linke), as president by right of age, opened the sitting. The house then elected Julia Klöckner of the CDU President of the Bundestag by secret ballot: 382 votes in favour, 204 against and 31 abstentions. A majority of the 630 members — 316 votes — was required.

Before the ballots for deputies, the Bundestag unanimously adopted a CDU/CSU–SPD motion that each parliamentary group would supply one vice president and would keep the right of nomination. Andrea Lindholz, the CDU/CSU group's nominee from the CSU, was elected on the first ballot with 425 votes in favour, 132 against and 53 abstentions.

Also elected that day to the Presidium were Josephine Ortleb of the SPD (434 in favour, 145 against, 31 abstentions), [Omid Nouripour](/people/omid-nouripour) of Alliance 90/The Greens (432, 156 and 22) and [Bodo Ramelow](/people/bodo-ramelow) of Die Linke (318, 256 and 34), two votes over the threshold. The house had provided for five vice presidents. [Gerold Otten](/people/gerold-otten), the candidate of the AfD, failed three ballots: 185 in favour against 411, with 10 abstentions; then 190 against 401, with 13 abstentions; then 184 against 403, with 15 abstentions. In the third ballot a majority of the votes cast would have sufficed. The fifth seat stayed empty. No AfD member has been elected to the Presidium since the party entered the Bundestag in 2017.

On 22 March 2022 the Federal Constitutional Court dismissed an AfD organ dispute over earlier defeats. It held that Article 40 of the Basic Law makes election of the president and the vice presidents a free vote, so the rules-of-procedure expectation of one vice president per group does not confer the office if the nominee lacks a majority.

Otten called the result "a day of mourning for German democracy, for German parliamentarism", saying that about ten million AfD voters would go unrepresented on the Presidium. Co-chair Alice Weidel said the decision opened the door to discrimination against the AfD. She and co-chair Tino Chrupalla stood with Otten and left open whether the group would nominate someone else. Two further AfD motions — to treat the Presidium as properly filled only when every group had a deputy, and to allow removal of its members by a majority of the house — were referred to the rules committee. A motion to give the opening chair to the oldest member by age, which the Bundestag's account said would probably have meant [Alexander Gauland](/people/alexander-gauland), was rejected.

### Duties in the Presidium

The president and the vice presidents form the Presidium. It meets in each sitting week, with the director of the Bundestag present, and advises the president on running the house, including senior staffing of the administration, major contracts and public communication. In the plenary they normally take the chair in turn, about every two hours; the power to conduct the sitting and to keep order passes to whoever is presiding.

Every member of the Presidium also sits on the Council of Elders, which assists the president, agrees sitting weeks and agendas, and is where disputes between the groups are taken up. On the timetable and the agenda it recommends rather than decides. For the 21st term the Bundestag's data handbook lists Lindholz as chair of two of its commissions, on the legal status of members and on information technology and digitalisation; the other vice presidents chair those on buildings and rooms, on members' staff, and on internal affairs. She is also a substitute member of the Committee on Internal Affairs, the Committee on Legal Affairs and Consumer Protection, and the Joint Committee of the Bundestag and the Bundesrat.

## Personal life, voluntary offices and reception

### Family

The Bundestag biography, based on Lindholz's own information, lists her as Roman Catholic, married, and the parent of one child. Munzinger gives her birth name as Andrea Milnik. Her website states that she has been married to Thomas Lindholz since 1996 and that they have an adult son. Her local base is Goldbach, in the district of Aschaffenburg: she joined the Christian Social Union there in 1998 and sat on the municipal council from 2002 to 2014, and the partnership Rechtsanwälte Lindholz GbR, in which she holds a stake, is registered in the town.

### Honorary positions

She was deputy chair of the Aschaffenburg district association of the Bavarian Red Cross, part of the German Red Cross, an honorary post in the disclosures from the 18th electoral term until 28 March 2025. At elections on 29 March 2025 the association's newsletter called her the outgoing second deputy chair. She did not stand again because of the Bundestag vice-presidency, while promising continued support; Burkhard Hofmann succeeded her. She is an unpaid trustee of the Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, which maintains the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe; the foundation lists her for the CDU/CSU. The current returns also include the board of the Stiftung Weg der Hoffnung and, until 18 April 2026, the vice-presidency of the THW-Bundesvereinigung, the helpers' association of the Technisches Hilfswerk. In November 2018 Goldbach's mayor, Thomas Krimm, gave her and Sandra Rußmann the Goldbach Medal for service to the common good.

Paid work is disclosed under the same rules. She has kept a self-employed legal practice in Aschaffenburg. The Members of the Bundestag Act requires notice to the President within three months, and publication of income from a notifiable activity above 1,000 euros in a month or, failing that, 3,000 euros in a year. Figures are gross; a lawyer need not name clients covered by professional secrecy. In the 18th term the practice carried no income bracket, while her allowance as deputy Landrat was published as monthly bracket 1 until April 2014. For the Goldbach partnership the 20th-term record shows profit distributions of 10,000 euros (2022), 10,953 euros (2023), 5,000 euros (2024) and 2,000 euros (2025), stated as gross sums, not taxable income. The Act publishes such earnings rather than barring a profession. The returns do not record a finding that any client or sum conflicted with the mandate.

### Criticism and public profile

On 30 June 2017 the Bundestag, in a roll-call vote without a group whip, opened [marriage to same-sex couples](/facts/same-sex-marriage-in-germany) by 393 votes to 226, with four abstentions, out of 623 cast. Of the CDU/CSU group, 75 voted yes and 225 no. Lindholz voted no. In a written explanation she called the Social Democratic Party move a breach of the coalition agreement and an election manoeuvre, while rejecting discrimination against same-sex partnerships and treating registered life partnership as already largely equal to marriage. She argued that Article 6 of the Basic Law could not be altered by ordinary statute, citing a 2015 government answer that the case law of the Federal Constitutional Court required a constitutional amendment, and she tied the privilege of marriage between a man and a woman to the capacity to have children. On full adoption she wrote, as a family-law specialist, that the child's welfare alone should decide and that a father and a mother were of elementary importance. She called the procedure of the SPD, Alliance 90/The Greens and the Left unworthy of the subject.

On 29 April 2024 the *Münchner Merkur* published an interview criticising coalition plans on parentage. Biological descent, she said, would be subordinated: before conception a mother could agree to name someone other than the biological father or the husband as legal father — in her example, a neighbour. A three-year agreement, revocable until conception, lacked seriousness, she said, and challenging paternity because a different donor had been used was unworthy of a child, who had a right to know its origins. Asked about two women seeking recognition of the birth mother's wife without a stepchild adoption, she said parenthood of two women ran through adoption and should in principle stay there, the mother being the woman who gives birth. The ordinary rule, she said, was to name the genetic parents first; the coalition was ending it without need.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/andrea-lindholz