Andreas Audretsch

Andreas Audretsch (born 25 June 1984 in Stuttgart) is a German politician of Alliance 90/The Greens and a member of the Bundestag from Berlin. He has sat in parliament since 2021 and was returned in 2025 on the Berlin state list, standing in Berlin-Neukölln — constituency 82 in the 20th electoral term and constituency 81 in the 21st. He is unmarried and holds a doctorate in political science (Dr. rer. pol.) from the University of Potsdam.

From 2004 to 2008 he studied at the University of Münster, the Free University of Berlin and Potsdam, and from 2008 to 2010 completed the Potsdam doctorate. Between 2007 and 2015 he worked as a radio journalist, from 2009 alongside other jobs, including for Deutschlandradio and ARD radio, and from 2009 to 2015 as a staff member (Referent) in the Bundestag. From 2015 to 2020 he was a press spokesperson at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs (2015–2017) and the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs (2018–2020), with a spell on fundamental questions of communication in the Office of the Federal President (2017–2018). Before his mandate he was a civil servant at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, with a right to return.

He joined the Greens in 2011 and the services union ver.di in 2012. From 2013 to 2016 he sat on, and for part of that time spoke for, the board of the Greens in Neukölln, and from 2016 to 2021 he was a member of the Berlin state executive. Since 2017 he has been a policy fellow at the think tank Das Progressive Zentrum, an unpaid role he has continued to declare as a member of parliament. Since 2022 he has been a deputy chair of the Green Bundestag group, responsible for finance, the budget, the economy, labour and social affairs. After the 2025 election the group, reduced to 85 members, completed its executive on 29 April 2025 by electing him again as one of five deputy chairs, alongside Julia Verlinden, Konstantin von Notz, Agnieszka Brugger and Misbah Khan; the co-chairs had been confirmed about a month earlier. The Bundestag’s register of members’ interests records that the party paid him 1,500 euro gross a month as campaign manager (Wahlkampfleiter) for the Bundestag election, an appointment that ran until 18 May 2025.

In the 20th term the archived parliamentary biography lists him as the Neukölln candidate. In the final result for constituency 82, after the partial rerun in parts of Berlin on 11 February 2024, the Greens received 25,790 first votes (19.7 percent), behind the SPD on 25.8 percent. At the 2025 Bundestag election the Greens’ candidate in the renumbered constituency 81 took 16,136 first votes (11.1 percent) and the party 22,260 second votes (15.3 percent); the direct seat went to Ferat Koçak of Die Linke with 30.0 percent. In the 21st Bundestag he is a deputy member of the Budget Committee, the Committee on Labour and Social Affairs, and the Mediation Committee. In a Der Spiegel interview he argued that the constitutional debt brake must not become “a drag on a good future” and called for more redistribution. When the CDU proposed replacing Bürgergeld with a new basic-security scheme, he told the same paper that the plan of Friedrich Merz and Carsten Linnemann threatened middle-class savings and that permanently withdrawing all of a subsistence benefit from parents would leave families without money for food or clothing — “they have completely lost all sense of proportion.”

Early life and education

Childhood and university studies

Andreas Audretsch was born on 25 June 1984 in Stuttgart. The Bundestag biography, compiled from members' own statements, records that date and place and nothing further about his childhood, family or schooling.

He states that he moved to Neukölln, in Berlin, in 2006 and has lived there since. The move fell in the middle of his university studies. From 2004 to 2008 he studied at the University of Münster, the Free University of Berlin and the University of Potsdam. His own chronology is slightly more specific about the sequence: study in Münster from 2004 to 2006, then study and the doctorate in Berlin and Potsdam from 2006 to 2010. A profile at Das Progressive Zentrum, the Berlin think tank where he was later a policy fellow, says that the subjects were politics, Publizistik and sociology. Neither that profile nor the parliamentary biography names a first degree, such as a Magister or a bachelor's degree, completed before the doctorate.

Doctorate

The Bundestag biography records a doctorate at the University of Potsdam from 2008 to 2010, with the degree Dr. rer. pol. (doctor rerum politicarum). That abbreviation is the one used in the doctoral regulations of the university's Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences (Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Fakultät) of 27 August 2002, which confer the title Doktor der Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften; the university's index of regulations shows amendments to those rules only from 2012, after Audretsch's procedure. The Progressive Zentrum profile likewise places the doctorate at that faculty.

In June 2009 he submitted the dissertation Zur Entstehung von Good Governance. Gründe, Muster und Bedingungen einer afrikanischen Entwicklung. Das Beispiel Ghana. The title page addresses the work to the Sozialwissenschaftliche Fakultät and the Institut für Internationale Politik, and gives a Berlin-Neukölln postal address. It names Prof. Dr. Harald Fuhr as first examiner and Prof. Dr. Werner Jann as second. Fuhr was professor of international politics at Potsdam's Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences; the university's electronic thesis record lists him as advisor.

That record dates acceptance of the thesis to 29 March 2010 and its release on the university publication server to 6 May 2010. The repository title is Zur Entstehung von Good Governance: Gründe, Muster und Bedingungen einer afrikanischen Entwicklung; das Beispiel Ghana, with the English title About the emergence of Good Governance: reasons, models and conditions of an African development; the example Ghana. The German National Library catalogues the online university version as a Potsdam dissertation of 2010, and a separate deposit copy, marked not for exchange, as a dissertation of 2009 of 455 pages with graphs, the text partly in German and partly in English.

The study asks which reasons, patterns and conditions lead to good governance. It treats Ghana as a case of a developing country followed for more than half a century, measures governance quality with six indicators, and then examines advances and setbacks qualitatively, including circular developments that delayed change until they were broken. The abstract argues that a shift of this kind is not produced by a short-term change in framework conditions alone, but by longer cultural change and learning.

The file on the university server was published under a Creative Commons licence (attribution, non-commercial use, share alike, version 3.0 Germany). In 2010 the Südwestdeutscher Verlag für Hochschulschriften in Saarbrücken also issued the work as a new edition, offered as a licensed print-on-demand book (ISBN 978-3-8381-1900-7).

Journalism and government communications

Radio journalism and parliamentary staff

Audretsch’s work before elected office, as given in the biography on the website of the German Bundestag, was in radio and then on parliamentary staff. The Bundestag states that these biographical details rest on members’ own disclosures. From 2007 to 2015 he worked as a radio journalist (Hörfunkjournalist), including for Deutschlandradio, the national public-service radio broadcaster, and for the radio services of the ARD (ARD-Hörfunk), the consortium of Germany’s regional public broadcasters. That account dates the start of the work to 2007, while he was still a student, and its continuation through his doctorate at the University of Potsdam in 2008–2010. From 2009 the journalism was part-time (nebenberuflich). The biography does not name individual ARD stations or programmes.

From 2009 to 2015 he was a Referent in the Bundestag, the staff post alongside which the radio work continued. The published biography does not identify a member, parliamentary group, or policy area. In 2013 and 2014 he also held a teaching appointment (Lehrauftrag) at the University of Lüneburg (Leuphana University of Lüneburg). That appointment is recorded on his own website and not in the Bundestag biography, which gives no subject or faculty.

Federal press and communications posts

From 2015 to 2020 the Bundestag biography describes work as a press spokesperson (Pressesprecher). It places him at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs (Bundeswirtschaftsministerium)—then formally the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy—from 2015 to 2017; on “fundamental questions of communication” (“Grundsatzfragen der Kommunikation”) in the office of the Federal President (Bundespräsidialamt) from 2017 to 2018; and at the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth from 2018 to 2020. Those entries do not name a minister, give a formal title inside the presidential office, or say whether the economics-ministry role was that of chief or deputy spokesperson.

The family-ministry description can be checked against the ministry’s own press-contact page. Captures from 13 December 2018 and 20 January 2019 list “Dr. Andreas Audretsch” as deputy press spokesperson (Stellvertretender Pressesprecher), under spokesperson Ulla Fiebig, on the ministry’s central press telephone number and email address. A capture of the same page on 1 November 2020 still names Fiebig and does not name Audretsch. The biographies do not record a further appointment between the end of that family-ministry period in 2020 and his taking a Bundestag seat in 2021.

In the disclosures required under the rules of conduct for members, the Bundestag lists his occupation before membership as civil servant (Beamter) of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action in Berlin, with a right of return (Rückkehrrecht). The “Climate Action” designation dates from 8 December 2021, when an organizational decree of the Federal Chancellor renamed the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy; the 20th Bundestag had already been constituted. Under the Members of the Bundestag Act, the rights and duties arising from a civil servant’s service relationship are suspended for the duration of membership, and after the mandate the civil servant is, on an application made in time, to be returned to the former service relationship in an office of the same or an equivalent career with at least the same final basic salary.

Party career in Berlin

Neukölln and the Berlin state executive

Andreas Audretsch has lived in the Berlin borough of Neukölln since 2006. He joined Alliance 90/The Greens in 2011; his own site dates earlier activity in the party to 2009. From 2013 to 2016 he was a member, and a spokesperson, of the board of the Neukölln district association, according to the parliamentary group's biography — which it says rests on members' own disclosures — and a 2023 application he filed for the federal party council.

The Neukölln Kreisverband, which the local party also calls its Bezirksgruppe, is the borough-level branch of the Berlin state association. The branch says it decides its own local programme, finances and staffing, and elects a board each year to represent it: a two-person spokesperson team inside a six-member executive, plus a treasurer and deputy. He has also stated that from 2015 to 2016 he sat on the Berlin Landesparteirat. Under the state statute, as amended to 1 January 2025, that 21-member council is elected for two years to advise the executive and the Landesausschuss, to coordinate planning among party units and Green groups in the Abgeordnetenhaus and the borough assemblies, and to offer them recommendations; the state party says the council is meant to reflect the boroughs.

On 3 December 2016 a state delegates' conference elected him a Beisitzer on a new Landesvorstand, with Anja Engelmohr and Hanna Steinmüller. Nina Stahr and Werner Graf became co-chairs, Henning Bublitz treasurer and Rhea Niggemann spokesperson for women's and gender policy. Under the state statute the seven-member executive — two chairs, a treasurer and four Beisitzer, elected for two years — represents the association, runs its business and carries out decisions of the members' assembly, the delegates' conference and the Landesausschuss. The chairs and the treasurer may be paid; the other members serve unpaid, and a seat is incompatible with a parliamentary mandate, a borough-executive post or a place in government.

Delegates confirmed the chairs on 24 November 2018, Stahr with 89 percent of the vote and Graf with 88 percent, and re-elected Audretsch, Engelmohr and Steinmüller; Ina Rosenthal replaced Niggemann. At the conference on 28 October 2020 in the Hotel Estrel the same seven-member board stood again without opposing candidates and was returned for two years, after few questions from the floor. The taz reported that it went unsaid that almost half the board was likely to leave the following autumn: Stahr, Steinmüller and Audretsch were prospective Bundestag candidates, and party rules bar parliamentarians, like members of government, from the state executive. A conference on Saturday, 11 December 2021, chose a new executive under Susanne Mertens and Philmon Ghirmai; Audretsch was not among the members named, and biographies date his state-board seat from 2016 to 2021.

Trade union and think-tank ties

The parliamentary biography lists membership, since 2012, of ver.di, the Vereinte Dienstleistungsgewerkschaft. Founded in Berlin in March 2001 from five service-sector unions, then with about three million members, ver.di says about 1.8 million members now contribute around one percent of gross earnings for legal advice, workplace representation, collective bargaining and, where necessary, strikes. Public records describe him as a member rather than as the holder of a union post. On the Neukölln Greens' site he connects that membership with support for collective agreements, equal pay and working time compatible with family life.

Since 2017 he has been a Policy Fellow at Das Progressive Zentrum, which lists him as an alumnus who held the fellowship until 2026. His disclosure on Abgeordnetenwatch classifies the role as unpaid. Founded in 2007, the centre describes itself as an independent charitable Berlin think tank working on what it calls a just transformation; its fellows contribute analysis for a limited term alongside other jobs. As a fellow, Audretsch and the historian Claudia Gatzka edited the 2020 Dietz volume Schleichend an die Macht, on the New Right's use of historical narratives, which the centre presented as both an analysis and a call to resist that use of history.

Bundestag elections

2021 election and the 2024 partial rerun

Audretsch was the direct candidate of Alliance 90/The Greens in constituency 82, Berlin-Neukölln, for the federal election of 26 September 2021. At a state delegate conference on 21 March 2021 the Berlin Greens placed Lisa Paus first on the state list, Stefan Gelbhaar second and Renate Künast third; Audretsch was fourth, as the Neukölln direct candidate, and Nina Stahr fifth.

In the original final result he received 27,104 first votes, 19.8 percent of the valid constituency vote, an increase of 8.9 percentage points on 2017. The seat went to Hakan Demir of the Social Democratic Party, whose 35,530 votes were 26.0 percent; Audretsch finished second. He entered the 20th Bundestag on the Berlin state list rather than as a directly elected member.

On 19 December 2023 the Federal Constitutional Court ruled that the Berlin election had to be repeated in 455 of the state's 2,256 polling districts. The partial rerun was held on 11 February 2024. In the revised Neukölln result the Social Democrats remained ahead with 33,880 first votes (25.8 percent) and the Greens stayed second with 25,790 (19.7 percent). Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg reported that Demir kept the direct mandate and that Audretsch, on 19.7 percent, remained just ahead of the Christian Democratic Union candidate. The Bundestag records that Audretsch won his mandate again in the repeat. After the Federal Electoral Committee restated the national result on 1 March 2024, the Council of Elders decided on 4 March that four Berlin members lost their seats, among them Stahr of the Greens. Audretsch was not one of the four.

2025 candidacy and campaign management

Neukölln was numbered constituency 81 at the federal election of 23 February 2025. On 14 December 2024 a Berlin Green delegate meeting in Moabit elected Paus to list place 1 with 107 of 140 votes, about 76 percent, and Audretsch to place 2 with just under 89 percent, after Gelbhaar had withdrawn from the contest for that place.

Audretsch did not win the constituency. Ferat Koçak of Die Linke took the direct mandate with 43,413 first votes, 30.0 percent. Audretsch received 16,136 votes, 11.1 percent, and the official comparison with 2021 shows a fall of 8.5 percentage points in the Green first-vote share. He returned for the 21st term on the Berlin state list, with a constituency candidacy in Neukölln; the list position recorded for that mandate is place 2.

For the same election he was campaign manager (Wahlkampfleiter) for Alliance 90/The Greens. The disclosure filed under the members' rules of conduct lists the post with the Berlin party organization at 1,500 euro gross a month, from 18 November 2024 until 18 May 2025. His parliamentary biography, which the Bundestag notes is based on members' own statements, describes the role as campaign manager for the party's Bundestag election, and news reports identified him as campaign manager to chancellor candidate Robert Habeck.

Berlin list contest of 2024

The December list decision was shaped by allegations against Gelbhaar. He and Audretsch had both intended to seek place 2. After reports that women had accused Gelbhaar of sexual harassment, some of them in statements given to rbb, Gelbhaar withdrew shortly before the delegate meeting, and Audretsch was elected without that contest. Place 2 was treated in that coverage as a near-certain route into the Bundestag. Gelbhaar denied the allegations, called them in part a planned attempt to discredit him, and said he had filed a criminal complaint for defamation against unknown persons. The Berlin prosecution service confirmed that complaint and said none had been filed against him.

In January 2025 rbb withdrew part of its reporting. It said a central complainant it had called "Anne K." in all probability did not exist, and that a Green district politician had presented herself under that name and signed a sworn statement. The broadcaster filed a criminal complaint over the false declarations. District politician Shirin Kreße left the party and gave up her leadership of the Green group in Berlin-Mitte's borough assembly; the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that party co-chair Felix Banaszak indirectly confirmed she was the person behind the alleged false statements. Co-chairs Franziska Brantner and Banaszak said the Greens were filing two criminal complaints in the case, one against a person known to the party and one against unknown persons. rbb said that at least one substantial allegation was no longer sustainable, but that not every claim had been cleared, and the party leadership said seven women were maintaining accusations.

The withdrawal left Audretsch, described in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung as Habeck's campaign manager, on the list place Gelbhaar had given up. The opposition Union took up the case in the campaign and spoke of brutal infighting in Habeck's immediate circle. Christian Social Union general secretary Martin Huber asked whether the chancellor candidate had known of the episode or approved it. Audretsch said he had "nothing to do with the entire matter." Foreign minister Annalena Baerbock said she was convinced he had nothing to do with a possible intrigue against Gelbhaar.

Roles in the Bundestag

Andreas Audretsch has been a member of the Bundestag since 2021. The 20th electoral term opened with the constituent sitting on 26 October 2021, and his parliamentary biography records his re-election for the 21st term in 2025.

Committees

The archived biography for the 20th term lists him as a full member of the Committee on Labour and Social Affairs and as a deputy member of the Budget Committee, the Joint Committee and the Mediation Committee. On the Budget Committee that deputy status came later. When the committee was constituted on 15 December 2021, the Bundestag’s parliamentary news service named him among seven full members from the Green parliamentary group on a body of 45 full members, chaired by Helge Braun of the CDU/CSU. The stenographic protocol of the committee’s 67th sitting, on 21 November 2023, places him among the deputy members. The full Green members listed that day were Felix Banaszak, Bruno Hönel, Sven-Christian Kindler, Markus Kurth, Paula Piechotta, Jamila Schäfer and Sebastian Schäfer.

On 2 June 2022 the plenary elected him, on the group’s proposal and with no votes against, as a deputy member of the Mediation Committee in succession to Lisa Paus. The committee works between the Bundestag and the Bundesrat. It has 16 members from each chamber, named in proportion to parliamentary-group strength, and is charged with seeking a compromise when a bill passed by the Bundestag does not obtain a majority in the Bundesrat. On 22 June 2022 the plenary likewise elected him, with no dissent noted, as a deputy member of the Joint Committee under Article 53a of the Basic Law, again succeeding Paus. That body is the emergency parliament for a state of defence, composed of two-thirds Bundestag members and one-third Bundesrat members, for cases in which the Bundestag cannot meet in time.

In the 21st term his current biography lists him as a deputy member of the Committee on Labour and Social Affairs, of the Budget Committee and of the Mediation Committee. It does not record a seat on the Joint Committee.

Deputy chair of the Green parliamentary group

On 10 May 2022 the group elected Audretsch a deputy chair at a group meeting. Paus had held that post from December 2021 until April 2022, responsible for the group’s subject area 1 — finance, the budget, the economy, labour and social affairs — and left it when she became Federal Minister for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth. Audretsch’s biography assigns him the same brief. In the group’s own account of its organisation he is political coordinator and deputy chair of Fachbereich 1 (economy, labour, social affairs, finance and the budget), whose working groups cover labour and social affairs, finance, the budget, and the economy and energy.

He served under the co-chairs Britta Haßelmann and Katharina Dröge. Three days after the Bundestag election of 23 February 2025, on 26 February, the group left the existing executive in office on an acting basis. On 24 March 2025 it re-elected Haßelmann and Dröge, each with 90.4 per cent of the vote, and Irene Mihalic as first parliamentary managing director with 93.9 per cent.

The remaining posts were filled on 29 April 2025. Der Spiegel reported that Audretsch, Julia Verlinden, Konstantin von Notz, Agnieszka Brugger and Misbah Khan were elected deputy chairs, and that Mihalic remained first parliamentary managing director. A dpa account published by the Süddeutsche Zeitung said Audretsch, Verlinden, Brugger and von Notz were confirmed; the only contested ballot among the deputy chairs was von Notz against the former parliamentary managing director Till Steffen, which von Notz won, while Khan entered the executive for the first time. Neither report gave a vote figure for Audretsch. After the 2025 election the group had 85 members — Alliance 90/The Greens won 85 seats — and was the fourth-largest of the five parliamentary groups.

Social and labour policy

As deputy chair of the Alliance 90/The Greens group in the Bundestag, Andreas Audretsch tied Bürgergeld to the statutory minimum wage: work, he said, should pay through wages, not by withdrawing the subsistence minimum.

Basic income support

Before the Christian Democratic Union published a “neue Grundsicherung” in March 2024, Audretsch told Der Spiegel that the plan linked to Friedrich Merz and general secretary Carsten Linnemann was “a threat to the savings of middle-class families” and “above all a blow against the self-employed”. Spiegel reported that the draft would end the twelve-month grace period and means-test assets from day one, so that a short gap after a lost contract might mean drawing down retirement savings or moving. Refusal of reasonable work without a factual reason would be treated as absence of need. Audretsch said denying parents “100 percent of what is necessary to live” would leave no money for food or clothing, and that Merz and Linnemann had “completely lost all sense of proportion” (“völlig das Maß verloren”).

In April he rejected an “update” sought by finance minister Christian Lindner of the Free Democratic Party, saying on RTL/ntv that the Federal Constitutional Court had limited sanctions to 30 percent “and we have used that room in full”. Its judgment of 5 November 2019 had not objected to a 30 percent cut in the standard benefit, but had found deeper cuts, including complete withdrawal, incompatible with the Basic Law on the evidence then available. In a CDU/CSU debate on 13 June, Linnemann said about 200,000 more people were on Bürgergeld than at its 2023 start and that “support and demand” had lapsed. Audretsch accused the Union of invoking a wage gap without decent pay. FDP speaker Jens Teutrine wanted a benefit freeze; Janine Wissler of Die Linke said the Union was campaigning against the unemployed.

In late July Linnemann told Funke newspapers that a six-figure number of people unwilling to work should lose support entirely, except single parents and carers. The Federal Employment Agency told tagesschau.de it kept no such count: 13,838 reductions for refusing work, training or a measure were recorded in the first eleven months of 2023. SPD deputy chair Dagmar Schmidt called a total cut unconstitutional. Audretsch told the Rheinische Post that policy should focus on “the 97 percent of people on Bürgergeld who want to work”, so extra hours, including after childcare, left families with more. One could not, he said, “simply strike the subsistence minimum” and “drive them into hunger”.

In a Die Zeit exchange on 29 October 2024, Rainer Schlegel, president of the Federal Social Court until June 2024, put 2023 spending near €47 billion and called asset rules “quite generous”, including a 140-square-metre house in a prime location. Refusal of reasonable work, he said, should be treated as absence of need. Audretsch answered that “we are talking about people”, many topping up low wages, and that the grace period was for finding work.

In September 2025 he told n-tv that savings lay in housing costs, not in cuts to claimants: large landlords, he said, profited from accommodation payments, and job centres should be able to challenge rents 20 to 30 percent above the local level. On his figures that spending had risen from €14 billion in 2011 to €18 billion.

On 17 December 2025 the cabinet adopted a bill, still requiring the Bundestag, to rename Bürgergeld “neue Grundsicherung” from 1 July 2026. The single-adult rate stayed €563. Two missed appointments would cut the payment by 30 percent; a third would suspend it while rent went to the landlord. Children would not be sanctioned, illness required a hearing, and assets would count from day one. Merz defended “support and demand”. Labour minister Bärbel Bas said help would remain. Audretsch said “zero euros for food, no home” would increase homelessness rather than employment. The Paritätischer and Diakonie warned of homelessness; Wissler called it a return to Hartz IV. Peter Adrian of the Association of German Chambers of Industry and Commerce called it a signal in the right direction.

Wages and labour-market policy

In April 2024 Audretsch said a wider gap between pay and benefits required higher wages, and that the Greens would set the commission a floor of 60 percent of the average wage — €14 in 2024 and about €15 in 2025 — for pay “more resistant to poverty”. In June he noted that CDU deputy chair Karl-Josef Laumann had demanded 60 percent of the median, then about €14, and asked which Union line held.

The 2025 coalition agreement told the commission to weigh agreed wages and 60 percent of the gross median, and called €15 in 2026 “achievable”. The rate was then €12.82. Audretsch told Spiegel the text was “prose for the SPD’s soul, no change whatever in reality”: the SPD had dropped a statutory rule and the Union had prevailed. He wanted 60 percent of the gross median written into the Minimum Wage Act, which he called a serious reading of the EU directive, and a faster cycle than the rate fixed in 2023 through the end of 2025. The commission later recommended €13.90 from January 2026 and €14.60 from 2027. Audretsch told AFP that €13.90 was “far too little”, with hundreds of thousands still needing housing benefit or Bürgergeld. Bas called it the largest rise the social partners had agreed since the minimum wage began.

Fiscal and economic policy

Debt brake and investment

As deputy chair of the Alliance 90/The Greens group in the Bundestag for finance, the budget, the economy, labour and social affairs, Andreas Audretsch argued that the debt brake should not crowd out investment. In a Spiegel interview on 2 October 2022 he said it "darf nicht zum Bremsklotz einer guten Zukunft werden." Germany, he argued, could leave the energy-price crisis stronger only if the state stabilised the economy and invested at the same time in efficiency, renewables and the transition; a recession fought in the name of inflation would be the worst result. Finance minister Christian Lindner of the Free Democratic Party rejected a reform or a suspension for the following year.

The debt brake (Schuldenbremse), added to the Basic Law in 2009, requires federal and state budgets in principle to balance without credit. The federation may borrow structurally up to 0.35 per cent of nominal GDP, with a cyclical allowance and an emergency exception that needs a Bundestag decision and a repayment plan. In February 2023 he told taz that the 2024 ceiling still required cuts to climate-damaging subsidies and more revenue, including an energy solidarity levy on very high wealth. Lindner held that not everything could be paid for at once.

On 15 November 2023 the Federal Constitutional Court voided the Second Supplementary Budget Act 2021. CDU/CSU members had challenged the transfer of €60 billion in unused pandemic credit, booked in February 2022 back into 2021, into the Energy and Climate Fund, later the Climate and Transformation Fund. The court found no sufficient link to the emergency, barred carrying that credit forward outside the brake, and cut the fund by €60 billion. On 1 December Audretsch said a 2023 supplementary budget and a fresh emergency declaration showed that "wir das Urteil aus Karlsruhe ernst nehmen," and that the brake must not block investment.

In March 2024 he urged a credit-financed "Deutschland-Investitionsfonds" for schools, transport, social housing and administration, financed by reforming the brake. After the 2025 election Friedrich Merz and the Social Democratic Party needed a two-thirds majority in the outgoing Bundestag. On 13 March Audretsch said on NDR Info that CDU/CSU and SPD would have to move before the Greens backed a special fund. The 14 March agreement exempted defence and related security spending above 1 per cent of GDP from the brake and created a €500 billion fund, €100 billion of it for the climate fund, on the reported Green condition that the money be additional and serve climate neutrality by 2045.

Budget conflicts

On 5 December 2023 he told n-tv that ending the company-car tax privilege would save about €1.8 billion and mainly helped owners of large, polluting cars: "Das ist nicht sinnvoll in dieser Zeit." He wanted a 2024 deal by year-end, left open another suspension, and called Merz's social cuts an unserious campaign against the poorest. In August 2024, after Lindner revived a gap of about €5 billion in the 2025 draft, Audretsch called that inappropriate conduct by a finance minister. The Greens refused to renegotiate or to close it by cutting climate or social spending.

Under Chancellor Merz and Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil, the complaint shifted to how the new room was used. In June 2025 Audretsch said gas subsidies would be paid from the climate fund, crowding out renovation and heat pumps. On plans through 2026 he told tagesschau that railway projects were being moved into the special funds so the core budget could plug holes, and that tax cuts for the richest would not be paid for by growth: "Das hat noch nie funktioniert." SPD spokesman Thorsten Rudolph called this a distraction from about €120 billion of investment; CDU/CSU spokesman Christian Haase said growth would not close a gap of about €172 billion by 2029.

In September 2025 he welcomed Klingbeil's link between welfare changes and higher taxes on very large wealth, Closing inheritance-tax exemptions could, he argued, raise €15 billion to €20 billion a year, against €8.5 billion the year before: a high-tax country for income, a low-tax country for the very rich. In July 2026, after the cabinet shifted €2.7 billion of emissions-trading revenue in 2027, and more than €13 billion by 2030, from the climate fund into the core budget, he told dpa that Merz and Klingbeil were plugging holes "auf Kosten des Klimas, mitten in der Klimakrise." The government said the shift helped consolidation because climate spending also ran through the federal budget.

Publications

Dissertation on good governance

Audretsch submitted Zur Entstehung von Good Governance. Gründe, Muster und Bedingungen einer afrikanischen Entwicklung; das Beispiel Ghana in June 2009 to the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Potsdam, with Harald Fuhr as first examiner and Werner Jann as second. The German National Library records a Potsdam doctorate of 2010. The university released a 455-page file that year under a Creative Commons licence. A commercial "new edition" from the Südwestdeutscher Verlag für Hochschulschriften in Saarbrücken (ISBN 978-3-8381-1900-7) is catalogued as 2010 print-on-demand; that record gives no separate page count.

The abstract treats Ghana as relatively advanced, in the studies it cites, on the road to good governance. Over more than fifty years, using quantitative and qualitative methods, it measures governance with six indicators and then traces advances and reversals. Circular patterns, it argues, long blocked democracy, the rule of law, public goods, and the economy until they were broken, while the fields interact: the rule of law affects stability and development and, through them, corruption. The text presents this as a reason to study governance as one system, and concludes that the shift depends on cultural change and learning, not a short-term change of rules, and that Ghana's path was unfinished.

Schleichend an die Macht

In July 2020 Audretsch and the historian Claudia C. Gatzka, then an assistant at the University of Freiburg, edited Schleichend an die Macht. Wie die Neue Rechte Geschichte instrumentalisiert, um Deutungshoheit über unsere Zukunft zu erlangen (Verlag J.H.W. Dietz Nachf., Bonn, ISBN 978-3-8012-0582-9). The publisher lists 140 pages; the national library records 132. Jürgen Kocka's foreword recalls Richard von Weizsäcker's 1985 speech on 8 May 1945 and the Historikerstreit, and treats attacks on that consensus as a danger to democracy.

The editors' introduction argues that provocations by the Alternative for Germany and the wider Neue Rechte, including Alexander Gauland on 8 May 1945 and the label "Vogelschiss" for National Socialism, are part of a strategy to shift historical consensus, drawing on a New Right reading of Antonio Gramsci's cultural hegemony. Audretsch writes the Germany chapter, "Neue alte Großmachtfantasien", and an essay on religion; Gatzka writes on Matteo Salvini and on antifeminism; Stefan Ozsváth writes on Viktor Orbán; Markus Linden on democracy. Audretsch, Gatzka, and Paul Jürgensen share a chapter on the COVID-19 pandemic, and Jürgensen and Hedwig Richter close with an appeal to scholarship, politics, and civil society.

Reviews diverged. In vorwärts (27 July 2020) Renate Faerber-Husemann called the 140-page book readable and unsensational in showing how the past is sold as a "golden yesterday". Felix Schilk, in jungle.world (13 August 2020), found the thesis unsurprising, objected to using New Right, right-wing populism, and right-wing extremism as synonyms, and called the style appellative rather than analytical. Der Spiegel interviewed Gatzka on 16 July 2020; she said Audretsch had wanted the martial call to "fight for history" in order to mark the threat, and that historians might object. The publisher also lists a Zeit item of 16 May 2020.

Zusammen wachsen

Zusammen wachsen. Eine neue progressive Bewegung entsteht (Dietz, Bonn, May 2022, ISBN 978-3-8012-0633-8) is a single-author essay. The publisher lists 192 pages; the national library records 191. The preface, dated Berlin, March 2022, quotes Olaf Scholz's Bundestag speech of 27 February 2022 on a Zeitenwende after the attack on Ukraine, and argues that the danger did not begin then. Audretsch offers the book as a reply to the 2020 volume: alliances among industrial workers, climate strikers, feminists, queer activists, post-migrant organisations, and religious figures against what he calls reactionary and far-right forces. Chapters move from the labour movement and identity politics to equality and freedom, including Article 3 of the Basic Law.

No independent review in a national newspaper was found. On 2 July 2022 t-online published a guest essay by Audretsch, labelled as his opinion and made of excerpts, under the headline "Zeitenwende: Putin ist längst nicht die einzige Bedrohung". The publisher's other press listing is a WDR 5 interview on 26 July 2022.

Other offices and public profile

Disclosed activities

Members of the Bundestag must file notices under the code of conduct in sections 45 and following of the Members of the Bundestag Act within three months of taking their seats, and must report later changes within three months; the administration publishes the items for which publication is required, with paid income stated as gross amounts. Among the offices published for Audretsch is an unpaid deputy seat on the board of trustees (Stiftungsrat) of the Stiftung Jüdisches Museum Berlin, recorded from 17 June 2024. The museum states that the Federal President appoints the board and that its members are newly appointed or reappointed every five years; the current list names Audretsch, as a member of the Bundestag, among the deputy members.

The Libeskind Building of the Jewish Museum Berlin, whose foundation board of trustees lists Audretsch as a deputy member.

The same disclosures list an honorary Policy Fellowship at the Berlin think tank Das Progressive Zentrum, which his Bundestag biography dates from 2017. The organization's profile lists him as an alumnus and states that he was a Policy Fellow until 2026. During the 2021–2025 term he was also a member of the administrative board (Verwaltungsrat) of the Institute for Federal Real Estate (Bundesanstalt für Immobilienaufgaben) in Bonn until April 2023; no remuneration was published for that seat.

The paid entries are narrower. For 2023 the archived biography records a one-off gross payment of €3,196.76 from Verlag J.H.W. Dietz Nachfolger GmbH in Bonn for publishing work. From 18 November 2024 to 18 May 2025 he disclosed a role as campaign manager for Alliance 90/The Greens, paid at €1,500 gross a month. Separately, the biography lists a pre-mandate post as a civil servant at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action in Berlin, with a right of return and no current income attached. A search of the Bundestag lobby register, which records interest representatives rather than members of parliament, returned no entry under his name.

Media presence and political positioning

Journalists have placed Audretsch on the left of the Greens. In its account of his appearance on the ZDF talk show Markus Lanz on 16 October 2024, ZDFheute reported that Helene Bubrowski, then deputy editor-in-chief of Table.Media, called control of the party's left wing—the wing to which, the report said, Audretsch counted himself—the Greens' main challenge, and described that wing as not "all that pragmatically inclined, the way Robert Habeck would like." t-online likewise described him as belonging to that wing. On the broadcast he argued for a large public-investment programme and a reform of the debt brake, and drew repeated interruptions from the host after naming Friedrich Merz, Markus Söder and Christian Lindner as the principal obstacles. The Bundestag biography records him as unmarried; on his own website he states that he has lived in Neukölln since 2006.