Andreas Mattfeldt

Andreas Mattfeldt (born 28 September 1969 in Verden (Aller)) is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and a directly elected member of the Bundestag. He represents constituency 34, Osterholz–Verden, in Lower Saxony, and the Bundestag lists his occupation as industrial clerk (Industriekaufmann). At the 2009 federal election he won the seat, then numbered 35, with 37.1 percent of the first votes (53,076), ahead of the SPD on 36.6 percent (52,394). He took his seat when the 17th Bundestag convened on 27 October 2009 and has been a member in the 17th, 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st electoral terms. In 2025 the federal returning officer recorded him as elected in constituency 34 with 35.9 percent of the first votes (59,337), ahead of Özge Kadah of the Social Democratic Party of Germany on 24.8 percent; turnout in the constituency was 84.7 percent.

The biography published by the Bundestag, which notes that such entries rest on members' own statements, records that Mattfeldt passed the Abitur in 1989 and trained from 1989 to 1992 as an industrial clerk at Buss GmbH & Co. KG in Ottersberg. From 1992 to 2001 he was a senior employee in the food industry. From 2001 to 2009 he was full-time mayor of the municipality of Langwedel and, over the same years, district chairman of the Lower Saxony association of towns and municipalities (Niedersächsischer Städte- und Gemeindebund). He joined the CDU in 1990, sat on the Langwedel municipal council from 1991 to 2009, was a member of the Völkersen local council from 1996 to 2001 and deputy local mayor until 2001, and since 2011 has been a member of the district council of Verden and of its district committee. The current biography states that he is married and has two children; the archived biography for the 20th term also describes him as non-denominational.

In the 21st Bundestag he is a full member of the Budget Committee (Haushaltsausschuss), the Petitions Committee (Petitionsausschuss), the federal financing body (Bundesfinanzierungsgremium) and the confidential committee (Vertrauensgremium), and a deputy member of the Defence Committee (Verteidigungsausschuss). The same biography states that since 2022 he has chaired the CDU/CSU parliamentary group's working group on petitions, and that since 2021 he has been deputy ("stellvertretender") of the parliamentary group on aerospace. Under the Bundestag's disclosure rules he is listed as managing partner of Königlich Preussische Biermanufactur GmbH in Berlin and of Quint Nord Vertriebs- und Beratungs GmbH in Langwedel, the latter at 539 euros gross a month, and the district-council seat is listed at 3,960 euros gross a year.

The Weser-Kurier has reported that Mattfeldt criticises rising prices in Bundeswehr procurement, which he calls "Rüstungsinflation", and that he argues for more competition in purchasing. On 17 September 2021 Der Spiegel published a report headlined as a case of conflicts of interest — "Der CDU-Politiker, sein adliger Freund und das 249.000 Euro-Votum" — whose summary states that Mattfeldt encouraged municipal politicians to apply for subsidies that were to benefit his business partner, and that he himself voted for the money on the Budget Committee. An image on that page is captioned as showing the business partner, the Prince of Prussia, with Mattfeldt on the Prinzeninsel.

Early life and career before parliament

Upbringing and education

Andreas Mattfeldt was born on 28 September 1969. The biography published by the Bundestag, drawn from members' own statements, gives the place of birth as Verden (Aller), in the district of Verden in Lower Saxony, and records that he is married with two children. The Weser-Kurier has instead described him as born, and still living, in Völkersen, a locality of Langwedel in the same district, and as the father of two daughters. In a 2017 interview he said that he met his father, a Frenchman, only in his mid-thirties, and that his mother watched his maiden speech on television.

The Bundestag biography records the Abitur in 1989 and does not name the school. In 2011 the Kreiszeitung reported that he had himself been a pupil at the school in Dauelsen, near Achim, which he revisited to answer a secondary-school class during a travelling exhibition on the Bundestag.

Work in the food industry

From 1989 to 1992 Mattfeldt trained as an Industriekaufmann (industrial clerk) at Buss GmbH & Co. KG in Ottersberg, another municipality in the district of Verden. Buss Fertiggerichte GmbH, a ready-meal producer in Ottersberg dated by the district's business pages to 1938, still trains industrial clerks and gives its workforce as about 480.

From 1992 to 2001 he was a senior employee (leitender Angestellter) in the food industry. The biography names neither the firm nor the post. That employment ended when he took the full-time mayoralty.

Mayor of Langwedel

In 2001 Mattfeldt became the first full-time mayor of the municipality (Flecken) of Langwedel, taking the town hall from the Social Democratic Party of Germany. The office had been honorary: Joachim Stünker (SPD) held it from 1984 to 2001 and, from 1998, also sat in the Bundestag. Before the mayoralty Mattfeldt had been on the Langwedel council since 1991 and on the Völkersen local council from 1996 to 2001, and was deputy local mayor in Völkersen until 2001. From 1996 he chaired the council group of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany.

Municipal figures taken from the Lower Saxony statistical office put the population at 14,437 on 30 June 2001 and 14,663 on 30 June 2009, on an area of 76.11 square kilometres that includes Völkersen, Etelsen, Daverden, Langwedel itself and smaller localities. He was elected again in 2006. At the council's last meeting of 2009, deputy mayor Andreas Grimm (CDU) said Mattfeldt had played a substantial part in renewing the outdoor pool, senior housing at Etelsen, a railway bridge at Förth and a motorway junction. In 2017 Mattfeldt himself counted preservation of the Burgbad pool, the Langwedel motorway access and the Förth bridge as the main results of the eight years.

For 2001 to 2009 the Bundestag biography also lists him as district chairman of the Niedersächsischer Städte- und Gemeindebund, the peak organisation of Lower Saxony's district-affiliated towns, municipalities and joint municipalities, which represents them toward federal and state authorities. A profile on a local CDU website, written while he was still mayor, dated that chairmanship from 2002 and also described him as a member of the association's district executive and a deputy member of its presidium.

At the Bundestag election of 27 September 2009 he won the constituency of Osterholz–Verden directly. The Kreiszeitung reported that accepting the seat would end the full-time mayoralty at the constitutive sitting, then expected for late October or early November, and that a new election was required within six months. Federal law suspends the rights and duties of a salaried civil servant's service relationship for the length of Bundestag membership, apart from official secrecy and the ban on gifts. By the council's last meeting of 2009 he was already the former mayor. Until a successor was chosen, the head of the municipal office, Rolf Korb, was to run the administration, with representative duties left to the honorary deputies Andreas Grimm (CDU) and Dr. Hans-Prüser (SPD).

In the runoff held on Sunday, 28 February 2010, SPD candidate Andreas Brandt defeated CDU candidate Jens Warnke, with 55.2 percent (2,916 votes to 2,365) on a turnout of 44.1 percent, and was to take office in the second week of March after leaving his post at the Sebaldsbrück railway works.

Party membership and local offices

Entry into the CDU

Andreas Mattfeldt has been a member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) since 1990, according to the biography published by the Bundestag, which is drawn from members' own statements and has repeated that date across terms. The same text lists him as a member of the CDU Bezirksvorstand, the regional executive tier, without naming the Bezirk. In June 2025 the CDU Bezirk Elbe-Weser, whose deputy chairs included Hella Bachmann of the Verden association, re-elected its executive: coverage named Enak Ferlemann as chairman, Bachmann, Karsten Behr and Fabian Albrecht as deputies, and Rotenburg district administrator Marco Prietz as treasurer. Mattfeldt was not among those officers.

A profile on the website of the CDU association in Kirchlinteln, still written as if he were full-time mayor of Langwedel, describes him as the founder of the local Junge Union branch and as CDU group chairman on the municipal council. Neither office appears in the Bundestag biography. Press reports document later contact with the youth organisation rather than its founding. On the night of his first Bundestag win in September 2009, at a celebration in Langwedel-Völkersen, he singled out what he called the strong team of the Junge Union among his campaign helpers. In January 2019 he was a guest when the Junge Union in Landkreis Verden elected a new board, with Marcel Iden as district chairman, and gave a "report from Berlin".

Municipal and district mandates

From 1991 to 2009 Mattfeldt sat on the council of Flecken Langwedel. From 1996 to 2001 he was also a member of the Ortsrat in Völkersen, a locality of Langwedel, and until 2001 deputy local mayor there. The council seat ended in 2009, the year he entered the Bundestag. The archived biography for the 2017–2021 term records no municipal-council membership, only a seat on the Verden Kreistag, then listed as honorary.

For the 2016 local elections the Langwedel CDU put Thomas Maruhn at the head of its municipal-council list and did not include Mattfeldt on it. He stood instead for the Kreistag, in second place in electoral area D, the area covering Langwedel, on a slate the party published in July 2016.

He had joined the Kreistag at the municipal election of 11 September 2011. The Kreiszeitung reported that 4,773 personal votes gave him the strongest individual result, ahead of fellow CDU candidate Wilhelm Hogrefe on 3,493; the totals had been calculated on election night and were still to be certified by the district election committee on 15 September. The Weser-Kurier, three days later, likewise called 4,773 the best personal total for the Kreistag. The Bundestag biography states that from 2011 he has also sat on the Kreisausschuss, the district committee.

At the elections of 12 September 2021 the Weser-Kurier named him among 18 CDU members of the new Kreistag. The CDU remained the largest group, with 34.7 percent and the same 18 seats as before; group chairman Wilhelm Hogrefe contrasted that result with the party's national standing. In Langwedel the Kreiszeitung recorded Mattfeldt as directly elected to the municipal council with 2,998 votes, the highest figure on the CDU list, which took nine seats, and quoted him as saying he had received 8,014 votes for the Kreistag. The council post is disclosed as unpaid. Kreistag membership, honorary in the 2017–2021 disclosure, is listed in the current one at 3,960 euros gross a year. After the Lower Saxony local elections of 13 September 2026, the Kreiszeitung included him among the CDU members of the incoming Verden Kreistag.

Bundestag elections and the constituency

Osterholz–Verden

Osterholz – Verden is a Bundestag constituency in Lower Saxony consisting of the districts of Osterholz and Verden in their entirety. It was numbered 35 at the federal election of 27 September 2009, when local reporting described it as newly formed, and it has been constituency 34 since the election of 2013. The Federal Returning Officer’s map, using administrative boundaries of 30 September 2023, shows the constituency beside the city of Bremen and names, among its municipalities, Osterholz-Scharmbeck, Schwanewede, Ritterhude, Lilienthal, Worpswede, Grasberg and the Samtgemeinde Hambergen in Osterholz, and Verden (Aller), Achim, Langwedel, Ottersberg, Oyten, Kirchlinteln, Dörverden and the Samtgemeinde Thedinghausen in Verden.

On 31 December 2023 the constituency contained 22 municipalities, covered 1,442 square kilometres and had 252,100 inhabitants, a density of 174.8 people per square kilometre. Foreign nationals were 8.3 percent of residents, against 14.5 percent in Germany. At the end of 2022, settlement and transport accounted for 15.6 percent of the area and vegetation and water for 84.4 percent. Unemployment at the end of November 2024 was 3.7 percent, compared with 5.9 percent nationally in the same structural series. Disposable income of private households in 2021 was 24,812 euro per inhabitant, close to the national 24,415 euro, while gross domestic product per inhabitant was 28,652 euro, against a national 43,292 euro. Of employees covered by social insurance on 30 June 2023, 27.7 percent worked in manufacturing, 28.1 percent in trade, hospitality and transport, 28.0 percent in other services, 14.3 percent in public and private services, and 1.9 percent in agriculture, forestry and fishing.

First votes, which elect the constituency member, have been contested mainly by the CDU and the SPD. In the Federal Returning Officer’s table for the 2009 constituencies, the 2005 result shown for comparison gave the SPD 48.4 percent of first votes and the direct majority. From 2009 onward the direct mandate has gone to the CDU at every federal election, even in years when another party led the second, or party-list, vote.

Direct mandates since 2009

On 27 September 2009 Andreas Mattfeldt (CDU) won constituency 35 with 53,080 first votes, 37.1 percent. Joachim Stünker (SPD), who had already served three legislative terms, received 52,397 votes, 36.6 percent, a margin of 683 votes out of 143,241 valid first votes. Turnout was 75.3 percent of 192,320 eligible voters. Alliance 90/The Greens took 8.6 percent of first votes, Die Linke 8.5 percent and the FDP 7.5 percent. Second votes put the CDU at 32.0 percent and the SPD at 29.2 percent, with the FDP on 12.5 percent and the Greens on 11.9 percent, so Mattfeldt’s personal share ran ahead of his party’s list. The 17th Bundestag held its opening sitting on 27 October 2009, and Mattfeldt was among the members who took part that day in the election of the president.

On 22 September 2013, in constituency 34, he took 63,174 first votes, 44.0 percent and 7.0 points more than in 2009. Christina Jantz (SPD) was second with 53,660 votes, 37.4 percent, 9,514 behind; turnout was 74.8 percent. Second votes also ranked the CDU first, at 40.0 percent to the SPD’s 33.1 percent. On 24 September 2017 he won with 59,560 votes, 39.2 percent, down 4.8 points, against Christina Jantz-Herrmann (SPD) on 48,505, 32.0 percent, a margin of 11,055. Jochen Rohrberg of the AfD placed third with 12,995 votes, 8.6 percent, and turnout rose to 78.0 percent. Second votes were led by the CDU at 34.9 percent, ahead of the SPD at 26.4 percent and the AfD at 9.7 percent.

The narrowest later result was on 26 September 2021. Mattfeldt received 50,274 first votes, 33.7 percent and 5.6 points lower than in 2017, and Michael Harjes (SPD) 48,574, 32.5 percent, a margin of 1,700 votes. The Greens took 14.7 percent of first votes and the FDP 9.2 percent; the AfD fielded no constituency candidate. Turnout was 76.6 percent of 197,490 eligible voters. Second votes reversed the ranking: the SPD led with 32.9 percent, up 6.5 points, and the CDU fell to 24.1 percent, down 10.9 points, with the Greens at 16.1 percent. Mattfeldt’s first-vote share was 9.6 points above the CDU list, and the direct mandate rather than a list place returned him.

At the election of 23 February 2025 he was re-elected with 59,337 first votes, 35.9 percent, up 2.3 points. Özge Kadah (SPD) was runner-up with 40,965 votes, 24.8 percent and 7.7 points less than the SPD in 2021, a gap of 18,372 votes. The AfD took 17.0 percent of first votes, the Greens 11.2 percent, Die Linke 6.7 percent and the FDP 3.0 percent. Turnout was 84.7 percent of 196,082 eligible voters, 8.1 points higher than in 2021. Second votes gave the CDU 28.0 percent, the SPD 23.0 percent and the AfD 17.6 percent, up 10.1 points, with the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht at 3.9 percent. His constituency vote again exceeded the CDU list, 35.9 percent to 28.0 percent.

Committee work and parliamentary offices

Budget Committee

Andreas Mattfeldt has been an ordinary member of the Budget Committee (Haushaltsausschuss) of the Bundestag in each term covered by the parliament’s biographies. In the 18th electoral term (2013–2017) the archived biography lists the Budget Committee, the Petitions Committee and the Audit Committee (Rechnungsprüfungsausschuss) as ordinary memberships, and a deputy seat on the Finance Committee. In the 19th term (2017–2021) the ordinary seats were the Budget Committee, the Petitions Committee and the Budget Committee’s subcommittee on questions concerning the European Union, with a deputy seat on the Committee for Economic Affairs and Energy. In the 20th term (2021–2025) he was an ordinary member of the Budget Committee, the Petitions Committee — also listed there as Obmann, the group’s lead member on the committee — and the Bundesfinanzierungsgremium, and a deputy on the Committee on Climate Action and Energy.

The Budget Committee of the 21st Bundestag constituted itself on 21 May 2025 with 42 members: 14 from the CDU/CSU, including Mattfeldt, ten from the Alternative for Germany, eight from the Social Democratic Party, six from Alliance 90/The Greens and four from Die Linke.

Rapporteurs divide the departmental chapters. The committee’s recommendation of 5 November 2025 on the 2026 estimates for Einzelplan 14, the Federal Ministry of Defence, names Mattfeldt as a rapporteur with Thomas Ladzinski, Andreas Schwarz, Sebastian Schäfer and Dietmar Bartsch, one member from each group. At the first reading of the 2025 defence budget, on 9 July 2025, he described himself as the responsible rapporteur for that plan, “perhaps even a new one”, while saying he had held it briefly before. The CDU/CSU group has called him the responsible lead rapporteur (Hauptberichterstatter) for the Climate and Transformation Fund, whose economic plan is chapter 6092, annexed to Einzelplan 60 on general financial administration. The committee’s recommendation of 13 November 2025 on Einzelplan 60 lists him among a larger set of rapporteurs from all groups, and the amendments include that chapter.

His biography for the 21st term, which the Bundestag says rests on members’ own information and which was current on 28 October 2026, lists ordinary membership of the Bundesfinanzierungsgremium, the Budget Committee, the Petitions Committee and the Vertrauensgremium, and a deputy seat on the Defence Committee. It does not list the Audit Committee recorded for the 18th term.

On 26 June 2025 the Bundestag elected the Vertrauensgremium under section 10a(2) of the Federal Budget Code. Mattfeldt received 482 votes in favour, 59 against, 31 abstentions and 11 invalid votes. For reasons of secrecy, the code lets the House make classified economic plans depend on that Budget Committee body; unless the Bundestag decides otherwise, the Federal Ministry of Finance submits the services’ plans, and members must keep secret what they learn. The Budget Committee constituted the body on 27 June 2025 under Florian Oßner, to adopt the plans of the Federal Intelligence Service, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the Bundesamt für den Militärischen Abschirmdienst, and to monitor spending through the year. The three AfD nominees missed the majority of members of the House, 316 votes, so 11 rather than 14 members were chosen.

The same sitting elected him to the body under section 3 of the Federal Debt Management Act — the Bundesfinanzierungsgremium — with 484 votes in favour, 56 against, 35 abstentions and 13 invalid. The act requires a body of Budget Committee members, chosen for the term by a majority of the House, which the finance ministry informs on all questions of federal debt; the ministry and the Bundesrechnungshof attend as of right, and members are bound to secrecy.

Defence oversight and special funds

The biography records only a deputy membership of the Defence Committee. Statute assigns approval of large defence contracts to the Budget Committee. Section 54(3) of the Federal Budget Code requires contracts in the defence ministry for procurement, development or operation above 25 million euro to be laid before the committee; until it approves them they are not yet effective, except for government sales to partner states. Section 5(3) of the Bundeswehr Financing and Special Assets Act sets the same threshold, with the same effect, for contracts charged to the special fund for the Bundeswehr.

On 26 June 2025 Mattfeldt was also elected to the oversight body under section 5(4) of that act, with 494 votes in favour, 49 against, 32 abstentions and 13 invalid, alongside Melanie Bernstein and Florian Oßner (CDU/CSU), Andreas Schwarz and Svenja Stadler (SPD) and Sebastian Schäfer (Greens). Nominees of the AfD and Die Linke did not reach 316 votes. The statute provides for a body of Budget Committee members, elected for the term, which the defence ministry informs on all questions of the “Sondervermögen Bundeswehr”, under a duty of secrecy. The Bundestag’s account of the election describes the fund as the means, over a multi-year average of at most five years, of supporting defence spending equal to two per cent of gross domestic product on the NATO measure. The profile current on 28 October 2026 does not display this seat, although the plenary record does.

News coverage has treated Mattfeldt and the SPD member Andreas Schwarz as the coalition rapporteurs for those submissions. An NDR Info programme of 10 July 2026 introduced both as the budget specialists of the CDU–SPD coalition who deal with every procurement submission above 25 million euro. The Berliner Zeitung, describing them as the lead rapporteurs for the defence budget, reported criticism of prices directed at Defence Minister Boris Pistorius. Mattfeldt was quoted as saying the task was to get the best equipment for soldiers at the best price for the taxpayer.

Petitions and other bodies

He has been an ordinary member of the Petitions Committee in the 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st terms, and the 20th-term archive also lists him as its Obmann. The current biography states, from his own information, that since 2022 he has chaired the CDU/CSU group’s working group on petitions. The same note says that since 2021 he has been “stellvertretender” of the Parlamentariergruppe Luft- und Raumfahrt, the cross-party group on aerospace; the published sentence does not supply the noun that would normally follow.

The Bundestag describes the Petitions Committee, with 26 members, as the chamber’s contact for requests, complaints and suggestions within federal competence, whether personal or raised in the general interest; Länder matters lie outside it. The working-group chairmanship is an office of the CDU/CSU group, not of the committee, and the aerospace group is not a Bundestag committee.

Political positions

Migration, asylum and Europe

On 26 November 2015, in the Bundestag debate on the economics ministry budget, Mattfeldt said the state had lost control of the refugee crisis. Germany needed immigration, he argued, but not “the speed” or “the number” of arrivals, which made integration “almost impossible.” He said reception capacity had probably been exceeded, that turning people back should no longer be taboo, and that the Länder were barely returning people with no right to stay. He also warned that ministries were using the crisis to justify lasting spending and might abandon a balanced budget.

SPD deputy Hubertus Heil called parts of the speech an opposition speech and said a member of the governing CDU/CSU should help restore state control rather than lament its loss. Green deputies interjected that he should resign and asked whether he sat in opposition to the right of Chancellor Angela Merkel. Focus, citing Bild, reported that group chair Volker Kauder shouted that Mattfeldt ought to be ashamed, and that parliamentary secretary Michael Grosse-Brömer asked which group he thought he belonged to. Mattfeldt told Bild he took the exchange as an attempt to intimidate him. He told the Kreiszeitung he was not opposing Merkel’s “wir schaffen das” for its own sake, that the group had no agreed refugee line, and that ignoring local limits on housing and language teaching, including in Verden, would “open a flank for the right-wing spectrum.”

He had already dissented on European rescue loans. On 19 August 2015 the Bundestag approved, by 453 votes to 113 with 18 abstentions, up to €86 billion in stability assistance for Greece through the European Stability Mechanism. Mattfeldt was one of 63 CDU/CSU members voting no; he had also voted against opening the talks. He told the Kreiszeitung that a meeting with Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, who said he felt better about this package than earlier ones, did not move him: there was no working monitor of Greek reforms, and temporary aid risked becoming permanent. The paper reported that Kauder had warned dissenters they might lose seats on committees such as the budget and European affairs committees. In the November speech he nevertheless said Germany’s economic strength was what had made the euro-area debt crisis manageable.

Energy, fracking and climate spending

The arguments tracked gas production in his Lower Saxony constituency. In November 2014 Welt reported that more than 100 CDU and CSU members, the “Mattfeldt group,” opposed a draft fracking law from Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks. Mattfeldt said it lacked a ban on injecting produced water (Lagerstättenwasser), which he described as laden with benzene and mercury, and that he would not support a bill without one. He also objected to leaving commercial shale fracking to an expert commission and state authorities. CDU deputy group leader Michael Fuchs defended that design: without a commercial prospect, he said, firms would not drill test wells.

On 24 June 2016 the Bundestag passed a coalition package by 436 votes to 119, with nine abstentions. Fracking in shale, clay, marl and coal-seam rock was banned except for at most four scientific wells, and only with the Land’s consent; sandstone fracking was restricted, including in drinking-water areas. Opposition parties and environmental groups said this was still short of a full ban. Mattfeldt said his group had pressed for the tighter rules, and that about two-thirds of German gas output was conventional yet caused the same problems of water, subsidence, earthquakes and disposal. He voted for the bills. His written explanation cited a reversed burden of proof after an earthquake around Verden that he said damaged hundreds of houses, and said 13 of the group’s demands were largely adopted: no new injection applications in drinking-water zones after five years, a transition he wanted shortened, and elsewhere produced water only in depleted reservoirs after treatment. He still preferred extraction in densely populated areas to stop, but wrote that rejection would have meant no unconventional ban and no gain on conventional production.

As lead rapporteur for the Climate and Transformation Fund, he proposed cuts in October 2026 to help pay for a lower electricity tax. Bild reported more than €3 billion of savings he had identified in a 2026 fund of about €33 billion, financed mainly from the carbon price and emissions trading, after Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil put an across-the-board cut at about €5.4 billion a year and demanded offsetting savings. Mattfeldt’s list included spending on “biodiversity abroad”—about €635 million in 2026 and €612 million in 2027, including projects on the Galápagos Islands and in Guatemala—and Germany’s share of a tropical-forest fund, for which Chancellor Friedrich Merz had pledged €1 billion over ten years. He said household and business relief could not be discussed while such savings were left untouched.

Free votes and pandemic measures

On 30 June 2017, in a free vote, the Bundestag opened marriage to same-sex couples by 393 votes to 226, with four abstentions. Mattfeldt was one of 75 CDU/CSU members voting yes, against the majority of his group.

During the COVID-19 pandemic he argued that restrictions had outrun parliament. On 23 May 2020 he told Deutschlandfunk that the Infection Protection Act let ministers limit fundamental rights without the Bundestag—acceptable for the first weeks, not after. He dismissed claims that Bill Gates was behind the pandemic as “nonsense,” but said people afraid for their rights should be answered, because a later government “not on the ground of the constitution” could use the same powers. On 10 December 2021 he was one of five CDU/CSU members, with Hans-Peter Friedrich, Manfred Grund, Jens Koeppen and Jana Schimke, to vote against the coalition bill on COVID-19 vaccination prevention, which included a requirement for staff in designated health and care settings. The vote was 569 to 79, with 38 abstentions; most of the Union sided with the government.

Defence procurement

With SPD rapporteur Andreas Schwarz, Mattfeldt reviews Bundeswehr contracts above €25 million. In an NDR interview of 10 July 2026, with defence spending that year put at nearly €125 billion, he said the test was the best equipment for soldiers at the best price for taxpayers. Schwarz said faster buying required dropping “gold-edged” specifications.

On 27 May 2026 the Berliner Zeitung reported that they had criticised Defence Minister Boris Pistorius over prices, with about €650 billion at stake in the years ahead. A plan for 902 fuel-tank containers, about €262.67 million, worked out at roughly €291,200 each, about double earlier orders. Mattfeldt told the Süddeutsche Zeitung that it was obvious some people “want to fill their pockets.” The rapporteurs had also first cut a loitering-munition order for Helsing and Stark Defence from up to €4.4 billion to €540 million. Schwarz said prices were exploding for lack of competition.

Business interests and outside income

Companies and partnerships

The official biography of Andreas Mattfeldt of the CDU names two limited companies (GmbH), each both as paid work beside his Bundestag seat and as a shareholding. Königlich Preussische Biermanufactur GmbH, Berlin, is listed as a managing partnership with no euro amount. Quint Nord Vertriebs- und Beratungs GmbH, Langwedel, is listed as a managing partnership at 539.00 euros gross a month.

The Berlin firm is registered as Kgl. Preussische Biermanufactur GmbH at the Amtsgericht Charlottenburg, HRB 176118 B, seat Königsallee 9. North Data's compilation of register notices dates the entry to 21 April 2016, with share capital of 25,000 euros and an object of producing and selling brewery products and non-alcoholic drinks and related business. Daniel Hug and Georg Friedrich Prinz von Preußen are the managing directors named at entry; Mattfeldt's appointment is dated 7 November 2016, and Hug left that office on 19 December 2019. In September 2017 the Weser-Kurier wrote that Mattfeldt, the prince and a Swiss banker were the three shareholders, and that he had gone into brewing at the start of that year. The same article said he held a stake in a meat-products business, without naming the firm. The company's legal notice names Mattfeldt and the prince as its representatives. A January 2023 Kreiszeitung report described the two men as the shareholders and said the beer sold as Preußens Pilsener had been on the market since April 2017; Mattfeldt told the paper that draught beer was about two-thirds of turnover. A separate controversy over a federal grant and property of the House of Hohenzollern in Plön is not part of these filings and is treated below.

Archived biographies show both shareholdings from the 18th legislative period (2013–2017). In the 18th and 19th periods he was managing director of both firms, with Quint Nord at monthly income level 1 and the brewery carrying no level. The 19th-period archive also records an unpaid seat as deputy member of the Verbandsversammlung of EWE AG, Oldenburg. From the 20th period (2021–2025) both roles are given as managing partner, and Quint Nord is the exact 539.00 euros gross a month rather than a band.

Side-income disclosures

Sections 45 and 47 of the Members of the Bundestag Act require notice of paid work beside the mandate and of a holding above 5 percent. An amount must be stated when income exceeds 1,000 euros in a month or, if not, 3,000 euros in a calendar year; the published figure is the gross sum, or pre-tax profit where the income is turnover. Reportable particulars are published on the Bundestag website. Returns are due within three months of taking the seat and of any later change. Since 19 October 2021 the code has been part of the Act, with implementing rules of the Council of Elders of 12 May 2022, and amounts are published to the cent.

Until that reform, income above the reporting line was published in steps. A 2013 change, in force from the first sitting of the 18th Bundestag, replaced three steps with ten: level 1 was 1,000 to 3,500 euros and level 10 anything over 250,000 euros. Quint Nord's level 1 in the 18th and 19th periods was that band. Under the later rule, 539 euros a month is below the monthly line, but 6,468 euros over a year is above the annual line, so the rate is published, while the brewery role still appears without an amount. Abgeordnetenwatch's republication of the declarations puts the Quint Nord managing partnership at 18,865.00 euros gross cumulatively as of 30 September 2024, equal to 35 payments at that rate, for the 2021–2025 term and the term that began in 2025.

The same pages list posts that are not company income. The current biography records honorary membership of the Langwedel council, a seat on the district council of Verden at 3,960.00 euros gross a year, an honorary vice-presidency of Weltliga für Freiheit und Demokratie (WLFD) – Deutschland e.V. in Berlin, and, as the occupation before the mandate, full-time mayor of Langwedel. The 20th-period archive added 120.00 euros gross in 2022 to the district-council allowance. A breach of the notification duties can bring a reprimand, a finding published as a parliamentary paper, and a fine of up to half the annual members' allowance, under section 51 of the Act.

The Plön funding dispute

Ties to the House of Hohenzollern

In August 2021 Der Spiegel reported that the House of Hohenzollern was disputing artworks and compensation, running into the millions, with the federal government, and that closeness to Andreas Mattfeldt could be useful to the family. Mattfeldt, a CDU member of the Bundestag Budget Committee, told the Weser-Kurier that he and Georg Friedrich Prinz von Preußen, who grew up in Fischerhude near Bremen, had been friends since childhood, and that he stayed out of the compensation question. He said they stood behind the Preußische Biermanufactur, a small Berlin brewery that had taken over management of Prinzeninsel Betriebs GmbH, which runs a restaurant on a Hohenzollern peninsula in the Plöner See in Schleswig-Holstein, and that he drew no income from either business.

The Kreiszeitung reported that Wilhelm II bought the Prinzeninsel in 1910 and that in the 1960s it was given free of charge to the town of Plön, which built a public lido with a DLRG lifesaving station and a kiosk about 350 metres from the restaurant. On 1 October Der Spiegel wrote that Mattfeldt had, in the summer of 2020, urged the council to seek federal money for a Hohenzollern property there and had then helped decide the grant on the Budget Committee. It said he had told neither the committee nor the President of the Bundestag that he was managing director of the restaurant company: the website named him, the commercial register did not. Section 45 of the Members of the Bundestag Act requires a member to notify the President of work on a company board or similar body and of a shareholding above five per cent.

Spiegel published a written answer by Mayor Lars Winter stating that, on Mattfeldt’s own account, he held 50 per cent of Prinzeninselbetriebs GmbH and “Mr von Preußen” the rest. Mattfeldt replied that this was outside his knowledge, that he held no shares, and that he did not rule out joining later as a shareholder. He had told the Kreiszeitung that the prince was still sole shareholder and that their brewery, in which he described them as equal partners, had taken over day-to-day running during the coronavirus crisis.

The Strandbad grant

The figure in dispute was for a green roof, not a full rebuilding. On 9 March 2021 Plön said a bid for up to €808,920, toward an estimated €900,000 renovation under the federal programme for sports, youth and cultural facilities, had been refused because the programme was oversubscribed. A parallel application, to convert the roof under the programme for adapting urban areas to climate change and costed at about €277,000, was still open. Winter said the town would next ask its Bundestag members to press colleagues on the Budget Committee, citing grants in the constituency of Bettina Hagedorn.

On 20 April 2021 sh:z, the site of the Schleswig-Holsteinischer Zeitungsverlag, reported that the administration wanted, on cost grounds, to drop a green roof on that building and to have an engineer check whether the foundation could carry it without further work. The main committee, the paper reported, voted against Winter, who feared extra bills for an architect and the foundations.

Spiegel’s article of 17 September, by Gunther Latsch and Klaus Wiegrefe, was headlined around a €249,000 vote and said Mattfeldt had encouraged local politicians to apply for money meant to benefit his business partner, then voted for it himself. The Kreiszeitung reported the charge of a conflict of interest and of “maximale Befangenheit” (the utmost bias), quoting the magazine on “state money for the grass roof of a lido on the Plön lake belonging to the Hohenzollern,” and wrote that a grant notice for a quarter of a million euros had reached the town hall. Mattfeldt told the paper that, as a guest in the summer of 2020, he had simply suggested an application. The council, the paper reported, voted 17 in favour, five against and three abstentions, despite SPD councillor Ingo Buth calling the bid ridiculous; faction chair Bettina Hansen said a financially weak town had to weigh its own share. The Kreiszeitung also reported a Spiegel suggestion that the island was apparently to become a beach resort, and that the two had acted almost in secret.

Response and consequences

Mattfeldt called the reporting unfounded mud-slinging—“Da wird unberechtigt mit Dreck geworfen”—and said he feared it would cost him the direct mandate. He said the property had long been free to the town, including after a 25-year lease, with another free lease of 25 years ready; the town maintained and insured the building, housed the DLRG and kept the kiosk rent, and the grants covered only municipal use. A resort, he said, was impossible because the island is a Flora-Fauna-Habitat site, and the businesses were already public, including an official restaurant opening in August 2021 and about 25 jobs. Spiegel’s piece of 1 October said he might have given untrue or incomplete information, setting Winter’s note of a 50 per cent holding against his denial. Those reports and the Kreiszeitung interview set out the allegation, the disputed company details and his reply; they did not report a criminal investigation, a request to lift parliamentary immunity, or a published finding by the Bundestag President under the members’ rules.

Public standing

Relations with the CDU/CSU leadership

On 26 November 2015, in the Bundestag debate on the economics-ministry budget, Mattfeldt said Germany had "lost control" of the refugee crisis, that integration at that speed and scale was "nearly impossible," and that returns at the border should not be taboo. Bild reported that CDU/CSU group chairman Volker Kauder shouted "Du solltest dich was schämen!" and that parliamentary manager Michael Grosse-Brömer called the speech "unmöglich," asking whether Mattfeldt still knew which group he was in. Mattfeldt told the paper he took the exchange as intimidation and that no group decision on refugee policy bound him. On 20 January 2016 he told n-tv that this handling of critics was "höchst bemerkenswert," and that ordinary CDU members thought "in eine ganz andere Richtung" from the leadership around Chancellor Angela Merkel.

In a Cicero interview on 18 September 2019 he said he belonged to neither the Werteunion nor the Union der Mitte, but called the Werteunion's founding a "Weckruf, stellenweise sogar als Hilferuf: Vergesst uns nicht!" meant to keep core voters from the Alternative for Germany. Unchecked crossings in 2015, he said, had broken with the "DNA" of the CDU electorate, and much of the base in his constituency felt closer to the Werteunion than to the Union der Mitte.

On 6 May 2025, after Friedrich Merz missed a majority on the first ballot for chancellor, a post Mattfeldt had written on the train to Berlin was read as a hint that he had been among the dissenters. He had criticised the Union leadership for letting outgoing interior minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) "lead" it by publishing a report on the AfD from the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, and had said he would vote only by conviction and for his district. That evening on ZDF, Markus Lanz put the post to CDU general secretary Carsten Linnemann, who declined to speculate because the ballot was secret. Mattfeldt told the Kreiszeitung the inference was "absurd"—"ich bin von Anfang an Merz-Mann, ich habe mit Ja gestimmt"—and that the criticism had been of the SPD partner, not of Merz.

Regional and national coverage

Bild wrote that the 2015 speech landed "wie eine Bombe" and that no Union MP had spoken so openly against Merkel's refugee policy; Focus, citing that account, headlined that Kauder had dressed a colleague down. n-tv and Cicero later cast him as a backbencher claiming to speak for a conservative membership the leadership had left behind. After the 2025 ballot the Kreiszeitung reported that the hunt for the MPs behind Merz's shortfall had put him among "mögliche Abtrünnige"; the Nordkurier asked whether Lanz had exposed a "Merz-Verräter," which Mattfeldt called absurd and said had made him smile.

Coverage of his row with Robert Habeck over aid to Northvolt set his account against a denial. In May 2025 Bild quoted him saying that, during and after a January budget-committee hearing, the then economics minister of Alliance 90/The Greens had "almost attacked" him and warned that his remarks could bring a criminal complaint. A Habeck spokesperson told Focus the questions had been answered "ruhig und sachlich." The Verden Kreiszeitung carried the dispute locally, with Mattfeldt saying he would not "knicken." When Focus later reported confidential Bundesrechnungshof criticism of the ministry's risk checks, it quoted him suggesting the money had been paid out deliberately as well as negligently.

In June 2026, after a Pentecost social-media post, the Kreiszeitung interviewed him on the AfD. He said confrontation by the other parties and the media "war nicht erfolgreich," and that speaking with AfD members was not the same as normalising the party. He called Björn Höcke "völkisch und nationalsozialistisch geprägt," said Höcke's wording deliberately echoed National Socialist patterns, and rejected treating AfD voters as a bloc; he also argued a ban case would likely fail and could strengthen the party. Asked whether he wanted an AfD shift on NATO and Russia in order to ease a coalition, he rejected that reading and said the CDU should not drop long-held positions merely because the AfD voiced similar demands.