Annika Klose

Annika Klose (born 24 June 1992 in Dortmund) is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and a social scientist. She has been a member of the Bundestag since 2021, elected on the Berlin state list while standing as a candidate in Berlin-Mitte. In the 21st Bundestag she is a full member and the SPD Obfrau of the Committee on Labour and Social Affairs, a deputy member of the Finance Committee, and, from 7 July 2025, a member of the foundation council of the Stiftung Humboldt Forum im Berliner Schloss.

She took her Abitur in 2011 at the Robert-Koch-Schule in Clausthal-Zellerfeld, after a year abroad in 2008–2009 in Madison, Mississippi. She studied social sciences at the Humboldt University of Berlin, completing a bachelor's degree between 2011 and 2015 and a master's degree in 2021. From 2013 she held a scholarship from the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, and in 2013–2014 she spent an Erasmus semester at Université Lyon 2 in Lyon. From 2017 to 2018 she worked as a union secretary for the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB) in Berlin-Brandenburg.

Klose joined the SPD in 2011. She was state chair of the Young Socialists in the SPD (Jusos) in Berlin from 2015 to 2020, has been a member of the SPD Berlin state executive since 2015, and has been district chair of the SPD in Mitte since 2024. On 28 June 2025 the SPD federal party congress in Berlin elected her one of 24 additional members of the party executive; she received 271 votes in the first round and 414 in the second.

In the 2021 German federal election the constituency was numbered 75, Berlin-Mitte. The federal returning officer’s table for the partial repeat held in parts of Berlin on 11 February 2024 gives the SPD 30,611 first votes (22.1 percent), behind Alliance 90/The Greens on 42,443 (30.6 percent). The archived Bundestag biography states that Klose again secured her mandate in that repeat vote. The 20th Bundestag held its constitutive sitting on 26 October 2021. In that term she was a full member of the Committee on Labour and Social Affairs and of the Petitions Committee, and since 2023 she has been spokesperson of the Berlin state group in the SPD Bundestag group.

At the 2025 German federal election, in constituency 74, Berlin-Mitte, the SPD took 26,816 first votes (16.7 percent) and 15.0 percent of second votes, with turnout at 78.0 percent. Hanna Steinmüller of Alliance 90/The Greens won the direct seat with 25.3 percent; Ottavia Stella Merendino of Die Linke placed second with 24.0 percent. Klose again entered through the Berlin state list. The 21st Bundestag constituted itself on 25 March 2025. On 20 May 2025 the SPD parliamentary group elected her spokesperson of its working group on labour and social affairs.

Early life and education

Family background

Annika Klose was born on 24 June 1992 in Dortmund. She grew up in Clausthal-Zellerfeld, in the Harz in Lower Saxony. In a 2022 profile in Das Parlament, the newspaper of the Bundestag, she described herself as part of the "Generation Hartz IV" and said that, as a young person in Clausthal-Zellerfeld, she had seen households on that basic unemployment benefit and what she called their reduced share in local life, an "unbelievable injustice". Her parents, she said, came from working-class families in which politics was not constantly discussed but support for the Social Democratic Party was assumed; they had met at a camp of the socialist youth organisation Die Falken.

Party and welfare work also ran through the older generation in the town. The SPD branch in Clausthal-Zellerfeld recorded in November 2024 that Günter Klose had joined in 1947 and, across 77 years of membership, had been Bürgermeister of the former Samtgemeinde and a member of the district council (Kreistag). Marking his 93rd birthday, the branch called him an honorary citizen of the Berg- und Universitätsstadt Clausthal-Zellerfeld and named his sons Manfred, then a 50-year member and himself a district councillor, and Reinhard, a 40-year member. The same notice identified Annika Klose, in the Bundestag for the SPD since 2021, as his granddaughter. Das Parlament reported that her grandmother led the local Arbeiterwohlfahrt and took the grandchildren to its senior gatherings for coffee and cake, and that as a teenager Klose noticed some of the older people could scarcely have paid for that cake in a café. The branch's own history says that Ingrid Klose headed the Clausthal-Zellerfeld Arbeiterwohlfahrt from 1992 to 2007.

The family also owns a joinery business in the town. In a December 2024 reply on Abgeordnetenwatch, Klose wrote that master carpenter Josef Klose had founded it in 1897, that her father and her uncle now run it in the fourth generation, and that the firm, after steady growth, mainly produces plastic windows. A company history carried by the profile supplier GEALAN states that Günter Klose began making PVC windows in the late 1960s and that the brothers Reinhard and Manfred Klose took over the management in 1996. Klose is a limited partner (Kommanditistin), with what she called a control function, in the related partnership KVB KG; she described the usual work as two meetings a year, including preparation, and said a pre-tax profit share for 2023 of €27,542.70 had been notified to the Bundestag. The archived biography for the 20th electoral term lists KVB KG, Clausthal-Zellerfeld, among reportable holdings, with pre-tax profit figures for 2022, 2023 and 2024, and notes that members' biographies rest on their own statements.

Schooling and university

Klose took the Abitur in 2011 at the Robert-Koch-Schule in Clausthal-Zellerfeld, a Gymnasium. In the 2008–09 school year, her eleventh year, she spent an exchange year in Madison, Mississippi, at a public school.

In April 2015 she told UnAuf, the student newspaper of the Humboldt University, that the American year had shown her how sharply school placement tracked family income: pupils from richer homes were in the stronger courses, while those without support at home and with weaker marks were moved into weaker ones. She said the contrast had convinced her that education was a central route to social advancement and had drawn her into questions of equal access to schooling. Looking back in 2022, she said she had liked her youth in the Harz and the landscape, but had also felt hemmed in, including by her opposition to Germany's tracked secondary system, and that she left for Berlin after the Abitur.

From 2011 to 2015 she studied for a bachelor's degree in social sciences at the Humboldt University of Berlin. In 2013–14 she spent an Erasmus semester at Lumière University Lyon 2. From 2013 her Bundestag biography and a 2018 SPD Berlin candidate sheet list her as a scholarship holder in the gifted-students programme (Begabtenförderung) of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation. She was a member of the university's student parliament from 2014 to 2016; the 2015 UnAuf interview presented her, then 22, as sitting for the Juso university group and as a member of that group's federal executive. In the same interview she argued that student co-determination at the university was too weak, that the student parliament was little known outside its own circle, and that access on campus, including at the rebuilt Mensa Süd, was inadequate for wheelchair users.

An SPD Berlin profile of May 2018 listed a master's in social sciences at the Humboldt University as under way since 2015. She completed that degree in 2021. Das Parlament noted that she had already begun work as a trade-union secretary before the master's was finished, so the degree ran alongside early employment rather than as a continuous course of study.

Trade-union and civil-society work

DGB Berlin-Brandenburg

From 2017 to 2018 Annika Klose worked as a Gewerkschaftssekretärin, a paid union secretary, at the Berlin-Brandenburg district of the German Trade Union Confederation (Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund, DGB). The Bundestag lists that post as her occupation before she entered parliament. Its biographical entries rest on members’ own statements, and the archived biography for the 20th legislative period records the same employment.

The DGB, founded in 1949, is the confederation of Germany’s main sectoral unions. Its district for Berlin and Brandenburg describes itself as the political voice of eight member unions, stating that it represents about 350,000 members and puts union positions to governments, parties and the public. Wage bargaining and workplace representation are left to the affiliated unions. Klose’s membership list includes ver.di (Vereinte Dienstleistungsgewerkschaft), the services union created on 19 March 2001 by the merger of five unions and admitted to the DGB that July.

Sea rescue and memberships

The archived biography separately records a 2017 search-and-rescue mission in the Mediterranean Sea with Sea Eye e.V. At the time Klose chaired the Berlin Jusos, the youth organisation of the Social Democratic Party of Germany.

Before leaving, she told the SPD paper Vorwärts that she would fly to Malta on 15 August 2017 and join a nine-person volunteer crew. The Sea-Eye was to sail around 20 August toward Libya to give first aid—life jackets, water and treatment of acute cases—before larger ships took people to Italy. She dated the decision to mid-June, said she no longer wanted only to watch drownings, and hoped to return a state-run European rescue mission to the agenda. Vorwärts put that year’s death toll on the crossing, to that date, at nearly 2,400. She called the work a humanitarian duty and said charges against the crews criminalised aid.

On 13 August Sea-Eye suspended operations. Founder Michael Buschheuer said continuing was no longer responsible after the Libyan navy required foreign ships to have special permission to approach the coast, which the group linked to an extension of Libyan waters and threats against private rescuers. Sea-Eye said it had rescued about 12,000 people since April 2016. Neues Deutschland reported that Klose still planned to fly to Malta, hoping the ship might sail within a week.

Later parts of the paper’s video-diary series described her joining the crew in Malta, standing a night watch after the Sea-Eye had put to sea, and returning to harbour, where she said she wanted to keep pressure on the European Union. The reports do not state how many people, if any, that voyage took aboard.

Sea-Eye e.V., founded in Regensburg in 2015 by a group around Buschheuer, says that since 2016 its vessels, beginning with the original Sea-Eye, have brought more than 18,000 people to safety, a total that includes later ships. Klose remains listed as a member.

The same list names the Arbeiterwohlfahrt (AWO), a welfare association founded on 13 December 1919 at the initiative of Marie Juchacz; the Arbeiter-Samariter-Bund, an aid organisation whose workers’ first-aid courses began in Berlin in 1888; the Willy Brandt Center in Jerusalem, a centre for political, educational and cultural meetings; the Institut Solidarische Moderne, a think tank founded in 2010 to link parties, unions, movements and researchers; and Amnesty International, the human-rights organisation founded in 1961. She sat on the institute’s board from 2018 until 25 April 2024 and remains a member.

The same register lists her from 29 October 2023 as an unpaid Beisitzerin (assessor) on the board of Forum Demokratische Linke 21 e.V. in Berlin. Founded in 2000, the association describes itself as a forum for the left inside the SPD.

Career in the SPD

Jusos Berlin

Klose joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 2011. While studying social sciences at Humboldt University of Berlin, she was deputy chair of the Jusos in Berlin-Mitte from 2014 to 2016, a member of the federal board of the Juso university groups in 2014–2015, and in those years a student adviser to the SPD Bundestag group's working group on education and research. From 2014 to 2016 she also sat in the university's student parliament.

The Jusos (Jungsozialistinnen und Jungsozialisten, Young Socialists in the SPD) are the party's youth organization. The Berlin branch states that more than 70,000 people aged 14 to 35 are active in the Jusos nationally, and it describes its tie to the SPD as one of "critical solidarity": the group develops its own positions and takes them into the party rather than serving only as an election auxiliary. The same Berlin pages present the Jusos as socialist, feminist and internationalist.

On 24 October 2015 a state delegates' conference elected Klose, then a 23-year-old social-sciences student from Mitte, as Landesvorsitzende of the Jusos Berlin. She took 57 percent in a second ballot against Anna Müller and succeeded Kevin Kühnert, who was moving on to become deputy federal Juso chair. Neues Deutschland put the membership at about 5,000 and called the Berlin Jusos the city's largest political youth organization. In her speech she called the SPD's entry into coalition with the CDU in 2011 a mistake that should not be repeated at the 2016 Berlin state election, and she named a left-wing state government as her aim. The Jusos attacked the asylum policy of CDU senators Mario Czaja and Frank Henkel as socially cold, and Klose asked governing mayor Michael Müller to take charge of refugee policy himself.

Delegates in Pankow confirmed her on 16 March 2018 for another two years. She was the only candidate and received 84.4 percent. She was then a union secretary at the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB) Berlin-Brandenburg. At the conference she opposed a renewed federal grand coalition with the CDU and the CSU, describing it as an alliance with a "reactionary party", and she called for a break with what she termed the neoliberal promises of the 2000s and for a left social vision aimed at democratic socialism. The organization said it then had more than 6,000 members.

She did not stand in 2020. On 15 August, 80 delegates at the Hotel Estrel elected a dual leadership, the lawyer Sinem Taşan-Funke and the teacher Peter Maaß, after her five years as sole chair.

State executive, the party left and local office

The Bundestag biography for the 21st legislative period states that she has been a member of the SPD Berlin state executive (Landesvorstand) since 2015. The biography for the 20th period, likewise drawn from her own disclosure, dated that membership to 2015–2019.

The Forum Demokratische Linke 21, founded in 2000, calls itself "the left in the SPD" and says it was created to bring together left-wing forces in the party and to build majorities for a left programme. Klose has been an unpaid assessor on its board since the members' meeting of 29 October 2023 in Berlin; the association lists that meeting as its latest full board election and names her among the assessors. From 2018 until 25 April 2024 she was also on the board of the Institut Solidarische Moderne, an association founded in Berlin on 31 January 2010. Its statute sets the purpose as promoting research and education through social-policy ideas for a socially obligated and ecologically sustainable economic order, and the association describes itself as a think tank and a platform for dialogue among parties, movements, trade unions, civil society and academia. The 20th-period biography records membership of the SPD Grundwertekommission (basic-values commission) from 2018. Writing in that capacity in vorwärts in February 2022, she argued that social justice required stronger shoulders to carry more, and she treated housing costs and income as part of that question.

On 1 June 2018 a Berlin SPD state congress chose the Land association's nominee for the SPD list at the 2019 European election. Trade unionist Gabriele Bischoff defeated Klose on the second ballot, 131 votes to 110. Klose was nevertheless placed 37th on the SPD federal list, with Mélanie Reuter as substitute. The SPD won 15.8 percent of the vote and 16 of Germany's seats, so that place did not elect her to the European Parliament.

Since 2024 she has been co-chair of the SPD in the borough of Mitte, together with Yannick Haan.

Federal executive and coalition talks

At its ordinary federal party congress in Berlin, the SPD on 28 June 2025 elected 24 assessors (Beisitzerinnen and Beisitzer) to the party executive (Parteivorstand). The first-round quorum was 307 votes. Klose received 271, below that line, and 414 in the second round, when a simple majority sufficed, and was elected. The chairs Bärbel Bas and Lars Klingbeil remained members of the executive alongside the other officers already chosen; the party said the new executive consisted of 19 women and 15 men.

On 12 March 2025, at the start of coalition talks with the CDU and CSU after the Bundestag election, the SPD published its working-group assignments. Klose was placed in group 5, Labour and Social Affairs, led for the SPD by Katja Mast, with Dagmar Schmidt as deputy lead, together with Kerstin Griese, Cansel Kiziltepe, Kathrin Michel and Natalie Pawlik.

Bundestag elections

2021 election and the Berlin partial repeat

In late August 2020 Klose, then state chair of the Berlin Jusos, announced that she would seek the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) nomination in Mitte. In December 2020 the SPD district association there nominated her as its candidate for the direct mandate in Bundestag constituency 75, Berlin-Mitte. On the Berlin SPD state list published in the Amtsblatt für Berlin of 9 August 2021 she stood fourth, behind Michael Müller, Cansel Kiziltepe and Kevin Kühnert and ahead of Ruppert Stüwe; the same notice named her as the SPD candidate in constituency 75 and Hanna Steinmüller as the candidate of Alliance 90/The Greens. A state delegates’ assembly on 24 April 2021 had voted on that order; the party said a postal ballot of the list was still to come.

Annika Klose campaigning in Berlin during the 2021 Bundestag election campaign.

At the election of 26 September 2021 the constituency had 207,483 eligible voters and turnout of 73.5 percent (152,506 voters). Of 150,210 valid first votes, Klose received 34,072 (22.7 percent). Steinmüller received 45,870 (30.5 percent) and won the direct mandate; Klose was second, ahead of Die Linke’s Martin Neise (21,291; 14.2 percent) and the Christian Democratic Union of Germany candidate Ottilie Klein (20,002; 13.3 percent). On the second vote the SPD took 32,133 (21.4 percent) and the Greens 46,120 (30.7 percent). She entered on the state list when the 20th Bundestag constituted itself on 26 October 2021.

Party	Candidate	First votes	Share
Alliance 90/The Greens	Hanna Steinmüller	45,870	30.5%
SPD	Annika Klose	34,072	22.7%
Die Linke	Martin Neise	21,291	14.2%
CDU	Ottilie Klein	20,002	13.3%
FDP	Anna Kryszan	10,038	6.7%
Alternative for Germany	Beatrix von Storch	7,597	5.1%

First votes in constituency 75 on 26 September 2021 (original final result). Candidate names are those admitted in the Amtsblatt; vote totals are the Federal Returning Officer’s party lines for that count.

On 19 December 2023 the Federal Constitutional Court ruled that the 2021 Bundestag election had to be repeated in 455 Berlin polling districts. The partial repeat was held on 11 February 2024. It did not open a new legislative period; the federal result was established again by combining the undisturbed 2021 votes with the new votes cast in the repeated districts. In the combined result for constituency 75, 140,655 of 207,010 eligible voters took part (67.9 percent). Steinmüller received 42,443 first votes (30.6 percent) and Klose 30,611 (22.1 percent), so the direct mandate did not change hands. The Bundestag recorded Steinmüller’s constituency mandate and Klose’s list mandate as won again; the same recalculation removed the Berlin SPD list seat then held by Ana-Maria Trăsnea. Against the 26 September count, Klose’s first-vote share was 0.6 points lower and turnout 5.6 points lower.

2025 election and the list seat

The SPD in Mitte nominated Klose again for the following Bundestag election, with 85 percent of the vote at the district nomination reported in November 2024. At the Berlin SPD’s state delegates’ assembly on 18 December 2024, Stüwe was elected to first place on the state list with 133 votes to 128 for Trăsnea. Klose, who had put herself forward with him from the party left, was elected unopposed to second place; Stüwe was the direct candidate in Steglitz-Zehlendorf and Klose again in Mitte. The Federal Returning Officer’s roll of those elected in 2025 lists Stüwe as returned from place 1 on the Berlin SPD list, with a candidacy in constituency 78, and Klose from place 2, with a candidacy in constituency 74.

For the election of 23 February 2025 the Mitte constituency was numbered 74 and again consisted of the borough of Mitte. Of 207,445 eligible voters, 161,865 cast ballots, a turnout of 78.0 percent. There were 160,822 valid first votes and 160,986 valid second votes.

Party	Candidate	First votes	Share	Second votes	Share
Alliance 90/The Greens	Hanna Steinmüller	40,672	25.3%	34,920	21.7%
Die Linke	Ottavia Stella Merendino	38,521	24.0%	43,614	27.1%
SPD	Annika Klose	26,816	16.7%	24,189	15.0%
CDU	—	22,933	14.3%	21,678	13.5%
AfD	—	13,706	8.5%	14,291	8.9%
BSW	—	8,012	5.0%	9,794	6.1%

Final result in constituency 74, 23 February 2025. The results page names Steinmüller as elected in the constituency and Merendino as runner-up; the SPD first-vote total is Klose’s. Candidate names for the CDU, AfD and BSW lines are not given on that page.

Steinmüller kept the direct mandate. Klose finished third on the first vote and was not elected from the constituency; Die Linke led the second vote. The Berlin state returning officer includes her among those elected on Berlin lists, and the Federal Returning Officer attributes the mandate to list place 2 rather than to constituency 74. The comparison printed beside the 2025 result uses the post-repeat 2021 figures, not the count of 26 September 2021: on that basis the SPD first-vote share was 5.4 points lower and the second-vote share 5.8 points lower.

Roles in the Bundestag

Twentieth legislative period

Annika Klose took her seat in the Bundestag with the constituent sitting of the 20th legislative period on 26 October 2021. The Bundestag's archived biography for 2021–2025 records her as an ordinary member of the Committee on Labour and Social Affairs (Ausschuss für Arbeit und Soziales) and of the Petitions Committee (Petitionsausschuss), and as a deputy member (stellvertretendes Mitglied) of the Committee on Economic Cooperation and Development (Ausschuss für wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung). Her current biography states the same two ordinary memberships for the 20th electoral period and does not add a further committee from that term. In 2023 she became spokesperson (Sprecherin) of the Berlin state group (Landesgruppe) in the parliamentary group of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).

The archived register of interests for that period lists an unpaid seat, from 29 October 2023, as Beisitzerin on the board of Forum Demokratische Linke 21 e.V. in Berlin, and a board seat at Institut Solidarische Moderne e.V. that ended on 25 April 2024. The same archive publishes her participation in KVB KG, of Clausthal-Zellerfeld, as pre-tax profit (Gewinn vor Steuern) of 11,280.58 euros for 2022, 21,931.84 euros for 2023 and 27,542.70 euros for 2024.

Twenty-first legislative period

Klose returned for the 21st legislative period. On Wednesday 21 May 2025 the Committee on Labour and Social Affairs held its first meeting of the new term, under Bundestag vice-president Bodo Ramelow; the parliamentary news service listed Klose among the eight ordinary members named by the SPD group on a committee of 42. The day before, the SPD parliamentary group had elected its speakers, whom it also calls Obleute, for its committee working groups and assigned labour and social affairs to Klose. The group's working-group page dates both her ordinary membership of that working group and her role as its spokesperson from 21 May 2025, and the Bundestag biography lists her as an ordinary member and as Obfrau of the committee itself.

In the Bundestag, each Fraktion names an Obmann or Obfrau for every committee in which it is represented. Those Obleute speak for their group in the committee and, together, take on organizational tasks of the committee's work; the SPD group treats the working-group spokesperson and the Obfrau as the same office. Klose has been a deputy member of the Finance Committee since 21 May 2025. The Bundestag biography heads that deputy seat "Finanzen"; the SPD group calls the body the Finanzausschuss and also lists her as a deputy member of its finance working group from the same date.

From 21 May 2025 until 21 April 2026 the SPD group listed her as a Schriftführerin, one of the MPs who assist the presiding officer. Schriftführer support the President of the Bundestag in plenary sittings, keep the speakers' list and, in recorded votes or elections by ballot, receive and count the voting papers.

Berlin state group and disclosed interests

The SPD group's profile for the 21st period continues to list Klose as spokesperson of the Berlin Landesgruppe, the office she has held since 2023, and as deputy chair of the Landesgruppe Ost. From 7 July 2025 the Bundestag's register of her outside posts records membership of the Stiftungsrat of the Stiftung Humboldt Forum im Berliner Schloss. The foundation describes that council as its highest decision-making body, to which the executive board reports, and lists Klose among the ordinary members delegated by the Bundestag.

North facade of the Schlüterhof in the Humboldt Forum, Berlin.

On 9 July 2026 the Bundestag, voting by open ballot, elected Nancy Faeser as Klose's personal substitute on the council, with 468 votes in favour, 95 against, 22 abstentions and 18 invalid ballots. The foundation's published list names Faeser as Ersatzmitglied for Klose. The Parlamentarische Linke, which describes itself as the organized wing of left-wing members of the SPD parliamentary group, lists Klose in its Leitungskreis; its speakers are Wiebke Esdar, Dagmar Schmidt and Carmen Wegge, with Hakan Demir as treasurer.

Under the disclosure rules of the Members of the Bundestag Act, the biography publishes her occupation before entering parliament as union secretary (Gewerkschaftssekretärin) at the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB) Berlin-Brandenburg, and an honorary post as Beisitzerin of the board of Forum Demokratische Linke 21 e.V. For KVB KG the current register records profit distributions (Gewinnausschüttung), a different heading from the pre-tax profits published for the previous term, of 19,722.75 euros for 2025 and 17,226.00 euros for 2026. Members must file reportable interests within three months of taking their seats, and changes within three months of arising; the administration publishes an item only after checking that publication is required. Her Bundestag office is given as Deutscher Bundestag, Platz der Republik 1, 11011 Berlin, and her constituency office as Turmstraße 81, 10551 Berlin.

Labour and social policy

Citizen's income

In the 20th Bundestag, the SPD group treated Annika Klose as its rapporteur for replacing unemployment benefit II — Hartz IV, from the Hartz reforms — with the Bürgergeld. Vorwärts used that title for her in August 2022. The Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs tabled the draft as the Twelfth Act amending Book II of the Social Code (printed paper 20/3873). The Bundestag passed it on 10 November 2022. Union-led Länder then withheld the consent required in the Bundesrat, and a mediation committee revised the bill on 23 November.

The committee cut the planned Karenzzeit from two years to one, a period in which housing and assets would not be tested for adequacy, and reduced protected savings from €60,000 for the claimant and €30,000 for each further household member to €40,000 and €15,000. It removed a six-month, largely sanction-free trust period and allowed reductions from the first day, in steps of up to 30 per cent rather than by at most 10 per cent. On 25 November 2022 the Bundestag accepted the compromise by 557 votes to 98, with two abstentions. The benefit replaced Arbeitslosengeld II on 1 January 2023.

As the government later summarised the benefit in force, a single adult’s standard need was €502. In the grace year, actual rent and reasonable heating costs were met, and savings were disregarded up to €40,000 plus €15,000 for each further person. A cooperation plan replaced the integration agreement, and qualification took priority over placement into any job. Breaches of duty cut the benefit by 10, 20 or 30 per cent, for one, two or three months; from 28 March 2024 the whole benefit could be withdrawn for up to two months for persistent refusal of reasonable work.

Before mediation, Klose told Vorwärts that the Bürgergeld was “das Ende von Hartz IV” and, in her words, “die größte sozialpolitische Reform der letzten 20 Jahre”. She said she would have preferred to abolish sanctions but accepted the compromise then on the table. That summer she took the draft to local meetings, including in Neubrandenburg.

The Act redesigning basic income support, adopted by the cabinet on 17 December 2025, passed by the Bundestag on 5 March 2026 and cleared by the Bundesrat on 27 March, took effect in stages from 1 July 2026. It renamed the cash benefit Grundsicherungsgeld, restored the priority of placement into work, ended the one-year asset grace period in favour of age-related allowances, capped housing costs at one and a half times the local limit, and set a 30 per cent reduction for three months for a breach of duty.

Wages, collective bargaining and procurement

Germany’s statutory minimum wage began on 1 January 2015 at €8.50 an hour. The Minimum Wage Commission proposes adjustments, which the government enacts unchanged by ordinance. An Act of 30 June 2022, outside that cycle, set €12 from 1 October 2022; later ordinances set €12.41 from 2024 and €12.82 from 2025. On 29 October 2025 the cabinet adopted a fifth ordinance from Labour Minister Bärbel Bas, following the commission’s decision of 27 June 2025: €13.90 from 1 January 2026 and €14.60 from 1 January 2027. The government, citing the Federal Statistical Office, said the 2026 step could affect up to 6.6 million jobs. The mini-job ceiling, tied to the hourly rate, was €603 a month in 2026.

Klose, by then the group’s labour and social-policy spokesperson, told Der Spiegel on 11 November 2025 that the SPD wanted “die Sozialversicherungspflicht ab dem ersten Euro” and a smaller low-wage sector. Mini-jobs could suit students and pensioners, she said, but “darüber hinaus gehören sie abgeschafft”; about 60 per cent of mini-jobbers were women, for whom the model meant “ökonomische Abhängigkeit und Altersarmut”. After the pension commission recommended ending that status except for school pupils, she said in July 2026 that she would also discuss exceptions for students, but not for pensioners.

The Bundestariftreuegesetz, in force on 1 May 2026, requires a firm executing a federal building or service contract or concession worth at least €50,000 excluding VAT to apply specified collectively agreed pay, leave and working-time rules to the workers on that job, and to bind subcontractors, even if the firm is not itself party to a collective agreement. The Labour Ministry sets the branch conditions by ordinance; none was in force when it published its explainer. A checking office at the Deutsche Rentenversicherung Knappschaft-Bahn-See is to enforce the duty. Direct awards, and Bundeswehr procurement until the end of 2032, are outside the Act. Bas said the Act was to stop tax-funded wage dumping.

On 22 July 2025, as ministerial coordination began, Klose cited an IAB fall in firms with collective agreements from 67 per cent in 1996 to 41 per cent, and said public contracts should mean fair pay. Speaking in the second and third reading on 26 February 2026, she called the bill “halb voll und nicht halb leer” and said a similar project had stalled under the SPD, the Greens and the FDP. The Bundestag passed it that day with the SPD, the CDU/CSU and the Greens, plus one non-attached member; the AfD voted no and Die Linke abstained.

Pensions and the old-age security commission

Rentenpaket II, the cabinet decision of 29 May 2024 to hold the pension level at 48 per cent for the long term and to build a Generationenkapital inside the statutory scheme, won no parliamentary majority and never entered into force. Rentenpaket 2025 took effect on 1 January 2026 and holds the pre-tax pension level at 48 per cent until 2031. Its “Mütterrente III”, extra child-raising credit for children born before 1992, is scheduled for 2027.

On 17 December 2025 the cabinet appointed an Alterssicherungskommission. It was to start in January 2026 and to report by the end of the second quarter on the statutory pension and on occupational and private provision. The co-chairs were Constanze Janda and Frank-Jürgen Weise. The deputy chairs from the Bundestag were Annika Klose (SPD), Dr Florian Dorn (CSU) and Pascal Reddig (CDU), with eight academic members and the Deutsche Rentenversicherung Bund attending as an expert body.

On 23 June 2026 Janda and Weise handed the report to Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Minister Bas at the Federal Chancellery. Merz described 33 measures as one package to be carried out in full. The ministry’s summary included a funded capital pension on a Swedish model, a wider insured population, and a retirement age linked to life expectancy. The government added a target net replacement rate of at least 70 per cent after tax for an average earner and an extra two-point contribution shared by employees and employers. On 2 July 2026 the coalition committee endorsed all 33 recommendations and aimed to legislate within the year.

Berlin-Mitte

Constituency and local issues

The Bundestag constituency Berlin-Mitte is the borough of Mitte and no territory outside it. In the 2021 election, and in the partial repeat of 11 February 2024, it was Wahlkreis 75; the statutory schedule for 2025 renumbered it Wahlkreis 74 while leaving the area as the borough of Mitte. The borough comprises the localities Mitte, Moabit, the Hansaviertel, Tiergarten, Wedding and Gesundbrunnen, on 39.4 square kilometres.

On the census-based update of the Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg, Mitte had 364,530 inhabitants on 31 December 2024, including 123,156 foreign nationals, at 9,252 people per square kilometre. The residents' register used by the Investitionsbank Berlin counted 397,004 people with a main residence in the borough in 2024: 37.3 percent were foreign nationals and 58.4 percent had a migration background, against 24.9 and 41.1 percent in Berlin, and the average age was 39.6 years against 42.8 in the city. The borough administration reports an 11 percent population rise between 2014 and 2024.

At the end of 2024 the stock was 214,593 dwellings, 91.9 percent rented, compared with 85.1 percent citywide; 7.5 percent of the rented stock still had a rent or occupancy tie, against 5.5 percent in Berlin. Floor space averaged 66.6 square metres per dwelling and 36.0 per registered resident, below the city figures of 72.5 and 38.3, and the central band of advertised rents in 2025, excluding the top and bottom tenth of listings, ran from 9.83 to 28.69 euros per square metre, against 7.88 to 25.06 in Berlin. Median monthly net household income was 2,650 euros, near the Berlin median of 2,675, and 981 dwellings were completed in the borough in 2024. In October 2025 unemployment was 12.3 percent, second among the boroughs after Neukölln and above the city rate of 10.3 percent.

Borough social reporting put the 2024 at-risk-of-poverty rate at 24 percent, third in Berlin after Lichtenberg and Neukölln; the median income of people below the line was 20 percent under the threshold. That year 17.2 percent of residents lived in Bürgergeld households under Book II of the Social Code, 5.5 percent of the working-age population were unemployed in that system, and 30.8 percent of children were growing up in such households. Disadvantage is concentrated in Gesundbrunnen and neighbouring parts of Wedding; the Zillesiedlung in Moabit is classed at very low social status, although the north–south gap has narrowed. Senate monitoring for 2025 still finds some of the inner city's stronger improvements in Gesundbrunnen.

Klose has not won the direct mandate. Hanna Steinmüller of Alliance 90/The Greens took it in 2021 with 30.5 percent of the first votes, about 11,800 ahead of Klose, and widened that lead slightly in the 2024 partial repeat. In 2025 the federal returning officer again recorded Steinmüller as elected in the constituency, with 25.3 percent. Klose holds her seat through the Berlin state list. The Bundestag lists her constituency office at Turmstraße 81, 10551 Berlin.

She describes the constituency as the centre of her work and names affordable rents, fair wages and social justice as the issues she takes up there, arguing for a stronger rent brake, a rent cap in tight markets and more social housing. On Abgeordnetenwatch she described a five-year rent moratorium as protection for sitting tenants until more social housing was built, and put rent increases in Berlin-Mitte at more than 100 percent over ten years.

District party leadership

Since 2024 Klose has shared the chair of the SPD Kreisverband Berlin-Mitte with Yannick Haan, an office also recorded in her Bundestag biography. The Kreisverband quotes the party statute: district executives are responsible for the political and organisational work of their Kreis, conduct it in agreement with the Land association, and carry out decisions of higher party bodies. Deputy chairs are Yasin Khalife, Federico Quadrelli, Clarissa Schiffel and Kerstin Spriesterbach; Sabine Smentek is treasurer. The association has 15 local branches across the borough.

Positions, debates and reception

Welfare-state reform and sanctions

At the Bundestag's first reading on 15 January 2026 of the bill to replace Bürgergeld with a "Neue Grundsicherung", Annika Klose, labour and social-affairs spokesperson of the SPD group, opposed full sanctions. She said she could no longer bear a debate that, "jenseits aller Fakten", attacked the benefit and its recipients, citing health problems among more than 60 percent, no vocational qualification among two thirds, more than 500,000 single parents and almost two million children. The benefit, she said, was being developed further, "mit schmerzhaften Rückschlägen", not abolished. She called "die Vollsanktionen und Leistungseinstellungen" personally "ziemlich populistischen Bullshit" and potentially unconstitutional, thanked Labour Minister Bärbel Bas for blocking something harsher, and said Parliament would examine the rule again. Handelsblatt reported that day that Klose, for the SPD left, was announcing resistance.

In an interview for the Bundestag paper Das Parlament, released in advance the same day, she called Union savings figures—successively 30, 20, 10 and at most five billion euros—"absurd", because the Basic Law set narrower limits. "Wir als SPD halten nichts davon, Menschen aufgrund von Spardruck zu sanktionieren," she said, putting any realistic saving at a two-digit or at most three-digit million sum, and only if growth, hiring and rents all moved that way. The draft, she said, lay "an der Grenze zur Verfassungsmäßigkeit". She was referring to the Federal Constitutional Court judgment of 5 November 2019 (1 BvL 7/16). The First Senate accepted a 30 percent cut in the standard benefit only with a hardship exception and without a rigid three-month term. Cuts above 30 percent, a total loss of benefits, mandatory reductions even in extraordinary hardship, and a fixed three-month duration were incompatible with the subsistence minimum under Article 1(1) and Article 20(1).

The Act of 16 April 2026, promulgated on 22 April, renamed the payment Grundsicherungsgeld. From 1 July it gave placement in work priority, except where training is more promising, especially under 30, and set asset allowances at 5,000 euros to age 30, then 10,000, 12,500 and 20,000. Care of a child generally makes work unreasonable only until the 14th month, not the third year. An ordinary breach cuts the standard benefit by 30 percent for three months, lifted on compliance or a serious undertaking to comply. Willful refusal of work that is actually and immediately available removes the standard benefit, with rent paid to the landlord; that ends after one month if the job has gone, and after two at the latest. Three consecutive missed appointments without good cause make the person unavailable and the claim lapses, the standard benefit being withheld for one month unless the person appears. One euro a month remains if nothing else would, and a personal hearing is required where mental illness is known or a third absence is examined. The refusal rule took effect the day after promulgation. On 5 March the Bundestag passed the bill 320 to 268, with two abstentions. Klose voted yes; Jan Dieren and Ruppert Stüwe, both SPD, abstained.

Coalitions and the party left

Klose sits in the Parlamentarische Linke, the left grouping in the SPD Bundestag group. Members elected her to its extended executive, the Leitungskreis, on 15 February 2022; the group's site still listed her there in 2026. On 29 October 2023 in Berlin, Forum Demokratische Linke 21, the organised left current in the SPD, made her a Beisitzerin of its board.

She has backed a Berlin government of the SPD with Alliance 90/The Greens and Die Linke. In a letter of 18 October 2026 obtained by the Deutsche Presse-Agentur, she, Hakan Demir, Helmut Kleebank and Stüwe supported talks "zwischen SPD, Grünen und Linken" and called the exploratory paper a basis for a "sozial gerechter, ökologischer und lebenswerter" city. They rejected a letter from 20 other SPD members of the Bundestag against talks with the Berlin Left "unter den gegenwärtigen Voraussetzungen". The accusations, including over antisemitism, were serious, they wrote, but did not of themselves bar a joint government; Israel's right to exist was "nicht verhandelbar".

Public reception

Bundestag President Julia Klöckner said in the January debate that "Bullshit", and the claim that visitors had come to watch nonsense, did not fit parliamentary custom. For the CDU/CSU, Marc Biadacz answered that the welfare state was strong but "Das Bürgergeld ist gescheitert", and that anyone able to live from their own means and effort must do so. On 25 June 2026 Der Tagesspiegel ran Karin Christmann's profile "Annika Klose, die Verwandelte: Ausgerechnet eine SPD-Linke kämpft für die große Rentenreform". The standfirst said she stood "ganz weit links" in the SPD yet, on the pension commission, had helped decide steps her party had treated as a "Zumutung" or a "Zockerei".