# Britta Haßelmann

# Britta Haßelmann

Britta Maria Haßelmann (born 10 December 1961 in Straelen) is a German politician of Alliance 90/[The Greens](/organizations/the-greens). She has been a member of the Bundestag since 2005, returned on the state list of North Rhine-Westphalia, and stands in the constituency Bielefeld – Gütersloh II. On 7 December 2021 the Green parliamentary group elected her co-chair with [Katharina Dröge](/people/katharina-droge), by 98 percent of the votes cast, in succession to Katrin Göring-Eckardt and Anton Hofreiter. Until that ballot she had been the group's first parliamentary managing director.

Her Bundestag biography records the Abitur and a diploma in social work. A March 2025 profile reported that she completed the Abitur at the girls' Gymnasium in Geldern, the first member of her family to do so, then moved to Bielefeld and studied social work at the Fachhochschule there. The same official biography states that she has worked with the Greens since 1989, joined the party in 1994, and from 2000 to 2006 chaired the North Rhine-Westphalia association, the occupation she lists for the period before her Bundestag mandate.

Coverage of the 2021 leadership vote placed her in the party's Realo current and Dröge on its left. After the result she said the group's task was to carry out the projects of the government formed by the Social Democratic Party, the Greens and the Free Democratic Party; the parliamentary group then had 118 members.

At the federal election of 23 February 2025 she led the North Rhine-Westphalia Green list and again contested Bielefeld – Gütersloh II. She received 16.0 percent of the first votes. [Wiebke Esdar](/people/wiebke-esdar) of the [Social Democrats](/organizations/social-democrats) won the direct seat with 27.2 percent, ahead of the [Christian Democratic Union](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany) candidate on 26.0 percent, and the Greens took 16.5 percent of the second votes in the constituency. Haßelmann re-entered the Bundestag on the state list. On Monday 24 March 2025 the group, by then in opposition, confirmed her and Dröge as co-chairs with 90.4 percent each and returned [Irene Mihalic](/people/irene-mihalic) as first parliamentary managing director with 93.9 percent.

In the 21st Bundestag she is a full member of the Wahlausschuss, the committee that elects judges of the Federal [Constitutional Court](/organizations/constitutional-court), and of the Joint Committee and the Mediation Committee. Her published voluntary roles include an unpaid seat on the board of UNICEF Germany. She is married and has a son.

## Early life and education

### Childhood in Straelen

Britta Haßelmann was born on 10 December 1961 in Straelen, a town on the Lower Rhine in North Rhine-Westphalia, close to the border with the Netherlands.

She was the daughter of salaried employees and the first person in her family to pass the Abitur, the school-leaving qualification that opens the way to higher education. She grew up in Straelen, which the *Rheinische Post* calls a flower town (*Blumenstadt*), and spent her first years in a house on Zand street. The tie lasted: in August 2021, visiting friends in the town during a campaign stop, she told the *Rheinische Post* that coming to Straelen meant coming home, and the paper noted that she still made the journey of about 230 kilometres from Bielefeld, where she has lived since her student years.

### Schooling and early political engagement

Haßelmann completed her Abitur at the Mädchengymnasium, then a girls' grammar school, in Geldern. While she was still a pupil, the prototype fast-breeder reactor SNR-300 was being built at Kalkar, about 35 kilometres from Straelen. On 24 September 1977, when she was 15, she joined the demonstration there against the reactor. A later account in the *Rheinische Post* called that day the largest protest against the Kalkar breeder and put the crowd at about 40,000; the Bundestag's 2012 profile describes it as one of the largest anti-nuclear demonstrations in Germany.

She was also present at the peace demonstration on the Hofgarten meadow in Bonn on 10 October 1981, called against the NATO Double-Track Decision. The Haus der Geschichte records it as the largest demonstration of the West German peace movement up to that point, with some 300,000 participants. In the 2012 interview she said that the anti-nuclear movement and the peace movement, both gaining strength in those years, had shaped her deeply. If she identified with any party as a young woman, she said, it was the Greens, the only one that took up the subjects that mattered to her. She did not become active for the party until 1989, after she had moved to Bielefeld, and she joined only in 1994.

### Social-work studies in Bielefeld

After the Abitur she moved to Bielefeld to study social work (*Sozialarbeit*) at the Fachhochschule Bielefeld, a university of applied sciences, and graduated as a *Diplom-Sozialarbeiterin*. The 2012 Bundestag profile says the city, on the edge of the Teutoburg Forest, was meant to be only the place of that course. During her studies she came into contact with the non-profit association Bielefelder Selbsthilfe, which offered work and housing to people who had dropped out of ordinary life, for instance after a stay in psychiatric care or a residential home; she began working there in 1985. She met her future husband in Bielefeld, had a son and remained in the city. The *Westfalen-Blatt* later described the same route in short form: she had come from her home on the Lower Rhine to Bielefeld in order to study, and she was a qualified social worker.

## Social work in Bielefeld

### Bielefelder Selbsthilfe

Haßelmann moved to Bielefeld in 1983, after her Abitur, for a Fachhochschule course in social work at what is now the Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences, and qualified as a Diplom-Sozialarbeiterin. Bundestag biographies, based on members' own statements, record that from 1985 she worked at the non-profit Verein Bielefelder Selbsthilfe e.V. and remained a qualified social worker there until 2000, in work, employment, psychiatry and social affairs. On Abgeordnetenwatch she described the post as work in a collective enterprise covering work and employment, psychiatry and health.

In a 2012 Bundestag interview she said the association offered work and housing to people who had fallen out of ordinary living arrangements, for example after psychiatric treatment or a stay in a home, and that as a student she moved into its then-occupied house.

BIS, as the group was also known, was part of the dispute over urban renewal in Bielefeld's west. A district history records that its members occupied the dilapidated house at Siechenmarschstraße 40 on 3 September 1977 in protest against the loss of cheap housing to road schemes, including the Ostwestfalendamm; residents received tenancies in 1981, and in 1990 the house was sold to an association. A 2007 article quotes Haßelmann on an eviction order, on repairs and rent payments attempted with BIS, and on a 1985 visit by North Rhine-Westphalia building minister Christoph Zöpel, which she called a turning point. It describes her as a former squatter still living there and says BIS kept three houses on the street from demolition. She has called that work, her "Stadtsanierungsarbeit", a political key experience that brought her into contact with the Bunte Liste Bielefeld. Her 1983 arrival places her in the occupation's later years, not in the 1977 action.

### Addiction, employment and health projects

The parliamentary biographies do not name separate projects within that employment. From November 1998 to December 2000, while she was still at the association, Drogenberatung e.V. Bielefeld ran "Drogenabhängige in Arbeit" with BAJ e.V. and Bielefelder Selbsthilfe for men and women who had been drug-dependent or were in substitution treatment. The counselling service calls it a model of social and vocational reintegration, funded in part under the European Social Fund programme INTEGRA, with partners in Helsinki, Utrecht and Bristol.

Participants began in BAJ workshops or BIS employment areas, for support, aptitude assessment and stabilisation, before retraining in metal, wood or office work. Of 74 people, 25 entered retraining as office-communications clerks, wood mechanics or industrial mechanics, and seven (28 percent) passed the final examination. The published account names the organisations rather than staff, and her Bundestag biographies give her no separate title on the project.

She left the paid post in 2000. She told the Bundestag interview that she could not combine the job, family and voluntary local politics, and that standing for state chair of Alliance 90/The Greens in North Rhine-Westphalia meant leaving a secure position that colleagues thought it risky to give up. She held the chair from June 2000.

## Local politics and the North Rhine-Westphalia Greens

### Bielefeld city council

Haßelmann’s municipal career was in Bielefeld, where she had moved to study social work. In a 2012 Bundestag portrait she traced the start to neighbourhood campaigns against the demolition of housing for an urban motorway, which brought her to the Bunte Liste Bielefeld, the local forerunner of the later Green organisation. In 1989 she was asked to sit as a *sachkundige Bürgerin*—a non-councillor with a committee seat—on the social-affairs and housing committee. At the 1994 municipal election she entered the city council for Alliance 90/The Greens, later chaired the Green group, and in 1999 stood for *Oberbürgermeisterin*.

On 12 September 1999 the Greens won 10.60 percent (14,821 votes). Haßelmann headed the reserve list, and eight Green councillors were returned on a council enlarged from 66 to 70 seats. In the first direct mayoral election, the same day, she received 13,497 votes (9.67 percent). Eberhard David of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) won in the first round with 54.31 percent; the incumbent, Angelika Dopheide of the [Social Democratic Party of Germany](/organizations/social-democratic-party-of-germany) (SPD), took 30.44 percent. Turnout was 57.93 percent.

She later called local politics a matter of the heart, because democracy was experienced more directly there than elsewhere. In 2000 she left the honorary mandate: job, family and council work could no longer be combined, and an offer to stand for the state chair decided her for full-time politics. At that June’s state congress she was still identified as speaker of the Bielefeld Green group.

### State chair, 2000–2006

In North Rhine-Westphalia the Greens were already the SPD’s junior partner. Michael Vesper had been Green deputy minister-president since 17 July 1995, and Sylvia Löhrmann chaired the Landtag group. For the term beginning in 2000 the Landtag recorded an SPD–Green government and a CDU–Free Democratic Party opposition. Wolfgang Clement (SPD) was minister-president from 27 May 1998 to 21 October 2002; Peer Steinbrück succeeded him from 6 November 2002 until 22 June 2005.

The Landtag election of 14 May 2000 cut the Greens from 10.0 percent in 1995 to 7.1 percent (518,295 votes). The SPD took 42.8 percent, the CDU 37.0 percent and the FDP 9.8 percent; turnout was 56.7 percent. Red–green kept a majority, but the coalition treaty split a Bonn congress on 16–18 June: 153 delegates voted yes, 110 no and six abstained, out of 269 valid votes. Environment minister Bärbel Höhn urged the party to “dare this government”; outgoing chair Barbara Steffens warned that another term beside Clement would cost the Greens their profile. Clement had just announced a road-building offensive, and Höhn lost responsibility for spatial planning, and with it influence over the Garzweiler II lignite mine.

The board election that closed the congress was to replace Steffens and Reiner Priggen. Haßelmann and Frithjof Schmidt emerged as the new dual leadership. Reporting cast them as a bridge between wings: Haßelmann from the Bielefeld group, Schmidt a social scientist from the party’s left who had worked for federal manager Ludger Vollmer. In May 2002, at Unna, they were confirmed without opponents for two more years—Haßelmann with 93 percent, Schmidt with 94 percent—as chairs of what the report called the largest Green state association. At Hagen in July 2004 they were re-elected again, Haßelmann with more than 95 percent and Schmidt with 74 percent. Before the local elections of 26 September she ruled out a red–green camp campaign and said the party would join CDU–Green councils where it thought that right, aiming for a double-digit share after 12.5 percent in the European election.

Office ended at the election of 22 May 2005. The Greens took 6.2 percent (509,293 votes), down 0.9 points; the CDU won 44.8 percent, the SPD 37.1 percent and the FDP 6.2 percent, on a turnout of 63.0 percent. Jürgen Rüttgers (CDU) led a CDU–FDP government, and the Landtag recorded the Greens with the SPD in opposition. Haßelmann and Schmidt did not stand again. On 11 February 2006 in Essen, delegates elected Daniela Schneckenburger of Dortmund and Arndt Klocke of Cologne. Nine months after the defeat, the new chairs called for a sharper line on the economy, the labour market and social policy, opposed tuition fees, and rejected an early coalition debate with the state CDU.

## Bundestag elections and mandate

### Candidacies from 2005

Britta Haßelmann has sat in the Bundestag continuously since the federal election of 18 September 2005. At every election from 2005 through 2025 she was the Alliance 90/The Greens candidate in the Bielefeld constituency and, at the same time, a candidate on the party's state list in North Rhine-Westphalia. She has not won the direct mandate. Each seat, from the 16th Bundestag to the 21st, was allocated from that list: place 3 in 2005, 2009 and 2013, and place 1 in 2017, 2021 and 2025.

For 2005 the state returning officer's directory of admitted candidates named her the Green nominee in constituency 133, Bielefeld, and third on the state list, after Bärbel Höhn and Reinhard Loske. The 2009 official gazette again listed her among those returned from the Green state list at place 3, behind Höhn and Volker Beck. A congress in Oberhausen on 2 December 2016 elected her to place 1 for 2017, with 253 of 263 valid delegate votes and no opposing candidate. On 7 December 2024 a congress in Bielefeld elected her to place 1 for 2025 with 99.27 percent—one vote against and one abstention—the third consecutive election at the head of the list; Katharina Dröge was placed second, with 97.09 percent. The final roll of members returned from North Rhine-Westphalia in 2025 records her seat as Green state-list place 1.

### List seats and the Bielefeld constituency

The district is the constituency built around Bielefeld. Under the delimitation used in 2013, and again in 2025, it comprises the whole independent city of Bielefeld and, from the district of Gütersloh, only the municipality of Werther (Westf.). It was numbered 133 and named Bielefeld in 2005 and 2009; numbered 132 and named Bielefeld – Gütersloh II from 2013 through 2021; and numbered 131, with the same name and the same two municipalities, in 2025. The 2013 tables repeat the 2009 constituency totals unchanged, so the renumbering did not alter the area.

The returning officer publishes one Green first-vote total in the district, the vote for that party's constituency candidate. In 2005 it was 12,742 votes, 6.5 percent, against Green second votes of 12.0 percent (23,358). The direct mandate went to Dr. Rainer Wend of the Social Democratic Party of Germany with 47.2 percent (92,287 votes), on a turnout of 80.0 percent.

On 27 September 2009 the Green first-vote share rose to 14.0 percent (24,981), level with the second-vote share (25,057). Lena Strothmann of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany won with 36.3 percent (64,621), ahead of the SPD on 34.5 percent; turnout was 73.0 percent. Those totals are the final figures for constituency 133 in the Federal Returning Officer's results volume.

On 22 September 2013 the direct seat returned to the SPD: Christina Kampmann took 38.1 percent (67,464) against 37.3 percent (66,021) for the CDU. The Green first-vote share fell to 10.7 percent (19,026), with second votes at 11.7 percent (20,711), and turnout was 72.7 percent. On 24 September 2017 Wiebke Esdar (SPD) won with 33.2 percent (61,086), ahead of the CDU on 30.7 percent (56,485). The Green first-vote share was 9.6 percent (17,728) and the second-vote share 11.1 percent (20,567); turnout was 75.6 percent.

The highest Green constituency share came on 26 September 2021. The district returning officer had admitted Haßelmann's Green nomination for constituency 132 and the SPD nomination of Dr. Wiebke Esdar. Haßelmann received 40,015 first votes, 21.8 percent, matching the Green second-vote share (40,161). Esdar held the direct mandate with 30.0 percent (55,234); the CDU followed on 22.3 percent (40,928). Turnout was 76.3 percent.

On 23 February 2025, in constituency 131, the Green first-vote total was 31,274 (16.0 percent) and the second-vote share 16.5 percent (32,374). Dr. Wiebke Esdar (SPD) was returned for the constituency with 27.2 percent (53,130), ahead of Katharina Kotulla (CDU) on 26.0 percent (50,742), at a turnout of 81.9 percent. Haßelmann again took her seat from place 1 of the North Rhine-Westphalia list.

## Committee work and policy portfolios

### Finance

Haßelmann did not sit on the Finance Committee (Finanzausschuss) when she entered the Bundestag in 2005. A biography of 30 June 2006 lists her as an ordinary member of the Committee on Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth and of the Subcommittee on Civic Engagement, and as a substitute on labour and social affairs, health, and the Parliamentary Advisory Council on Sustainable Development. By 9 June 2007 that biography added an ordinary seat on the Finance Committee, which later biographies still record through the 17th legislative period (2009–2013) and the 18th (2013–2017). Apart from the federal budget, the committee’s field matches the Federal [Ministry of Finance](/organizations/ministry-of-finance): it usually leads on tax policy, financial-market regulation and customs. From the 19th period (2017–2021) the published lists no longer include it.

### Municipal policy, demographics and ageing

In that first term the family and senior-citizens committee was the standing body for policy on older people. On 31 January 2007 Haßelmann was the lead signatory of a motion by the Alliance 90/The Greens group, “Das neue Bild vom Alter – Vielfalt und Potenziale anerkennen” (printed paper 16/4163), which treated demographic change and the participation of older people as a task running across policy fields. Her biography for the 19th term states that from November 2009 to October 2013 she was a parliamentary business manager of the Green group and its spokesperson for municipal policy.

A biography captured in December 2012 lists her, for the 17th term, as an ordinary member of the Subcommittee on Municipal Affairs and of the Council of Elders (Ältestenrat). The Council assists the President of the Bundestag: it fixes sitting weeks, agrees draft agendas and takes up disputes between the groups, and the groups’ parliamentary business managers sit on it. In the 18th term she was a substitute member of the Subcommittee on Municipal Affairs, and that term’s published list does not include the Council of Elders. In the 19th term she was a substitute member of the Committee on Building, Housing, Urban Development and Municipalities and again an ordinary member of the Council. From the 18th term her candidacy is recorded for Bielefeld – Gütersloh II in North Rhine-Westphalia, constituency 131 in the 21st Bundestag.

### Parliamentary rules and judicial selection

In the 18th and 19th terms she was an ordinary member, and the Greens’ Obfrau, of the Committee on the Scrutiny of Elections, Immunity and the Rules of Procedure. That committee interprets and amends the rules of procedure, deals with conflicts in plenary and in committees, and oversees members’ immunity. In the 19th term she also sat on the Commission for the Reform of Federal Electoral Law and the Modernisation of Parliamentary Work, and was an ordinary member of the Wahlausschuss. That twelve-member committee, filled in proportion to the strength of the groups, proposes the judges whom the Bundestag elects to the Federal Constitutional Court; the Bundesrat chooses the other half of the sixteen judges. She remained an ordinary member in the 20th term (2021–2025) and, from 21 May 2025, in the 21st Bundestag.

The Mediation Committee (Vermittlungsausschuss) has 16 members from each chamber and seeks a compromise when a bill passed by the Bundestag lacks a majority in the Bundesrat. The biographies list her as an ordinary member in the 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th terms. Printed paper 21/596 of 25 June 2025 names her and Katharina Dröge as the Greens’ full members for the 21st term, with [Andreas Audretsch](/people/andreas-audretsch) and Irene Mihalic as substitutes; the member register dates the seat from 26 June 2025. The Joint Committee (Gemeinsamer Ausschuss) has 48 members, two-thirds from the Bundestag and one-third from the Bundesrat, under Article 53a of the Basic Law. It is the emergency parliament in a state of defence if the Bundestag cannot meet in time. The 20th-term biography lists her as an ordinary member. Printed paper 21/595 of the same day proposes her, with [Agnieszka Brugger](/people/agnieszka-brugger), Katharina Dröge and Irene Mihalic, as one of the Greens’ full members, and the register dates that seat from 26 June 2025.

## Parliamentary business manager

### Managing director from 2009

From November 2009 until October 2013, Britta Haßelmann was one of the parliamentary managing directors of the Green parliamentary group in the 17th Bundestag, and the group's spokesperson on municipal policy. The first parliamentary managing director in that term was Volker Beck.

The first managing directors of the factions meet each Tuesday to fix the sitting week: the plenary agenda, the length of debates, and which group may call a topical hour. Speaking lists and other business that keeps the chamber running pass across their desks. The post is often described as that of fixer and whip. Members are free in law to follow their conscience, but anyone who plans to vote against the group is expected to give notice in advance, and at recorded divisions the managing directors commonly stand at the ballot box displaying the group's voting card.

They also sit on the Council of Elders (*Ältestenrat*). The rules of procedure charge it with assisting the President and with agreements among the factions on committee chairs and the Bundestag's work plan; on those points it does not vote. Separately it decides internal House affairs not reserved to the President or the Presidium, allocates rooms reserved to the Bundestag, and drafts the parliament's own budget chapter, from which the Budget Committee may depart only in agreement with the council. It consists of the President, the Vice-Presidents and 23 further members named by the factions in proportion to their strength.

### First parliamentary managing director, 2013–2021

On 8 October 2013, after Alliance 90/The Greens won 8.4 percent, the group elected Haßelmann parliamentary managing director by 60 of 62 votes. Beck did not stand again. The same meeting elected Katrin Göring-Eckardt and Anton Hofreiter as co-chairs in place of [Renate Künast](/people/renate-kunast) and [Jürgen Trittin](/people/jurgen-trittin). A Bundestag text archive later dates the vote to 9 October and records 96.8 percent, calling her the new first parliamentary managing director (*Erste Parlamentarische Geschäftsführerin*) and Beck's successor. Her biography for the 19th term (2017–2021) says she held that post from 2013, and lists her on the Council of Elders, as the group's spokesperson (*Obfrau*) on the Committee for the Scrutiny of Elections, Immunity and the Rules of Procedure, and on the Mediation Committee. On 7 December 2021 the group elected her and Katharina Dröge as co-chairs and chose Irene Mihalic as first parliamentary managing director.

### The 2017 Jamaica talks

On 24 September 2017 the Christian Democratic Union took 26.8 percent of second votes, the [Christian Social Union](/organizations/christian-social-union-in-bavaria) 6.2, the Social Democratic Party 20.5, [the Alternative](/organizations/the-alternative) for Germany 12.6, the Free Democratic Party 10.7, [Die Linke](/organizations/die-linke) 9.2 and the Greens 8.9, ending the majority of the CDU–CSU–SPD government. The SPD intended to go into opposition, so the other route to a majority was a "Jamaica" coalition of CDU/CSU, FDP and Greens, after the parties' black, yellow and green.

On 30 September a small Green congress accepted, with no votes against, exploratory talks with the CDU, CSU and FDP, with no automatic entry into government and with any full negotiations left to a federal party congress. The resolution named a 14-member team. A list published two days earlier, which Göring-Eckardt said was meant to span both wings, expertise and generations, included the lead candidates [Cem Özdemir](/people/cem-ozdemir) and Göring-Eckardt, [Winfried Kretschmann](/people/winfried-kretschmann), Jürgen Trittin, Hofreiter, Robert Habeck, Haßelmann, Claudia Roth, Reinhard Bütikofer, Simone Peter, [Michael Kellner](/people/michael-kellner), [Annalena Baerbock](/people/annalena-baerbock), Agnieszka Brugger and Katja Dörner. In the smaller rounds a news-agency account placed Haßelmann in a Green core with Göring-Eckardt, Hofreiter, Kellner, Özdemir and Peter, opposite teams around Chancellor [Angela Merkel](/people/angela-merkel), CSU chair Horst Seehofer and FDP chair Christian Lindner.

A joint note on finance, the budget and taxes, dated 24 October, was published overnight and immediately disputed. Late on 19 November Lindner ended the talks after what he called a good four weeks. It was better not to govern than to govern wrongly, he said: the four sides had found neither trust nor a common idea of modernisation, only a paper of contradictions, open questions and conflicting aims. Merkel, speaking as acting chancellor, said an agreement had still seemed possible and that she would inform Federal President [Frank-Walter Steinmeier](/people/frank-walter-steinmeier); Seehofer said a result had been within reach. Göring-Eckardt said an alliance could have been formed; Özdemir said the Greens had been ready until the last second and that the FDP had removed the only workable majority. The next day Haßelmann defended a lignite compromise still under discussion, telling the *Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger* that an exit would have begun, with seven gigawatts shut at once and the rest of the process set in law.

## Co-chair of the Green Bundestag group

### Election in December 2021

On 7 December 2021 the parliamentary group of Alliance 90/The Greens in the Bundestag elected Britta Haßelmann and Katharina Dröge as co-chairs, succeeding Katrin Göring-Eckardt and Anton Hofreiter, who did not stand again. Haßelmann, until then the group's first parliamentary managing director and a figure of its realo wing, received 98 percent. Dröge, its economic-policy spokesperson and associated with its left wing, received 93 percent. Irene Mihalic, previously the interior-policy spokesperson, was elected first parliamentary managing director with 99 percent. The group's rules require at least one chair to be a woman and allow an all-woman leadership; with Mihalic, the three senior posts were held by women.

The ballot followed the [2021 federal election](/facts/2021-german-federal-election), in which the Greens took 14.7 percent of second votes and 118 seats, and it came as the party was entering government with the Social Democratic Party and the Free Democratic Party. Haßelmann said the substantive work was beginning and that the group had to carry out the traffic-light government's projects. Dröge, who had been the Greens' lead negotiator on labour in the coalition talks, said the chairs would lead the group of 118 as a team, and that implementing the coalition agreement would leave the country better off in four years. The *Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung* described them as one realo and one left-winger, both from North Rhine-Westphalia.

### The traffic-light years

Haßelmann and Dröge led the Green group through the traffic-light coalition under Chancellor [Olaf Scholz](/people/mig-olaf-scholz) until it broke on 6 November 2024. Cabinet bills, including those from Economy Minister Robert Habeck, had to pass a group that was also the Greens' means of holding the SPD and the FDP to coalition agreements.

In May 2023 the three parties' parliamentary business managers postponed the first reading of the heating law, the Building Energy Act, after the FDP demanded a fundamental redraft. Habeck called that a breach of a coalition-committee timetable from late March, which had aimed to finish before the summer recess. Haßelmann said the unreliability was astonishing, recalled that the schedule had been agreed with FDP leader Christian Lindner, and said she expected the FDP to end what she called its blockade, warning that further delay would damage the government's ability to act.

In November 2023 the Federal Constitutional Court held that shifting €60 billion in unused pandemic borrowing authorisations into the Climate and Transformation Fund breached the debt brake. The credits had already been earmarked inside programmes planned at a minimum of €211.8 billion through 2027. Haßelmann and Dröge said the programmes were "extremely important for climate protection, relief for citizens and a future-proof economic policy" and stood at the core of government policy.

On 6 November 2024 Scholz asked the federal president to dismiss Finance Minister Lindner, after Lindner had proposed an early election and talks on the 2025 budget had failed. On the sidelines of a group meeting Haßelmann said that "egoism and the destructiveness" with which Lindner and parts of the FDP had worked had burdened the coalition to breaking point, and that the outcome was very regrettable.

### Re-election in 2025 and opposition

The snap election of 23 February 2025 cut the Greens from 118 seats to 85 in a Bundestag of 630, on 11.6 percent of second votes against 14.7 percent in 2021, and the group moved into opposition. On 26 February it left the existing executive in office on a caretaker basis. In early March Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock wrote to the group that she was leaving the front rank and would sit as an ordinary member.

Before the new Bundestag met, the outgoing house still had to vote on a financing package from the SPD and the CDU/CSU that needed a two-thirds majority. Haßelmann and Dröge negotiated the defence and infrastructure package with the Union and the SPD. On 18 March 2025 the 20th Bundestag amended Articles 109, 115 and 143h of the Basic Law on a joint motion of those three groups. Defence and specified security spending above a threshold would no longer count toward the debt rule, and a €500 billion special fund, also outside that rule, was authorised for additional infrastructure investment and additional investment toward climate neutrality by 2045, over twelve years rather than the ten originally proposed. Of the total, €100 billion was assigned to the Länder and a further €100 billion to the Climate and Transformation Fund, with additionality defined by an investment share above 10 percent of federal expenditure excluding special funds and financial transactions.

The roll call was 512 in favour, 206 against and no abstentions, above the 489 votes required. Of 117 Green members, 112 voted yes, one—Canan Bayram—voted no, and four did not vote. Haßelmann said it was "damned bitter" that the Union, and [Friedrich Merz](/people/friedrich-merz) in particular, had needed weeks after the election to accept a case it had rejected, often with what she called arrogance and populism, but that the measure was not therefore wrong. She argued for investment in the wider security architecture, not only the Bundeswehr.

On 24 March 2025 the group confirmed Haßelmann and Dröge, each with 90.4 percent, and re-elected Mihalic with 93.9 percent. Tagesschau reported internal praise for their talks with the Union and the SPD, and Dröge called the result a strong vote of confidence. The parliamentary leadership was unchanged as the Greens entered opposition.

## Political positions

### Climate, energy and housing

As co-chair of the Alliance 90/The Greens in the Bundestag, Haßelmann defended the 2023 Building Energy Act, known as the heating law, as climate policy that had to be socially paid for. In May 2023 she told the *Rheinische Post* that buildings had to cut carbon dioxide and that oil, gas and coal would become a "cost trap," with grants up to 80 percent for lower incomes. Inside the coalition, she said, only the Greens were consistent on climate. The draft came from Economy and Climate Minister Robert Habeck. In June, Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Habeck and Finance Minister Christian Lindner tied the rule that new systems run 65 percent on renewable energy to municipal heat plans, due by 2028, and said households must not be overburdened.

On 5 July the Federal Constitutional Court stopped a pre-recess vote after CDU deputy Thomas Heilmann said members had too little time for late amendments. Haßelmann told Deutschlandfunk that the order concerned procedure, not substance, and that she took it "with great respect." The point, she said, remained planning certainty and heat that was "social and just." She would not reopen a text the SPD, Greens and FDP had already passed in committee. In September she told *Welt am Sonntag* that the social case "was not communicated successfully from the start," and that the act "was never only a Green project, but one of the coalition as a whole." It could "stand scrutiny," she said, and would pass that month as agreed with the chancellor.

The CDU/CSU–SPD government under Chancellor Friedrich Merz later moved to drop the 65 percent rule, which the coalition agreement had marked for abolition. In the 2026 debate Green co-chair Katharina Dröge accused Economy Minister Katherina Reiche of telling people, in an oil-price shock, to buy gas heating again. The Bundestag then passed a Building Modernisation Act by 322 votes to 272, again allowing oil and gas boilers. The Greens voted no, as did the Left and the AfD; the Bundesrat approved it.

### Social policy and municipalities

Haßelmann pushed a basic child allowance (Kindergrundsicherung) against a narrower FDP reading. In April 2023 she told the RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland that, after the Bürgergeld and child benefit of €250, the allowance was "one of the next central projects." Every fifth child, she said, was poor or at risk of poverty. Lisa Paus had put the need at €12 billion; Lindner stressed digital access to benefits already due. Haßelmann called the reform "more than a digitisation project." At the end of 2023 she still called passage in 2024 one of her "affairs of the heart" and wanted the scheme to start in 2025.

She has framed municipal finance as a democratic problem. On 29 October 2025, after mayors of the 13 non-city-state capitals wrote to Merz, she described unrepaired roads, leaking school roofs and too little money for culture and social work. "If the infrastructure does not work and all that is managed is scarcity, that damages democracy in the long run." Merz had promised help with old municipal debt from 1 January 2026, but nothing had been tabled. She warned of "another of those empty promises by Friedrich Merz."

### Democracy, parliament and the far right

On that injunction she said two hearings had looked orderly, that Karlsruhe deserved respect, and that its indications had to be weighed for procedure generally. She has refused cooperation with the Alternative for Germany. On 29 January 2025 a CDU/CSU motion on asylum and migration passed by 348 votes to 345; the AfD and the FDP supplied the majority. She called it "a historic day, in the negative sense," and said that, "against the background of our history," majorities "beyond the democratic centre" had been knowingly sought and willingly accepted. She blamed Merz: her group had been emailed a request to review and consent, not an offer to negotiate. Merz said he sought no such majority. [Rolf Mützenich](/people/rolf-mutzenich) said the Union had left [the centre](/organizations/the-centre); Dröge said the motion passed only with a far-right group, and Habeck called the day a possible break with the republic's practice.

On a party ban she has asked for a review without treating prohibition as a substitute for politics. On 8 May 2025, after the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution classified the whole AfD as confirmed right-wing extremist, she said the pressure on the Bundestag, the Bundesrat and the federal government "to examine a ban procedure and to initiate one" had risen considerably, and that the Greens would not wait for others. Support for the programme, she added, still had to be answered politically. A reply issued for her that September called a ban a last constitutional means, not a substitute for argument. By June 2026 an emergency order had blocked that federal label, with the main case still open, while five state associations remained classified. The Green leadership asked other chairs to respond to a legal opinion that found the AfD unconstitutional; without the Union there was no majority to go to the Constitutional Court.

## Reception and criticism

### Reputation inside the party and parliament

For much of her time in the Bundestag, Haßelmann was described as a floor manager rather than a public face of Alliance 90/The Greens. A 2011 Bundestag profile called the parliamentary business managers “the managers of parliament,” arranging plenary business “behind the scenes” and speaking from the lectern chiefly when the groups could not agree an agenda. Haßelmann, then a Green whip, said the job was to hold the group together and to settle sitting weeks with the other whips. After she and Katharina Dröge became co-chairs of the Green Bundestag group in 2021, that division of attention remained. Watson wrote in March 2025 that she appeared in the media less often than Robert Habeck, Annalena Baerbock or [Claudia Roth](/people/claudia-roth). The Berliner Morgenpost later reported that, in opposition, the limited spotlight was split four ways, and that sympathetic colleagues said none of the leaders had the profile Baerbock and Habeck had held.

Inside the group the judgment was more operational. [Der Spiegel](/organizations/der-spiegel) reported that on 24 March 2025 members re-elected Haßelmann and Dröge with 90.4 percent each, after what it described as considerable internal praise for their talks with the CDU/CSU and the SPD on a defence and infrastructure finance package. Baerbock had been discussed for the post and then declined.

On 31 January 2025, shortly before the vote on the CDU/CSU draft Zustrombegrenzungsgesetz, she fell on a step in the plenary. President [Bärbel Bas](/people/barbel-bas) briefly suspended the sitting; Haßelmann returned within minutes and later wrote that she had simply stumbled. The episode was reported as an accident, not as a political judgment.

### Disputes over governing record and style

Criticism of the Ampel record attached to the group leadership centred on the 2023 heating law, the Gebäudeenergiegesetz, and on the speed of its passage. On 5 July 2023 the Federal Constitutional Court stopped the final readings before the summer break after CDU member Thomas Heilmann said the procedure violated his right to equal participation. The Bundestag recorded a first reading on 15 June and a committee vote on 5 July, with the plenary vote set for 7 July. In a June 2025 strategy paper reported by [Die Welt](/organizations/die-welt), Haßelmann and Dröge wrote that the law “should have been prepared differently and discussed differently—including in public,” because many people had not understood what it meant for them. They also wrote that the time in government had cost trust and that people still too often accepted the “distorted image of an everyday-remote elite party.”

Her tone toward the CDU/CSU–SPD government formed in 2025 was reported in its own right. After exploratory talks in March, Friedrich Merz left her a voicemail about the planned finance package. The Neue Westfälische quoted her as saying she did not consider that “zeitgemäß” at all—“absolut nicht”—and that it failed the seriousness of questions of security and the peace order. BR24 reported that Green chair [Franziska Brantner](/people/franziska-brantner) quoted the message as offering only to mention climate “somewhere in a statement of reasons,” and that Green member [Lisa Badum](/people/lisa-badum) asked whether Merz had thought negotiations could be conducted by answering machine. Merz told Bild am Sonntag, as reported by Der Spiegel, that the message had been well meant and that he would have tried another route had he foreseen the reaction; the talks later produced an agreement.

In the budget debate of 26 November 2025, ZDFheute reported that she accused the government of chaos and of raising expectations it then had to withdraw “the day after next.” In an October 2026 Tagesspiegel interview, summarized by the Frankfurter Rundschau, she put the coalition at “seven to eight” on a scale topped by an “open field battle,” said it had lacked the shared project the Ampel had at first, and called talk of new elections or a minority government “highly negligent,” while adding that the Ampel’s own compromise had in the end no longer been enough.

## Personal life and civic roles

### Family and residence

Haßelmann has kept her family largely outside campaign coverage. A 2012 Bundestag profile says she came to Bielefeld only to study social work, met her future husband there, had a son and stayed. In August 2013 the *Neue Westfälische* reported that she lived in Bielefeld-West with her husband, Marcus Stichmann, described as politically active, and their then 20-year-old son, and that she refused a home interview in order to keep her family out of the campaign. The biography for the 20th electoral term, from members' own statements, recorded her as married with one child; the current biography omits that line. In September 2025 the *Rheinische Post* wrote that she arrived with her husband for a Greens' walk in Straelen, where she grew up, and placed her work in Berlin and her constituency in Bielefeld.

In August 2021 the *Westfalen-Blatt* said she still lived in the Teichstraße quarter of Bielefeld-West, where she had moved as a student in the 1980s. The Bundestag lists a constituency office there. On her own site she states that a second flat in Berlin is among costs met by the tax-free expense allowance, and that she has no income beyond parliamentary pay. The basic allowance, published by the Bundestag president, rose on 1 July 2024 from 10,591.70 euro to 11,227.20 euro a month and on 1 July 2025 by 5.4 percent to 11,833.47 euro. The Bundestag group of Alliance 90/The Greens states that its chairs receive a supplement of 50 percent of one month's allowance from group funds.

### Voluntary offices

That biography, which the parliament says rests on self-reporting, lists unpaid ties to UNICEF Deutschland, Bielefelder Selbsthilfe e.V., the Bundesnetzwerk Bürgerschaftliches Engagement, the Förderverein Nationalpark Senne, the Alpenverein, DSC Arminia Bielefeld and Förderkreis Bunker Ulmenwall e.V. Only UNICEF also appears in the statutory disclosure of association posts: an unpaid board seat at UNICEF Deutschland in Cologne.

UNICEF Deutschland says its board, elected by the members' assembly for four years and once re-electable, appoints and supervises management, and lists Haßelmann, with Bielefeld and Berlin as her places. In 2012 she described Bielefelder Selbsthilfe as offering work and housing to people outside ordinary living arrangements, for instance after psychiatric care, and said she had lived as a student in its then-occupied house in Bielefeld-West.

The Bundesnetzwerk Bürgerschaftliches Engagement calls itself a network of civil-society, state and business actors promoting civic engagement. The biography does not describe the Förderverein Nationalpark Senne; the Förderverein Nationalpark in OWL e.V. says it still seeks a national park in Ostwestfalen-Lippe covering the Senne, the Teutoburg Forest and the Egge. The Alpenverein is the German Alpine Club, which promotes mountaineering and protection of alpine and upland landscapes; in 2013 the *Neue Westfälische* reported that hiking was among her favourite pastimes, including holidays on European high routes. DSC Arminia Bielefeld is the city's football club. Bunker Ulmenwall e.V., a nonprofit in this form since 1996, says it does youth work around contemporary jazz in a former bunker; the biography lists a separately named Förderkreis Bunker Ulmenwall e.V.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/britta-hasselmann