# Caroline Bosbach

# Caroline Bosbach

Caroline Bosbach (born 27 November 1989 in Bergisch Gladbach) is a politician of the [Christian Democratic Union of Germany](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany) (CDU) and a member of the Bundestag for the Rheinisch-Bergischer Kreis in North Rhine-Westphalia. She sits in the CDU/CSU parliamentary group and has held that constituency's direct mandate since the 21st Bundestag constituted itself on 25 March 2025. She is the daughter of the former CDU interior politician Wolfgang Bosbach. The Bundestag biography, drawn from her own disclosure, records her as Roman Catholic and unmarried and lists her profession as an economist and regulatory manager.

From 2000 to 2009 she attended the Gymnasium Herkenrath in Bergisch Gladbach, where she passed the Abitur, and in 2017 she completed a Master of Arts in Business Communication Management at the Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft Berlin. Before entering parliament she worked as a regulatory manager at the Stromkontor group in Bergisch Gladbach and was active as an author, moderator and speaker. The register of members' interests still lists the regulatory post, paid at €1,846 gross a month alongside the mandate. In 2022 she competed on the RTL show *Let's Dance* with the professional dancer Valentin Lusin and was voted off by the audience in the fifth live show, on 25 March, after a slow foxtrot that the jury scored at 14 points.

In the early federal election of 23 February 2025, called after the Federal President dissolved the 20th Bundestag on 27 December 2024, she won constituency 99 with 77,301 first votes (42.2 percent). Hinrich Schipper of the [Social Democratic Party of Germany](/organizations/social-democratic-party-of-germany) finished second on 18.8 percent, and turnout in the district was 85.9 percent. In the 21st Bundestag she is a full member of the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Homeland and of the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Sustainable Development and Future Issues, a deputy member of the Interior Committee and the Committee on Labour and Social Affairs, and one of the Bundestag's secretaries (*Schriftführerin*).

In November 2025 the Cologne public prosecutor's office opened an investigation on suspicion of joint fraud, alleging that in January 2025 she had a campaign aide submit a fictitious invoice for €2,500 to the CDU district association for social-media work that was not performed, and examining whether that sum was then handed to her in cash. The prosecutor notified the President of the Bundestag; after the statutory 48-hour waiting period her immunity was lifted and the investigation began. Bosbach has denied enriching herself and said she expected the case to be dropped, and the prosecutor's office underlined the presumption of innocence. In the same season of coverage she deleted an Instagram post, written after the killing of the American activist Charlie Kirk, in which she had called him a "fighter for Western values".

## Early life and family

### Childhood in Bergisch Gladbach

Caroline Bosbach was born on 27 November 1989 in Bergisch Gladbach, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The biography published by the Bundestag, compiled from her own disclosures, records that she is Roman Catholic and unmarried; she later entered parliament for the Christian Democratic Union.

She grew up in Bergisch Gladbach with her parents, Sabine and Wolfgang Bosbach, her younger sisters and her grandparents. From 2000 to 2009 she attended the Gymnasium Herkenrath in the city and left with the Abitur.

Her father's years in parliament set the rhythm of the household. While the Bundestag still met in Bonn, he later said, he could breakfast with the family and sometimes drive the children to kindergarten and then to school; he dated the break to the chamber's move to Berlin in 2001, after which session weeks meant flying out on Monday and often returning only on Friday evening or Saturday. Caroline said in 2019 that she, her siblings and her mother had stayed in Bergisch Gladbach when the government moved, so that they "did not have much of Papa." On the VOX series *7 Töchter* that year she said he had hardly been there when they were small, though at the time that had seemed normal; he replied that she had not had much of her father, nor he of her, and that what had been missed could not be recovered.

She told *Gala* that he had largely kept out of raising her and her two sisters because he was almost never present, and that what mattered to him was that they were happy. She described a "wild Gothic phase" in her teens, with purple hair and clothes of patent leather and leather, which she said had not bothered him. In 2016 he said he had never attended a parents' evening or a St Martin's procession with his daughters, and that in 22 years as a member he had been to the cinema with the whole family only three or four times, although the daughters were keen cinema-goers. He put his share of the child-rearing at no more than 5 per cent. When he came home, he said, the children wanted to recount the week, while he often wanted quiet first, and the mismatch had often disappointed them.

### Parents and siblings

Wolfgang Bosbach married Sabine Bosbach in 1987. She already bore the surname Bosbach, although the two were not related; asked about a double surname, he said that "Bosbach-Bosbach" would have been curious, and she kept her birth name.

*Wolfgang Bosbach with his wife Sabine and daughters Caroline, Viktoria and Natalie at the ZDF show Wetten, dass..? in Düsseldorf on 10 December 2005.*

The couple's three daughters are Caroline, the eldest, Natalie and Viktoria. In November 2016 *Bild* gave their ages as 26, 24 and 21 and reported that Viktoria, the youngest, was preparing for her final examination as a bank clerk. Sabine avoided publicity, and the family lived in a plain detached house without a nameplate in the countryside near Bergisch Gladbach.

Wolfgang said that his father-in-law had died suddenly at 60 about sixteen years before that interview, and that Sabine's mother had then moved in. He called the three-generation household a sound decision: he and his mother-in-law got on well, and she willingly took on part of the children's care. In 2012 the daughters were told that his prostate cancer was incurable; Sabine later said that, at his request, the illness was not discussed at home.

In February 2025 Caroline said politics had never been the main subject at home and that, when her father returned, he wanted to rest from it. The sisters, she said, had been brought up liberally, within limits, but encouraged to decide for themselves. One worked as a flight attendant and another had two children and ran a café; she was the one drawn into politics. The daughters took after their mother in appearance, she added, their mother stood at [the centre](/organizations/the-centre) of the family, and Sabine would sleep more easily if Caroline had stayed clear of politics.

## Education and professional career

### Studies

Bosbach completed the Abitur in 2009 at Gymnasium Herkenrath in Bergisch Gladbach. Her Bundestag biography, which the parliament states is based on members’ own information, records her at that school from 2000 to 2009.

She then studied business communication at the Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft Berlin; the parliamentary biography gives the course the English title Business Communication Management and states that she received a Master of Arts in 2017. A curriculum vitae included with her July 2024 letter seeking the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) nomination in the Rheinisch-Bergischer Kreis names the same school and subject and adds a bachelor’s degree in 2013. The Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger reported both the Herkenrath Abitur and the Berlin course when it covered that candidacy.

A short biography published by the CDU in North Rhine-Westphalia dates the studies to 2010–2017 and places them in Berlin and in Rotterdam in the Netherlands, with the qualification given as an M.A. The Bundestag biography does not mention study in the Netherlands or name a Dutch institution. The *Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger* also reported that, during her studies, she worked in Berlin’s largest reception facility for refugees.

### Communications, teaching and energy regulation

The *Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger* reported that in 2017 she was a management trainee at a German food discounter in Cologne and that in 2018 she lectured on product management at Cologne Business School in Cologne. The retailer is not named in that account. The state CDU biography describes a management trainee programme in 2017–18 and says that she then worked as a strategy consultant in a communications agency and as a lecturer at Cologne Business School; it names neither the agency nor the city. In October 2023 the same newspaper, calling her a *Wirtschaftswissenschaftlerin* (economist), reported that after her studies she had gone to Cologne and taught at that school. A commercial speaker profile repeats the sequence of trainee, strategy consulting in a communications agency, and teaching at Cologne Business School, again without naming the firm.

Since 2023 she has worked as a regulatory manager (*Regulierungsmanagerin*) at Stromkontor Rostock GmbH in Bergisch Gladbach, according to the *Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger* at the time of her selection as candidate. The Bundestag entry on activity before membership names the employer as the Stromkontor Unternehmensgruppe in Bergisch Gladbach and the post as regulatory manager, gives her occupation as “Wirtschaftswissenschaftlerin, Regulierungsmanagerin,” and also lists work as an author, moderator and speaker in Bergisch Gladbach. The CDU state biography places the Stromkontor post at the group’s site in the Bensberg technology park and describes the group as an operator of electricity, gas and heat networks.

Alongside the mandate, the Bundestag publishes a paid activity at the Stromkontor Unternehmensgruppe as regulatory manager at €1,846.00 gross a month. Members file these details under the code of conduct in the Members of the Bundestag Act; the parliament publishes them after checking whether disclosure is required. Under corporate functions the disclosure lists her as a member of the advisory board (*Beirat*) of Anytime Invest GmbH in Bonn, with no separate remuneration figure. The company’s imprint identifies Anytime Invest GmbH, Kronprinzenstraße 41, 53173 Bonn, commercial register of the Cologne local court HRB 103618. Its public advisory-board page does not include Bosbach among the advisers it names.

## Media appearances and publications

### Television

In a July 2019 episode of the VOX series *7 Töchter*, Bosbach spoke with other daughters of public figures about Wolfgang Bosbach's 23 years in the Bundestag and his absence when she and her sisters were small. *t-online* reported that she cried in the studio at a filmed message in which he said he had never been to a parents' evening and that they had never built a kite together. In a 2019 VOX special of *Grill den Henssler* she cooked alongside her father; *Bild* reported that the host produced a youthful cover shot of her for Michael Wendler's single "Nina".

In 2022 she competed in the 15th season of *Let's Dance* on RTL with professional dancer Valentin Lusin. A positive COVID-19 test, announced on 7 March, kept her out of the third live show. On 25 March, in the fifth show ("Made in Germany"), they danced a slow foxtrot to Echt's "Du trägst keine Liebe in dir". Jurors Jorge González, Motsi Mabuse and Joachim Llambi gave 14 points, one more than comedian Bastian Bielendorfer, but viewer votes sent the pair out. Llambi said the slow foxtrot had "already cost many their heads" and objected that she set the whole foot down; González called her a good student who had not learned much.

*Caroline Bosbach and professional partner Valentin Lusin during Let's Dance on RTL in 2022.*

They were recalled a day before the sixth show to replace an injured contestant, Michelle, with about a day and a half to prepare a slow waltz. RTL reported a score of 16 and a second elimination on the combined jury and viewer result. Lusin called the dance, put together that quickly, a "crowning conclusion"; Bosbach called the return an encore she was content with.

On RTL's *stern TV*, host Steffen Hallaschka moderated a clash with SPD politician [Annika Klose](/people/annika-klose) over a planned rise in Bürgergeld. *Watson* reported that Bosbach opposed it, spoke of people who were "perfectly fit" and refused jobs, and said the system was "built on sand", while Klose pointed to low pay. A viewer poll found 77 percent saying further rises would mean work no longer paid.

On 19 October 2023 the Kölner Brauerei-Verband named her the first Kölsch ambassador for one year, at the post-pandemic Kölsch-Konvent in the Sünner cellars in Cologne. The *Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger* reported the laudation by Melanie Schwartz of Malzmühle and Sünner; the *Kölnische Rundschau* added a certificate, a bronze glass by Cornel Wachter, and her remark that Cologne was not the most beautiful city but the most easy-going. The convent dates from 1985.

### Books and lectures

*Schwarz auf Grün. Was die schweigende Mehrheit umtreibt. Für eine neue Politik der Mitte*, with Torsten Weber, appeared from Murmann in July 2021 (200 pages; ISBN 978-3-86774-682-3). Murmann presents it as a "series in book form": arguments with passers-by, notes by Weber, who teaches sustainability at Cologne's CBS International Business School, and "Radio Future" items from 2030, pressing for "more black on the green" rather than green measures that leave fears unanswered. Wolfgang Bosbach appears in that family line. Claudia Panster wrote in the *Handelsblatt* of a 2030 scene in which Chancellor Armin Laschet has led a black-green-yellow government for nine years and Bosbach is "minister for the economic future". She told the paper she wanted a non-academic account, in the 2021 election year, of energy, budgets and everyday consumption. To the *Frankfurter Neue Presse* she called the screenplay form documentary rather than fiction, named Weber rather than her father as co-author, and summed up the claim as "not everything that wants to gleam green is gold".

*Zeit für Mut. Warum wir Deutschland nicht links liegen lassen dürfen* was published by Langen Müller in Munich on 21 October 2024 (176 pages, paperback, ISBN 978-3-7844-3677-7, 20 euros). The jacket text says migration, the economy and media coverage are going wrong, contrasts argument over gender asterisks with harm to women from immigration policy, and calls civic-mindedness still necessary. Robert Probst, in the *Süddeutsche Zeitung* on 1 December 2024, said *Schwarz auf Grün* still showed some sympathy for core themes of Alliance 90/[The Greens](/organizations/the-greens), while *Zeit für Mut* reckoned with three years of an "ideologically prettily coloured left-green Bullerbü". He found the criticism of the coalition often sober but repeatedly sarcastic, at times what he called borderline, especially on identity politics, with the stress on nuclear power, fracking and "steered and consistent" immigration. He noted the silence on the FDP, the AfD, the BSW and [Angela Merkel](/people/angela-merkel), whose "no alternative" he said was shifted onto the traffic-light government, and read the book as preparation for a bloc campaign rather than a bridge.

Under the members' code of conduct, the Bundestag register of outside interests lists her earlier work as author, moderator and speaker in Bergisch Gladbach and itemizes paid talks after she entered parliament. Declared pre-tax profits on single 2025 and 2026 dates run from 2,500 to 6,000 euros. Several talks are titled "Zeit für Mut", booked through agencies including EREIGNISHAUS/geno kom, Econ Referenten-Agentur, K&P Consulting and MEET Live; other titles are "Aufbruch, Werte und Wohlstand" (2,900 euros, Chemnitz) and "So geht Zukunft" (6,000 euros, Speyer). Filings are due within three months, and only interests judged publishable are shown.

## Party roles before the Bundestag

### Staff work and associations

Before entering the Bundestag in March 2025, Caroline Bosbach combined paid advisory work for the Christian Democratic Union with the federal chair of a business-oriented affiliate. The *Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger* reported in November 2024 that she had been a CDU member for eight years and, in her nomination speech, cited municipal and state-level work in Wiesbaden and Hesse. A 2022 profile in the same paper said she had served on the campaign team of Hessian minister-president Volker Bouffier and as a political adviser (*politische Referentin*) to the CDU group in Wiesbaden city hall, then moved in the summer of 2019 to the Bundestag as a scientific staff member. A biography on the site of the CDU in North Rhine-Westphalia states that from 2018 she advised at municipal and federal level, including five years in the Wiesbaden city hall, and later advised Bundestag member Bettina Wiesmann and the Parlamentskreis Mittelstand of the CDU/CSU group. The *Rheinische Post* wrote that she had been a referent at several CDU levels and that in 2021 she ran the Bundestag campaign of Bettina Wiesmann of Frankfurt, whom the paper described as having later returned to parliament.

In October 2021 she became federal chair of the Junger Wirtschaftsrat, the young-members' organisation of the Wirtschaftsrat der CDU. The *Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger* reported in August 2024 that she had just been re-elected and still held the office while seeking the Rhein-Berg nomination; the *Rheinische Post* identified her the same way at the November nomination. Her Bundestag disclosure lists the chair of the Junger Wirtschaftsrat Deutschland, at the Wirtschaftsrat der CDU e.V., as ending in October 2025. On 11 October 2025 a members' assembly elected Ferdinand Herfeldt to succeed her. The Wirtschaftsrat said the statutory age limit barred another term and that she was leaving after four years.

She also stood for local office in Hesse. In the elections of 14 March 2021 she was a CDU candidate for the city council of Eltville am Rhein, then her place of residence, and was not elected. The same day she stood for the CDU for the local advisory council (*Ortsbeirat*) of Erbach, a district of Eltville. The official count recorded 498 votes for her, 8.43 percent of the votes cast for CDU candidates there.

She has dated her own turn to politics to 2015. In an October 2024 *Bild* interview she said that she, her sisters and her mother had been relatively unpolitical until she worked at the former Berlin Tempelhof Airport, then a refugee reception centre. On her account she met hardly any children and women in need of protection, but "5,000 young, unattached men, some of them ready to use violence," unlike the evening news. The *Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger* reported that at the November 2024 nomination meeting she said she had worked during her studies at Berlin's largest reception centre and, by her own telling, had already seen later problems coming.

### Local offices in Rhein-Berg

In the Rheinisch-Bergischer Kreis she also held district offices while chairing the Junger Wirtschaftsrat. By August 2024, when she applied for the Bundestag candidacy, the *Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger* described her as deputy chair of the Mittelstands- und Wirtschaftsunion (MIT) Rhein-Berg, deputy chair of the CDU branch in Herkenrath, part of Bergisch Gladbach, and a member of the district board of the Junge Union. The district Junge Union reported that on 3 June 2024 its members' meeting in Bergisch Gladbach elected her a *Beisitzerin*, a non-executive board member, under the new chair Maximilian Rhode. The district CDU reported that on 6 September 2023, after Doro Dietsch stood down from eleven years as MIT chair, Uwe Pakendorf of Rösrath beat Isabell Johann of Odenthal by 34 votes to 31, and Bosbach and Fabrice Ambrosini of Bergisch Gladbach were elected deputies.

## 2025 Bundestag election

### Nomination

The 2025 German federal election was held early, on 23 February, after Chancellor [Olaf Scholz](/people/mig-olaf-scholz)'s coalition of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), Alliance 90/The Greens and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) broke up. Scholz dismissed Finance Minister Christian Lindner on 6 November 2024, and the FDP left the cabinet. On 16 December the Bundestag withheld its confidence: 207 members voted for Scholz, 394 against and 116 abstained, short of the 367 votes required. Scholz asked President [Frank-Walter Steinmeier](/people/frank-walter-steinmeier) to dissolve parliament. Steinmeier, finding neither the incumbent government nor any alternative combination with a majority, dissolved the 20th Bundestag on 27 December under Article 68 of the Basic Law and set the election for 23 February 2025.

Constituency 99, the Rheinisch-Bergischer Kreis, is the district of that name in North Rhine-Westphalia: eight municipalities — Bergisch Gladbach, Burscheid, Kürten, Leichlingen, Odenthal, Overath, Rösrath and Wermelskirchen — covering 437.3 square kilometres, with 283,600 inhabitants at the end of 2023. The same territory had been constituency 100 in 2021. The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) had held the direct mandate since 1994. Wolfgang Bosbach was elected six times, last in 2013, when the CDU took 58.5 percent of the first votes, and did not stand in 2017. Hermann-Josef Tebroke succeeded him, with 40.0 percent in 2017 and 30.0 percent in 2021, and did not run again.

The district CDU chose its candidate on 22 November 2024 at the Bürgerhaus Steinbreche in Bergisch Gladbach-Refrath. Of 451 eligible members present, 438 cast ballots and one was invalid. Caroline Bosbach won on the first ballot with 263 of 437 valid votes (60.2 percent). Michael Freiherr von Maltzahn, a Bundeswehr colonel from Burscheid, received 173 (39.6 percent), and Fabian Felder, a naval officer from Bergisch Gladbach, one. The *Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger* reported that the district party was nominating a woman for the Bundestag for the first time. Bosbach, then 34, a regulatory manager at an energy company and a CDU member for eight years, argued for a stronger social-market economy, affordable and secure energy, and migration policy combining what she called humanity with order, and she described the collapsed coalition as ideologically split and clientelist. She also said that, under the reformed electoral law, a constituency win alone might not bring a seat, so the CDU needed an above-average second-vote result. Wolfgang Bosbach, who said he had felt like a coach unable to intervene, told the paper he was more nervous than at his own elections. Tebroke, the outgoing member and district chairman, who announced the result, had asked members to unite behind whoever was chosen.

### Result in constituency 99

On 23 February, 184,312 of 214,554 eligible voters cast ballots, a turnout of 85.9 percent, 4.4 points above 2021. Of 183,157 valid first votes, Bosbach received 77,301 (42.2 percent), 12.2 points above the CDU share in 2021. Hinrich Walter Johan Schipper of the SPD, a special-needs school principal from Kürten, was second with 34,424 (18.8 percent, down 3.9). Maik Außendorf of the Greens received 25,245 (13.8 percent, down 4.2). Harald Weyel of [the Alternative](/organizations/the-alternative) for Germany (AfD), a sitting member and former professor living in Bergisch Gladbach, received 22,758 (12.4 percent, up 7.0). Tomás Marcelo Santillán of [Die Linke](/organizations/die-linke), a software consultant, received 9,309 (5.1 percent, up 2.3), and Lindner, the FDP candidate, 9,054 (4.9 percent), 11.9 points below the FDP's 16.8 percent of first votes in 2021. Alexander Johannes Becker of [Volt Germany](/organizations/volt-germany) took 2,529 (1.4 percent), Marcel Liebegott of the [Free Voters](/organizations/free-voters) 1,692 (0.9 percent) and Stefan Manfred Schäfer of [Bündnis Deutschland](/organizations/bundnis-deutschland) 845 (0.5 percent). Invalid first votes numbered 1,155.

*Caroline Bosbach, holding a bouquet, stands beside an older man as people applaud indoors on the night she won the Rheinisch-Bergischer Kreis constituency.*

Of 183,450 valid second votes, the CDU led with 61,975 (33.8 percent, up 6.4), ahead of the SPD on 33,928 (18.5 percent, down 6.8), the Greens on 27,583 (15.0 percent, down 3.3), the AfD on 24,339 (13.3 percent, up 7.6), Die Linke on 11,972 (6.5 percent, up 3.6), the FDP on 10,199 (5.6 percent, down 8.3) and the Bündnis [Sahra Wagenknecht](/people/sahra-wagenknecht) on 6,305 (3.4 percent), contesting a federal election for the first time. Bosbach's first-vote share ran 8.4 points ahead of the CDU list. Invalid second votes numbered 862. The 2023 electoral reform fixes the Bundestag at 630 seats and admits a constituency winner only when the seat is covered by the party's second votes in the state, so a local plurality no longer guaranteed entry; the Federal Returning Officer nonetheless recorded Bosbach as elected in the constituency. Allegations about a €2,500 campaign invoice charged to the district CDU later became a Cologne fraud investigation, which Bosbach denied.

## Work in the Bundestag

### Committees and parliamentary offices

Caroline Bosbach has been a member of the 21st [German Bundestag](/organizations/german-bundestag) since its constituent sitting on 25 March 2025. She holds the direct mandate for constituency 099, Rheinisch-Bergischer Kreis, in North Rhine-Westphalia, and sits with the CDU/CSU. Her constituency office is listed at the CDU Rhein-Berg address, Am Stadion 18–24, in Bergisch Gladbach.

The Bundestag biography records her as an ordinary member of the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Homeland and of the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Sustainable Development and Future Issues, and as a Schriftführerin. The agriculture committee has 30 members and covers nutrition, farming and forestry, hunting and fishing, environmental and climate questions, animal welfare and rural areas. On 24 June 2025 the Bundestag set up the advisory council to follow sustainability policy across departments, including the German Sustainability Strategy, European policy and the Sustainable Development Goals, and to assess the government’s sustainability checks for lead committees. Schriftführer are members elected on a group proposal; two of the 64 in the 21st term sit with the presiding officer, take requests to speak and motions, keep the speakers’ list and record votes.

She is a deputy member of the Committee on Labour and Social Affairs, whose field includes pensions, the labour market, unemployment support and inclusion, and of the Interior Committee. That committee’s 42 members range from immigration and asylum to civil defence and disaster protection, oversee the interior ministry and its agencies, and prepare bills for the plenary.

In the agriculture committee she has been named a CDU/CSU rapporteur. At the committee’s 13th sitting, on 17 December 2025, she spoke on an [Alternative for Germany](/organizations/alternative-for-germany) motion on geographical indications (printed paper 21/2550), arguing that origin, quality and regional character were advantages for domestic producers, that the rules had to be legally secure and practical, and that the motion should be rejected. The committee recommended rejection, with the CDU/CSU, the SPD, Alliance 90/The Greens and Die Linke voting against the AfD.

Stenographic reports record several speeches for the CDU/CSU. On 16 October 2025, on an AfD motion to ban “Antifa” organisations and to act against left-wing terrorism (printed paper 21/2221), she said such groups were held together by hostility to the state and that the Union would reject the motion as a gesture. On 29 January 2026 she closed an Aktuelle Stunde, requested by the CDU/CSU and the SPD, on applying the Mercosur agreement, saying it had been blocked rather than having failed and that farmers’ doubts called for structural support rather than closed markets. On 21 May 2026, on a Die Linke motion for free meals in every school and day-care centre (printed paper 21/3660), she supported adequate meals for children regardless of their parents’ means but called a nationwide free scheme a cost shifted onto others, citing municipal estimates of up to €14 billion a year before kitchens and staff. On 24 June 2026 she closed debate on the government’s decision “Sustainability for a modern and future-proof Germany” (printed paper 21/2696), saying the term had come to mean reporting duties and regulation and welcoming its emphasis on sustainable public finances. In November 2025 *[Der Spiegel](/organizations/der-spiegel)* reported that her immunity had been lifted for an investigation by the Cologne public prosecutor’s office; the allegations are treated separately.

### Group roles and outside activity

Bosbach is a deputy chair of the Parlamentskreis Mittelstand (PKM) of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group; the chair listed on the group’s page is Christian Freiherr von Stetten. A June 2025 flyer from the circle calls it the Mittelstand voice in the group and the largest of six “sociological” groupings in a group of 208 members, with 166 deputies. Members meet before group sittings to discuss the relevance of coming bills to small and medium-sized firms, and the circle says it remains committed to the social market economy associated with Ludwig Erhard.

Activity paid beside the mandate is published under sections 45 and following of the Members of the Bundestag Act. Bosbach declares continued work as a regulatory manager for the Stromkontor Unternehmensgruppe in Bergisch Gladbach at €1,846 a month gross, the employer also listed for her occupation before she entered parliament, when she was additionally described as an author, moderator and speaker. Lecture fees for 2025 and 2026, entered as profit before tax, run from €2,500 to €6,000 an engagement, including “Zeit für Mut” and “So geht Zukunft” talks booked through agencies such as Econ Referenten-Agentur and MEET Live, a Ring Deutscher Makler panel and an IGA OPTIC podium. The same return lists her on the advisory board of Anytime Invest GmbH in Bonn, with no separate fee shown, and as chair of the Junger Wirtschaftsrat Deutschland in the Wirtschaftsrat der CDU until October 2025.

## Political positions

### Migration and internal security

Bosbach, of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany, has traced her turn to politics to work from 2015 to 2017 at a reception centre on the former Tempelhof airport in Berlin, which she has described as holding about 5,000 people, mostly young men, unlike what she said the news showed. In October 2024 she said Germany's capacity was finite, that Dublin assigned most asylum applicants already there to other EU states, and that a decade after Angela Merkel's 2015 decision a "cut" was needed.

Before the 2025 German federal election she separated irregular entry from labour migration: illegal migration had to stop and skilled immigration be promoted; municipalities were overloaded; and the security package of Olaf Scholz's government, including wider border checks, only simulated greater security. To a Rhein-Berg citizens' agenda she answered that asylum claims belonged in the first EU state entered, that controls against illegal entry should be lasting, that more states should count as safe countries of origin, and that asylum should be split from labour immigration so foreign qualifications could be recognised more easily.

On 10 September 2025, in her first Bundestag speech, she called "Wir schaffen das" the emblem of a policy that had underestimated the task—"the doors were open, but the house was not built"—and spoke of more than two million protection seekers in two years, overloaded authorities and a "cultural confrontation". She would not say nothing had been achieved, citing volunteers, people who had integrated, and an Institut der deutschen Wirtschaft figure of about €500 billion in value creation by people without a German passport; the new government, she said, had begun corrections, with much still to do. [Friedrich Merz](/people/friedrich-merz) had promised permanent controls and the turning back of every attempted illegal entry, including by people claiming protection, but on his government's first day Interior Minister [Alexander Dobrindt](/people/alexander-dobrindt) ordered that entry "can" be refused to protection seekers, excepting children, pregnant women and other visibly vulnerable people. In October 2025 Bosbach defended Merz's "Stadtbild" remark, saying problems were not solved by taboo.

### Economy, energy and the Mittelstand

*Schwarz auf Grün* (2021), with Torsten Weber, was cast as a politics of the centre. *Handelsblatt* described its 2030 scene of a black-green-yellow government under Chancellor Armin Laschet, with Bosbach as minister for the economic future—a plain-language book, she said, prompted by the rise of Alliance 90/The Greens. She rejected renunciation—fewer flights, less meat, smaller engines—said national climate efforts and bans meant standstill, and argued that the goal was shared but the route was not: economy and ecology had to be reconciled by listening to the middle rather than governing past it.

*Zeit für Mut* (2024) was sharper. Robert Probst, in the *Süddeutsche Zeitung*, read it as a reckoning with the traffic-light coalition on technology—for nuclear power and fracking—and on immigration: often concrete, but a camp book that built no bridges, largely omitting the Free Democratic Party, parties further to the right and Merkel, whose "no alternative" line he found pinned on that government. Bosbach told the *Merkur* the tone was deliberate, a debate book rather than a study, after interviewers noted a comparison in it with GDR-style planning. She could imagine nuclear plants in Germany again once a government wanted them—clean, safe and affordable, in her words—but said a return depended on the coalition partner, her preference being the FDP, and that the CDU, which had co-decided the exit, should not drop its basic programme in coalition talks.

As chair of the CDU's Young Economic Council she said in March 2024 that the Mittelstand financed the welfare state, and that the Greens and the [Social Democrats](/organizations/social-democrats) meant to transform both society and the economy. The CDU shared responsibility for 16 years in office, she added, but the traffic-light years had made matters worse: the nuclear exit came at the worst moment, bureaucracy rose, and energy prices had already been the EU's highest before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine because of taxes and levies. She wanted work incentives rather than a growing *Bürgergeld*, citing her figure that 100,000 fewer recipients would relieve the budget by €2–3 billion a year. Campaigning in 2025, she called bureaucracy a "desert" costing firms half their profit and preferred technology openness to bans; she criticised wind expansion and electric cars, treating the sales drop after subsidies ended as evidence that buyers had followed price, not conviction. Her answers sought lower company taxes, electricity taxes and grid fees, an end to the solidarity surcharge, and a basic payment in place of *Bürgergeld*. In October 2025 she told a CDU meeting that the welfare state depended on a strong economy, that a "fully insured" mentality had had its day, and that the slump also came from earlier Union governments which had administered rather than shaped; tax rises, she said, mistook a spending problem for a revenue one.

## Investigations and public controversies

### Party funds and the Cologne investigation

In July 2025, RTL/n-tv and *Stern* reported that €2,500 from a Christian Democratic Union (CDU) account in the Rheinisch-Bergischer Kreis had reached Caroline Bosbach in cash, via an invoice for her Bundestag campaign. Bosbach, the member from Bergisch Gladbach and daughter of the former CDU politician Wolfgang Bosbach, denied private use of the money and called the claims a smear campaign. Her lawyer, Ralf Höcker, said there was no fictitious invoice and no loss, that the aide had done the work, and that she had never claimed back costs she had advanced. The firm attributed the claims to a dismissed former employee and a "perfidious revenge campaign".

The association's chronology included the aide's claim that on 13 January 2025 she asked for a fictitious €2,500 social-media invoice. It ended his traineeship on 21 July because of that self-reported allegation and sought the money back, and it recorded her 15 July transfer of €2,500, referenced "Spende/Wahlkampf" (donation/campaign). Höcker said the payment was meant to dispel doubt over a loss he said never arose; t-online reported that a lawyer had acknowledged she received the cash while still denying a sham invoice. Senior prosecutor Ulrich Bremer said the association sent the files to Cologne but filed no criminal complaint itself. In August both sides agreed the material would go to prosecutors and an independent examiner.

On 30 October 2025 the Cologne office said it saw an initial suspicion (*Anfangsverdacht*) of fraud to the CDU's detriment and would investigate. On 3 November, *Spiegel* and tagesschau reported that an investigation for suspected joint fraud (*gemeinschaftlicher Betrug*) had opened over the invoice and the alleged cash handover, with a separate case against the aide who had reported himself. Prosecutors stressed the presumption of innocence. They had notified the President of the Bundestag; 48 hours after receipt was confirmed, immunity was lifted and the investigation could start. Bosbach said she was surprised inquiries were opening after nearly four months, expected the case to be dropped, and repeated that she had not enriched herself and that the party had lost nothing.

In an account to the *Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger*, not a court finding, the aide said he invoiced for work he never did, handed her the cash and kept €50; a second worker who said he drove him there was also investigated and was dismissed without notice on 7 April 2025. That worker's lawyer, Harriet Krüger, said Bosbach had used staff as scapegoats. On 30 January 2026 prosecutors named another suspect, a woman in Bosbach's working environment, over an invoice for campaign support allegedly written in July 2025 and backdated to 3 February 2025. The paper reported a search of her home in December 2025; she denied wrongdoing. Through another lawyer, Bosbach said she knew of no forged invoices by the woman and that €2,088.45 for campaign work had been paid by her, not the party. In March 2026 further searches seized evidence, including two former aides' phones, which spokesman Bremer confirmed without further detail. As of those March 2026 searches, and in *Spiegel*, tagesschau, n-tv and *Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger* coverage located through October 2026, the matter remained an investigation: no charge, indictment or discontinuation had been reported. Bosbach and the other suspects remain presumed innocent.

### Membership-recruitment allegations

Separate reporting by t-online and the ARD magazine *Kontraste*, in late July 2025, alleged that before a 6 September 2023 Mittelstands- und Wirtschaftsunion (MIT) vote in the Rheinisch-Bergischer Kreis, Bosbach and Uwe Pakendorf recruited members with money. Pakendorf won the chair, with her as prospective deputy, by 34 votes to 31; she was then elected deputy. The outlets said newcomers were offered about €90 or €100, plus free food and drink, to join and vote for that slate. *Kontraste* cited three sworn statements, including a witness who said that at a party she offered him €100 and free hospitality for his membership and vote. A reported chat of 4 September 2023 had her calling the vote very close, asking if anyone would join only for money, and saying she would "sponsor" one person but no more.

Her lawyers told *Kontraste* that the chat was the only time she spoke of sponsoring a membership, that she never did so, and that a Junge Union member had pressed her to recruit for money. On 4 August 2025 she called the claims false and partly based on manipulated chats, and said she was considering action over a campaign against her credibility. Pakendorf denied paying for votes. In this reporting, prosecutors' public statements concerned the invoice, not the MIT vote. She told local members she would skip campaign appointments until the claims were clarified, so they would not dominate the municipal campaign in North Rhine-Westphalia.

### Social-media tribute to Charlie Kirk

On 10 September 2025 [Charlie Kirk](/people/charlie-kirk), founder of [Turning Point USA](/organizations/turning-point-usa), was shot while speaking at a university in Utah and later died. The state's governor called the killing a political assassination, and a 22-year-old suspect was arrested. Bosbach posted that Kirk was a "fighter for Western values" and one of the most influential young conservative voices worldwide, and that he had stood for free debate by travelling America to talk with opponents.

Alliance 90/The Greens in the district said the killing should be condemned without reservation, but that praise for someone who had made racist, sexist and anti-democratic remarks — including, they said, describing Black women as intellectually inferior — had to be questioned. *Spiegel* called Kirk far-right in its report; *Welt* called him right-wing. She deleted the post, writing that she had put free speech first without sharing every statement of his, and that comments missing that point "did not do justice to the matter."

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/caroline-bosbach