Christian von Stetten

Christian Alexander Freiherr von Stetten (born 24 July 1970 in Stuttgart) is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and a self-employed merchant. He has been a directly elected member of the Bundestag for the constituency of Schwäbisch Hall–Hohenlohe in Baden-Württemberg since October 2002. The 15th Bundestag, the legislative term in which that membership began, held its opening sitting in Berlin on 17 October 2002. In the 2025 federal election he won constituency 268, Schwäbisch Hall–Hohenlohe, with 36.4 percent of the first votes (67,218), 4.3 percentage points more than in 2021. Benjamin Pascal Götz of the Alternative for Germany placed second on 24.0 percent, and turnout in the constituency was 82.9 percent.

According to the biography he supplied to the Bundestag, von Stetten studied business administration at the University of Mannheim and Heilbronn University of Applied Sciences and qualified as a Diplom-Betriebswirt (FH). He went into business on his own in 1994 and founded a company in 1996. He is the owner of Technologie Holding Christian Stetten GmbH and the majority shareholder and chairman of the executive board of Schloss Stetten Holding AG. He has sat on the city council of Künzelsau since 1994, has been the town’s first deputy mayor since 2013, and has been a district councillor of the Hohenlohekreis since 1994. The same biography describes him as Protestant, married, and the father of two children.

In the CDU/CSU parliamentary group he is the spokesperson for Mittelstand policy and chairman of the Parlamentskreis Mittelstand, the group’s circle of members focused on small and medium-sized business. On 21 May 2025, at the constitutive meeting of the Bundestag Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy, chaired by Bundestag President Julia Klöckner, he was elected committee chair with 41 yes votes out of 42 in a secret ballot. In the 21st Bundestag he is also a deputy member of the Committee on Sport and Volunteering, the Committee for the Scrutiny of Elections, Immunity and the Rules of Procedure, and the Finance Committee.

During the CDU/CSU–Social Democratic Party coalition under Chancellor Friedrich Merz, von Stetten said on 11 September 2026 that Labour Minister Bärbel Bas was “no longer tenable” because agreed reforms had been delayed. Tagesschau described that remark, from the chair of what it called an influential parliamentary circle, as the sharpest Union criticism of her record. Bas later resigned, citing grief after the death of her stepdaughter and public attacks that she said had also come from the coalition partner. SPD co-leader Lars Klingbeil called the Union’s conduct “indecent”, and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern minister-president Manuela Schwesig called it “inhuman”. Von Stetten answered in his newsletter that the 11 September comment came before he knew of the death on 26 September 2026, and that it concerned the ministry’s work rather than Bas personally. Klingbeil rejected the charge that Bas had slowed the reforms, saying the coalition had agreed to wait until after three state elections.

Early life and family

Family and childhood

Christian Alexander Freiherr von Stetten was born on 24 July 1970 in Stuttgart and is evangelical. His family belongs to the Franconian noble house of Stetten, whose seat is Schloss Stetten at Kocherstetten, a district of Künzelsau in the Hohenlohe district of Baden-Württemberg.

The castle is a spur fortification of the Staufer period above the valley of the Kocher, with the village of Kocherstetten below it. The town of Künzelsau records that men of the family—Adelrich, Heinrich and Adelhalm von Stetten—appear as witnesses in charters of Stift Comburg from 1098, and that the house later belonged to the imperial knights of the canton of Odenwald. In the late seventeenth century the sons of Wolfgang Eberhard von Stetten, who had reunited the estates and died in 1644, divided them by lot into the Inneres Haus, the Äußeres Haus and the Buchenbacher Haus; the inner line died out in 1865. Both the family and Hohenlohe lost their immediate territorial status in 1806 to the King of Württemberg. The Künzelsauer Burgfestspiele, drawing on the family chronicle, date the surviving keep and shield wall to about 1180–1200; the municipal account instead places a building phase in 1140 under Siegfried Zürch de Steten.

His father, Wolfgang Hermann Freiherr von Stetten, was born on 22 January 1941 in Niederwartha, near Meissen. He trained as a farmer, studied economics and law, worked as a judge and a lawyer, and taught commercial and economic law at the Fachhochschule Heilbronn; Munzinger dates that professorship to 1984–1991, while his own Bundestag biography dated it from 1985. From 1990 to 2002 he was the Christian Democratic Union member of the Bundestag for the constituency his son later held. Christian's mother, Silvia, née Forrer, is Swiss and had worked in hotel management before her marriage. His two younger siblings are a brother and a sister, Franziska, who later shared the management of the senior residence at the castle with her father. In 1983, while Christian was still a child, his parents founded the senior village Residenz Schloss Stetten on the family property.

Education

After his Abitur at the Wirtschaftsgymnasium in Öhringen he performed compulsory service in the Bundeswehr. A Bundestag biography of the late 2000s also lists a study stay in the United States before his degree course, without naming an institution. He studied business administration at the University of Mannheim and at the Fachhochschule Heilbronn, now the Heilbronn University of Applied Sciences, and graduated as a Diplom-Betriebswirt (FH). In 1994, while he was still a student, he set up on his own account in Künzelsau.

Marriage and citizenship

Through his Swiss mother he also holds Swiss citizenship, with Wildhaus in the canton of St. Gallen as his place of origin (Bürgerort). In a 2009 interview with Blick he was described as the only German–Swiss dual citizen then sitting in the Bundestag; he said that he worked above all as the representative of his Baden-Württemberg constituency, that his centre of life was in Germany, and that he paid tax to the competent German tax office. In July 2015 SWI swissinfo.ch likewise called him the only Swiss citizen in the German parliament. He told that site that he had for several years voted in Swiss initiatives and referendums, but that he did not think the Swiss system of direct democracy could be transferred to Germany, which he described as much larger and without a national tradition of the practice.

His Bundestag biography of 2009 still listed him as unmarried. In July 2014 he married Natalie Pfeiffer at Schloss Stetten. The Heilbronner Stimme reported a civil ceremony at the castle and a church wedding on 26 July 2014 in the castle chapel; the couple treated the celebration as private and did not want photographs of the bride published. The Bundestag's current biography records that he is married and has two children. The Deutsches Adelsblatt later described the baptism, in the castle chapel, of a daughter, Louisa Silvia.

Business activities

Companies and holdings

The Bundestag lists Christian von Stetten’s occupation as self-employed merchant (Selbstständiger Kaufmann). In the biographical note, which the parliament says rests on members’ own statements, he reports that he became self-employed in 1994 and founded a company in 1996, and that he is owner of Technologie Holding Christian Stetten GmbH as well as majority shareholder and chairman of the executive board of Schloß Stetten Holding AG.

Register notices compiled by North Data place Technologie Holding Christian Stetten GmbH, formerly Unternehmensentwicklungs- und Förderungsgesellschaft Hohenlohe mbH, in Künzelsau, Baden-Württemberg, with a founding date of 25 March 1999 and a 20 October 2006 entry at €80,000 share capital. Its object is to hold stakes and to advise on new business ideas, especially technology firms in research and development and renewable energy. Natalie von Stetten, née Pfeiffer, is the recorded managing director; notices show her appointment in July 2007 and a change of name and object in February 2014.

He declares that holding reportably invested in Bürgerenergie Stetten GmbH & Co. KG, Christian Stetten Land- und Forstwirtschaft GmbH, Eigenstrom Schloss Stetten GmbH, the Gesundheitscampus Künzelsau companies (a gemeinnützige GmbH until 31 March 2025, then a GmbH), Hohenloher Ticketservice GmbH and Klimaneutrale Bürgerenergie Stetten GmbH. Separate stakes are Barockschloss Stetten GmbH, Stetten Bau GmbH — reportably invested in Residenz Taubertal GmbH in Bad Mergentheim — and Stetten Bau Immobilien GmbH & Co. KG. Pre-mandate posts are listed without published pay: managing directorships at Stetten Bau, an ecological-energy company, a residence-services firm, a trade-fair company, the Schloss Stetten castle-festival company and two ticket firms, plus powers of attorney at Residenz Schloß Stetten GmbH and Dr. v. Stetten Grundstücks KG.

Schloss Stetten and senior living

Schloß Stetten Holding AG, at the same address, is described in register notices as holding participations, especially in the Schloß Stetten group, and real estate. North Data gives 10 October 2001 as the founding date and the earlier name Schloß Stetten Betreuungs-AG. A 2006 entry shows €60,000 of capital and Wolfgang von Stetten on the executive board; the Holding name appears in a September 2007 notice, and capital stands at €2.5 million in an April 2013 notice. In May 2019 Christian von Stetten joined the executive board and Wolfgang von Stetten left it.

He declares the holding reportably invested in Management- und Beteiligungs GmbH Schloss Stetten, Ökologische Energie- und Facility Management GmbH, Residenz Dienstleistungen gemeinnützige GmbH and Residenz Schloss Stetten gemeinnützige GmbH. The operator of the senior village says that Wolfgang von Stetten and his wife Silvia began, in 1983, converting farm buildings on the family property into housing for older people. It describes about 280 residents in twenty houses of assisted living at Schloss Stetten, further residences in Künzelsau and Bad Mergentheim, and a health campus at the entrance to the estate. The same account names Christian von Stetten as chairman of the holding and his sister Franziska von Stetten as manager of Residenz Dienstleistungen gGmbH.

Disclosed outside income

Under sections 45 and following of the Members of the Bundestag Act, the Bundestag publishes the activities and shareholdings it treats as disclosable. It states that the figures are gross, including benefits in kind, that a member’s own expenses are not deducted, and that the sum is not taxable income; if a gross amount for work inside a company cannot be determined, the distributed profit share is published as “Gewinn”.

On the biography current as of 27 October 2026, no euro amount is printed beside the chairmanship of Schloss Stetten Holding AG. The company function for which amounts are published is membership of the advisory board of KRIWAN Industrie-Elektronik GmbH in Forchtenberg: €20,000 gross for 2025 and €10,000 gross for 2026. The archived biography for the 20th electoral period records €40,000 gross for 2023 and €20,000 gross for 2024 from that board seat and, in the Schloss Stetten Holding AG participation entry, a 2024 profit distribution of €98,549.22. That distribution does not appear on the later biography. abgeordnetenwatch.de reproduces the same filings, including the pre-mandate posts and the KRIWAN sums. Other disclosed functions, among them local mandates, foundation seats and membership of the presidium of the Wirtschaftsrat der CDU, are marked honorary.

When the disclosure rules were first applied, Der Spiegel singled out von Stetten, a CDU member from the Hohenlohe district. In July 2007, after the Federal Constitutional Court had upheld publication of outside earnings, the magazine reported that he had listed twelve company functions — including managing-director posts at a retirement-home operator, a construction firm, a trade-fair company and a ticket firm — and had described all of them as unpaid. He said the posts had recently lapsed and that employees who had “grown into” the jobs would replace him. Spiegel wrote that, according to Creditreform, the trade-fair company and the ticket service each had a staff of one, and that people around him remembered the lack of pay differently.

Party career and local office

Junge Union and CDU

Von Stetten joined the Junge Union (JU) in 1986 and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in 1988, according to the biography carried on the Bundestag website during the 17th electoral period. In the JU of the Hohenlohekreis he was district chairman from 1990 to 1999. From 1994 to 2002 he was a member of the JU state executive in Baden-Württemberg, and in 1998 and 1999 he sat on the JU's federal council, the Deutschlandrat. From 1999 to 2002 he chaired the JU association for the administrative region of Nordwürttemberg.

That biography also records two substitute candidacies short of a Bundestag nomination. From 1996 to 2001 he was the Zweitkandidat of the CDU member of the Landtag of Baden-Württemberg for Hohenlohe, and from 1999 to 2004 the substitute candidate of the CDU Baden-Württemberg lead candidate for the 1999 election to the European Parliament. From 2003 to 2008 he chaired the Mittelstands- und Wirtschaftsvereinigung (MIT) of the CDU in Baden-Württemberg, the state branch of the party's Mittelstand and business association.

From 2009 the parliamentary biographies list him as a member of the MIT federal presidium. The text used in the 18th electoral period also called him a member of the federal executive of the association, by then named the Mittelstands- und Wirtschaftsunion of the CDU/CSU. The biographies for the 17th and 18th periods further listed him, from 2005, on the federal executive of the Kommunalpolitische Vereinigung (KPV) of the CDU/CSU. The biography for the 21st Bundestag, whose structured data were last modified in September 2026, still names membership of the MIT presidium among his party offices.

Künzelsau and Hohenlohekreis

His municipal offices are in Künzelsau, the district seat. From 1989 to 1999 he was a member of the village council (Ortschaftsrat) of Kocherstetten, one of the town's localities. Since 1994 he has been a city councillor in Künzelsau and a member of the district council (Kreistag) of the Hohenlohekreis; the Bundestag's register of members' outside posts describes both as honorary.

At the municipal election of 9 June 2024 he stood on the CDU list in Künzelsau, received 4,647 votes — the most of any candidate on that list — and was elected. The CDU list took 36,375 of 131,647 valid votes and six of the 22 council seats. Of 12,285 eligible residents, 6,975 cast a ballot. The town lists him among the six CDU councillors for the 2024–2029 term; the CDU group is chaired by Ernst-Friedrich Bürkert.

At its constitutive meeting on 23 July 2024 the council appointed him first honorary deputy to mayor Stefan Neumann, with Wolfgang Schmelzle second and Rainer Süssmann third. The biography published for the 18th Bundestag dates that first-deputy role from 2014, while the biography for the 21st Bundestag dates it from 2013. The biography archived in September 2011 did not describe him as a deputy mayor and listed only the council seats held since 1994.

On the district council, the official result of the election of 26 May 2019 records him as elected in the Künzelsau constituency with 3,488 votes. In the district election of 9 June 2024 the county's published candidate totals give him 3,490 votes, and the current Bundestag disclosure lists him as a member of the Kreistag. Separately, the 18th-term biography said that from 2013 he sat in the assembly of the Regionalverband Heilbronn-Franken; the disclosure of outside posts on the same page recorded that membership as ending on 24 October 2014.

Bundestag elections

Entry in 2002 and the constituency

Christian Freiherr von Stetten entered the Bundestag at the federal election of 22 September 2002, winning the direct mandate in constituency 269, Schwäbisch Hall – Hohenlohe, for the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). He succeeded his father, Wolfgang von Stetten, who had held the seat for three legislative periods; a Tagesspiegel profile published that October called the then 32-year-old his father’s successor after a first-vote share reported as 47 percent. The Bundestag’s constituency table put the CDU at 47.3 percent of valid first votes, ahead of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) on 34.7 percent, the Free Democratic Party (FDP) on 8.9 percent and Alliance 90/The Greens on 6.6 percent. Turnout was 78.2 percent among 218,189 people eligible to vote. The 15th Bundestag opened on 17 October 2002, and the parliament’s biography records him as the directly elected member for the constituency from October 2002.

The constituency comprises the whole of the district of Schwäbisch Hall and the Hohenlohekreis, in northeastern Baden-Württemberg. SWR has described it as a seat created in 1980 from those two districts, with Öhringen, Künzelsau, Schwäbisch Hall and Crailsheim as the larger towns. For 31 December 2023 the Federal Returning Officer recorded 46 municipalities, an area of 2,260.8 square kilometres and a population of 315,900, about 140 inhabitants per square kilometre; 87.1 percent of the area was vegetation or water and 12.9 percent settlement or transport. The same territory was constituency 269 in 2002 and 2005 and has been numbered 268 since the 2009 election.

Results since 2005

On 18 September 2005 von Stetten again won constituency 269. In the Federal Returning Officer’s final comparison tables he received 75,371 first votes (46.5 percent). The SPD was second with 51,836 (32.0 percent); the Greens and the FDP had 7.1 percent each, and turnout was 75.2 percent. CDU second votes in the constituency were 39.9 percent.

At the election of 27 September 2009, by then constituency 268, the CDU first-vote total was 65,474 (43.3 percent), still ahead of the SPD on 21.5 percent. The personal vote sat well above the list: the CDU took 34.7 percent of second votes, while the FDP reached 18.9 percent. Turnout, 69.1 percent, was the lowest figure in this run of results. In 2013 the CDU direct candidate’s share rose to 81,427 votes (52.3 percent), 9.0 points above 2009, with the SPD second on 35,728 (22.9 percent) and the Greens on 10.0 percent; turnout was 70.6 percent. SWR later attributed that result, rounded to 52 percent, and the following one to von Stetten.

In 2017 he received 68,717 first votes (40.5 percent), down 11.8 points. The SPD remained second on 31,406 (18.5 percent), and the Alternative for Germany (AfD), on 22,894 (13.5 percent), placed third, ahead of the Greens on 12.6 percent. Turnout was 76.1 percent. In 2021 the CDU first-vote share fell further, to 54,894 (32.1 percent). The SPD was again second, with 33,568 (19.6 percent), followed by the Greens on 25,825 (15.1 percent), the AfD on 20,579 (12.0 percent) and the FDP on 19,941 (11.7 percent). Turnout was 76.5 percent. SWR reported that the direct mandate had again gone to von Stetten, with a little over 32 percent.

The election to the 21st Bundestag was held on 23 February 2025. In constituency 268 the Federal Returning Officer recorded von Stetten as elected with 67,218 first votes (36.4 percent), 4.3 points more than in 2021. Benjamin Pascal Götz of the AfD was runner-up with 44,363 votes (24.0 percent), a gain of 12.0 points and the first time in this series that the AfD placed second on the constituency ballot. The SPD followed on 27,499 (14.9 percent) and the Greens on 18,528 (10.0 percent). Of 224,446 eligible voters, 186,108 cast a ballot, a turnout of 82.9 percent, 6.5 points above 2021. On the party list the CDU took 31.8 percent of second votes and the AfD 25.1 percent, so von Stetten’s first-vote share ran ahead of his party while the AfD’s list share ran slightly ahead of Götz. SWR noted before the vote that he was not placed on the CDU state list. The direct mandate of 2025 was his seventh in succession, covering the 15th through the 21st electoral terms.

Committees and parliamentary roles

Christian Freiherr von Stetten, a deputy of the Christian Democratic Union, has been a member of the Bundestag since 17 October 2002. His documented committee service has run from the Finance Committee, including rapporteurships on inheritance and gift tax, to the chair of the Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy in the 21st electoral term.

Finance committee and group offices

Bundestag biographies record von Stetten as an ordinary member of the Finance Committee (Finanzausschuss) in the 18th, 19th and 20th electoral terms. At the committee’s constitutive sitting on 15 December 2021 he was one of twelve members from the CDU/CSU group; Alois Rainer was elected chair. In the 21st term the same biography lists him only as a deputy member of the Finance Committee.

He served as a rapporteur for the committee on inheritance and gift tax. The report of 26 November 2008 on the government bill for an Inheritance Tax Reform Act (Erbschaftsteuerreformgesetz) was submitted in the name of von Stetten, Florian Pronold, Carl-Ludwig Thiele and Barbara Höll, after the Finance Committee had taken the lead on the bill and held a public hearing. He was rapporteur again for the bill adapting the Inheritance and Gift Tax Act to the judgment of the Federal Constitutional Court of 17 December 2014. That judgment had found the relief for business assets incompatible with the constitutional guarantee of equal treatment and had left the legislature until 30 June 2016 to enact a new regime. The committee’s recommendation and report of 22 June 2016, signed by its chair Ingrid Arndt-Brauer, names von Stetten, Cansel Kiziltepe and Lisa Paus as rapporteurs and records that the committee recommended an amended bill, supported by the CDU/CSU and the Social Democratic Party against Die Linke and Alliance 90/The Greens.

Offices inside the parliamentary group are recorded separately from those Bundestag seats. Biographies for the 18th and 19th terms, which the Bundestag states rest on members’ own information, describe von Stetten as chairman of the CDU/CSU group’s finance commission (Finanzkommission), as the group’s mittelstandspolitischer Sprecher, and as a member of the group’s executive. The 21st-term biography, on the same self-reported basis, still describes him as mittelstandspolitischer Sprecher and as chairman of the group’s Parlamentskreis Mittelstand; that circle is treated with his position inside the Union group. The CDU/CSU group’s own member page confirms the chairmanship of the Parlamentskreis Mittelstand and lists him in the group’s working bodies on economic affairs and energy and on local government, but it does not list a finance-commission chairmanship.

Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy

On 21 May 2025, at the constitutive sitting of the Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy, held under Bundestag President Julia Klöckner, von Stetten was elected chair by secret ballot. Of 42 votes cast, 41 were in favour and one against, with no abstentions. The committee has 42 members in the 21st term: 14 from the CDU/CSU, ten from the Alternative for Germany, eight from the SPD, six from Alliance 90/The Greens and four from Die Linke.

The Bundestag describes the committee’s remit as coinciding with that of the federal ministry of the same name. It is responsible for the energy transition and the related questions of climate protection and energy saving, with grid expansion, energy efficiency and security of supply among the stated priorities of its energy work, and also for technology, industrial and Mittelstand policy, the EU internal market, foreign trade and global competition. Before taking the chair, von Stetten had been only a deputy on the economic committee: the Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy in the 18th and 19th terms, and the Economic Affairs Committee (Wirtschaftsausschuss) in the 20th. The 21st-term biography lists him both as chair and as an ordinary member.

Other committee memberships

Deputy memberships ran alongside the finance seat. In the 18th term the Bundestag listed him as a deputy member of the Committee for the Scrutiny of Elections, Immunity and the Rules of Procedure, the Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy, and the Sports Committee. In the 19th term the deputy seats were the scrutiny committee and the Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy; in the 20th term they were the scrutiny committee and the Economic Affairs Committee.

In the 21st term the ordinary seat moved to economic affairs and energy. Von Stetten is a deputy member of the Committee on Sport and Volunteering, of the Committee for the Scrutiny of Elections, Immunity and the Rules of Procedure, and of the Finance Committee.

On 19 March 2026 he conducted the constitutive sitting of the Commission for the Review of Security-Relevant Economic Relations between Germany and China, in his capacity as chair of the economic-affairs committee. The Bundestag had established the commission on 13 November 2025 on a motion of the CDU/CSU and SPD (Drucksache 21/2719). It has no members of the Bundestag; its members come from associations, research institutions and trade unions. On 28 April 2026 the commission unanimously elected Cora Jungbluth of the Bertelsmann Stiftung and Mikko Huotari of MERICS as co-chairs.

Economic, tax and energy policy

Inheritance and business taxation

On 17 December 2014 the First Senate of the Federal Constitutional Court held the relief for business assets in the inheritance and gift tax incompatible with equality under Article 3 of the Basic Law. Parliament could still largely spare small and medium-sized firms run under personal responsibility, to keep the firms and the jobs. The privilege was disproportionate beyond that group without a needs test, where firms with up to 20 employees escaped the wage-sum rule, and where up to 50 per cent administrative assets could still be sheltered. A new statute was required by 30 June 2016.

Von Stetten, chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary Mittelstand circle, was the Union rapporteur for the bill on the Finance Committee, with Cansel Kiziltepe (SPD) and Lisa Paus (Greens). When the Bundestag accepted the mediation result on 29 September 2016, he said the question was capital bound in Mittelstand firms, competitiveness and jobs, not private wealth. If family businesses had to price in the tax, he said, they would be sharply worse off against listed companies, and he was glad that had been prevented. On Deutschlandfunk a week earlier he called the compromise acceptable because it had blocked red-green proposals in the Bundesrat.

Only a flat tax, he argued, would have been fully safe in court. The German Council of Economic Experts had favoured one, but he said the SPD rejected a rate near 10 per cent because cutting the 30 per cent top rate for close relatives would look like a gift to the rich. Heirs who kept the workforce could pass on much of a firm tax-free; wealth without that tie would still face 30 per cent. Volker Wissing of the FDP warned that one lawsuit could bring the statute down, and Gerhard Schick of the Greens said large fortunes would be taxed more lightly than small ones. Die Linke said the court had already rejected a blanket exemption for heirs of very large business wealth, and that the coalition had restored one under lobby pressure.

Under the law, 85 per cent of the tax is remitted if the firm continues for five years and the wage bill is held, and all of it after seven years. Above €26 million a needs test applies: the tax can be waived if liquid private wealth will not cover it. In 2026 the taz quoted Carsten Sieling, a Länder negotiator in 2016, calling the result a Verschlimmbesserung. Norbert Walter-Borjans said the Union had threatened that the tax would otherwise lapse, and that assets were simply relabelled as business property.

It also noted his own firms. The Bundestag lists him as owner of Technologie Holding Christian Stetten GmbH and as majority shareholder and chief executive of Schloss Stetten Holding AG, with further stakes in property, construction, farming and citizen energy. The taz wrote that he can be said to speak in his own interest when he defends company heirs. He has denied forbidden lobbying and described his task as regard for "the special needs of the large German family companies", better kept in Baden-Württemberg than sold to buyers from China or an American corporation.

In January 2026, under Chancellor Friedrich Merz, the SPD proposed a lifetime allowance of €1 million, a tax-free owner-occupied house, €5 million free on business assets and payment over up to 20 years, instead of the old privileges. Matthias Miersch said about 85 per cent of firms would stay exempt. Fritz Güntzler called the plans "mausetot" ("stone dead"); von Stetten said they had appeared on Tuesday morning and been "buried by evening". Jens Spahn allowed a "justice issue" on loopholes but said the timing was wrong. Any reform, von Stetten told the taz, must not disadvantage German family firms against corporations and foreign groups. On 13 October 2026 the court heard complaint 1 BvR 804/22. President Stephan Harbarth said the even burden of the tax touches many people's sense of justice; no judgment had yet been given.

Mittelstand and regulation

In Das Parlament of 24 May 2025 he called the coalition corporate-tax cut—one point a year for five years, only from 2028—"too late and too timid", a timetable he said the SPD had put in the coalition agreement. German firms, in his view, carry a heavier burden than those in comparable economies. He named energy prices, bureaucracy, taxes and rigid working time as the brakes, and said faster depreciation alone would not restart investment. The Supply Chain Act was "well meant, but badly done". The agreed 25 per cent cut in bureaucracy, he said, had to come by simplification and deletion if Germany was to remain an industrial nation able to fund medicine and social provision.

Energy and foreign economic relations

A lower electricity tax would not, he said, offset costs that had already closed works. He pointed to economics minister Katharina Reiche: less regulation, supply firms can pay for, 20 gigawatts of new gas plant, and stronger foreign trade. He said the previous government had lost support over a heating law built around heat pumps, and that the ban on operating boilers should be lifted first.

He opened, but does not sit on, the commission on security-relevant economic ties with China. The Bundestag set it up on 13 November 2025 on a CDU/CSU and SPD motion; the AfD voted for it, while the Greens and the Left abstained. The 13 members come from associations, institutes and unions, not from parliament. As chair of the Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy he conducted the constitutive sitting on 19 March 2026. It is to examine dependence on China for energy, raw materials and sensitive technology, changes to foreign-trade law, and how far "de-risking" can limit economic coercion, then report yearly to the Bundestag and twice a year to his committee. Cora Jungbluth of the Bertelsmann Stiftung and Mikko Huotari of MERICS were elected co-chairs on 28 April 2026.

Role in the Union parliamentary group

Parlamentskreis Mittelstand

Von Stetten has chaired the Parlamentskreis Mittelstand (PKM) of the CDU/CSU group in the Bundestag since 29 November 2011, when its members elected him unanimously to succeed Michael Fuchs, chairman since 2006, who was made honorary chairman. The circle then had 144 of the faction’s 237 members and was described as its largest internal “sociological” group, organized around Mittelstand policy and the social market economy associated with Ludwig Erhard. The CDU/CSU group dates it to the first Bundestag, on the initiative of Konrad Adenauer.

A June 2025 flyer signed by von Stetten put membership at 166 of 208 Union members of parliament, still the largest of six such groups. Members meet before faction sittings to weigh the Mittelstand relevance of bills; commissions cover crafts, labour and social law, and the defence industry. The Bundestag lists him as the faction’s Mittelstand spokesman and as unpaid chair of a Berlin association that supports the circle. On 25 February 2025, after Friedrich Merz was elected faction chairman, the PKM confirmed von Stetten by secret ballot with 98.1 percent for two further years. In the previous term, the faction said, 142 members—more than two-thirds—had belonged.

In 2026 Die Zeit treated the PKM as a large bloc inside the faction and von Stetten as influential with Chancellor Merz. An October profile used the press nickname “schwarzer Baron,” a label also applied to his father. Handelsblatt called him little known to most citizens but a power factor in the Union, with a direct line to the chancellor.

Support for Friedrich Merz

Handelsblatt reported that von Stetten had backed Merz’s path to the chancellery, organizing majorities in the background for the end of Angela Merkel’s leadership and for Merz’s bids for the CDU chairmanship “on the first attempt, the second, and also the successful third.” It described that comeback as carried largely by the economic wing, later well placed in party, faction and government but limited by coalition with the SPD. As candidate, Merz spoke at von Stetten’s New Year reception in Künzelsau; von Stetten said he had rented the largest hall in the region and that 3,000 people came.

At the CDU congress in Stuttgart in February 2026, delegates re-elected Merz party chairman with 91.17 percent. On 16 September 2026, after a heavy CDU loss in the Saxony-Anhalt election of 6 September and before votes in Berlin and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the eight CDU minister-presidents rejected talk of replacing the chancellor or of a minority government. Von Stetten told the taz that this showed the leadership question “does not arise—and it has not arisen at any point.” He said Merz and his reform course had been confirmed at the federal party congress with more than 91 percent—the taz reported him as placing that vote in December—and that Merz had “the full backing of our Bundestag colleagues” and was “the right man in the right place at the right time.”

Coalition disputes in 2025–2026

On 11 September 2026 von Stetten told Bild that Labour Minister Bärbel Bas was “no longer tenable.” He said she had for months blocked reforms, especially the second stage of the reform of basic security, the renamed Bürgergeld, because submitting the bills would cost her the SPD chair. He called the combination of that ministry in Merz’s “reform cabinet” and the SPD chair—he spoke of a “party of reform refusal”—a failed experiment. He called the draft federal budget for the coming year, 2027, from Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil “not capable of being approved,” citing missing savings, proposed new taxes and what he called a record level of new debt.

SPD general secretary Tim Klüssendorf called the attack a helpless diversion and said the Union should not project its own dissatisfaction and internal debates onto its partner. Economic-policy spokesman Sebastian Roloff told Der Spiegel that the PKM’s 166 members should deal with firms’ problems rather than headlines, and he described the budget remark as a vote of no confidence in Merz. The taz wrote that removing Bas would have pulled the SPD ministers out and ended the coalition, and that the chancellery denied any such plan.

On 12 October 2026 Bas resigned at once as labour minister and SPD co-chair, keeping her Bundestag seat. She wrote that after the death of her stepdaughter she needed time to grieve, and that public attacks, “unfortunately also from the ranks of the coalition partner,” had continued; she said she could not fully do both jobs. Former Rhineland-Palatinate minister-president Alexander Schweitzer was named to succeed her. Klingbeil called the attacks during her mourning “indecent”; Manuela Schwesig called the CDU’s conduct “inhuman and inconsiderate.” Merz wrote that they had worked together in trust and that her decision deserved respect.

In a newsletter first reported by the Heilbronner Stimme, von Stetten wrote that no CDU parliamentarian and no journalist had criticized Bas, or demanded she resign as party chair, after the loss became known, and that Klingbeil, Schwesig and Klüssendorf had named no such attack. He said the 11 September remark came “long before I knew what heavy loss Bärbel Bas had suffered in her family on 26 September 2026,” and that it “was never aimed at the person Bärbel Bas, but solely at the work in the ministry.” The delays, he wrote, had accumulated over months. He accused Klingbeil and Schwesig of using the death politically.

Honorary offices and public roles

Honorary consul of the Maldives

Christian Freiherr von Stetten is honorary consul-general of the Maldives in Germany. The Federal Foreign Office lists the office at Burgallee 2 in Künzelsau, open by appointment, with a consular district covering Baden-Württemberg, Bremen, Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland. On 21 August 2017 the federal government granted him the exequatur as honorary consul-general in Künzelsau for that district, a decision later published in the Ministerialblatt of North Rhine-Westphalia. His Bundestag disclosure records the post, held through the honorary consulate in Künzelsau, as unpaid. He was already described as honorary consul before that exequatur: on 16 August 2015 the President's Office in Malé reported that he called on Vice President Ahmed Adheeb Abdul Ghafoor to discuss preparations for the ITB tourism fair in Germany.

On 9 March 2023, during a visit by President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih to Germany, von Stetten and Andreas Peter Witte, another honorary consul of the Maldives, paid a courtesy call on Solih. The President's Office said Solih thanked both men for promoting the Maldives and asked them to use their contacts to seek removal of a 24 percent tariff on Maldivian fisheries exports.

After a bomb exploded outside the home of former president and then speaker Mohamed Nasheed in Malé on 6 May 2021, Nasheed underwent surgery and on 13 May was flown to Germany for further treatment. The Heilbronner Stimme reported that von Stetten had arranged a private initiative for a special flight to Berlin and met Nasheed at Berlin Brandenburg Airport. He told the paper that Nasheed was a "people's hero" in the Maldives and that helping him, and thereby the country, was a point of honour. Reports on payment do not agree: The Edition, citing a press release of the People's Majlis, wrote both that von Stetten had paid for the air ambulance and Nasheed's care in Germany and that the German government had covered travel and healthcare, with assistance from the Maldivian embassy and foreign ministry.

Foundations and associations

Bundestag disclosures list several unpaid posts in foundations and associations, apart from his company mandates. He is chairman of the Ritterrat of the Baron Wolfgang von Stetten-Stiftung in Künzelsau and chairman of the support association of the Künzelsau Burgfestspiele at Schloss Stetten. He also sits on the boards of the Anne-Schmidt-Brücken-Stiftung in Künzelsau, the Friedrich Kriwan-Stiftung in Forchtenberg, and the foundation that supports the Reinhold-Würth-Hochschule of Heilbronn University of Applied Sciences.

The same declarations record a seat on the Kuratorium of Brustring der Herzen – Die VfB-Stiftung gemeinnützige GmbH, the charitable foundation of VfB Stuttgart. The foundation states purposes that include sport, education, health, environmental and climate protection, welfare and civic engagement, and its own list of the Kuratorium includes von Stetten as a member of the Bundestag. Since 2015 his Bundestag biography has named him a member of the presidium of the Wirtschaftsrat der CDU e.V. The association's presidium page includes him, and the parliamentary disclosure marks that seat as unpaid.