Christina Stumpp

Christina Daniela Stumpp (born 16 November 1987 in Backnang) is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and a member of the Bundestag for the constituency of Waiblingen in Baden-Württemberg. She won the constituency’s direct mandate at the 2021 German federal election: the Federal Returning Officer recorded 50,566 CDU first votes (29.0 percent), and the Zeitungsverlag Waiblingen identified her as the CDU candidate on that share. She defended the seat at the 2025 German federal election with 69,225 first votes (37.7 percent).

The Bundestag’s biography, based on her own disclosures, describes her as Protestant, married and the mother of two children, and lists her occupation as an administrative officer and tax lawyer (Verwaltungswirtin and Steuerrechtlerin, LL.B.). From 2004 to 2006 she trained in the intermediate civil service with the city of Waiblingen; in 2007–2008 she took the entrance qualification for a university of applied sciences at the commercial school in Backnang; and from 2008 to 2011 she studied tax law for the higher tax service at the University of Public Administration and Finance in Ludwigsburg.

Before entering parliament she worked in the Waiblingen municipal administration and tax office and then in ministries of the state of Baden-Württemberg, ending as personal adviser to Agriculture Minister Peter Hauk from February to October 2021. She joined the Young Union in 2001 and the CDU in 2003, chaired the Young Union in Waiblingen from 2010 to 2014, and has been a member of the Stuttgart regional assembly since 2019 and deputy district chair of the Rems-Murr CDU since 2021.

On 9 September 2022 a CDU federal congress in Hanover elected her the party’s first deputy secretary-general, with 740 of 846 votes cast, after the office had been written into the party statute on the proposal of Friedrich Merz. Delegates re-elected her at the 2024 congress with 77.90 percent of the vote (691 votes) and again at the February 2026 congress in Stuttgart with 81.8 percent. On 11 September 2026 the CDU announced that she and Merz, by then federal chancellor as well as party chairman, had agreed she would leave the post on 21 September, the day after state elections in Berlin and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern; she remained a Bundestag member, and the Thuringian deputy Michael Hose was put forward as acting successor. Since September 2026 the Bundestag has listed her as chair of the CDU/CSU working groups on food, agriculture and homeland and as a full member of the corresponding parliamentary committee, and the Federal Agency for Civic Education lists her as chair of its board of trustees.

Early life and education

Family and upbringing

Christina Stumpp was born on 16 November 1987 in Backnang, a town in the Rems-Murr-Kreis of Baden-Württemberg. The Bundestag biography, which is compiled from members' own statements, gives her religious affiliation as Protestant.

She grew up in Steinbach, a district of Backnang. Steinbach had been a municipality in its own right until it was incorporated into Backnang in 1941; it still has a local council (Ortschaftsrat). A press notice carried by the Backnanger Kreiszeitung in June 2020, when she sought a Landtag nomination, said that she had grown up in Steinbach on her parents' farm and remained rooted in the Backnang area. In that notice she is quoted as saying that through agriculture one comes to know and value one's home region particularly well. A report in the same paper on 14 September 2026, by Andrea Wüstholz and Kornelius Fritz, likewise described her as having grown up in Backnang-Steinbach. On her own website she writes that she was raised on her parents' farm in the Rems-Murr-Kreis, and that the holding taught her that one must sow before one can harvest. Published accounts do not name her parents or describe the size or produce of the farm.

Schooling and professional training

The qualifications set out in the Bundestag biography run from a municipal apprenticeship to a law degree at the Hochschule für öffentliche Verwaltung und Finanzen in Ludwigsburg.

From September 2004 to September 2006, starting at 16, she trained with the city of Waiblingen in the middle grade of the public administration (mittlerer Verwaltungsdienst) and qualified as a Verwaltungswirtin. Only afterwards, from September 2007 to September 2008, did she obtain the Fachhochschulreife — the entrance qualification for a university of applied sciences — at the Kaufmännische Schule Backnang. That commercial vocational school was renamed the Eduard-Breuninger-Schule on 11 October 2008, shortly after her year there ended.

From October 2008 to September 2011 she studied tax law for the higher grade of the tax administration (Gehobener Dienst Steuerverwaltung) at the Ludwigsburg university and graduated as a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.). The Hochschule describes the course as a three-year full-time programme worth 180 ECTS credits, taught on its Ludwigsburg campus and alternating with practical training in a tax office. Admission requires the Abitur, a subject-restricted Hochschulreife, the Fachhochschulreife or an equivalent school-leaving certificate. Students hold the status of civil servants on revocation (Beamte auf Widerruf); those who pass receive both the LL.B. and the qualification for the higher non-technical administrative service. That combination was the qualification with which Stumpp entered the tax administration of Baden-Württemberg.

Civil service career

Municipal administration and the tax office

Stumpp’s first employment was in the municipal administration of Waiblingen, the seat of the Rems-Murr-Kreis in Baden-Württemberg. The chronology follows the biography she supplied to the Bundestag, which publishes members’ curricula vitae from their own information. From September 2006 to September 2007, after training for the intermediate administrative service, she held two half-time city posts: deputy local head (stellvertretende Ortsvorsteherin) in the district of Beinstein, and a post in the office of the lord mayor. Beinstein is an Ortschaft of Waiblingen, with its own local council, a local administration and an Ortsvorsteher.

From October to December 2011 she was a case officer (Sachbearbeiterin) at the Finanzamt Waiblingen, working on value-added tax, income tax, balance-sheet tax law and trade tax. The office belongs to the Land tax administration under the Oberfinanzdirektion Baden-Württemberg. In its district it assesses and collects income tax and value-added tax, among other taxes, and it determines the trade-tax base used by the municipalities.

State ministries

In January 2012 she joined the Ministry of Finance and Economic Affairs (Ministerium für Finanzen und Wirtschaft) in Stuttgart. Until August 2015 she was a case officer in Department 9, principles and European affairs, in the unit for strategy and planning. From September 2015 to April 2016 that ministry seconded her to the interior ministry’s staff unit for refugee accommodation (Stabsstelle Flüchtlingsunterbringung). The unit was the Land’s operational answer to the 2015 European migrant crisis: a larger staff began work at the start of September 2015 and was still running in staff mode in January 2016, with about 50 people. The interior ministry then replaced it with a standing department for population protection and crisis management, covering the fire service, the rescue service and disaster protection.

From May 2016 to February 2020 Stumpp was a case officer in that department’s rescue-services unit, at the Ministry of the Interior, Digitalisation and Migration. The department sets the legal and organisational framework for fire brigades and the Rettungsdienst, helps fund stations and vehicles, and prepares the Land administration for crises. In March 2020 she moved to the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport (Ministerium für Kultus, Jugend und Sport), the Land’s supreme school authority, and until January 2021 worked in its leadership staff for government coordination.

From February to October 2021 she was personal adviser (persönliche Referentin) to Peter Hauk, the CDU minister for food, rural areas and consumer protection. That ministry, a supreme Land authority for rural areas, agriculture and consumer protection, kept the title Ministerium für Ernährung, Ländlichen Raum und Verbraucherschutz until it was renamed in May 2026. Her published disclosure lists the occupation before membership of the Bundestag as Oberamtsrätin of the Land Baden-Württemberg, Stuttgart, with a right of return (Rückkehrrecht). Under the Members of the Bundestag Act, a salaried civil servant’s rights and duties are suspended for the duration of the mandate, apart from official secrecy and the ban on gifts. Within three months of leaving parliament the official may apply to be restored to the former service relationship, in an office of the same or an equivalent career and with at least the same final basic salary; if no application is made, the suspension continues until retirement.

Local and regional politics

Junge Union and the Waiblingen CDU

Christina Stumpp joined the Young Union (Junge Union), the youth organisation of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party, in 2001, and the CDU in 2003. Her Bundestag biography, which the parliament states is drawn from members' own information, records that she chaired the Young Union in Waiblingen from 2010 to 2014 and has been deputy chair of the CDU city association there since 2014. The same account lists her, from 2021, as a deputy district chair (stellvertretende Kreisvorsitzende) of the CDU in the Rems-Murr-Kreis. The district executive published by the CDU Rems-Murr names Siegfried Lorek, a member of the Landtag of Baden-Württemberg from Winnenden, as Kreisvorsitzender, and lists Stumpp as a deputy chair with Steffen Krötz, Tom-Lukas Lambrecht and Ute Ulfert.

Regional assembly and Landtag candidacies

Since 2019 Stumpp has been a member of the Regional Assembly (Regionalversammlung) of the Verband Region Stuttgart, sitting for Rems-Murr on the CDU list. The Verband is a public-law corporation created by Baden-Württemberg statute in 1994 for Stuttgart and the districts of Böblingen, Esslingen, Göppingen, Ludwigsburg and Rems-Murr, about 2.8 million people in 179 municipalities.

Compulsory tasks include regional and landscape planning, the S-Bahn and other regional public transport, economic promotion, parts of waste disposal and tourism marketing; sport, culture and individual projects are voluntary. The assembly is elected every five years by list proportional representation in those six constituencies. It has at least 80 members, plus up to 16 levelling seats; the body elected on 9 June 2024 has 92 members, 13 from Rems-Murr, and meets in public about five or six times a year. Three deciding committees—economy, infrastructure and administration; planning; and transport—each comprise the association's chair and 32 members.

At the election of 26 May 2019 the CDU list in Rems-Murr received 50,829 of 190,600 votes; region-wide the CDU took 24.15 percent and 21 of 88 seats, one behind Alliance 90/The Greens. The 2019–2024 directory lists Stumpp, a tax lawyer (LL.B.), for economy and planning, and names her on the economic committee and the planning committee. She was returned in 2024. The Zeitungsverlag Waiblingen gave a preliminary Rems-Murr turnout of 66.05 percent and these list shares: CDU 31.04 percent, Free Voters 17.50, Alternative for Germany 16.24, Greens 13.00, Social Democrats 10.32 and Free Democrats 5.41. It named four CDU members from the district: Stumpp, Hartmut Holzwarth, Ute Ulfert and Benjamin Treiber. An August 2025 overview of the three deciding committees does not list her. The seat is honorary: the Bundestag's register of outside activities records a monthly gross payment of 200 euros, plus irregular payments of 1,400 euros gross in 2025 and 1,200 euros gross in 2026.

She was also the CDU's substitute candidate for the Landtag in constituency 15, Waiblingen, from 2016 to 2025—the biography's term is Zweitkandidatin. Under the law used in 2016 and 2021, each voter cast one vote for a constituency ticket, which also covered a party-nominated substitute (Ersatzbewerber); that substitute entered the Landtag only if the elected lead candidate later left. Extra seats, the Zweitmandate, went to unsuccessful lead candidates by their vote share, not to the substitutes.

On 13 March 2016 the admitted CDU ticket was Lorek, a senior police officer from Winnenden, with Stumpp, then a bachelor of laws in tax and business law from Waiblingen, as substitute. Wilhelm Halder of the Greens won the direct seat with 21,494 votes (27.8 percent); Lorek, with 20,273 (26.2 percent), received a Zweitmandat, as did Ulrich Goll of the FDP with 8,804 (11.4 percent). Turnout was 73.4 percent. For 14 March 2021 the Interior Ministry again listed Stumpp, described as a tax and business lawyer (LL.B.), behind Lorek, by then a Landtag member. Swantje Sperling of the Greens won with 20,468 votes (30.0 percent); Lorek's 17,183 (25.2 percent) again yielded a Zweitmandat, and Julia Goll of the FDP, with 9,070 (13.3 percent), received one too. Turnout was 65.2 percent. Stumpp did not take a Landtag seat.

Elections to the Bundestag

Nomination and the 2021 election

Wahlkreis 264, the Waiblingen electoral district in Baden-Württemberg, covers 18 municipalities in the south of the Rems-Murr-Kreis: Alfdorf, Berglen, Fellbach, Kaisersbach, Kernen im Remstal, Korb, Leutenbach, Plüderhausen, Remshalden, Rudersberg, Schorndorf, Schwaikheim, Urbach, the city of Waiblingen, Weinstadt, Welzheim, Winnenden and Winterbach. The rest of the district is in Wahlkreis 269. The Federal Returning Officer used that delimitation for both the 2021 and 2025 Bundestag elections. The seat is in the commuter belt of Stuttgart. The Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) had won its direct mandate at every federal election since 1976.

The incumbent, Joachim Pfeiffer, had already been renominated when he withdrew. In a statement of 10 April 2021, reported by the Deutsche Presse-Agentur, he said he would not stand in September, would return the nomination, and was resigning as economic and energy-policy spokesman of the CDU/CSU Bundestag group. He gave two reasons: what he called a highly criminal hack on himself and his contractual partners—after which, Welt am Sonntag reported, confidential financial data linked to his business holdings were published—and a code of conduct the Union group planned after the mask-procurement affair. He said he supported stricter transparency rules, but that the code would in practice bar outside business activity for members in leadership posts and would undermine the free mandate. Pfeiffer had just been criticized over alleged conflicts of interest between the mandate and his business activity. He called the allegations a campaign of constructed and false claims and said he had referred them to the Bundestag administration. On his account, the Federal Office for Information Security, the domestic intelligence service and the Baden-Württemberg criminal police were engaged on the hack. He was one of the Union's negotiators on the Renewable Energy Act; the Social Democrats had suspended those talks amid lobbying allegations against Union members.

The district CDU reopened the candidacy. On 4 June 2021 Christina Stumpp, then 33, a lawyer in tax and commercial law from Waiblingen-Hegnach, won 58 percent of the vote, clearly ahead of Thomas Eisenbarth and David Müller.

At the 2021 German federal election on 26 September she won the direct mandate. The final count gave the CDU 50,566 first votes (29.0 percent), 7.8 percentage points below 2017. Runner-up was Urs Jakob Abelein of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), on 39,642 first votes (22.7 percent). The Free Democratic Party (Germany) (FDP) took 27,123 first votes (15.6 percent), Alliance 90/The Greens 26,224 (15.0 percent) and the Alternative for Germany (AfD) 15,196 (8.7 percent). Second votes were led by the CDU with 44,987 (25.7 percent), then the SPD (37,753; 21.6 percent), the FDP (30,999; 17.7 percent), the Greens (27,098; 15.5 percent) and the AfD (15,474; 8.9 percent). Turnout was 79.3 percent of 221,775 eligible voters.

The 2025 election

For the snap 2025 German federal election, Stumpp sought the nomination again. On 11 June 2024 the Zeitungsverlag Waiblingen reported that Ann-Cathrin Simon, a 27-year-old lawyer from Waiblingen, would oppose her at the CDU assembly on 6 July. Simon withdrew, leaving Stumpp unopposed, and the Stuttgarter Zeitung reported on 7 July that the nomination had become a formality.

The election on 23 February 2025 was the first held under the 2023 reform. The Bundestag was capped at 630 members; overhang and compensatory seats ended, and a party's seats followed only its second-vote share. Constituency winners in a state were ranked by first-vote share and seated only until that party's state quota was filled. A plurality no longer guaranteed a seat, and an uncovered constituency remained vacant. In Baden-Württemberg the CDU won 35 of 38 constituencies, but SWR reported that only 29 CDU candidates entered on a constituency seat; six winners, in Mannheim, Tübingen, Heidelberg, Stuttgart II, Rhein-Neckar and Lörrach–Müllheim, did not. The Greens won the other three. Waiblingen was covered. The final result records Christina Daniela Stumpp (CDU) as elected there.

She received 69,225 first votes (37.7 percent), up 8.7 points from 2021. The runner-up was Lars Haise (AfD), with 33,168 votes (18.1 percent), up 9.3 points. The SPD candidate was again Urs Abelein; the party took 31,595 first votes (17.2 percent). Sarah Heim (Greens) received 22,702 (12.4 percent) and Stephan Seiter (FDP) 10,519 (5.7 percent). Die Linke polled 9,726 (5.3 percent). Turnout was 84.2 percent of 219,692 eligible voters. Second votes put the CDU first on 61,352 (33.3 percent), then the AfD (34,225; 18.6 percent), the SPD (26,985; 14.7 percent), the Greens (23,496; 12.8 percent) and the FDP (12,485; 6.8 percent). Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW), with no constituency candidate, took 7,033 second votes (3.8 percent).

Parliamentary work

Committees and parliamentary offices

Stumpp entered the Bundestag on 26 October 2021, the day the 20th Bundestag was constituted, as the directly elected member for Waiblingen (constituency 264) in Baden-Württemberg. The biography archived for that term lists her as an ordinary member of the Committee on Food and Agriculture (Ausschuss für Ernährung und Landwirtschaft) and as a deputy member of the Finance Committee and the Health Committee. The archived agriculture-committee list and the Bundestag's 2024 brochure on the committee both include her among its members.

In the 21st term, dated in the Bundestag's member master data from 25 March 2025, she again holds the Waiblingen direct mandate for the CDU/CSU. At the committees' constitutive sittings on 21 May 2025 she was named an ordinary member both of the Committee on Agriculture, Food and Heimat (Ausschuss für Landwirtschaft, Ernährung und Heimat), the renamed successor body, and of the Interior Committee. That open-data file records her from 21 May 2025 as a deputy member of the Budget Committee, with no end date for the Interior or Budget seats, and records that on 30 September 2025 her agriculture-committee function changed from ordinary member to deputy member.

On 11 September 2026 Südwestrundfunk still described her as a deputy member of the Committee on Agriculture, Food and Heimat, and noted that the CDU/CSU post of agriculture-policy spokesperson was vacant because Johannes Steiniger had become a parliamentary state secretary in the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs. On 22 September 2026 the parliamentary group elected her chair of its working group on agriculture, food and Heimat, and with that its agriculture-policy spokesperson; top agrar reported a vote of 69 percent. Alexander Engelhard is deputy chair. The election fell the day after the end date the Bundestag gives for her paid role as deputy secretary-general of the CDU.

As of 27 October 2026 her Bundestag biography and the agriculture committee's member list record her as an ordinary member of that committee and, since September 2026, as chair of the CDU/CSU working groups on food, agriculture and Heimat. The Interior Committee and Budget Committee lists published the same day do not include her as either an ordinary or a deputy member, although the 23 September report had still described her as sitting on the Interior Committee. On the group's own page she is also listed in the local-government working group, the women's group and the Parliamentary Circle for Small and Medium-Sized Businesses. Her constituency office is at Marktgasse 5 in Waiblingen.

Legislation and plenary debates

On 18 January 2023, in the 78th sitting of the 20th Bundestag, she spoke for the CDU/CSU on the group's motion "Nahrungsmittelversorgung sicherstellen – Selbstversorgungsgrad in Deutschland und Europa erhalten" (Drucksache 20/5215). She said that food security and climate protection had to go together, warned that the European plant-protection rules then planned would mean the end for winegrowers in Baden-Württemberg, and argued that the federal government's animal-husbandry labeling favored imports, including from Spain, and would accelerate farm closures in Germany rather than improve animal welfare.

The short minutes of the agriculture committee's 74th sitting, on 18 December 2024, name her as the CDU/CSU rapporteur for the citizens' assembly report "Ernährung im Wandel: Zwischen Privatangelegenheit und staatlichen Aufgaben" (Drucksache 20/10300) and for a Left motion on free meals in schools and day-care centres (Drucksache 20/12110).

In the 21st term, before she took the agriculture spokespersonship, the plenary speeches on the record were largely on interior business. On 27 June 2025, during the second and third reading of the CDU/CSU and SPD bill to suspend family reunification for people with subsidiary protection (Drucksachen 21/321, 21/634 and 21/635), she spoke for the CDU/CSU. She presented the suspension as part of a migration-policy shift associated with Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt, cited the existing ceiling of 1,000 visas a month under that route, pointed to housing pressure in cities such as Stuttgart, and, replying to a short intervention, said the measure was limited to two years and was one lever among others for limiting irregular migration. The Bundestag television service's list of her ten most recent speech contributions, as retrieved on 27 October 2026, also indexes remarks on deportation custody (4 June 2025), border controls and refusal of entry (11 September 2025 and 26 February 2026), an Aktuelle Stunde on internal security (6 November 2025), admission pledges for Afghan nationals (3 December 2025), gender-parity state lists (24 June 2026) and a bill on strengthening cybersecurity (25 June 2026).

Federal Agency for Civic Education

The Federal Agency for Civic Education (Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung) is supervised, under section 6 of the decree of 24 January 2001, by a board of trustees (Kuratorium) of 22 members of the Bundestag. Members are appointed by the President of the Bundestag on the proposal of the parliamentary groups. The agency's president must send the board the annual budget estimates, planning reports and activity reports for comment, and must inform it in good time of significant projects; the president and representatives of the Federal Ministry of the Interior attend its meetings. The agency describes the board's role as checking that its work is effective and politically balanced, with the groups represented in proportion to their strength in the House.

The Bundestag master data record Stumpp as an ordinary member of the board from 18 July 2025 and as its chair from 17 September 2025. The agency's list for the 21st-term board, eight of whose 22 members are from the CDU/CSU, names her as "Christina Stumpp (Vorsitzende)".

Role in the CDU national leadership

Creation of the office and elections

The post of deputy secretary-general of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany was created for Christina Stumpp after Friedrich Merz won the December 2021 leadership election. In that contest Norbert Röttgen and Helge Braun had each promised to appoint a woman as secretary-general. Merz's nominee for the existing office was Mario Czaja; SWR later described the deputy post as the additional office Merz then created for a woman. Merz was confirmed as chairman at a digital congress in January 2022, with 94.6 percent of the delegate votes. The deputy office was written into the party statute only shortly before it was filled. On 9 September 2022, at the federal congress in Hanover, delegates followed Merz's proposal and elected Stumpp, then 34 and a member of the Bundestag from Baden-Württemberg. She received 740 of 846 votes cast. The CDU announced 89.6 percent because it customarily treats abstentions as invalid; 20 abstentions were set aside, and counting them would have produced a lower share.

Before the Bundestag she had worked mainly in municipal politics, and that record was described as what she was meant to bring to the new role. At the congress she said renewal had to come "from the bottom up," that the party should not look only at the "Berlin bubble," and that the municipal level, including rural areas, was the foundation of its work. She also said the CDU had to become "younger, more modern, more female."

Czaja remained secretary-general for about a year and a half. On 11 July 2023 Merz replaced him with Carsten Linnemann. The party called the separation amicable; reporting tied it to dissatisfaction with Czaja's low profile and described Linnemann as economically conservative, like Merz, and as a close associate. At the 36th federal congress in Berlin on 6 May 2024, Merz was re-elected chairman with 873 of 972 valid votes, 89.81 percent, with abstentions again excluded, and afterwards brought Linnemann and Stumpp on stage. On the results list Linnemann received 889 votes (91.37 percent) as secretary-general and Stumpp 691 (77.90 percent) as deputy. The February 2026 congress in Stuttgart confirmed her with 81.8 percent. The Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported the term as a further two years.

Responsibilities and party campaigns

The Hanover congress treated municipal politics, not the running of federal campaigns, as her assignment. In April 2025 she described herself as head of the CDU's Kommunalbüro. In the coalition talks after that year's federal election she chaired the CDU side of the working group on municipalities, sport and volunteering, and said Merz wanted women at the table and practical support for local office-holders.

The party's statement on her departure, as carried by Der Spiegel, gave her own account of the four years. She said it had been an honour to work for about 72,500 voluntary and full-time municipal representatives, that she had visited about 75 percent of the district associations, and that the women@cdu network she had founded had drawn more women into municipal politics. The office was paid. The Bundestag's register of members' outside interests lists the CDU in Berlin as paying her 5,175.00 euros gross a month as "Stellv. Generalsekretärin," with the entry closed on 21 September 2026.

Departure in 2026

The resignation came during a wider reshuffle that began when Jens Spahn stepped down as chairman of the CDU/CSU group in the Bundestag. Linnemann moved into the Merz cabinet as health minister, and Franziska Hoppermann became secretary-general. Party sources told SWR that Stumpp and Hoppermann did not get on, that Stumpp had opposed Hoppermann's appointment, and that Merz had asked Stumpp to give up the deputy post voluntarily. The same account said she did not want to leave without a fight and, in the version circulating in party circles, wanted appropriate compensation for a voluntary resignation. A member of the federal executive told SWR: "I would not advise her to push the conflict to the limit. Otherwise her time in the party is over."

The argument became public after reports that a departure had already been settled. Table.Briefings and the podcast Machtwechsel reported that Merz had urged her to resign and that she had not been prepared to go. On the morning of 9 September 2026 she wrote on X that this was "incorrect" and that she was "still deputy secretary-general of the CDU of Germany." The rest of the leadership did not comment on those reports. Der Spiegel reported that the faction's personnel round — the state-group chairs and representatives of its organized wings, known internally as the Teppichhändler — had agreed to propose her as agriculture-policy spokesperson only if she vacated the party office that Friday, and that she had at first refused.

On the evening of 11 September the CDU said Merz and Stumpp had "jointly decided in personal conversations" that she would leave on 21 September, the day after the state elections in Berlin and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Merz said he would propose Michael Hose, a 41-year-old Bundestag member from Thuringia, to the party bodies as acting successor. He called a stronger representation of western and eastern Germany an aim of the new line-up, and said Hose, a teacher and former school principal from Erfurt, would complement Hoppermann. Merz thanked Stumpp for their "trusting cooperation" and said that with high personal commitment she had had an integrative effect in the party; she was quoted thanking him for his confidence and the collaboration. She remained a member of the Bundestag. On 22 September, the day after she left the party office, she became the CDU/CSU group's agriculture-policy spokesperson, succeeding Johannes Steiniger, who had moved to the economics ministry as a parliamentary state secretary.

Political positions

Agriculture and rural areas

In December 2023, as deputy secretary-general of the Christian Democratic Union, Stumpp attacked the plan of the Social Democratic Party, Alliance 90/The Greens and the Free Democratic Party to phase out the agricultural-diesel rebate and the vehicle-tax exemption for farm and forestry vehicles. She told the Deutsche Presse-Agentur that Agriculture Minister Cem Özdemir was leaving “our farming and the rural areas in the lurch” and committing a “serious breach of word,” with farmers made to “pay the bill for the traffic-light failure.” The rebate was cut from 21.48 cents a litre to 6.44 cents in 2025. On 10 September 2025 the CDU/CSU–SPD cabinet restored the full rate from 1 January 2026, €430 million a year. At Westerwald farms in February 2026 she presented that restoration and the end of nutrient-flow reporting as promises already kept.

The 2018 Stoffstrombilanz ordinance had required farms to log nitrogen and phosphorus. Alois Rainer of the Christian Social Union repealed it in July 2025 and put the paperwork saving at €18 million a year. The Green group in the Bundestag challenged the repeal in the Federal Constitutional Court as “politics in the Trump style,” arguing that the Fertilizer Act required the ordinance and a parliamentary role.

Internal security and migration

On 27 June 2025 Stumpp defended a two-year suspension of family reunification for people with subsidiary protection. She credited Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt with border controls, frontier refusals, more safe countries of origin and an end to accelerated naturalization, and said councils had run out of housing, care, childcare and language courses. She linked irregular migration to serious crime in police statistics, called reunification a pull factor of 1,000 visas a month, and told Die Linke that “the strong men” arrived first and then sent for their families. SPD deputy Rasha Nasr said reunification belonged to protection and human dignity and that her party had blocked a four-year ban; Green speaker Schahina Gambir called the bill a capitulation before rights.

Against an Alternative for Germany motion on 11 September 2025 to turn back every asylum seeker, she said mayors and district administrators in North Rhine-Westphalia already reported fewer arrivals and easier pressure on shelters, nurseries and schools. First applications were, she said, 60 percent down, June 2025 the lowest month since 2013, and Germany no longer the European Union’s main destination for the first time in more than ten years. She defended the controls, the pause and deportations, including to Afghanistan, and said integration was “no one-way street.” AfD speaker Christopher Drößler answered that the borders were still “practically open”; Green deputy Jeanne Dillschneider said the controls broke the law and had cost an extra €80.5 million by June 2025.

On 6 November 2025 she described festivals now fenced with bollards and trucks, agreed with Chancellor Friedrich Merz that the “cityscape” was a real problem, and linked it to the attacks in Solingen, Mannheim and Aschaffenburg. She asked for wider police powers, electronic tags, faster trials on the Baden-Württemberg model, and removal, including to Afghanistan and Syria, of people with no right to stay. In Welt on 21 November 2025 she wrote that Afghan men were suspects in serious sexual offences more than ten times as often as German men, while some origins were not over-represented, and that rejected asylum seekers should receive only “bed, bread and soap.”

Taxation, bureaucracy and local government

In the Südwest Presse of 19 April 2025 Stumpp said coalition relief was “far larger than with a tax cut,” in an interview that also covered spending cuts and councils’ old debt. In July 2025 she told the Münchner Merkur that an electricity-tax cut for firms, but not yet households, only partly met a promised package of five cents a kilowatt-hour, which she hoped to complete by 1 January 2027 if the money was there.

She called council finances the worst she had known—a deficit above €24 billion and mayors unable to repair schools—and blamed “uncontrolled arrivals” and underfunded hospitals. Her remedies were a €5 billion-a-year hospital fund, federal cover for local tax losses, €100 billion for Länder and municipalities, and a “future pact” to match duties with money and cut administration. Where the SPD had wanted the federation to assume old municipal debt, she called €250 million a year for interest and repayment a good compromise.

On Welt’s Meinungsfreiheit in April 2026 she said “we definitely need a tax reform” so that earners kept “more net from gross.” The top rate, she said, already began near €70,000 of taxable income; a Union proposal would move it to €85,000, she would abolish the solidarity surcharge, and she backed raising the basic allowance, then €12,348, by €1,000. Social contributions of 42.5 percent had to stop rising, she argued, or tax cuts would be cancelled, and the federal budget had to “save, save, save.”

Reception and controversies

Statements on the AfD

On 29 January 2025 a five-point migration motion from the CDU/CSU, including wider rejection of asylum seekers at the border, passed the Bundestag with votes from the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the Free Democratic Party: 187 members of the Christian Democratic Union and CSU, 75 of the AfD, 80 of the FDP and six non-attached deputies. Friedrich Merz, then the Union’s candidate for chancellor, said he sought “keine anderen Mehrheiten als die in der demokratischen Mitte” and regretted a majority reached with AfD votes. On 31 January the Bundestag rejected the related Zustrombegrenzungsgesetz. The Zeitungsverlag Waiblingen reported that Stumpp, deputy secretary-general and member for Waiblingen, called the Social Democratic Party and the Greens “absolut verantwortungslos” and “beschämend.” It gave the vote as 338 in favour, 349 against and five abstentions, and noted that her constituency colleague Stephan Seiter (FDP) had refused to vote yes.

In October 2025 Stumpp gave a roughly 200-second interview to Politico’s “Berlin Playbook” podcast. Asked whether tolerating an AfD-led minority government would be cooperation, she answered “Nein.” On whether that meant toleration was acceptable, she said “Das habe ich nicht gesagt.” She restated no cooperation and no coalition, and said that in Saxony-Anhalt, where the AfD led the polls, the CDU would campaign to finish first and only then choose partners. Welt reported that, in the interview, she had not ruled toleration out in principle. On the evening before the episode appeared on 21 October she wrote on X that any impression she favoured CDU toleration of the AfD was wrong, and that she had misunderstood the question: the line was “Keine Zusammenarbeit mit Extremisten.” She told the Deutsche Presse-Agentur there must be “keine Zusammenarbeit und auch keine Tolerierung der oder durch die AfD.” Former Green co-leader Ricarda Lang replied that there were no simple answers, “Außer halt: Nein.” The agency set the exchange against polls putting the AfD at 25 to 27 percent nationally, level with the Union, and near 40 percent in Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Merz had again promised demarcation from the AfD while distancing himself from the word Brandmauer.

The 2026 leadership dispute

On 11 September 2026, days after what Welt called an election defeat in Saxony-Anhalt, the CDU said Merz, by then chancellor and party chairman, and Stumpp had “in persönlichen Gesprächen gemeinsam entschieden” that she would leave the deputy secretary-generalship on 21 September, the day after elections in Berlin and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. He proposed Michael Hose, a Thuringia Bundestag member from Erfurt, as acting successor, citing a more even West–East balance in Germany.

Table.Briefings and Robin Alexander’s podcast Machtwechsel had reported that Merz urged her to resign and that she at first refused. On Wednesday morning she wrote on X: “Das ist unzutreffend. Ich bin weiterhin stv. Generalsekretärin der CDU Deutschlands.” SWR, citing party circles, reported that she wanted compensation for leaving and would not give the post up without a fight. A member of the federal executive was quoted advising her not to push the conflict until “ihre Zeit in der Partei vorbei.” Der Spiegel called it a “Personalquerele,” wrote that Merz had prevailed after she long refused removal, and reported that faction negotiators would propose her as the Union’s agriculture spokesperson only if she cleared the party office that Friday. The party text quoted Merz thanking her for their cooperation, with no wishes for her future, and quoted her on a “große Ehre und Freude” and on visits to about three quarters of the district associations. Welt and n-tv headlined the step as Merz parting from her, while also reporting his praise for “sehr gute Arbeit.”

SWR placed the argument in the changes that followed Jens Spahn’s resignation as chair of the Union Bundestag group. Carsten Linnemann became health minister, and in July Merz named Franziska Hoppermann of Hamburg secretary-general. Reports said Stumpp had opposed that choice; Hoppermann said she expected they would work well together.

Local criticism

On 23 October 2026 the Stuttgarter Zeitung reported a dispute in Rems-Murr after an Instagram post in which Stumpp warned against a Berlin coalition of the SPD, the Greens and Die Linke, linked violence in France to plans in the capital, and called for a clear line against the left. The paper said the post drew a small backlash, including charges of scaremongering as well as support, and that SPD district chair Pierre Orthen answered with what it called a serious accusation of a rightward turn (Rechtsdrall) and of focusing on dangers from the left. In the paper’s account he pointed instead to a strong AfD in the district and to conservative budget cuts.

Personal life

Family

The Bundestag biography, based on Stumpp's own information, states that she was born on 16 November 1987 in Backnang, is Protestant, is married and has two children. She has written that she has been married since 2014 to her husband Michael, that their son was born in 2020 and their daughter in 2024, and that work and family life are combined through flexible daycare and help from her retired parents. A profile in the Staatsanzeiger für Baden-Württemberg on 15 October 2025 placed the family's main home in Waiblingen: the son, then five, was there with her husband, a lawyer, while the daughter, then about eighteen months old, attended the Bundestag daycare. In a 16 May 2025 interview the Backnanger Kreiszeitung described her as living in Hegnach, after growing up in Backnang-Steinbach, and quoted her on friends and her daughter's godmother in Backnang and on visits to her parents.

Voluntary commitments

On that personal page she wrote that she led a Jungschar group in Backnang-Steinbach for ten years, was active in the German YMCA (CVJM), and had been involved for about ten years in a fruit-and-garden society (Obst- und Gartenbauverein). Her website later specifies the youth role as ten years as Jungschar leader in the Protestant parish of Backnang-Steinbach and lists local memberships in the German Red Cross, the Malteser and an Obst- und Gartenbauverein. In an 11 July 2023 Domradio interview she said she had grown up in Protestant Jungschar work, had enjoyed introducing children to the Christian faith, and saw the churches and clubs as important for social cohesion.

From 1 November 2025 the Bundestag's published disclosure of members' roles lists her as an unpaid member of the foundation council of the Deutsche Stiftung für Engagement und Ehrenamt in Neustrelitz. The foundation's published list of that 22-member council, which mixes civil-society seats with Bundestag, federal, state and municipal members, includes her. For the 21st electoral period the Federal Agency for Civic Education lists her as chair of its board of trustees, made up of 22 Bundestag members. The same disclosure records, from 20 March 2026, an unpaid seat on the scientific advisory board of the BeYOU-Schule Waiblingen, held through BeYOU Bewegung e.V.