# Christos Pantazis

# Christos Pantazis

Christos Pantazis (born 9 October 1975 in Hanover) is a German physician and a politician of the [Social Democratic Party of Germany](/organizations/social-democratic-party-of-germany). He has represented Braunschweig (constituency 50 in Lower Saxony) in the Bundestag since the 20th legislative period, which began with the constitutive sitting of 26 October 2021, and won the same direct seat again at the federal election of 23 February 2025.

In 2021 he took the constituency with 51,220 first votes (36.7 percent), ahead of Carsten Müller of the [Christian Democratic Union of Germany](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany) on 22.4 percent, with turnout at 75.0 percent. In 2025 he held it with 51,553 first votes (33.4 percent) to Müller’s 24.7 percent, while turnout rose to 83.4 percent.

He passed the Abitur in 1995 at the Georg-Büchner-Gymnasium in Seelze-Letter and, the same year, a Greek higher-education qualification. He studied human medicine at the Hannover Medical School, the University of Basel and the University of Ioannina, and passed the third state examination in 2003. From 2004 until his election to the Landtag of Lower Saxony he worked as a physician at the Städtisches Klinikum Braunschweig, where he joined the works council in 2010, and in 2013 he received a doctorate in neurobionics at the International Neuroscience Institute in Hanover. The Bundestag records that these biographical details come from the member.

Pantazis sat in the Landtag for the 17th and 18th electoral periods from 19 February 2013, and was deputy chair of the SPD Landtag group from November 2017 until he entered the Bundestag. In the 21st Bundestag he is a full member and the SPD group’s lead member (Obmann) on the Committee on Health, and a deputy member of the Committee on Labour and Social Affairs. In May 2025 the SPD parliamentary group named him its health-policy spokesperson. The published biography also lists him as chair of the SPD subdistrict of Braunschweig from 2015 to 2025 and as vice president of the Lower Saxony branch of the German Red Cross.

## Early life and education

### Family and childhood

Christos Pantazis was born on 9 October 1975 in Hanover, the capital of Lower Saxony. In a [Deutsche Welle](/organizations/deutsche-welle) interview after the 2021 federal election, he said that his parents came from Amphithea, in the Ioannina area of Greece, and had arrived in Germany in the 1960s as Gastarbeiter. They had three children there: a daughter, Athina, and twins, Christos and Periklis. His father worked at Volkswagen, and his mother at Continental, which also makes vehicle tires. Although the parents had finished only primary school, he said, they treated education as the means of social advancement and supported their children "with all their strength."

He writes that the family lived in Seelze, on the Leine west of Hanover, in what he calls a railway workers' town; that Athina is six years older and Periklis an identical twin born six minutes later; that both parents had worked shifts from the age of 17, his father as a trained metalworker and his mother in final inspection; and that there was French ancestry on his mother's side. Letter, the district where he later finished school, took much of its modern shape from the railway: railway families began settling after a repair works opened nearby in 1878, and the marshalling yard built between Seelze and Letter from 1906 to 1909 produced the settlement known as Neu-Letter. Periklis Pantazis is now a reader in advanced optical precision imaging, a rank the college equates with associate professor, in the Department of Bioengineering at Imperial College London; Deutsche Welle in 2021 called him a lecturer in biophysical chemistry there.

He has also linked the family to the German occupation of Greece. He told Deutsche Welle that his mother's family name was Fouka and that the family came from Ligkiades, near Ioannina, a village German soldiers destroyed on 3 October 1943, with relatives among the dead. At the memorial there on 7 March 2014, Federal President [Joachim Gauck](/people/joachim-gauck) spoke of 83 people killed that day by fire and gunfire.

### Schooling and citizenship

In 1995 Pantazis passed the Abitur at the Georg-Büchner-Gymnasium in Seelze-Letter and, at the same time, obtained the Greek university entrance qualification. The Bundestag biography that records those qualifications notes that its biographical details rest on the members' own statements. He writes that the Greek qualification came from a Greek gymnasium attended in parallel, after a German-language all-day kindergarten, primary school and the orientation stage (Orientierungsstufe).

He and his brother joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany in 1998, before either held German citizenship, and he was naturalized in 2002, at 27, while keeping his Greek citizenship. He told Deutsche Welle that without German citizenship he could not have gone further in public office, and that the decision was not difficult because he had grown up in Germany with what he called "many German characteristics." Asked how he saw himself, he answered that he was "a German with Greek roots," close to Greece, but that his home was Braunschweig and Germany. A Braunschweig report in February 2021 also dated the naturalization to 2002 and quoted him as saying that becoming German had cost a fee of 255 euros.

### University studies

The Bundestag biography, again based on his own information, states that he studied human medicine at the Hannover Medical School, the University of Basel and the University of Ioannina, without saying how the course was divided among the three, and that he passed the third state examination in human medicine in 2003.

## Medical career

### Hospital practice in Braunschweig

From July 2004 Christos Pantazis worked in the department of neurosurgery at the Städtisches Klinikum Braunschweig gGmbH, then directed by Wolf-Peter Sollmann. The curriculum vitae in his medical dissertation describes that appointment as specialist training toward the Facharzt für Neurochirurgie, not as a completed specialist title. He had passed the third state examination in human medicine in October 2003 and received his licence to practise, the Approbation, in November 2004. Sollmann had been the department’s founding chief since 1996.

He remained at the municipal hospital until his election to the Landtag of Lower Saxony in 2013. Profiles in the medical press describe those years as work as a neurosurgeon, or as a physician in neurosurgery, at the Braunschweig hospital. The Bundestag biography, which the parliament states rests on members’ own information, lists his occupation as Arzt and says he was a doctor at the Städtisches Klinikum Braunschweig gGmbH until the 2013 state election. Neither that biography nor the dissertation CV, which still described the post as Weiterbildung zum Facharzt, records a completed Facharzt examination.

From 2010 he also sat on the works council of the hospital company, a role the Bundestag biography and the SPD parliamentary group for Lower Saxony and Bremen both date from 2010 to 2013. A March 2012 report on his nomination as SPD candidate for Braunschweig-Nord already described him as a neurosurgeon and a member of that works council. Medical-press profiles present the hospital years as the clinical work he left on moving into full-time politics.

### Doctorate

The Hannover Medical School awarded Pantazis the Dr. med. in 2013 for the dissertation *Biokompatibilität penetrierender Mikroelektroden im ZNS am tierexperimentellen Modell*, prepared at the International Neuroscience Institute in Hanover. The title page is dated Hanover 2012. The faculty senate accepted the thesis on 13 August 2013, the day of the oral examination, and names Madjid Samii as Betreuer, Kerstin Schwabe as Referent and Horst Kokemüller as Korreferent. The German National Library catalogues it as a 2013 dissertation of the Hannover medical school, of III and 119 leaves with illustrations.

A statutory declaration in the volume, dated 2 July 2012, places the experiments at the neurosurgical clinic of the Klinikum Hannover Nordstadt, the medical school’s department of neurosurgery and the institute, under Steffen Rosahl as Betreuer and Samii as mentor. The acknowledgements thank Rosahl for assigning and supervising the project and note a Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft grant, Ro 1259/3, and cooperation with MED-EL in Innsbruck on the electrode carriers. Political biographies shorten this to a 2013 doctorate under Samii at the institute in neurobionics, a word the thesis title does not use.

Electrode carriers developed with MED-EL were implanted for eight weeks in the parietal cortex of rats, and further groups received six hours of high-frequency stimulation at 150 or 300 microamperes. Using histology and neuron counts, Pantazis reported that the carriers were well tolerated, with a foreign-body reaction mainly at the chisel-shaped tip, while stimulation above the charge levels tested produced irreversible tissue changes of a pattern already described for implanted electrodes.

## Early political activity

### Jusos and party entry

Christos Pantazis joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 1998. That year is given in his Bundestag biography, which the parliament notes is drawn from members’ own statements, and it is repeated in a portrait published by the *Ärztezeitung* on 4 October 2021.

The Young Socialists in the SPD (Jusos) are an *Arbeitsgemeinschaft* of the party, not a separate organization. Guidelines adopted by the SPD executive on 26 March 2012, under the party’s organizational statute, assign to the Jusos every member who has not yet turned 35, and describe their work as political education among young voters and activity within the youth for democratic socialism. The text is later than Pantazis’s own youth-wing offices; it is the party executive’s formal description of the Jusos. The Bundestag biography records one such office: deputy chair of the Jusos of Lower Saxony in 2003 and 2004, the same years in which it places his third state examination in medicine. The *Ärztezeitung* portrait gives the same deputy chairmanship and the same dates.

A 12 March 2012 report on the Braunschweig site *Braunschweig Spiegel*, after local SPD delegates nominated a candidate on 8 March, called him by the party nickname Kitto and wrote that, as deputy Juso state chair and as a later chair of the SPD group in Seelze, he had taken on responsibility young. The piece gives no years and points readers to his website. His own SPD chronology adds an office the Bundestag biography omits: speaker of the Jusos in the SPD district of Hanover from 2003 to 2005. No publicly indexed minutes of a Hanover district Juso conference from those years name him, so that speakership rests on the self-published chronology.

### Seelze local council

On 9 September 2001, voters in Lower Saxony filled 2,239 municipal bodies, including the *Ortsräte*—locality councils inside a municipality, distinct from the municipal council—of 1,003 localities. The state returning officer states that *Ortsrat* seats, like other local councils, are elected every five years. The Bundestag biography, which also records his *Abitur* at a grammar school in Seelze-Letter, lists him as a member of the *Ortsrat* in Seelze from 2001 to 2004.

That biography does not say he led the SPD group. His SPD chronology says he was elected to the *Ortsrat* Seelze and chaired its SPD group. The 2012 *Braunschweig Spiegel* profile also calls him a faction chair in Seelze, without dates. The article’s “later” does not match that chronology: the Bundestag biography has the council seat from 2001 to 2004 and the Juso deputy chairmanship only in 2003 and 2004, so the offices overlap rather than follow one another. That 2001 account gives district and municipal results, not the membership or votes of the Seelze *Ortsrat*. The seat, the group chairmanship, and an end in 2004, short of a five-year term, are known from these biographies rather than from a published roll or minutes.

The same Bundestag biography, and the 2021 *Ärztezeitung* portrait, date the start of his work as a neurosurgery physician at the municipal hospital in Braunschweig to 2004, the year those accounts end the Seelze seat.

## Landtag of Lower Saxony

### Elections and the Braunschweig-Nord seat

Christos Pantazis was a directly elected member of the Landtag of Lower Saxony for constituency 1, Braunschweig-Nord, in the 17th and 18th electoral periods, from the constituent sitting of 19 February 2013 until he resigned the mandate on 9 November 2021. The 18th period ran from its own constituent sitting on 14 November 2017 until 9 November 2022. On the day Pantazis resigned, Gerd Ludwig Will took the seat from the state list of the Social Democratic Party of Germany.

Under the annex to the Lower Saxony electoral law, used for both elections, Braunschweig-Nord consisted of six districts of the city of Braunschweig: Hondelage, the inner city (Innenstadt), Östliches Ringgebiet, Viewegsgarten-Bebelhof, Volkmarode and Wabe-Schunter-Beberbach.

At the Landtag election of 20 January 2013, 42,659 of 65,933 eligible voters in the constituency voted, a turnout of 64.7 percent. Pantazis received 16,863 first votes, 40.0 percent, and the direct mandate; he was also 81st on the SPD state list. The city of Braunschweig's official report names the other candidates as Claas Merfort of the Christian Democratic Union, 14,834 votes (35.2 percent); Dr. Gabriele Heinen-Kljajić of Alliance 90/[The Greens](/organizations/the-greens), 6,910 (16.4 percent); Hanne Burmester of [Die Linke](/organizations/die-linke), 1,533 (3.6 percent); Harald Kibbat of the [Pirate Party Germany](/organizations/pirate-party-germany), 1,028 (2.4 percent); and Almuth von Below-Neufeldt of the Free Democratic Party, 979 (2.3 percent). The same first-vote totals appear in the state returning officer's final result, which put the SPD's second-vote share in the constituency at 31.4 percent.

He was re-elected on 15 October 2017. Turnout was 68.2 percent, with 44,886 voters out of 65,803 eligible, and the final result gave Dr. Christos Pantazis 18,631 first votes, 41.8 percent. The constituency returning officer's preliminary figures, whose percentages are identical to that final result, named Jan-Tobias Hackenberg (CDU, 28.6 percent; 12,734 votes), Gabriele Heinen-Kljajić (Greens, 13.0 percent; 5,783), Susanne Schütz (FDP, 6.1 percent; 2,712), Hannes Kirchhoff (Die Linke, 6.0 percent; 2,688) and Stefan Wirtz of [the Alternative](/organizations/the-alternative) for Germany (4.6 percent; 2,047). The SPD took 35.6 percent of second votes in the constituency. Pantazis was 13th on the SPD state list, but the party won all 55 of its seats in constituencies, so the list filled none.

### Committees and portfolios

In the 17th electoral period Pantazis was the SPD Landtag group's spokesperson for migration and participation and a member of the committees for social affairs and health and for science and culture. When the Landtag's commission on migration and participation was reconstituted in February 2014, he commented as that spokesperson; Immacolata Glosemeyer was named as his deputy on the commission. The commission was constituted for the 18th period only on 22 January 2019, when Pantazis was elected chair. The Landtag's report on the period records him in that chair until 18 May 2020 and Petra Tiemann from then on; voting members are one deputy from each group plus representatives of Roma and Sinti associations, resettler organisations, municipal integration officers, migrant associations, independent welfare and research. In April 2018 he was still identified both as deputy group chair and as spokesperson for migration and participation.

At the group's board election of 21 November 2017 he was also chosen as spokesperson for federal and European affairs and regional development. By 30 July 2020 regional reporting described him as the group's spokesperson on economic policy. On 16 April 2021 the Committee for the Economy, Labour, Transport and Digitalisation named him rapporteur for a Green bill to amend the Lower Saxony local public-transport law.

### Faction leadership

The SPD Landtag deputies had already re-elected Johanne Modder as group chair on 20 October 2017, with Wiard Siebels as parliamentary business manager from 24 October. On 21 November 2017 the group elected its new board, including Pantazis as one of Modder's deputies, with 90.9 percent. The same sitting, the day before the plenary of 22 November, chose Silke Lesemann, Marcus Bosse, Stefan Politze, Ulrich Watermann and Uwe Santjer as the other deputies. By then Pantazis was already chair of the SPD in Braunschweig and speaker of the SPD Landtag members from the Braunschweig party district, known as the Braunschweiger Gruppe.

He was confirmed as a deputy chair when the group re-elected its board on 11 May 2020, together with Lesemann, Bosse, Politze, Watermann and Sebastian Zinke, Modder remaining chair. The Landtag's account of the 18th period lists him as a deputy chair until 11 October 2021, when Immacolata Glosemeyer took that post, and as a member of the Council of Elders (Ältestenrat) until the resignation of his mandate on 9 November 2021. His Bundestag biography dates the deputy chairmanship from November 2017 until he entered the federal parliament.

## Bundestag elections

### The 2021 election

At the [2021 German federal election](/facts/2021-german-federal-election) on 26 September 2021, voters in constituency 50, Braunschweig, cast a first vote for a constituency candidate and a second vote for a party list. The direct mandate is the first-vote plurality. The Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) had held it through Carola Reimann, the winner at every federal election from 2002 to 2017. In 2017 the SPD received 55,641 first votes (38.0 percent) and the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) 45,881 (31.4 percent); the candidates were Reimann and Carsten Müller. Reimann resigned the mandate with effect from 21 November 2017 to become Lower Saxony's minister for social affairs, health and equality.

Pantazis was the SPD's constituency candidate. On 29 May 2021 a delegate assembly in Hildesheim placed him unanimously, by 113 delegates, at number 26 on the party's Lower Saxony list. He called the placing a signal that he wanted the direct mandate rather than a list seat, in succession to Leyla Onur and Reimann.

The final result elected him. Dr. Pantazis (SPD) received 51,220 first votes, 36.7 percent, 1.3 points below the SPD share in 2017. Müller (CDU) was second with 31,276 (22.4 percent, down 8.9 points), and Erdmann of Alliance 90/The Greens third with 28,214 (20.2 percent, up 12.2). The Free Democratic Party (FDP) took 7.0 percent, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) 5.8 percent and Die Linke 3.8 percent. Turnout was 75.0 percent, 140,807 ballots from 187,721 people eligible to vote, down 1.9 points from 2017. On second votes the SPD led with 42,377 (30.4 percent), ahead of the Greens on 33,401 (24.0 percent) and the CDU on 25,929 (18.6 percent). The Federal Returning Officer recorded the winner as the SPD on 36.7 percent and the runner-up as the CDU on 22.4 percent. The 20th Bundestag constituted itself on 26 October 2021.

### The 2025 election

The 2025 German federal election was brought forward after the traffic-light coalition of SPD, Greens and FDP broke up. On 6 November 2024 Chancellor [Olaf Scholz](/people/mig-olaf-scholz) dismissed Finance Minister Christian Lindner. Tagesschau reported that the coalition had failed after Lindner told Scholz the parties lacked common ground on economic and fiscal policy and proposed an early election. Scholz then tabled a confidence motion under Article 68 of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany. On 16 December 2024 the Bundestag withheld confidence by 394 votes to 207, with 116 abstentions; 367 votes would have been required. President [Frank-Walter Steinmeier](/people/frank-walter-steinmeier) dissolved the 20th Bundestag on 27 December 2024 and set the election for 23 February 2025.

In Braunschweig the final result again returned Dr. Christos Pantazis (SPD), with 51,553 first votes, 33.4 percent and 3.3 points below 2021. The Federal Returning Officer named Carsten Müller (CDU) as runner-up, on 38,158 votes (24.7 percent, up 2.3 points). The Greens fell to 21,984 (14.3 percent, down 6.0). The AfD rose to 20,472 (13.3 percent, up 7.5) and Die Linke to 12,660 (8.2 percent, up 4.4); the FDP fell to 4,462 (2.9 percent, down 4.1). Turnout was 83.4 percent — 155,402 of 186,358 eligible voters, up 8.4 points. Pantazis's vote total was slightly higher than in 2021, but his lead over Müller narrowed from 19,944 votes to 13,395.

Second votes were effectively tied: the SPD took 34,994 (22.6 percent, down 7.8 points) and the CDU 34,958 (22.6 percent, up 4.0), a gap of 36 votes. The Greens received 18.0 percent, the AfD 13.3 percent and Die Linke 11.6 percent. The Bündnis [Sahra Wagenknecht](/people/sahra-wagenknecht), on a federal ballot for the first time, had no constituency candidate and won 5,966 second votes (3.9 percent). The 21st Bundestag constituted itself on 25 March 2025.

### The constituency

Wahlkreis 50 comprises only the independent city of Braunschweig. The Federal Returning Officer's delimitation for 2021 and for 2025 lists no other municipality. It lies between constituency 49, Salzgitter–Wolfenbüttel, and constituency 51, Helmstedt–Wolfsburg, and is one of 30 Lower Saxony constituencies, numbered 24 to 53.

On 31 December 2023 the area covered 192.7 square kilometres and had 253,500 inhabitants, 1,315.7 per square kilometre, of whom 221,600 were German citizens and 12.6 percent foreign nationals. The electorate was smaller, and it shrank across the three elections: 192,041 eligible voters in 2017, 187,721 in 2021 and 186,358 in 2025. The SPD direct-mandate lead over the CDU was 6.6 points in 2017, 14.3 points in 2021 and 8.7 points in 2025. Second votes stayed closer than first votes: in 2021 the SPD led the Greens by 6.4 points on that ballot, and in 2025 it finished 36 votes ahead of the CDU.

## Parliamentary work and health policy

### Committees and the spokesperson role

In the 20th Bundestag, Pantazis was a full member of the Committee on Health. A 2024 Bundestag brochure lists him among the SPD members and names Heike Baehrens, not him, as the group's Obfrau and health spokesperson. In the first sitting week of January 2022 the SPD group elected him deputy health-policy spokesperson. RegionalHeute, quoting his office, reported his briefs as statutory health-insurance financing, competition among insurers, hospital-financing reform, staffing, and hospital working conditions. He called advance retention payments (Vorhaltepauschalen), added to diagnosis-related groups, an overdue way to stop commercialization.

From the 21st Bundestag's constitution on 25 March 2025, the official biography lists him as an ordinary member and as Obmann of the health committee—the group's coordinator there—and as a deputy member of the Committee on Labour and Social Affairs. On 20 May 2025 the SPD group elected him its health-policy spokesperson. The *Deutsches Ärzteblatt* recorded that he succeeded Baehrens, who had not stood in 2025, and quoted him as keeping the rapporteurships for insurance finances and hospitals, with [Lina Seitzl](/people/lina-seitzl) and [Matthias Mieves](/people/matthias-mieves) as deputies in a working group cut from twelve members to seven.

### Hospital reform

On 6 March 2026 the Bundestag passed an adjustment to that hospital reform after a debate in which Federal Health Minister [Nina Warken](/people/nina-warken) defended longer deadlines as a matter of practicability.

The statute being adjusted was the Hospital Care Improvement Act (Krankenhausversorgungsverbesserungsgesetz, KHVVG), passed on 17 October 2024 by 373 votes to 285, with one abstention. The CDU/CSU, AfD, Left and BSW had said they would oppose it, and none of their members voted yes. Pantazis, the SPD rapporteur on hospital policy, said the new service groups would set rules that could save lives and avoid unnecessary procedures. Union speakers called the decision blind because a promised impact analysis was, in their view, inadequate; their health spokesperson Tino Sorge called it an impertinence that the coalition had seen the simulation tool weeks earlier. The Bundesrat, whose consent was required, did not request the mediation committee on 22 November 2024 and adopted an accompanying resolution; the act was promulgated on 11 December 2024.

The day before the vote, the *Schwäbische Zeitung* described Pantazis as the SPD negotiator at a meeting in the Sigmaringen district. He said case-based payment, introduced under Chancellor [Gerhard Schröder](/people/gerhard-schroder), had commercialized hospitals, closing maternity units that did not pay while complex surgery spread to unspecialized sites. Retention budgets of 40 to 60 percent would be paid in advance, but diagnosis-related groups would remain, so he called the bill a reform rather than the "revolution" used by health minister Karl Lauterbach, and said he did not want a law that overwhelmed everyone. Plans to rank houses by "level" were dropped, he said, and he had told Lauterbach, "Karl, please do not use that term," because it implied weaker care at a level-1 house; categories would remain. Managers of the Zollernalb and SRH hospitals agreed a reform was overdue, but Gerhard Hinger said money was missing, experts had not been included, and bureaucracy was the problem. Pantazis said volume rules could be waived where a Land assigned a basic-care mandate.

In June 2025 he told the *Ärzteblatt* that further work must not dilute the reform: the two-kilometre rule for counting buildings as one site was causing distortions and should be revisited, the federal half of the transformation fund should come from the budget rather than contributions, and nationwide quality standards should stay.

The *Ärzteblatt* reported a transformation fund of 50 billion euros for 2025–2035, half from the Länder and half from an infrastructure special fund, rather than the federal share coming from statutory insurance as in the KHVVG. Retention payments were delayed a year and would take financial effect only from 2030; service groups fell from 65 to 61; Länder could make more exceptions, including assignments by the end of 2026 without a sickness-fund veto; the two-kilometre rule remained, with individual deviations. Warken said staffing, experience and equipment would still be required and rejected the charge of dilution. Pantazis said the fund would relieve statutory insurance by up to 25 billion euros and thanked Finance Minister [Lars Klingbeil](/people/lars-klingbeil). [Janosch Dahmen](/people/janosch-dahmen) of Alliance 90/The Greens said the fund was being turned into support for existing structures and called the day bitter for patients and contributors. The German Hospital Federation said important questions had been postponed. Its chair, Gerald Gaß, allowed that hospitals now knew the requirements, but called the retention-payment model inherited from Lauterbach wholly unfit because it still followed case numbers and did not secure low-volume houses a region might need; municipalities were already plugging deficits, and non-profit and church owners were the main victims of insolvencies.

### Health insurance, nursing and working conditions

Before the 2024 vote Pantazis told the *Ärzteblatt* that uniform quality requirements were the core of the reform and not a place for compromise on staff or equipment. Rural financing and the outpatient–inpatient link had to be protected, he said, and retention payments should improve training and working conditions by taking commercialization out of payment. In June 2025 he put a nursing-competence law and emergency-care reform beside the hospital changes, argued that digitization and less bureaucracy were for staff as well as patients, and treated extra federal money for the funds as a one-off that Klingbeil would not repeat and that must not blunt reform.

At the AOK federal association's reception on 24 September 2025 he said a contribution increase on 1 January 2026, and possibly for 2027, was foreseeable, after contributors had paid ahead without always receiving optimal care. Tasks he called society-wide, including non-insurance benefits and health care for people on Bürgergeld, should be met more from taxation, he said, and long-term care insurance needed two billion euros quickly from the federal budget. "Health policy is always democracy policy," he said: stabilizing the funds strengthened democracy. He read a Federal [Constitutional Court](/organizations/constitutional-court) judgment from summer 2025 on the 2022 financing law as confirming the legislature's duty to keep the funds stable and a share of the cost for providers. The *Ärzteblatt* noted that Klingbeil's finance ministry was giving no sign of further tax money for the scheme.

## SPD organization in Braunschweig

### Subdistrict and district offices

The city branch of the Social Democratic Party of Germany in Braunschweig is the Unterbezirk, usually called the SPD Braunschweig, and sits under the regional SPD Bezirk Braunschweig. On 19 March 2015 delegates elected Christos Pantazis, then a member of the Landtag of Lower Saxony, chairman with 93 percent of the vote. He succeeded Christoph Bratmann, another Landtag member, who after four years did not stand again so as to concentrate on the city council. Annegret Ihbe and Nils Bader were elected deputies.

He was re-elected on 25 February 2017 by 93 votes to three, with one abstention, and on 23 February 2019 with 94.7 percent, the latter figure coming from an SPD statement reported by regionalHeute. At the June 2023 congress the party said he had been confirmed again, with Bader, Stefan Hillger, Jana Kurz and Julia Retzlaff as deputies. His Bundestag biography, which the parliament says rests on members' own information, lists the SPD Braunschweig chair as held since 2015 and the Unterbezirk chair from 2015 to 2025 — the same city office — plus a deputy chairmanship of the Bezirk from 2019 to 2023.

The subdistrict had first sought the regional chair for him. On 15 April 2019 its executive committee nominated him unanimously, with all 48 delegates present in favour. On 27 April in Wolfenbüttel the district congress instead re-elected Hubertus Heil, then federal labour minister, with 74.1 percent. An SPD account said Heil admitted mistakes in the run-up and promised a clearer procedure for later contests. The deputies elected alongside him were Laura Letter, Falko Mohrs, Pantazis and Christiana Steinbrügge.

Heil stood down in 2023 after 14 years. On 13 May, at a congress in Goslar with about 250 delegates and guests, Braunschweig's mayor, Thorsten Kornblum, was elected his successor. Kornblum was confirmed with 94 percent at a district congress in Peine reported on 28 April 2025. The deputies were then [Dunja Kreiser](/people/dunja-kreiser), Mohrs, Philipp Raulfs and Michaela Römmeler; Pantazis was not among them, while Hillger and Retzlaff joined as ordinary members.

### The 2024 conflict and succession

In 2024 the *Braunschweiger Zeitung* reported an unusually open quarrel in the city SPD, with Kornblum, district chair as well as mayor, and Pantazis both in the middle. Its 1 October account said Pantazis would leave the subdistrict chair by March 2025 at the latest but would still be the Bundestag candidate, and the headline called that the loss of a fierce power struggle. On 15 March 2025 the subdistrict congress elected Retzlaff and Hillger, two of his deputies since 2023, as its first dual leadership, by what an SPD statement called a large majority.

On 29 June 2024 Dolle and Kaufmann wrote that a legally problematic employment of a staff member caused the rupture, though divisions were older, and that Kornblum, Heil, Bundestag member Dunja Kreiser and Pantazis disagreed over personnel. The 1 October article said there was talk of "Erpressung" (extortion) and asked whether he had had to accept a "deal". It named the Volksfreundhaus in the Magniviertel as the joint headquarters of subdistrict and district.

On 30 August *Junge Freiheit*, citing the *Braunschweiger Zeitung*, reported that observers thought the subdistrict unable to act, that a mediation commission aimed to settle matters by mid-September, and that the sides accused one another of coercion (*Nötigung*), bullying and extortion. The weekly wrote that Pantazis had announced a further Bundestag candidacy by press release and on social media before the subdistrict executive voted, which an unnamed member treated as making him untenable as chair even though no rival was expected. It described as the sharper dispute his dismissal of a part-time employee who, it said, worked in his constituency office and, paid in shares from parliamentary staff allowances, also for Kreiser and Heil, and for the district under Kornblum, allegedly concentrating on the party side of the job. It added that party work may not be paid from those allowances. The coercion and extortion claims are reported as accusations from inside the dispute, not as findings of a court.

He was still described as chairman on 29 October 2024, when 69 delegates nominated him for Bundestag constituency 50. RegionalHeute, relaying the SPD, said 12 of 14 local branches had already proposed him and that [Rolf Mützenich](/people/rolf-mutzenich), chair of the SPD Bundestag group, spoke in support. The party's notice of the March congress, as carried by regionalHeute, gave no reason for his departure and did not say whether he had declined to stand; a question to him went unanswered.

## Positions beyond health policy

### Migration and asylum

As migration and participation spokesperson for the Social Democratic Party of Germany in the Landtag of Lower Saxony, Pantazis opposed deporting asylum seekers who had learned German and completed vocational training. A statement regionalHeute published on 15 August 2018 said the group shared Minister-President [Stephan Weil](/people/stephan-weil)’s view that such removals ran counter to common sense, and that it would welcome a rule in a federal immigration law expected that year.

After the fall of [Bashar al-Assad](/people/bashar-al-assad), Pantazis, by then the Bundestag member for Braunschweig, called demands by leading politicians of the Christian Democratic Union and the [Christian Social Union in Bavaria](/organizations/christian-social-union-in-bavaria) that Syrian refugees return to Syria “cynical and dangerous.” In a press release reported on 10 December 2024 he said the Union was playing “a game with fear,” ignoring international organisations and using refugees for domestic politics. Maximilian Pohler, chair of the CDU in Braunschweig, replied on 13 December that the remark was “unserious and unsachliche Polemik” that invented fronts and ignored facts. The local CDU said Assad’s fall had largely ended the protection ground, favoured voluntary return and immediate deportation of serious offenders, and cited the duty to leave under section 50 of the Residence Act.

### Other public disputes

On 4 January 2019, after a data leak that published his address and phone numbers, Pantazis said the attack came “from the right,” calling it intimidation because data on leading figures of the Alternative for Germany had not been released. On 8 January, Braunschweig AfD councillor Stefan Wirtz filed a criminal complaint for defamation (*üble Nachrede*) or calumny, saying Pantazis had imputed the hack to the AfD without evidence. Pantazis said he had not accused the party or its officials but a right-populist milieu, a view he said the BBC, netzpolitik.org and the [Chaos Computer Club](/organizations/chaos-computer-club) had also raised.

In 2026 the directorship of Braunschweig’s Haus der Vielfalt, a migrant centre then run largely by the city-owned Volkshochschule, became a dispute involving his family, though reporting did not find that he arranged the hire. The man taken on at the end of January was the brother of Tanja Pantazis, who works there on political education, and thus Pantazis’s brother-in-law. *Rundblick Niedersachsen* reported that she had disclosed the relationship and joined the interview remotely on management’s instruction, and that the city later cited a compliance breach. In March, during probation, social-affairs head Christina Rentzsch (SPD), chair of the Volkshochschule board, pressed to end the contract; he was offered a termination agreement and sued at the labour court, where, *Rundblick* reported via the *Braunschweiger Zeitung*, it was argued the provider had no compliance rules of its own. On 30 July 2026 the *Braunschweiger Zeitung* reported that an out-of-court settlement had returned him to the post. The CDU asked whether the dismissal had been unjustified, and the AfD also raised questions; in September the CDU said the mayor’s office had refused file inspection. Some saw a questionable hire and others an exaggerated sanction. *Rundblick* linked the row to longer strains between Pantazis and mayor Thorsten Kornblum in the local SPD, treated with the 2024 leadership dispute.

In April 2026 he rejected suggestions, which *Bild* attributed to Young Union chair [Johannes Winkel](/people/johannes-winkel), to cut health benefits for Bürgergeld recipients unless federal funds covered them in full. He called that wrong in health policy and unacceptable in social policy. Insurers said the federal flat rate met about a third of the cost; Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil (SPD) had said ten billion euros a year was unaffordable. In September, after CDU budget politician [Andreas Mattfeldt](/people/andreas-mattfeldt) called a sugary-drinks levy “nonsense,” Pantazis said the debate should “stay with the facts,” that sugar-free drinks would not be taxed (“Zero bleibt Zero”), and that the receipts were for statutory health insurance, not the general budget.

## Civic engagement

### German Red Cross

The German Red Cross state association of Lower Saxony lists Christos Pantazis, of Braunschweig, as a vice president of its presidium. Its report for 2014/15 records that the 67th ordinary state assembly on 15 November 2014 elected a new presidium, and names him as a vice president from Braunschweig under president Hans Hartmann. Later that month the Braunschweig-Salzgitter district assembly unanimously re-elected its honorary presidium, with Pantazis, then a member of the Landtag of Lower Saxony, as chair; the account noted that he had just been elected a state vice president.

The district association reported that the 75th state assembly, in mid-November 2022, again elected him vice president, and published his statement that he had held the office since 2014. Its website still lists him as chair of the executive presidium, with Gabriele Heinen-Kljajic, Erik Wilhelmus and Andrea Wiencke as deputies and Oliver Discher as treasurer.

The Bundestag publishes outside posts under the members' code of conduct. Pantazis's disclosure marks as honorary the Lower Saxony vice-presidency, seated in Hanover, the Braunschweig-Salzgitter presidium chair, the deputy chairmanship of DRK-Dialogforum e.V. in Berlin, and a seat on the Kuratorium of DRK-Blutspendedienst NSTOB gGmbH in Springe. The federal society describes the Dialogforum as an association for Bundestag members, linking Red Cross volunteers and parliamentarians on civil protection, welfare work and international cooperation. A further post, which the disclosure does not label honorary, is deputy Land chair of the Stiftung des DRK-BSD NSTOB zur Förderung des Gesundheitswesens, also in Springe. The foundation states that it funds projects on blood donation and health care for bodies working with the NSTOB blood service. Abgeordnetenwatch's reproduction of the filings shows no income figure for these posts; they were first recorded on 16 November 2022 and last changed on 7 July 2025.

### Professional and welfare associations

The biographical section of the same Bundestag page, which the parliament attributes to members' own statements, lists memberships and does not attach an office to them. The names are the physicians' union Marburger Bund, the services union ver.di, AWO, SoVD, and the German Society for Neurosurgery (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Neurochirurgie, DGNC). Also named are the Europa-Union, the Niedersächsischer Flüchtlingsrat, the association "Mach' meinen Kumpel nicht an! – für Gleichbehandlung, gegen Fremdenfeindlichkeit und Rassismus", the German Youth Hostel Association, and local clubs around Braunschweig, among them shooting societies in Waggum and Gliesmarode, Haus der Kulturen, Rast Orchestra, support associations for the fire service and the Waggum open-air pool, and Bürger für Bürger Volkmarode. Those affiliations appear in the self-reported biography, not in the separate schedule of outside posts that carries the Red Cross functions.

## Personal life

Christos Pantazis was born on 9 October 1975 in Hanover. The Bundestag biography, based on members' own statements, records that he is married and has two children, and lists his occupation as physician. Abgeordnetenwatch gives his residence as Braunschweig. In the self-description on that profile he says he lives there with his wife, Tanja, and that since May 2022 they have been the parents of twins.

He writes that he met Tanja in Braunschweig and that they have been married since 22 September 2012. She sat on the Braunschweig city council for the Social Democratic Party of Germany from 2011 as the SPD group's spokesperson on integration. The group said she would leave at the meeting of 4 September 2018 because a professional opening was hard to combine with the mandate; Bayram Türkmen succeeded her. The Volkshochschule Braunschweig lists her as head of programme and project development.

On 19 May 2022 regionalHeute reported his statement that he and his wife had become parents of twins and that he would take family time until the summer recess. He called 13 May his last sitting day before the break, said he would be almost exclusively with Tanja and the twins, and asked to be excused because there were two newborns rather than one. Constituency appointments, he said, could resume only from the end of August; the offices in Berlin and Braunschweig would stay in touch and remain reachable by email, and he expected to resume political work in September. The report noted that members had no statutory parental leave. As it described section 14 of the Members of the Bundestag Act at the time, an unexcused absence cut the expense allowance (Kostenpauschale) by 200 euros per sitting day and an excused absence by 100 euros, with exceptions limited to a sick child under 14, hospital treatment, certified inability to work, and maternity protection.

He has written that he has an older sister, Athina, and an identical twin brother, Periklis, born six minutes later. The page links that name to the Imperial College London profile of Periklis ("Laki") Pantazis, reader in advanced optical precision imaging—equated there with associate professor—in the Department of Bioengineering, and director of the college's imaging hub with Leica Microsystems.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/christos-pantazis