# Claudia Moll

# Claudia Moll

Claudia Moll (born 15 December 1968 in Eschweiler) is a German politician of the [Social Democratic Party of Germany](/organizations/social-democratic-party-of-germany) (SPD) and a member of the Bundestag for North Rhine-Westphalia. She is a state-recognised geriatric nurse with a further qualification in gerontopsychiatry, and before entering parliament she worked as a nurse for Caritas Lebenswelten GmbH in Eschweiler, with a right to return to that post. The Bundestag biography, which rests on her own disclosures, also records that she is married, has two children and is a Roman Catholic.

She entered the SPD and in 1998 became deputy business manager of the local association in Dürwiss–Neu-Lohn/Fronhoven and deputy chair of the Eschweiler city association. She has been a member of the Eschweiler city council since 2009. At the federal election of 24 September 2017 she won constituency 88, Aachen II, with 36.9 percent of the first votes (63,135), ahead of the [Christian Democratic Union of Germany](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany) (CDU) on 36.5 percent (62,405), with turnout at 75.9 percent. The 19th Bundestag, whose official biography lists her as a member from October 2017, held its constituent sitting on 24 October 2017.

In the 20th electoral term the Bundestag recorded her as directly elected in constituency 88, Aachen II. At the 2021 federal election the SPD took 34.5 percent of the first votes there (58,189), ahead of the CDU on 32.5 percent (54,808). On 23 February 2025, in the renumbered constituency 87 Aachen II, Catarina dos Santos-Wintz of the CDU won the direct mandate with 40.1 percent of the first votes (70,541); Moll, with 30.5 percent (53,747), was runner-up. She sits in the 21st Bundestag through the North Rhine-Westphalia state list and remains the SPD candidate in that constituency.

On 12 January 2022 Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach appointed her, after the cabinet had accepted his proposal, as Federal Government Commissioner for Long-term care (Bevollmächtigte der Bundesregierung für Pflege). On 28 May 2025 the cabinet appointed Katrin Staffler as the new commissioner.

In the 21st Bundestag she is a full member of the Committee on Health, the Committee on Tourism and the Defence Committee, and a parliamentary secretary (Schriftführerin). She is a full member of the Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly, a deputy delegate to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly and deputy chair of the parliamentary group for Belgium and Luxembourg. From 10 September 2025 she has been an unpaid member of the board of the Deutsche Härtefallstiftung in Bonn. In the SPD parliamentary group she is a spokesperson of the Seeheimer Kreis, together with Marja-Liisa Völlers and [Esra Limbacher](/people/esra-limbacher).

## Early life and education

### Childhood in Eschweiler

Claudia Moll was born on 15 December 1968 in Eschweiler, in the area that since 2009 has formed part of the StädteRegion Aachen in North Rhine-Westphalia. She has said that the StädteRegion has been her home ever since, and official biographies list her as still living in Eschweiler. The town received municipal rights in 1858 after growth built on coal mining and ironworking. In the 1972 local-government reform, when she was three, Dürwiß, Weisweiler, Kinzweiler and other places were incorporated, and the enlarged municipality counted 55,497 inhabitants. Lignite mining on Eschweiler territory ended in 1987, and from the 1980s the town shifted from a mining and industrial centre toward housing, retail and services.

She has described that upbringing as a working-class household in which everyone had long voted for the Social Democratic Party of Germany. In a September 2021 questionnaire for the Eschweiler paper *Filmpost*, she wrote that the “social idea” had always been very present in her life, and that she had learned there that anyone working for society had to keep the welfare of all in view. As a child of a working-class family, she said, she knew the value of a secure and properly paid job. In an interview published in April 2022 she said she had been politically engaged “from childhood on” and had been socialised with the trade unions. The Bundestag biography, drawn from members’ own disclosures, records her denomination as Roman Catholic. She has called the local SPD association for Dürwiß and Neu-Lohn her home branch.

### Schooling

Moll attended a Hauptschule and a Realschule in Eschweiler, and then the town’s Fachschule für Soziales und Gesundheitswesen. A biography published by the SPD’s North Rhine-Westphalia group in the Bundestag dates that school to 1987–1989 and states that she left with the Fachoberschulreife and the additional qualification for the gymnasiale Oberstufe, the certificate also given in the Bundestag biography and in her own accounts. In North Rhine-Westphalia the education ministry uses Fachoberschulreife as the name of the Mittlerer Schulabschluss, the intermediate certificate at the end of lower secondary education; higher marks can add a separate entitlement to the introductory phase of the gymnasiale Oberstufe, the path that normally ends with the Abitur. Moll did not take the Abitur and did not study at a university. A 2025 *Spiegel* portrait noted that she lacked both, unlike almost 90 percent of members of the Bundestag.

The same party biography sets out the step from school into care work: from 1989 to 2001 she worked as a nursing assistant (*Pflegehelferin*), and from 2001 to 2004 she completed training as a state-examined geriatric nurse (*Altenpflegerin*). *Deutsches Ärzteblatt* has likewise described a long period as a nursing assistant before that qualification. In her own shorter summaries she has presented the Fachoberschulreife as the certificate with which she began the examined training. *[Der Spiegel](/organizations/der-spiegel)* has also reported that she cleaned stairwells and worked at a supermarket checkout, as well as spending many years in elder care.

## Nursing career

### Training and qualification

Claudia Moll came to nursing in Germany through assistant work and only later took the full geriatric-nursing qualification. A biography issued by the North Rhine-Westphalia group of the Social Democratic Party of Germany in the Bundestag lists, after her schooling in Eschweiler, employment as a Pflegehelferin (nursing assistant) from 1989 to 2001, training as a staatlich examinierte Altenpflegerin from 2001 to 2004, and further training as a Fachkraft für Gerontopsychiatrie from 2007 to 2009. The *Deutsches Ärzteblatt* gave the same sequence in 2022: a long period as a nursing assistant, then training as an Altenpflegerin, then the gerontopsychiatric further qualification. *Der Spiegel* has also reported that she cleaned stairwells and worked at a supermarket checkout; those jobs are not dated, and do not appear, in the parliamentary and party curricula vitae.

Altenpflegerin was a protected professional title. Under the federal Altenpflegegesetz, which governed the profession until its repeal on 31 December 2019, the titles "Altenpflegerin" and "Altenpfleger" could be used only by someone who had been granted a licence. The licence depended on completing the prescribed training and passing the required examination, and it could be refused or withdrawn for unreliability, unfitness on health grounds, or insufficient German for the work. In full time the training lasted three years regardless of the date of the state examination, and in part time up to five. It combined teaching at an Altenpflegeschule with a larger share of practical training in inpatient homes and outpatient services for older people; practical sections could also be spent in gerontopsychiatric departments, geriatric hospital units and other services caring for older people. Since 1 January 2020 new entrants have trained under the Pflegeberufegesetz, which joined the former geriatric, general and children's nursing courses in a generalist programme and still allows a separate elderly-care qualification in the final year. A licence already issued under the Altenpflegegesetz continues in force and counts as a licence under the newer act. The Bundestag biography, which the parliament states is based on members' own information, records both qualifications and gives her occupation as Altenpflegerin.

### Work in long-term care

She has described nearly three decades in inpatient care of older people. In July 2017, while she was still employed, she told *Vorwärts* that she had worked for 27 years in the stationary sector; in December 2020 she spoke of almost 30 years' experience in stationary Altenpflege. Counted from the assistant post that began in 1989, that is time in care work, not 27 years after the examination of 2004. The Bundestag's published disclosures list her occupation before membership as Altenpflegerin at Caritas Lebenswelten GmbH in Eschweiler, with a right to return to the post. The company was founded in 2002 to establish and run services for people with disabilities in the Diocese of Aachen. Its shareholders are the Diözesan-Caritasverband Aachen and two regional Caritas associations, and its objects are residential homes and other housing, kindergartens and outpatient services for people with intellectual, physical and mental disabilities. It operates such houses in Eschweiler; the parliamentary entry does not identify the particular service in which Moll worked.

In September 2017 she described the shifts. She recalled a late shift, her tenth or eleventh in a row, on which she alone had to provide nursing care for 55 people, and she said that what frightened her was night duty in sole charge of 53 sick people. The rota included weekends. She took six weeks of unpaid leave for the 2017 election campaign because campaign dates otherwise collided with shifts, and she left day-to-day practice when she became a member of the Bundestag in October 2017. She is a member of the services union ver.di.

## Local politics

### Joining the SPD

Claudia Moll joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 1998. Her biography on the Bundestag website, which the parliament states is based on members’ own information, records that in the same year she became deputy business manager (stellvertretende Geschäftsführerin) of the local branch Dürwiss–Neu-Lohn/Fronhoven, the unit for her home district of Dürwiß and the neighbouring villages of Neu-Lohn and Fronhoven in Eschweiler, North Rhine-Westphalia. The same account lists her as deputy chair of the SPD city association (Stadtverband) in Eschweiler. At the association’s delegate conference on 14 March 2026, held at the Talbahnhof in Eschweiler, delegates elected Georg Maier as chair and Parvin Neysari-Tabrizi and Oliver Brosius as deputy chairs; the association’s own account of the meeting does not name Moll among the officers elected that day.

The SPD Bundestag group’s biography names her as chair of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft sozialdemokratischer Frauen (AsF) in the Eschweiler city association and as deputy chair of the local Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Arbeitnehmerfragen (AfA), without dates for either post. The AsF, which also uses the name SPD FRAUEN, is the party’s women’s organisation: women in the SPD belong to it automatically, and its stated aim is equality of women and men in the party and in society. The AfA was founded in Duisburg in October 1973 as the SPD’s platform for employees, members of works and staff councils, and trade unionists. It describes itself as the party’s largest working group and says it presses, inside the SPD, for secure and socially insured jobs and for codetermination at work.

### Eschweiler city council

Moll has sat on the council (Rat) of Eschweiler since 27 October 2009, the opening of the term that followed that year’s municipal election. The council information system records uninterrupted membership through the terms running from 1 June 2014 to 31 October 2020 and from 1 November 2020 to 31 October 2025, and again from 1 November 2025. She therefore remained a councillor after taking her seat in the Bundestag in October 2017. In the Bundestag’s register of activities that members must disclose, she is listed as a member of the council of the city of Eschweiler at a gross payment of 437 euros a month.

Her ward has been Wahlbezirk 22, covering Dürwiß III, Fronhoven and Neu-Lohn. On 25 May 2014 she won the direct mandate there with 676 votes (46.43 percent), ahead of Thomas Graff of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) on 632 votes (43.41 percent), with turnout in the ward at 64.37 percent. On 13 September 2020 she was directly elected again, with 541 votes (44.97 percent) to Graff’s 446 (37.07 percent), on a turnout of 68.70 percent.

At the municipal election of 14 September 2025 the city’s official result again records a direct mandate for her in Wahlbezirk 22. In the ward’s polling district Dürwiß III she took 118 votes (28.64 percent), behind Graff on 138 (33.50 percent); in Fronhoven/Neu-Lohn, where the published count included a large postal vote, she took 333 votes (40.46 percent) to his 295 (35.84 percent). Across Eschweiler the SPD’s share of the council vote fell from 46.1 percent in 2020 to 28.4 percent in 2025, and the party won 14 of the 50 seats, ten of them direct mandates and four from the reserve list.

The council register shows her on the culture committee (Kulturausschuss) and the election-review committee (Wahlprüfungsausschuss) from 21 October 2009 until 31 May 2014. In the following term she was a voting member of the culture committee, and a deputy voting member of the youth-welfare committee (Jugendhilfeausschuss), from 24 June 2014 until 27 March 2019, and a voting member of both the election committee (Wahlausschuss) and the election-review committee from 24 June 2014 until 31 October 2020. From 1 November 2020 to 9 March 2023 she was a voting member of the advisory board for inclusion and social participation, and she stayed on the election committee until 31 October 2025. Since 26 November 2025 she has been a voting member of the suggestions and complaints committee (Anregungs- und Beschwerdeausschuss).

## Bundestag elections

### 2017

Aachen II is the Bundestag constituency for the Städteregion Aachen in North Rhine-Westphalia, excluding the city of Aachen, which forms Aachen I. The Federal Returning Officer assigns it Alsdorf, Baesweiler, Eschweiler, Herzogenrath, Monschau, Roetgen, Simmerath, Stolberg (Rhld.) and Würselen. At the elections of 24 September 2017 and 26 September 2021 it was number 88; for the election of 23 February 2025 it was renumbered 87, with the same municipalities.

On 24 September 2017 Claudia Moll, the candidate of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, took the direct mandate by 730 votes. The state returning officer recorded 63,135 first votes for her, 36.9 percent of valid ballots, against 62,405 and 36.5 percent for Helmut Brandt of the Christian Democratic Union. Brandt was the incumbent: in 2013 the state returning officer had declared him elected with 45.6 percent (73,621 first votes), and the 2017 candidate register listed him as a sitting member of the Bundestag and a lawyer, also placed 20th on the CDU state list.

Turnout was 75.9 percent, 173,149 of 228,248 people eligible to vote, 3.8 points higher than in 2013. Of 171,176 valid first votes, [Markus Matzerath](/people/markus-matzerath) of [the Alternative](/organizations/the-alternative) for Germany was third with 15,114 (8.8 percent), ahead of Frank Schniske of the Free Democratic Party on 11,038 (6.4 percent), Gabriele Halili of [Die Linke](/organizations/die-linke) on 8,785 (5.1 percent) and Alexander Tietz-Latza of Alliance 90/[The Greens](/organizations/the-greens) on 7,782 (4.5 percent). The same register described Moll as a geriatric nurse and placed her 38th on the SPD state list; the constituency result alone returned her.

Second votes were less evenly split. Of 171,607 valid second votes the SPD received 60,539 (35.3 percent) and the CDU 52,656 (30.7 percent), followed by the FDP on 19,213 (11.2 percent), the AfD on 14,853 (8.7 percent), Die Linke on 10,105 (5.9 percent) and the Greens on 8,436 (4.9 percent).

### 2021

On 26 September 2021 Moll defended constituency 88 against [Catarina dos Santos-Wintz](/people/catarina-dos-santos-wintz), who stood for the CDU under the name Catarina dos Santos Firnhaber. The Tagesschau breakdown of the official count labelled her Catarina Santos Firnhaber. Moll received 58,189 first votes (34.5 percent) to 54,808 (32.5 percent), a margin of 3,381. Turnout was 75.4 percent, with 170,670 voters out of 226,420 eligible and 168,787 valid first votes.

[Lukas Benner](/people/lukas-benner) of the Greens placed third with 19,976 votes (11.8 percent). Michael Winterich of the AfD followed with 12,632 (7.5 percent) and Birgit Haveneth of the FDP with 12,055 (7.1 percent); Johannes Koch of Die Linke received 4,496 (2.7 percent). Second votes, 169,087 of them valid, went 53,408 to the SPD (31.6 percent), 49,838 to the CDU (29.5 percent), 19,918 to the Greens (11.8 percent), 17,892 to the FDP (10.6 percent), 12,409 to the AfD (7.3 percent) and 5,259 to Die Linke (3.1 percent).

Dos Santos Firnhaber did not win the constituency. The Bundestag’s archived biography for the 20th electoral term records her as elected on the state list, with constituency 088 Aachen II given as her district, and as a lawyer born on 8 July 1994 in Lisbon who grew up in the Städteregion Aachen.

### 2025

The election of 23 February 2025 reversed the direct result. In constituency 87, Catarina dos Santos-Wintz (CDU) was declared elected with 70,541 first votes, 40.1 percent of the valid total, 7.6 points above the CDU’s 2021 share. Moll, again the SPD candidate, was runner-up with 53,747 votes and 30.5 percent, down 3.9 points. The margin was 16,794 votes. Turnout rose to 81.1 percent, 182,361 of 224,835 eligible voters. Under the electoral law used in 2025, a first-vote plurality did not by itself guarantee a seat; the Federal Returning Officer nevertheless lists dos Santos-Wintz among the members elected in constituencies, with 40.1 percent.

Seven constituency candidates were registered. Behind the two leaders, Florian Müller of Die Linke received 13,330 votes (7.6 percent), Anna Kysil of the Greens 13,269 (7.5 percent) and Andreas Wollermann of the [Free Voters](/organizations/free-voters) 12,919 (7.3 percent). Natalie Maria Pütz of the FDP took 8,191 (4.7 percent) and Marcel Willy Peter Verkooyen of Volt 4,001 (2.3 percent). The AfD had no constituency candidate, so its first-vote column is blank; invalid first votes numbered 6,363, 3.5 percent of ballots cast, compared with 1.1 percent in 2021.

Of 180,985 valid second votes the CDU led with 57,089 (31.5 percent), ahead of the SPD on 37,900 (20.9 percent, down 10.6 points) and the AfD on 34,595 (19.1 percent, up 11.8 points). The Greens received 17,002 (9.4 percent), Die Linke 12,306 (6.8 percent), the FDP 7,599 (4.2 percent) and the Bündnis [Sahra Wagenknecht](/people/sahra-wagenknecht) 7,376 (4.1 percent). Moll’s first-vote share ran 9.6 points ahead of the SPD list in the constituency, and dos Santos-Wintz’s ran 8.6 points ahead of the CDU list. The state returning officer’s candidate table placed Moll 18th on the SPD list for North Rhine-Westphalia and dos Santos-Wintz 17th on the CDU list. Moll lost the direct mandate and was returned on that SPD list: the Federal Returning Officer’s roll of members elected from state lists gives her list place 18.

## Parliamentary work

### Health committee

Claudia Moll has been a member of the Bundestag for the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) since October 2017. In the 19th Bundestag (2017–2021) the chamber’s archived biography records her as an ordinary member of the Committee on Health and of its Subcommittee on Global Health, as a deputy member of the Committee on Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth and of the Committee on Tourism, and as a secretary (*Schriftführerin*). She was not among the provisional secretaries named when that Bundestag was constituted on 24 October 2017, so the secretary’s office recorded for the term was a later appointment. The global-health subcommittee was chaired by her SPD colleague Heike Baehrens; a photograph of its constitution identifies Moll as a member of both the health committee and the subcommittee. The subcommittee’s own record includes a meeting on 16 October 2018 with Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization.

In the 20th Bundestag the end-of-term biography lists an ordinary seat only on the health committee, together with membership of the Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly. Abgeordnetenwatch likewise records the health committee as her only committee seat for 2021–2025. At the constitutive sitting on 26 October 2021, Wolfgang Schäuble, presiding as the longest-serving member, named her among the provisional secretaries. From 2022 to 2025 that committee seat ran alongside her separate appointment as the federal government’s commissioner for long-term care.

In the 21st Bundestag the SPD parliamentary group lists her as an ordinary member of the Committee on Health, and of the group’s health working party, from 21 May 2025. On 22 May 2025 the Bundestag elected its secretaries without debate on a joint proposal (Drucksache 21/215 (neu)); the SPD list of twelve included Moll. Two secretaries sit with the presiding officer as the *Sitzungsvorstand*. They take motions and requests to speak, keep the speakers’ list, check corrections to the plenary record and establish voting results.

Her speeches on care continued after the commissioner post. In a debate reported by *Deutsches Ärzteblatt* on 19 October 2026, she said that motions from [The Left](/organizations/the-left-slovenia) and the Greens raised real problems in long-term care insurance, but that calls for improvement also had to say how they would be financed and carried out. The aim, she said, was to relieve people who need care while keeping the insurance affordable for employees and employers; the SPD group’s rejection of a Left motion against benefit cuts was not, on her account, a vote for cuts. The motion “Keine Leistungskürzungen in der Pflege” was rejected, and a further motion on a more solidaristic design of the insurance was referred to the health committee. On 6 and 14 November 2025, SPD group statements issued with [Christos Pantazis](/people/christos-pantazis) presented, in their names, a law extending nurses’ clinical powers and cutting bureaucracy, and a decision to hold the general contribution rate of social long-term care insurance at 3.6 per cent for 2026, while saying that the insurance’s structural problems remained.

### Defence, tourism and other offices

Defence and tourism became ordinary assignments only in the 21st term. From 21 May 2025 she has been an ordinary member of the Defence Committee and of the SPD working group on defence. On the group’s own list the spokesperson is Falko Droßmann and the deputy spokesperson is Christoph Schmid; Moll is recorded as a member, not as a spokesperson. She joined the Committee on Tourism, and the SPD tourism working group, on 25 June 2025. In the 19th term tourism had been only a deputy seat, and neither the archived 20th-term biography nor Abgeordnetenwatch records a tourism seat at the close of that Bundestag. From 21 May to 25 June 2025 the SPD group also lists her as a deputy member of the Petitions Committee.

On 18 September 2025 the Bundestag elected her, with [Sabine Dittmar](/people/sabine-dittmar), to the board of trustees of the Deutsche Härtefallstiftung in Bonn. The joint nomination of the CDU/CSU, the AfD and the SPD (Drucksache 21/1671) was adopted with the Greens and The Left abstaining. The foundation assists active and former members of the Bundeswehr, former members of the National People’s Army, and their families, in exceptional hardship that may have arisen from service; eight members of the Bundestag sit on its board. Moll’s published disclosure records the trusteeship as unpaid.

The plenary debate she tied most directly to the lignite region around her home town was the coal phase-out of 2020. On 3 July 2020 she told the House that an opencast mine and a power station stood “outside the front door”, described herself as a miner’s child, and called the exit by 2035 to 2038 a compromise with which no side was fully satisfied. She argued for an adjustment payment for older workers and for €40 billion in regional structural aid, which she presented as money for people in the districts rather than for the companies, and closed by addressing miners in the Rhenish district, Lusatia and central Germany with “Glück auf”.

### Interparliamentary activity

The archived biography of the 20th Bundestag lists Moll as an ordinary member of the Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly. The assembly has 100 members, 50 from the Bundestag and 50 from the [French National Assembly](/organizations/french-national-assembly), and is intended to meet at least twice a year, alternating between Germany and France. It was constituted in Paris on 25 March 2019 on the basis of the Franco-German parliamentary agreement adopted that month by both chambers. At its eighth sitting, on 7 November 2022, it elected her without objection as substitute for [Angelika Glöckner](/people/angelika-glockner) on the German side of the bureau; Christian Petry was elected at the same time as substitute for [Nils Schmid](/people/nils-schmid).

In the 21st term the SPD group records ordinary membership of the assembly from 21 May 2025, which matches the current Bundestag biography. Since 9 September 2025 she has been a substitute member of the German delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the [Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe](/organizations/organization-for-security-and-co-operation-in-europe). From 22 September 2025 the SPD group lists her in the parliamentary group for Belgium and Luxembourg, and the Bundestag biography records her as deputy chair of that group, which handles the chamber’s contacts with Belgium and Luxembourg.

## Federal Commissioner for Long-term Care

### Appointment and status of the office

On 12 January 2022 the federal cabinet of Germany, on a proposal from Health Minister Karl Lauterbach, appointed Claudia Moll Bevollmächtigte der Bundesregierung für Pflege. He handed her the certificate that day at the Federal Ministry of Health, together with those of the new patient and drugs commissioners, and called the appointees experts in their fields. Moll, of the Social Democratic Party of Germany and in the Bundestag since 2017, was a qualified geriatric nurse and succeeded Andreas Westerfellhaus. The post sits in the ministry's portfolio.

*Claudia Moll with Health Minister Karl Lauterbach at the Federal Ministry of Health after her appointment as long-term care commissioner in January 2022.*

The office was created by cabinet decision in early 2014. On 8 January 2014 the cabinet named [Karl-Josef Laumann](/people/karl-josef-laumann) of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany, in the rank of a state secretary, patient commissioner and the government's new representative for care. From 16 April 2018 Westerfellhaus, a nurse and former president of the German Council of Nursing, held the care brief alone, also as a state secretary, after the cabinet chose him on 21 March 2018 on a proposal from Health Minister Jens Spahn. Appointed for a legislative period and supported by a small office, the commissioner represents people who need care inside the federal government. Ministries and federal authorities must involve the office in bills, ordinances and other important projects that affect care.

Lauterbach did not give Moll state-secretary rank, and she kept her Bundestag seat. *Tagesspiegel* reported that the rank had been removed. Bavaria's health and care minister, Klaus Holetschek of the [Christian Social Union in Bavaria](/organizations/christian-social-union-in-bavaria), called the change a "downgrade" and said the state-secretary rank should at least have been kept, because Moll could no longer act in it. The German Council of Nursing found the change *befremdlich* (disconcerting). The brief was thus carried alongside a parliamentary mandate, not as the full-time state-secretary post her predecessors had held.

### Policy initiatives

The main care statute of the term was the Pflegeunterstützungs- und -entlastungsgesetz (PUEG), passed by the Bundestag on 26 May 2023. From 1 July 2023 the general contribution to social long-term care insurance rose by 0.35 percentage points, about €6.6 billion a year on the ministry's estimate, and the government could reset the rate by ordinance if financing required it. The same date implemented the Federal [Constitutional Court](/organizations/constitutional-court) judgment of 7 April 2022: members without children paid 4 percent and members with one child 3.4 percent, with a further reduction of 0.25 points per additional child, up to the fifth, until that child turned 25. Benefit amounts were to move with prices in 2025 and 2028. In nursing homes the insurance subsidy toward the care-related co-payment rose from 5 to 15 percent in the first year of a stay, and to 30, 50 and 75 percent in the following years.

Respite care (*Verhinderungspflege*) and short-term care (*Kurzzeitpflege*) were to be merged from 1 July 2025 into one annual sum, and the six-month wait before respite care was abolished. Moll announced the coalition compromise in May 2023: the joint budget from 2024 for children with severe needs, and from mid-2025 for everyone else, because children's entitlements had often lapsed when the separate benefits did not fit what parents could use. The statute brought that amount forward to 1 January 2024 for people under 25 in care grades 4 and 5, eased relatives' access to prevention and rehabilitation, and extended help for combining care work with family life. It also accelerated the staffing-assessment procedure in homes, financed in-house float pools, and generally capped refinancing of agency nurses at the relevant collectively agreed wage.

In November 2023, at a meeting of the German Protestant Association for Elder Work and Care, Moll called agency nursing "Fluch und Segen zugleich" and rejected a ban: it could cover sudden absences, but should not be ordinary staffing, and was a symptom of poor conditions for permanent staff. Float pools, she said, could save money and improve care. The share cited there was about 2.2 percent in hospital nursing and 2.6 percent in elder care.

The 2022 care bonus was contested separately. The Bundesrat approved €1 billion for a one-off premium, tax-free up to €3,000: €500 million for 837 hospitals that in 2021 had ventilated more than ten COVID-19 patients for longer than 48 hours, and €500 million, on a sliding scale, for elder-care staff with at least three months in a home between November 2020 and June 2022. In September 2022 Moll told the Protestant Press Service that unpaid bonuses were unacceptable and had to be pursued, after reports on a Federal Audit Office draft found the 2020 payout open to error and misuse, including homes that never applied and owners who claimed the money for themselves. The FDP's care spokesperson, Nicole Westig, called the findings alarming; the audit office warned that 2022 used a similar channel.

Two later bills did not pass before the term ended. On 18 December 2024 the cabinet adopted a Pflegekompetenzgesetz that would have let qualified nurses decide more without a physician's order, including in diabetes, wounds and dementia, assign care grades themselves, and support new forms of housing. The government later recorded that it failed in the 20th legislative period. Moll had already described such a law, in a 2024 review, as the way for nurses to use skills they already had, and she paired it with one national assistant qualification. A Pflegefachassistenzeinführungsgesetz, cleared by the cabinet on 4 September 2024 and given a first reading on 5 December 2024, got no final vote after the coalition broke up.

### Assessment and succession

Moll's 2024 account listed staffing rules in homes and hospitals, the removal of nursing costs from hospital case payments, changes she said had improved pay, and training reform, including pay for nursing students. She credited the PUEG with steadier rosters and less agency work, and pointed to GAP ("Gute Arbeitsbedingungen in der Pflege"), a coaching project she called her own. She said the task ahead was still large.

Insurers described a fund the reform had not steadied. In March 2025 the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Funds reported a 2024 deficit of €1.54 billion. The liquidity reserve had fallen from about €1.8 billion to about €1 billion over the year, and a further deficit of about €0.5 billion was expected in 2025 despite another 0.2-point contribution rise. Chair Doris Pfeiffer said the scheme was up to its neck, while noting benefits were not then at risk, and asked the next government to repay pandemic costs the insurance had carried and to take over pension contributions for family carers. The Association of Substitute Health Insurance Funds found that higher subsidies from January 2024 only slowed what residents pay. On 1 January 2024 the average out-of-pocket cost in the first year of a stay was €2,576 a month, €165 more than a year earlier. By 1 July 2025 it was €3,108, 8.3 percent above €2,871 a year before. Chair Ulrike Elsner said burdens of that size were no longer acceptable; investment costs still left with residents averaged €507 a month.

Moll left the post with the change of government after the 2025 election. On 28 May 2025 the cabinet appointed [Katrin Staffler](/people/katrin-staffler) of the CSU, a biochemist and Bundestag member since 2017; Health Minister [Nina Warken](/people/nina-warken) later gave her the certificate. Staffler, herself a member of parliament rather than a state secretary, said care insurance was at a crossroads and that continuing as before was not an option. She took over the patronage of the documentation project EinSTEP and of GAP. The office remained inside the health ministry.

## Role in the SPD

### Workers’ and women’s groups

The Social Democratic Party of Germany keeps working groups (Arbeitsgemeinschaften) that carry particular constituencies into internal debate. The Arbeitsgemeinschaft sozialdemokratischer Frauen, which presents itself as SPD Frauen, states its aim as equality of women and men in the party and in society. Every woman member belongs automatically—the organization puts the number at about 150,000, a little over 31 percent of the membership—and the group keeps its own structure and can pass its own resolutions. The Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Arbeitnehmerfragen (AfA) describes itself as the party’s largest working group. It organizes employees, trade unionists and members of works and staff councils around secure, socially protected jobs and around preserving and adapting the welfare state.

Moll’s posts in both groups are local, in Eschweiler, rather than seats on the federal boards. The biography issued by the SPD group in the Bundestag lists her as chair of the AsF in the Eschweiler city association and as deputy chair of the AfA there, and records that she joined the SPD in 1998. Her own website dates active work in the Eschweiler AsF from 2005 and the chair from 2013, and the AfA deputy chair from 2015. Those offices are the town-level tier of organizations that exist throughout the party. They are distinct from a Bundestag mandate and from the federal leadership of SPD Frauen and the AfA, and they place her party standing in the women’s and employees’ networks.

### Seeheimer Kreis

The Federal Agency for Civic Education locates the right of the SPD in the Seeheimer Kreis, which it describes as having formed in the mid-1970s in response to the growing influence of the [New Left](/organizations/new-left) in the party. The circle’s own account dates what it now calls the founding meeting to early September 1974 at the Dorint Hotel in Lahnstein, where about 40 [Social Democrats](/organizations/social-democrats) met at the initiative of [Hans-Jochen Vogel](/people/hans-jochen-vogel). Vogel opened by saying the gathering was neither conspiratorial nor a founding assembly; the circle’s history says that disclaimer later proved wrong, because the meeting is now treated as the foundation, and notes that a similar round had met in Lahnstein the year before. The group presents the effort as a defence, in the tradition of the Godesberg Program, of the political centre and of the course of a governing people’s party. The same civic-education text places the organized left of the parliamentary group in the Parlamentarische Linke, and records that younger deputies formed Netzwerk Berlin in 1998, a circle that locates itself in the middle while standing relatively close to the Seeheimer on policy.

In February 2024 *Der Spiegel*, reporting a strategy paper that urged simpler social-security administration and wider use of artificial intelligence in welfare offices, called the circle conservative and noted its own count of 95 Bundestag members. In June 2026 *t-online*, citing the circle, wrote that more than 50 of the 120 SPD members of the Bundestag belonged to what the paper called its conservative current. The *Aachener Zeitung* reported on 18 December 2025 that Moll had been in the circle for seven and a half years and that she likes to call herself “the most conservative Social Democrat.” On 16 December 2025 the circle announced that it had elected her a new spokesperson, together with [Marja-Liisa Völlers](/people/marja-liisa-vollers) and Esra Limbacher, and thanked Uwe Schmidt for years of work in the group. Its website lists the three as the current speakers. In the profile published there, Moll writes that politics means finding solutions that benefit everyone, which succeeds only through compromise and pragmatic approaches, and that this is what she wants to pursue as co-spokesperson. The election put an Eschweiler deputy, whose party posts had been in the local women’s and employees’ groups, into the public leadership of the current that *Der Spiegel* and *t-online* describe as conservative.

## Public profile and criticism

### Media portrayal

In February 2025 *Der Spiegel* published Jonah Lemm’s campaign portrait “Die da unten für die »ganz normalen Leute«”. Its teaser described Moll as someone who had cleaned stairwells, worked a supermarket till and spent years as a geriatric nurse (*Altenpflegerin*), and who was arguing in the Bundestag for “ganz normalen Leute”. A companion presentation of that reporting said she had neither an *Abitur* nor a university degree, unlike almost 90 percent of members of parliament, treated her Rhenish dialect as a trademark, and called her a committed carnival participant whose method was “radikale Volksnähe”, from shooting festivals and New Year receptions to nursing homes whose residents often could not vote.

The *Aachener Zeitung* headlined a 2025 profile “Claudia Moll – die letzte Arbeiterin der SPD”. In a later 2025 article the paper reported that she likes to call herself “die konservativste Sozialdemokratin”. On her 2022 appointment the *Deutsches Ärzteblatt* led with “Altenpflegerin wird Pflegebevollmächtigte” and quoted her saying she could be “sehr laut und hartnäckig” while remaining a pragmatic “Praktikerin”.

### Criticism of the care brief

Criticism began with rank, not training. The cabinet appointed Moll on 12 January 2022 without the state-secretary status held by predecessors, including Andreas Westerfellhaus. On 14 January the *Tagesspiegel* reported that Karl Lauterbach had removed that rank. Bavaria’s minister for health and care, Klaus Holetschek of the CSU, called it a “Herabstufung” and said Moll could no longer act as a state secretary: “Man hätte das mindestens belassen sollen.” The paper’s account said the Deutscher Pflegerat found the change “befremdlich”. *Die Übergabe*, drawing on that reporting, wrote that Christine Vogler of the Pflegerat saw the post losing content and importance, and that Markus Mai, then president of the nursing chamber of Rhineland-Palatinate, doubted whether combining the commission with a Bundestag seat could meet the demands of long-term care. In March 2022 the Bundesverband Pflegemanagement called the missing rank a step backwards and criticised her support for another survey on a federal nursing chamber rather than a clear government commitment.

Later comment treated the 2022–2025 record as incomplete. In June 2023 Holetschek called the *Pflegeunterstützungs- und -entlastungsgesetz* “Stückwerk statt großer Wurf”: a reform of long-term care insurance had again been postponed, neither people needing care nor family carers nor working conditions were really helped, and the joint respite budget would for most people arrive only in summer 2025. Higher subsidies slowed co-payments but did not stop them. The substitute-fund association vdek put the average monthly out-of-pocket cost in the first year of a nursing-home stay at €2,576 on 1 January 2024, €165 more than a year earlier, and at €3,108 on 1 July 2025. The contribution rate rose on 1 July 2023 to 3.4 percent for people with one child and 4 percent for people without children, then by a further 0.2 points from 1 January 2025, to 3.6 percent. The Federal Ministry of Health presented the second rise as short-term stabilisation; Lauterbach said a more fundamental solution was still required, and *Tagesschau* reported that the larger reform would not follow because the coalition had collapsed. Doris Pfeiffer of the GKV-Spitzenverband called the 0.2-point rise only a breathing space, and Eugen Brysch of the Deutsche Stiftung Patientenschutz said people in need of care were bearing the cost of a sustainable reform not started in time.

The *Pflegekompetenzgesetz*, adopted by the cabinet on 18 December 2024, was already uncertain to pass before the 23 February 2025 election, because the minority government lacked its own majority. It was not debated in parliament before that election. On 6 December 2024 Vogler, president of the Deutscher Pflegerat, had urged that the care bills still be passed in that period, warning that starting again would be “ein schwerer Rückschlag”. A February 2025 *Ärzte Zeitung* sketch said that, for her critics, Moll had carried the brief in her direct manner but with too little influence on the health-policy agenda.

## Personal life and civic activity

### Family

Claudia Moll lives in Eschweiler, in the Städteregion Aachen of North Rhine-Westphalia, the town where she was born on 15 December 1968. The Bundestag biography, compiled from members’ own statements, records that she belongs to the Roman Catholic Church, is married and has two children. The SPD group in the Bundestag describes the children as two adult daughters and states that she has been married for 27 years. On her own website she gives her husband’s name as Michael. In a profile for the North Rhine-Westphalia SPD she says that time away from politics is spent with her family, that she reads—mostly Swedish crime novels and biographies—and that she likes to travel.

### Associations and carnival

Her Bundestag biography lists membership of the Naturfreunde in Dürwiß, the Arbeiterwohlfahrt local group there, the services union ver.di, the Sozialverband’s Eschweiler branch, and “various carnival societies.” The state party profile repeats those affiliations and also records membership of ver.di and IG BCE; the union tie is separate from her former employment in long-term care.

Carnival, known locally as *Eischwiele Fastelovend*, is a standing public custom in Eschweiler. The municipality says it has been celebrated for nearly 170 years, since 1850; the local greeting is “Alaaf,” and 22 societies open the “fifth season” on 11 November with hundreds of hall and tent events. The city describes the Rosenmontag parade—about six kilometres, with roughly 6,500 participants and about 250 vehicles—as having been for some years the third-largest in Germany. Moll has written that carnival, and a “Rhineland pragmatism,” are what connect the otherwise different towns of her constituency.

Named carnival affiliations on that state profile include the “Kaafsäck” trumpet corps, the societies K.G. Ulk Oberröthgen and K.G. Klee Oepe, the supporters’ association of the Eschweiler carnival museum, the title of *Senatorin* at K.G. Ülle Würselen, the Fidele Zunfthäre and the Alsdorf carnival festival committee, and Narrengare Dürwiß. The Bundestag group’s profile adds that she looks after a carnival dance group.

The same state profile lists the shooting clubs at Zweifall and Niederhardenberg, local sections of the German Life Saving Association (DLRG) in Baesweiler and Eschweiler, the Malteser Hilfsdienst, Igel-Hilfe Eschweiler, supporters’ groups for the Bürgerhaus in Zweifall and the Catholic Eduard Mörike primary school, a family centre at the BKJ day nursery in Jahnstraße, the Reservistenverband and the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold, and notes further memberships beyond that list. Apart from club membership, the Bundestag’s register of outside posts records roles taken up in the 21st electoral term: honorary membership of the foundation council of the Deutsche Härtefallstiftung in Bonn from 10 September 2025; honorary membership of the presidium of the Förderkreis Deutsches Heer from 15 September 2025; membership of the advisory board of EVS EUREGIO Verkehrsschienennetz GmbH in Stolberg from 19 November 2025; and, unpaid, membership of the advisory board of Rhein-Maas Klinikum GmbH in Würselen from 11 May 2026.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/claudia-moll