# Daniel Baldy

# Daniel Baldy

Daniel Baldy (born 25 September 1994 in Bingen am [Rhein](/people/boris-rhein)) is a German teacher and a politician of the [Social Democratic Party of Germany](/organizations/social-democratic-party-of-germany) (SPD) who has been a member of the Bundestag since the 20th electoral term. That term opened at the constitutive sitting on 26 October 2021. In the 21st Bundestag he holds his mandate through the Rhineland-Palatinate state list, in list position 4, after standing in constituency 204 Mainz. The Bundestag lists him as an ordinary member of the Interior Committee and the Defence Committee, as a parliamentary secretary (Schriftführer), and as a member of the Parliamentary Control Panel set up under Article 45d of the Basic Law. The panel was constituted on 26 June 2025 and oversees the Federal Intelligence Service, the [Military Counterintelligence Service](/organizations/military-counterintelligence-service) and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

He grew up in Münster-Sarmsheim, in the Mainz-Bingen district. The biography archived for the 20th term records the Grundschule am Nahetor there from 2000 to 2004, the Abitur in 2013 at the Stefan-George-Gymnasium in Bingen, and a Master of Education in history, Catholic religious education and civics (Sozialkunde) at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, with the course dated 2013 to 2019 on that archived page and 2013 to 2020 on the current biography. He then completed the preparatory service for Gymnasium teachers in 2020–2021 at the state seminar in Kaiserslautern and the Heinrich-Heine-Gymnasium there, taking the second state examination; the *Allgemeine Zeitung* dated the end of that training to the summer of 2021. The archived biography states that he joined the SPD in 2011, chaired the Young Socialists in the SPD in Mainz-Bingen from 2014 to 2018, has sat since 2014 on the municipal council of Münster-Sarmsheim and the council of the Verbandsgemeinde Rhein-Nahe, and has been speaker of the SPD groups on those councils since 2019. It also lists membership of the Education and Science Workers' Union (GEW) and the Mining, Chemical and Energy Industrial Union (IG BCE). He is married and Roman Catholic, lives in Mainz, and the Bundestag's register of outside positions lists a seat on the Mainz city council running until 30 June 2026.

At the federal election of 26 September 2021 he won the direct mandate in constituency 205 Mainz. Of 200,001 valid first votes he received 49,878 (24.9 percent), ahead of the incumbent [Christian Democratic Union](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany) member Ursula Groden-Kranich on 47,153 (23.6 percent); turnout was 81.2 percent of 249,630 people eligible to vote. On second votes the SPD led the constituency with 26.8 percent. In the 20th Bundestag he was a full member of the Committee on Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth and of the Committee on Internal Affairs and Homeland, a parliamentary secretary, and a deputy member of the environment committee and of its subcommittee on civic engagement.

The Mainz seat was numbered 204 at the snap election of 23 February 2025. Groden-Kranich led the first votes with 57,966 (27.3 percent) to Baldy's 50,411 (23.7 percent), on a turnout of 85.5 percent of 251,074 eligible voters. The federal returning officer recorded that the constituency remained without a directly elected member because the leading candidate's party lacked sufficient second-vote coverage. The *Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung* reported that the CDU finished first in 14 of Rhineland-Palatinate's 15 constituencies but was entitled to only eleven seats, so three first-vote winners, Groden-Kranich among them, did not enter the Bundestag, while Baldy returned on the SPD state list. In the constituency the SPD's second-vote share was 18.5 percent. From the start of the 21st term the SPD parliamentary group has also listed him as deputy speaker of its interior working group and, from 25 June 2025, as a deputy member of the board of trustees of the Federal Agency for Civic Education.

## Early life and education

### Childhood and school

Daniel Baldy was born on 25 September 1994 in Bingen am Rhein, in the Mainz-Bingen district of Rhineland-Palatinate. He grew up in the neighbouring municipality of Münster-Sarmsheim. The Bundestag biography, drawn from members' own disclosures, lists him as Roman Catholic.

The biography published for the 20th electoral term states that he attended the Grundschule am Nahetor in Münster-Sarmsheim from 2000 to 2004 and the Stefan-George-Gymnasium in Bingen from 2004 until the Abitur in 2013. The current Bundestag entry records the 2013 Abitur at that school but does not repeat the primary-school years. In a September 2021 interview he said that reading figures on how rarely children from non-academic families reached the Abitur had led him to become Schülersprecher there and to join the Social Democratic Party of Germany. The 20th-term biography dates that party entry to 2011.

### University studies

From 2013 he studied for the Gymnasium teaching qualification at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, in history, Catholic religious education and Sozialkunde (social studies). The 20th-term biography dated the course from 2013 to 2019 and named a Master of Education. The current Bundestag text gives 2013 to 2020. He told Campus Mainz, a student magazine, that he had needed one extra semester in both the bachelor's and the master's phase, and that he had not joined the student parliament because from 2014 he was already sitting on the municipal council in Münster-Sarmsheim.

He has described both parents as people who neither studied nor held the Abitur, and has called himself an Arbeiterkind for whom a university place was not automatic. In that interview he said a study had found that 79 of 100 children of academics took the Abitur, against 25 or 26 of 100 working-class children, and that the gap had struck him because his own family background had not, in his view, held him back. The SPD group biography uses a rounded version of the same claim: one in four working-class children gains the Hochschulreife, while three in four children of academics do, and it presents the link in Germany between parental income and educational chance as one reason he joined the party in 2011. A 2018 brief from the German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies reported a related 2016 result with different categories: of 100 children with at least one university-educated parent, 79 entered higher education, compared with 27 of 100 children from families in which neither parent held a degree. That count was of entry to university, not of the Abitur alone, and the comparison was parental education rather than a working-class occupation.

He has also connected the line that education "must not cost anything" to the tuition-fee debate in Hesse around 2011, and has said that his time in Mainz steered him toward unequal school chances rather than toward the financing of student services.

### Teacher training

The preparatory service for Gymnasium teachers, the Referendariat, is dated by the Bundestag to 2020–2021 at the state Studienseminar in Kaiserslautern and at the Heinrich-Heine-Gymnasium there. The 20th-term biography adds that it closed with the second state examination (Zweites Staatsexamen). The Heinrich-Heine-Gymnasium describes itself as an Eliteschule des Sports: a state Gymnasium with sports classes and a boarding house. In the September 2021 interview Baldy said he had begun the Referendariat in January 2020 and had taken his last examination at the end of June, on a day that also included a campaign photograph with Minister-President [Malu Dreyer](/people/malu-dreyer). The SPD group's profile instead says he finished the Referendariat in July 2020 at a sports Gymnasium in Kaiserslautern, a completion date that matches neither the Bundestag chronology nor that interview.

For the 20th electoral term the Bundestag listed his occupation before he took his seat as Studienreferendar, a trainee teacher, at the Kaiserslautern seminar. He said pupils at the training school learned of his candidacy only about two weeks before the Referendariat ended, and that he was no longer teaching there once it was over. His teaching subjects remained history, Catholic religion and social studies. The current Bundestag biography gives his occupation as Lehrer (teacher).

## Party membership and local politics

### Young Socialists and the state party

Daniel Baldy joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 2011. The Bundestag biography for the 20th electoral term records that he chaired the Mainz-Bingen branch of the Young Socialists in the SPD (Jusos) from 2014 to 2018.

On 23 January 2018, with demonstrations against Marcus Held, the SPD mayor of Oppenheim, already in their third week, the Mainz-Bingen Jusos wrote to the SPD district executive. Baldy, identified by the *Allgemeine Zeitung* as Juso chair, said a state-audit report had produced facts incompatible with their view of social-democratic local politics. The letter tied allegations of waste and questionable property deals—the public prosecutor was investigating suspected breach of trust (*Untreue*)—to a loss of trust visible in the previous year's results, and said dealing critically with mistakes was part of social-democratic self-understanding. It also condemned former district chief Claus Schick for speaking, at a New Year reception, of a "pogrom atmosphere," calling that a relativization of the 1930s pogroms, including those in Oppenheim, and asked the district party to demand a public apology. Nineteen others signed, among them Ingelheim mayor Ralf Claus, Landtag members Michael Hüttner and Nina Klinkel, and, the paper reported, more than a third of the district executive.

The SPD in Rhineland-Palatinate renewed its executive at the ordinary state congress in Idar-Oberstein on 23 August 2025. Delegates confirmed Sabine Bätzing-Lichtenthäler as state chair with 98.94 percent. Deputy chairs [Alexander Schweitzer](/people/alexander-schweitzer), Doris Ahnen and [Sven Teuber](/people/sven-teuber) received 99.65, 94.77 and 95.12 percent; Gregory Scholz was elected general secretary with 96.92 percent, and treasurer Daniel Stich was confirmed with 84.72 percent. Congress papers listed Baldy for an assessor (*Beisitzer*) seat. The published executive names him in that role, with assessors including Kathrin Anklam-Trapp, Bundestag members [Tanja Machalet](/people/tanja-machalet) and [Isabel Mackensen-Geis](/people/isabel-mackensen-geis), and several Landtag members.

### Councils in Mainz-Bingen

The Bundestag's register of outside activities lists Baldy as an honorary member of the Münster-Sarmsheim municipal council and of the Verbandsgemeinde Rhein-Nahe council from 2014 until 11 September 2023. The biography on the same page records him, from 2019, as speaker of the SPD groups on both councils.

On 20 December 2018, SPD Rhein-Nahe delegates meeting in Münster-Sarmsheim put Baldy first on the list for the Verbandsgemeinde election of 26 May 2019. The *Allgemeine Zeitung* described the then 24-year-old as SPD chair and lead candidate. Annika Pierron of Weiler was second; other places went to candidates from across the association, including Christine Jung of Trechtingshausen and Herbert Mehlig of Münster-Sarmsheim. Steffen Wolf, Mainz-Bingen SPD chair and First District Deputy (*Erster Kreisbeigeordneter*), said Baldy and Jung were also on the list for the district council.

### Mainz city council

For the Mainz city-council election of 9 June 2024, an SPD meeting on 18 November 2023 placed Jana Schmöller first and Baldy, by then a Bundestag member, second. Sissi Westrich, local mayor in Lerchenberg, was third, Matthias Dietz-Lenssen fourth, and Maike Hessedenz—not a party member, and a former *Allgemeine Zeitung* editor—fifth. Michael Ebling, then interior minister, stood 30th. Schmöller said the aim was to become the largest group on the council.

Of 162,032 eligible voters, 102,997 cast ballots (63.6 percent; 61.9 percent in 2019). On 100,818 valid papers, Alliance 90/[The Greens](/organizations/the-greens) took 24.8 percent and 15 of 60 seats, the Christian Democratic Union 23.6 percent and 14, and the SPD 19.5 percent (19,639 votes) and 12—the same seat total as in 2019, when its share was 20.2 percent. Die Linke and the AfD won four each, the FDP and Volt three each, the ÖDP and the [Free Voters](/organizations/free-voters) two each, and Die PARTEI one. Personal votes reordered the SPD list. The city gazette recorded 27,601 for Schmöller, 25,483 for Westrich, 25,189 for Baldy and 24,101 for Ebling, enough for Ebling to pass candidates placed above him. *Mainz&* reported Free Voters' criticism of that dual role: as interior minister, Ebling exercised state supervision of municipal budgets.

The SPD then entered a coalition with the Greens and the CDU, a lineup known in Germany as a Kenya coalition, for 2024–2029. The agreement was signed on 25 November 2024 in the Mainz Stadthaus by, among others, Ludwig Holle and Thomas Gerster (CDU), Jonas König, Christin Sauer and Daniel Köbler (Greens), and SPD chairs Jana Schmöller and Ata Delbasteh.

Baldy was the SPD group's spokesperson for youth and family policy. A listing archived in December 2025, when the group still described itself as the twelve members elected in June 2024, named Kathleen Herr as chair and Dietz-Lenssen and Westrich as deputies; Erik Donner was spokesperson for transport, the environment and digital policy. Abgeordnetenwatch, drawing on Bundestag disclosures, records the council seat as ending on 30 June 2026. From 9 October 2024 the same Bundestag register lists membership of the regional assembly of the Planungsgemeinschaft Rheinhessen-Nahe and of the Rheinhessen Sparkasse special-purpose association; abgeordnetenwatch records the Sparkasse seat as ending on 30 June 2026 as well. *Mainz&* reported in August 2026 that Yvonne Wuttke had succeeded Baldy and that on 24 August the group elected Donner chair in place of Herr, who had followed Schmöller in June 2025 after Schmöller became head of the city's social-affairs department.

## The 2021 federal election

### Candidacy

On 16 April 2021, delegates of the Social Democratic Party of Germany sub-districts of Mainz and Mainz-Bingen nominated Daniel Baldy as the party's direct candidate for constituency 205 at the [2021 German federal election](/facts/2021-german-federal-election). He had been proposed by the Mainz-Bingen district association and won an internal runoff against the candidate of the Mainz city association, Jana Schneiß, who then agreed to stand as substitute. On 5 June 2021 a state party congress in Gensingen elected Thomas Hitschler to head the Rhineland-Palatinate list. The list that was submitted placed Baldy, recorded as a trainee teacher from Münster-Sarmsheim, fifth, after Hitschler, Tanja Machalet, [Thorsten Rudolph](/people/thorsten-rudolph) and Isabel Mackensen-Geis. In 2017 the SPD had returned eight members from Rhineland-Palatinate through its list, so a fifth place was, on that precedent, inside the range of recent list seats.

The constituency mandate was held by Ursula Groden-Kranich of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany, who had won it in 2013 and again in 2017, the second time with 35.7 percent of first votes. The CDU had held the seat since 2009, first with Ute Granold and then with Groden-Kranich. In July 2021 the *Allgemeine Zeitung* expected the direct contest to be fought mainly between Groden-Kranich and Tabea Rößner of Alliance 90/The Greens, a member of the Bundestag since 2009 and first on the Green state list, and described Baldy as an outsider who still had to make himself known in the city. [Sebastian Münzenmaier](/people/sebastian-munzenmaier) of [the Alternative](/organizations/the-alternative) for Germany, already an MP and first on the AfD list, was treated as likely to return through the list rather than the constituency. [Die Linke](/organizations/die-linke) nominated the non-party physician Gerhard Trabert, whose local profile SWR judged could draw votes from the SPD. Groden-Kranich was fourth on the CDU state list, behind [Julia Klöckner](/people/julia-klockner), Patrick Schnieder and [Thomas Gebhart](/people/thomas-gebhart).

### Result in constituency 205

Polling took place on 26 September 2021. Of 249,630 eligible voters, 202,670 voted, a turnout of 81.2 percent and 0.2 percentage points below 2017. In the final result Baldy received 49,878 first votes (24.9 percent), 3.1 points less than the SPD in 2017. Groden-Kranich received 47,153 (23.6 percent), down 12.1 points, a margin of 2,725 votes. Rößner took 37,319 votes (18.7 percent, up 7.8 points). [The Left](/organizations/the-left-slovenia), with Trabert as its candidate, took 24,863 (12.4 percent, up 6.0). The Free Democratic Party candidate Friedrich Sartorius received 14,408 (7.2 percent), and Münzenmaier 10,360 (5.2 percent, down 2.1).

The SPD's own first-vote share fell, but the much larger CDU loss and a split field left Baldy with a plurality. SWR described the result as the defeat of a candidate who had been treated beforehand as the favourite. On second votes the SPD led with 53,889 (26.8 percent, up 4.8 points), ahead of the Greens on 46,183 (22.9 percent, up 9.8) and the CDU on 42,659 (21.2 percent, down 11.5). The FDP received 23,178 (11.5 percent), the AfD 10,833 (5.4 percent) and Die Linke 9,418 (4.7 percent), far below Trabert's first-vote share.

Baldy took his seat in the 20th Bundestag by direct mandate. The SPD returned twelve members from Rhineland-Palatinate, eight of them elected in constituencies. The CDU returned nine, seven by direct mandate and two from the state list; Groden-Kranich was not among them.

### The Mainz constituency

Constituency 205 was one of fifteen Bundestag districts in Rhineland-Palatinate and one of 299 in Germany. For 2021 it comprised the independent city of Mainz and, from the district of Mainz-Bingen, the independent municipalities of Bingen am Rhein, Budenheim and Ingelheim am Rhein, plus the collective municipalities (*Verbandsgemeinden*) of Gau-Algesheim, Nieder-Olm and Rhein-Nahe. The rest of Mainz-Bingen was in constituency 206, Worms. At the end of 2019 the constituency contained 30 municipalities, 353,600 inhabitants and 467.3 square kilometres, a density of 756.6 people per square kilometre; 15.5 percent of the population were foreign nationals.

The state capital shaped the district. Before the election, SWR identified scarce affordable housing in the Rhine-Main area and Mainz's heavy municipal debt as leading local issues, and noted that trade-tax payments from BioNTech, based in the city, might ease the city's finances. Schott in Mainz and Boehringer Ingelheim connected the constituency to export manufacturing. Aircraft noise from Frankfurt Airport, widening of the A643, and discussion of another Rhine crossing near Bingen or Ingelheim were persistent transport questions. Mainz is also a broadcasting centre: Südwestrundfunk and ZDF are headquartered there, which made federal media policy a constituency issue.

## The twentieth Bundestag

### Committees and offices

Daniel Baldy took his seat in the 20th Bundestag as a directly elected member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany for Mainz, in Rhineland-Palatinate, when the Bundestag was constituted on 26 October 2021. The archived biography for 2021–2025 lists him as an ordinary member of the Committee on Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth and of the Committee on Internal Affairs and Homeland, and as a deputy member of the Committee on the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection and of the Subcommittee on Civic Engagement. Abgeordnetenwatch records the same four assignments.

The family committee was constituted on 15 December 2021 under Vice-President [Aydan Özoğuz](/people/aydan-ozoguz) and elected Ulrike Bahr chair. Baldy was among the eleven SPD members named that day. The interior committee met the same day under Vice-President Wolfgang Kubicki and rejected the nominee of the Alternative for Germany for the chair. The membership published from that sitting did not include Baldy. The archived end-of-term list does record him as an ordinary member of the interior committee.

On 27 January 2022 the plenary elected the secretaries (*Schriftführer*) proposed in printed paper 20/503. Baldy was first on the SPD list, and the proposals passed with no votes against and no abstentions. Secretaries form the presiding board with the President of the Bundestag: they keep the speakers' list and receive and count ballot papers at roll-call votes and elections. The archived Board of Trustees of the Federal Agency for Civic Education, 22 members attached to the interior committee and charged with reviewing the agency for effectiveness and political balance, names him as a deputy, not an ordinary, member.

Parliamentary documentation lists 48 activities in his name: 32 plenary speeches, one speech entered in the minutes, ten rapporteurships, three bills and one motion he signed, and one question during government questioning on 8 November 2023. Abgeordnetenwatch records 163 roll-call votes—122 in favour, 35 against and six absences, none explained. On 16 March 2022 he spoke on a commission to reform electoral law, and on 17 March 2023 he voted for the reform that reduced the Bundestag's size. He signed the cross-party bill of 3 March 2022 on counselling and vaccination of all adults against SARS-CoV-2. At the free votes of 7 April 2022 he backed the compromise for a vaccination duty from age 60 plus a counselling duty, rejected by 296 votes to 378, and voted against the alternatives from a group around Wolfgang Kubicki, the CDU/CSU and the AfD.

### Family, senior citizens, women and youth

He spoke for the SPD in the second readings of the federal budgets for 2022, 2023 and 2024, on 31 May 2022, 22 November 2022 and 30 January 2024. The rest of his work on this committee was concentrated on sexual violence against children. On 26 May 2023 he spoke on an AfD motion for a commission of inquiry and a duty, for certain professions, to report suspected abuse. The committee report of 21 February 2024, which he presented as rapporteur, recommended rejection. On 14 March 2024 he spoke at the first reading of a bill changing the minimum penalties in section 184b of the Criminal Code. On 10 October 2024 a speech on amending the Act on Cooperation and Information in Child Protection was entered in the minutes, and on 11 October he spoke at the first reading of the government bill on structures against sexual violence against children and adolescents. He reported the committee's recommendation of 29 January 2025 that the bill be adopted, and spoke again at the second reading on 31 January. On 19 January 2023 he spoke on an interior-committee report on a Left motion about the European Union proposal for a regulation to prevent and combat child sexual abuse (COM(2022) 209).

On 14 November 2024 he was among the signatories of a cross-party bill to recast abortion law, a motion on care for women with unwanted pregnancies, and a cross-party bill for an opt-out rule in the Transplantation Act. He voted on 5 July 2024 for a government amendment of the Pregnancy Conflict Act on harassment outside counselling centres and clinics, which passed, and on 31 January 2025 for a bill on assistance in cases of gender-based and domestic violence, which also passed.

### Internal affairs

As rapporteur for the interior committee he presented recommendations to reject opposition motions: on 5 July 2023, an AfD motion to extend a police risk tool ("RADAR-links") to left-wing extremist violence; on 29 November 2023, a motion to bar federal authorities from exploiting IT security vulnerabilities; and on 25 September 2024, a CDU/CSU motion demanding immediate transposition of the NIS-2 directive. The documentation system also lists him as rapporteur for reports 20/9578 (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Samidoun), 20/10777 (left-wing extremist violence), 20/11663 (political Islam), 20/11734 (a ban on Muslim Interaktiv) and 20/11744 (further measures against Islamist organisations).

In the chamber he spoke on 15 June 2023 on the RADAR-links motion; on 9 November 2023 in a current-affairs hour on calls for a caliphate in Germany; on 16 November 2023 on motions about polygamy and headscarves in day care; and on 14 December 2023 on motions about Hezbollah and political Islamism. In May and June 2024 he spoke on Islamist organisations, the Mannheim attack and political Islam, and on 13 June, 9 October and 11 October 2024 on NIS-2, including the first reading of the government bill transposing the directive. On 18 January and 5 December 2024 he spoke on proposals to store IP addresses in the investigation of serious crime and sexual abuse of children.

He also spoke at the first reading, on 10 November 2023, of the bill for a parliamentary commissioner for the federal police, and at the second reading, on 11 April 2024, of a bill on domestic burglary. On 13 March 2024 he took part in the current-affairs hour on the interception of a Bundeswehr conversation about Taurus cruise missiles. On 18 October 2024 he voted for the coalition "security package", as amended by the interior committee, on the domestic intelligence service, asylum and residence, and weapons; the roll call passed. On 29 January 2025 he voted against a motion on "27 measures to strengthen internal security", which failed.

## Policy record

### Child protection

In June 2023 the Social Democratic Party group in the Bundestag unanimously adopted the position paper "Kinder vor sexualisierter Gewalt schützen", presented by rapporteurs Daniel Baldy (family policy), [Carmen Wegge](/people/carmen-wegge) (interior and legal affairs) and Anna Kassautzki (digital policy). The paper calls sexualised violence a society-wide problem, enlarged by the [COVID-19 pandemic](/drivers/covid-19-pandemic), and asks for children's rights in the Basic Law, for domestic violence to be mandatory in custody and contact cases under the [Istanbul Convention](/facts/istanbul-convention), and for a statutory basis and more resources for the Independent Commissioner on Child Sexual Abuse and the inquiry commission. Baldy called 48 recorded cases of child sexual abuse a day only the visible field, against estimates of one or two affected pupils in a class and of every seventh or eighth adult having experienced such violence when young. Wegge said about three quarters of cases happen in the close family, so prevention had to reach parents, teachers and doctors; the paper also seeks protection concepts in places children use, faster deletion of abuse images, and active online police searches.

On 31 January 2025 the Bundestag passed the government bill on structures against sexual violence towards children and young people. It gives a statutory footing to an Independent Federal Commissioner elected by parliament, a survivors' council and an inquiry commission, requires reports to the Bundestag and the Bundesrat, and orders binding protection concepts in child and youth welfare. Family minister Lisa Paus spoke of more than 50 children a day experiencing sexual abuse. Baldy called the Act a milestone, citing wider file access for survivors, a round-the-clock medical child-protection hotline, and reporting to parliament.

### Digital policy and cybersecurity

Baldy has supported storage of IP addresses and opposed suspicionless scanning of private messages. On 5 December 2024 he told the Bundestag that bundling connection data, location data and IP addresses under the label of data retention hid the narrower question of which address belonged to whom, and that IP storage was "not the road into an Orwellian surveillance state". Nearly 90,000 reports of abuse imagery from the United States had reached the Federal Criminal Police Office the previous year, 98.4 percent with an IP address as the main lead; only four in ten could be cleared that way, and on the office's figures four weeks of retention would have raised the success rate above 90 percent, against nearly 25,000 discontinued proceedings a year in Germany.

He backed the Bundesrat bill for one month of storage by access providers, inside the [Court of Justice of the European Union](/organizations/justice-cjeu) rule that a period must not exceed what is strictly necessary. He called the Free Democratic Party "quick freeze" bill, which would secure data only after a specific suspicion, useless, and said the CDU/CSU draft of three months quoted the Court while omitting that limit. Boris Rhein (CDU), minister-president of Hesse, said about 40,000 proceedings had failed since the Court's judgment of 20 September 2022. Thorsten Lieb (FDP) called indiscriminate retention a serious interference with the Charter of Fundamental Rights; [Helge Limburg](/people/helge-limburg) of Alliance 90/The Greens recalled the Federal [Constitutional Court](/organizations/constitutional-court)'s 2010 annulment of the 2007 statute; [Stephan Brandner](/people/stephan-brandner) of the Alternative for Germany compared the plans to Orwell's *1984*. The bills were referred to committee.

On 22 October 2025 he wrote that he and the SPD group decisively reject suspicionless surveillance of private communications, and that a Danish Council draft allowing suspicionless scans and the breaking of end-to-end encryption was not acceptable. Other parts of the proposed European Union regulation, including a centre to help trace offenders, should be supported. Days earlier Justice Minister [Stefanie Hubig](/people/stefanie-hubig) had called suspicionless "chat control" taboo; the SPD's Dirk Wiese and the Union's Jens Spahn agreed, while Wiese said investigators still needed powers. On 9 October 2024 Baldy spoke for the SPD as the Bundestag rejected a CDU/CSU motion to transpose the NIS-2 directive at once.

### Pandemic measures and education

On 3 January 2022 Baldy wrote that he favoured a general COVID-19 vaccination mandate. A facility-based duty for staff close to vulnerable people was, he said, only a first step, because intensive care was especially burdened by unvaccinated patients. The duty touched bodily integrity but was, in his view, proportionate; he noted that German licensing required three clinical phases and that authorised vaccines were recommended by the Standing Committee on Vaccination. On 3 March 2022 he co-sponsored a cross-party group bill for vaccination of every adult (printed paper 20/899), which he said on 30 March he still supported for the next winter.

On 7 April the Bundestag rejected, by 296 votes to 378 with nine abstentions, a merged text (papers 20/899, 20/954 and 20/1353) requiring proof of vaccination or recovery from age 60, counselling from 18, and a vaccination register. Baldy voted yes. He later wrote that he had signed the duty from 18 and then the compromise from 60, because the Union's own timetable, a duty only in the autumn, would have been too late, and he regretted that nothing was agreed. The CDU's Tino Sorge argued that vaccination protected individuals but that a flat mandate would not avert an overload which did not then exist.

In September 2021 Baldy said education policy had drawn him into politics. A child of parents with neither the *Abitur* nor a degree, he cited figures of 79 *Abitur* graduates in 100 children of academics against 25 or 26 in 100 working-class children, and said that disparity had led him to become a pupil representative and join the SPD. In May 2025 he said educational justice starts in nursery and school, and listed expansion of the Startchancen programme, a legal right to all-day primary care, school digitalisation, a BAföG reform tying rates to living costs, and a special fund for school, university and childcare buildings.

## The 2025 federal election

### Snap election and renomination

The election of 23 February 2025 was brought forward after the Bundestag refused Chancellor [Olaf Scholz](/people/mig-olaf-scholz) its confidence. On 16 December 2024, of 717 members voting, 394 voted against the motion he had tabled on 11 December under Article 68 of the Basic Law, 207 supported it and 116 abstained; 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 new election for 23 February 2025.

Selection of candidates had started while a regular autumn election was still expected. On 17 September 2024 the executive boards of the Social Democratic Party in Mainz and in Mainz-Bingen jointly proposed that Daniel Baldy, the member for the Mainz constituency since 2021, stand again, and said they would put that proposal to the conference that decided the candidacy. The Christian Democratic Union changed its 2021 candidate: at a constituency delegates' meeting on the evening of 8 November 2024 it selected Ursula Groden-Kranich, who had sat in the Bundestag for eight years before losing both the constituency and a list place in 2021.

The SPD state list for Rhineland-Palatinate was decided on 15 December 2024 in Worms. Two hundred delegates adopted a slate of 32 candidates; Baldy was placed fourth, with 97.4 percent, behind Tanja Machalet, [Matthias Mieves](/people/matthias-mieves) and [Verena Hubertz](/people/verena-hubertz). The state electoral committee admitted that order on 24 January 2025. Groden-Kranich was seventh on the CDU list, after Julia Klöckner, Patrick Schnieder, Thomas Gebhart, [Mechthild Heil](/people/mechthild-heil), [Jan Metzler](/people/jan-metzler) and [Johannes Steiniger](/people/johannes-steiniger).

### First votes in constituency 204

Constituency 204 Mainz consists of the city of Mainz and part of the district of Mainz-Bingen, including the towns of Bingen am Rhein, Budenheim and Ingelheim am Rhein and the collective municipalities of Gau-Algesheim, Nieder-Olm and Rhein-Nahe; the rest of the district lies in constituency 205.

Of 251,074 people eligible to vote, 214,618 did so, a turnout of 85.5 percent, 4.3 points above the 2021 figure for the constituency. Groden-Kranich received the most first votes, 57,966, or 27.3 percent, up 3.7 points. Baldy was second with 50,411, or 23.7 percent, down 1.2 points. Alliance 90/The Greens took 40,617 votes (19.1 percent), [Alternative for Germany](/organizations/alternative-for-germany) 21,665 (10.2 percent, up 5.0 points), Die Linke 19,474 (9.2 percent) and the Free Democratic Party 8,024 (3.8 percent).

Second votes in the same constituency produced a different order and a much larger swing against the SPD. The CDU led with 56,648 (26.6 percent), ahead of the Greens on 44,047 (20.7 percent) and the SPD on 39,496 (18.5 percent, down 8.2 points). Die Linke rose to 11.1 percent and the AfD to 10.8 percent, while the FDP fell to 5.1 percent. Those local second votes did not themselves decide who was seated. Coverage is assessed for each party across the whole Land, not inside one constituency.

### List seat and the electoral reform

A 2023 amendment of the Federal Elections Act fixed the Bundestag at 630 seats and abolished overhang and compensatory mandates. From 2025 a party candidate with the most first votes receives a seat only if the seat is covered by the party's second-vote entitlement in that Land. Plurality winners are ranked by their share of valid first votes, seats are given in that order up to the entitlement, and any further constituency is left without a member; seats still left over go down the closed state list. The Federal Constitutional Court, in a judgment of 30 July 2024, held unanimously that this second-vote coverage procedure was compatible with the Basic Law.

In Rhineland-Palatinate the CDU's 760,623 second votes, 30.6 percent, were worth 11 seats, but CDU candidates finished first in 14 of the 15 constituencies. The exception was Kaiserslautern, where Mieves won 28.0 percent of the first votes for the SPD. Ranked by share, the CDU's eleventh and last covered winner was in Kreuznach, on 32.3 percent. The three below that line were not covered: Trier at 30.8 percent, Mainz at 27.3 percent, and Ludwigshafen/Frankenthal at 27.1 percent. Groden-Kranich's seventh place on the state list did not open another route. All 11 CDU seats from the Land went to constituency winners with higher first-vote shares, and no CDU candidate was returned from the list. The final seat calculation left 23 plurality winners without seats in Germany. The official result for Mainz records that the constituency stayed vacant for lack of sufficient second-vote coverage.

The SPD's 462,705 second votes in the Land, 18.6 percent, were worth seven seats. One was Mieves's constituency seat. The other six were filled from the list, in list order, by Machalet, Hubertz, Baldy from fourth place, Isabel Mackensen-Geis, Thorsten Rudolph and [Angelika Glöckner](/people/angelika-glockner). Baldy therefore sat again without holding the constituency, while the candidate who had led the first-vote count in Mainz did not enter the new Bundestag.

## The twenty-first Bundestag

### Interior and defence committees

Daniel Baldy sits in the 21st Bundestag for the Social Democratic Party of Germany, elected on the Rhineland-Palatinate state list after standing in constituency 204, Mainz. The SPD’s group of members from that state lists Mainz as his constituency and constituency 205, Worms, as one he also covers, because not every constituency in the state has its own SPD member.

The Bundestag lists him as an ordinary member of the Interior Committee and the Defence Committee and as a parliamentary secretary (*Schriftführer*). The SPD parliamentary group dates all three from 21 May 2025. The 21st Bundestag has 64 secretaries, elected on group proposals and rotating on sitting days; two sit with the presiding officer, keep the speakers’ list and record votes. In the SPD group he has been deputy spokesperson of the interior working group since 3 June 2025 and a member of the defence working group since 21 May 2025. From 21 May 2025 until 21 April 2026 he was also a substitute member of the Committee on Education, Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, and since 25 June 2025 a deputy member of the board of trustees of the Federal Agency for Civic Education. That board comprises 22 members of the Bundestag, apportioned by the strength of the groups, and oversees whether the agency’s work is effective and politically balanced.

### Intelligence oversight

On 26 June 2025 the plenary, under Article 45d of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, set up a nine-member Parliamentary Control Panel and elected six people to it: [Heiko Hain](/people/heiko-hain), [Marc Henrichmann](/people/marc-henrichmann) and [Alexander Throm](/people/alexander-throm) for the CDU/CSU, Baldy and [Sonja Eichwede](/people/sonja-eichwede) for the SPD, and [Konstantin von Notz](/people/konstantin-von-notz) for Alliance 90/The Greens. The panel chose Henrichmann of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany as chair and von Notz as deputy. Nominees of the Alternative for Germany and Die Linke did not receive the absolute majority the election requires, so three seats stayed empty. Bundestag vice-president [Josephine Ortleb](/people/josephine-ortleb) (SPD) chaired the constitutive meeting.

The panel supervises the federal intelligence services: the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), the Military Counterintelligence Service (MAD) and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV). Under the control-panel statute the federal government must inform it comprehensively about the services’ general activities and about events of particular importance, and the panel may demand reports on further matters. Deutschlandfunk described meetings in a shielded basement room under a duty of secrecy, with power to question service staff, inspect files and enter their offices. It also reported that decisions need six votes, a two-thirds majority of the nine seats, and that substitutes are not allowed, so one absence among the six members elected would leave the panel unable to decide. The Greens had warned of that risk, and Reichinnek of Die Linke accused the Union group of arbitrariness.

Ahead of cabinet discussions, Baldy defended a planned expansion of the services’ powers in a Deutschlandfunk interview broadcast on 10 August 2026. He said hybrid attacks had multiplied since 2022 and had to be confronted, and that greater power required stronger supervision: fewer oversight instances, but control that was concentrated and, as he put it, “entschlackt” (slimmed down). The broadcaster reported that the draft, according to press accounts, would create an Independent Control Council taking over tasks of the G10 Commission, including authorisation of interception, and would let the BND in defined threat situations not only collect information but intervene to avert harm.

### Conscription and security debates

In an SWR Aktuell interview published on 8 September 2025, Baldy took a harder line on military service than Defence Minister [Boris Pistorius](/people/boris-pistorius), also of the SPD. Baldy said the arrangement in force until conscription was suspended in 2011 had been the right one: an entire age group was mustered, and anyone who refused armed service for reasons of conscience went into civilian service instead. He called the cabinet bill then under way, which would require young men to fill in a questionnaire, “a first good step for defensive capability”, and said he could live with that view being a minority position in the SPD.

On 5 December 2025, at the 48th sitting, the Bundestag adopted the government’s Military Service Modernisation Act (*Wehrdienst-Modernisierungsgesetz*) by roll call, 323 to 272 with one abstention. On the official division list Baldy’s vote is recorded in the yes column. The Bundesrat consented on 19 December 2025. The act restores registration rather than an immediate general draft: every 18-year-old German citizen is to receive a questionnaire on motivation and suitability, which men must complete and women may complete, and every man born from January 2008 must attend a medical examination after reaching adulthood. From 2027 the defence ministry must report volunteer numbers to parliament; if they fall short, the Bundestag may activate a needs-based obligation (*Bedarfswehrpflicht*), the point at which compulsory call-up would become possible. Volunteers were offered gross pay of about 2,600 euro a month.

Pistorius called the statute a decisive step for the Bundeswehr and said that if volunteers were not enough a partial obligation would be unavoidable. [Norbert Röttgen](/people/norbert-rottgen), deputy leader of the Union group, called it an important part of security strategy. AfD member [Jörg Zirwes](/people/jorg-zirwes) called the law timid. [Desiree Becker](/people/desiree-becker) of Die Linke said young people had other plans than holding their heads out “im Regiment Merz für das Kapital der Reichen”. [Sara Nanni](/people/sara-nanni), the Greens’ security-policy spokesperson, said it did not answer how total defence would include every generation and both sexes. Student strikes against the plans were called in 90 cities; Pistorius treated that protest as part of a necessary argument.

## Other activities and public profile

### Unions and honorary offices

The Bundestag biography archived for the 20th electoral term, compiled from the member’s own information, lists membership of the Education and Science Workers’ Union (Gewerkschaft Erziehung und Wissenschaft, GEW) and of IG Bergbau, Chemie, Energie (IG BCE). The current biography page does not repeat those two lines. Europa-Union Deutschland lists him among the members of its parliamentary group in the 21st Bundestag.

The entries the Bundestag publishes under the members’ code of conduct name two unpaid roles in companies: member of the programme advisory board of the local station Antenne Mainz, at Radio Mainz Live Rundfunk GmbH, and member of the board of trustees of the Fridtjof Nansen Academy at the Weiterbildungszentrum Ingelheim, a non-profit company in Ingelheim am Rhein. The academy’s own list of that board includes him with the other Bundestag members on it.

The same disclosure records three functions in public-law bodies, each with an end date of 30 June 2026: member of the regional assembly (Regionalvertretung) of the Planungsgemeinschaft Rheinhessen-Nahe, the regional planning body; member of the special-purpose association (Zweckverband) of the Rheinhessen Sparkasse; and member of the Mainz city council. A membership list of the planning association dated 23 September 2026 names him as a Social Democratic Party of Germany representative of the city of Mainz, with Mareike von Jungenfeld as deputy. The archived disclosure for the previous term recorded honorary membership of the municipal council of Münster-Sarmsheim and of the Verbandsgemeinderat of Rhein-Nahe, both until 11 September 2023, and gave June 2024 as the start of the Mainz council seat and 9 October 2024 as the start of the planning-body and Sparkasse-association seats.

He also plays for FC Bundestag, the cross-party side of current and former members. The club’s squad page lists him in defence, with 57 appearances and four goals. On 20 May 2026 the Bundestag press office named him vice-captain of the squad, captained by [Fritz Güntzler](/people/fritz-guntzler), that won that month’s parliamentary European championship.

### Parliamentary conduct

On Wednesday 10 May 2023, in the 102nd sitting of the 20th Bundestag, Vice-President [Wolfgang Kubicki](/people/wolfgang-kubicki) called Baldy to order. The stenographic report places the exchange at the end of a speech by the non-attached member Robert Farle. After Kubicki had told Farle to conclude, the minutes record Farle saying, “Gründlich aufräumen in diesem Saustall! Im Ministerium, nicht im Bundestag!” (“Have a thorough clear-out in this pigsty! In the ministry, not in the Bundestag!”), and Baldy’s counter-interjection: “Alter, ey, nerv nicht mit deinem Gelaber! Also wirklich! Geh nach Hause!” Kubicki then said he was issuing the call to order for the word “Alter”, which he described as age discrimination, and that “Nerv nicht mit deinem Gelaber!” (“Don’t annoy me with your drivel!”) was unworthy of the House. The same passage records an interjection by [Katharina Dröge](/people/katharina-droge) of Alliance 90/The Greens, “Aber ‚Alter‘ ist doch keine Beleidigung!” (“But ‘Alter’ is not an insult!”), and applause from Markus Hümpfer of the SPD and [Klaus Ernst](/people/klaus-ernst) of Die Linke. The report of that sitting does not record any further penalty.

### Personal life

The biography the Bundestag publishes, which it states rests on members’ own information, gives Baldy’s date and place of birth as 25 September 1994 in Bingen am Rhein, and states that he is a Roman Catholic and that he is married. It does not name a spouse. The same page lists a constituency office at Fuststraße 8, 55116 Mainz. The *Allgemeine Zeitung* reported a citizens’ surgery there on Wednesday 29 April 2026, from 16:00 to 17:30, both by telephone and in person, with prior registration by email. In a profile published on 7 November 2024, the *Behörden Spiegel* described a separate format, the “event packages” on his website, under which constituents could arrange a meeting at home and he would bring coffee and cake, pizza and beer, or pretzels and Spundekäs. He told the paper that people often did not come to ordinary surgeries because they had no particular subject or did not think their concern was important enough.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/daniel-baldy