Daniela Rump

Daniela Rump (born 13 January 1996 in Hanover) is a German jurist and politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). She has sat in the Bundestag since the constituent meeting of the 21st legislative period on 25 March 2025, holding the direct mandate for constituency 48, Hildesheim, in Lower Saxony. At the federal election of 23 February 2025 she received 53,926 first votes (30.7 percent), ahead of Justus Lüder of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany on 51,421 votes (29.3 percent). On the party-list ballot in the same constituency the CDU placed ahead of the SPD, with 26.9 percent to 24.2 percent.

The Bundestag biography, compiled from members' own disclosures, records that Rump is Protestant and passed the Abitur in 2016 at the Ernst-Reuter-Schule in Pattensen. From 2017 to 2025 she studied law at Leibniz University Hannover and completed a Bachelor of Laws. Between 2017 and 2021 she worked for Volker Senftleben, then a member of the Landtag of Lower Saxony, and from 2018 to 2023 she was a seminar leader for the Friedrich Ebert Foundation. The SPD newspaper Vorwärts reported that she delayed the end of that degree by a few months after the federal election was brought forward to February 2025.

Rump joined the SPD in 2016 and has been a councillor in the municipality of Nordstemmen since that year. She chaired the council committee for education, culture and social affairs from 2021 to 2025, sat on the SPD state executive in Lower Saxony from 2021 to 2023, and has chaired the SPD sub-district of Hildesheim since 2023. From 2022 until 26 April 2025 she was chair of the Lower Saxony association of the child-protection organisation Der Kinderschutzbund, and from that date she has been a member of its team board. Vorwärts wrote during the campaign that the SPD had not previously returned a woman from Hildesheim to the Bundestag, and noted that the Social Democrat Elise Bartels had represented the city in the Reichstag more than a century earlier.

In the 21st Bundestag she has been a full member of the Committee on Labour and Social Affairs and of the Petitions Committee since 21 May 2025, and spokesperson for the SPD group's petitions working party from the same day. She is a deputy member of the Committee on Education, Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, of the Bundestag commission concerned with children's interests, and of the study commission on the COVID-19 pandemic. The SPD parliamentary group also lists her as co-opted to its executive, as a spokesperson, from 3 June 2025.

Early life and education

Upbringing in the Hildesheim district

Daniela Rump was born on 13 January 1996 in Hanover. The Bundestag biography, which the parliament states is based on members’ own information, records her as Protestant. She has lived since birth in Adensen, a village (Ortschaft) of the municipality of Nordstemmen in the district of Hildesheim, Lower Saxony. Adensen has its own local council (Ortsrat) within the municipality. Regional reporting has treated that village as her home: a November 2021 profile was datelined Adensen, and in September 2024 the same paper described the then 28-year-old as an Adenserin.

Schooling and legal studies

In 2016 she obtained the Allgemeine Hochschulreife, the German Abitur, at the Ernst-Reuter-Schule in Pattensen. The school, also known as the KGS Pattensen, teaches pupils from year 5 partly in classes that cross its Hauptschule, Realschule and Gymnasium streams. On the Gymnasium stream a second foreign language—French, Latin or Spanish—begins in year 6 in stream-specific courses, and the lower-secondary work is set out as preparation for the gymnasiale Oberstufe under the regulations of the Lower Saxony Ministry of Education for the Gymnasium.

From 2017 to 2025 she studied law at Leibniz University Hannover. The faculty’s law course is a state-examination programme with a standard length of ten semesters. It covers civil, criminal and public law together with foundation subjects, a course in economics or social science, a foreign-language certificate and three compulsory placements, in a court, a law office and an administration. After the advanced course and the specialization examinations, an integrated Bachelor of Laws may be awarded on application; passing the state compulsory-subject examination leads to the title Diplom-Jurist, and work as a judge, prosecutor or attorney further requires the two-year legal traineeship and the second state examination. The completion recorded for Rump is the Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.), and both the Bundestag biography and the SPD parliamentary group list her occupation as Juristin (LL.B.). The published span, 2017 to 2025, is longer than the ten-semester standard period. While she was still enrolled, local coverage described her as a law student: in November 2021, aged 25, she told a regional reporter that she carried political work alongside the degree, and in September 2024 the paper still referred to her as a Jurastudentin. A Lower Saxony SPD profile from the time she described herself as 29 said the degree was close to completion.

Early employment

From 2017 to 2021 she was a staff member in the office of Volker Senftleben, then a member of the Landtag of Lower Saxony. A Landtag paper on changes in the membership of the 18th electoral period records that Senftleben resigned his mandate on 9 November 2021 and that Luzia Moldenhauer succeeded him. Rump has written that the job allowed her to apply legal knowledge and to see parliamentary work at first hand. From 2018 to 2023 the Bundestag biography lists her as a Teamerin of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation. The foundation describes itself as linked to social democracy and the trade-union movement and as educating people who want to work for those aims. The state SPD profile also lists a side job at Deutsche Post alongside the Landtag post.

Municipal politics in Nordstemmen

Council membership

Nordstemmen is a municipality in the district of Hildesheim, Lower Saxony, with ten localities, including Adensen, where Rump lives. The 2022 census counted 11,928 inhabitants; a year-end 2025 estimate was about 11,800.

The town hall of Nordstemmen, with the word Rathaus above the entrance.

Under the Niedersächsisches Kommunalverfassungsgesetz (NKomVG), the council (Gemeinderat) is the municipality’s principal organ: the elected councillors, titled Ratsfrau or Ratsherr, plus the full-time mayor ex officio. Election is for five years, and terms in this cycle begin on 1 November. The statutory size is 30 seats at 12,001 to 15,000 inhabitants and 28 at 11,001 to 12,000; a municipality above 8,000 inhabitants may also reduce the next council by two, four or six seats by bylaw. Nordstemmen’s council through 2026 had 30 elected seats. A council decision cut the body elected on 13 September 2026 to 28.

The council alone decides development aims, bylaws, local taxes, the budget and investment programme, and land-use plans, and it supervises the administration. The charter of 28 June 2022 also reserves to it property transactions, and certain contracts with council or committee members, above €15,000. Nine localities elect a seven-member Ortsrat—Hallerburg has an Ortsvorsteher instead—and a councillor who lives in a locality sits on that Ortsrat with an advisory vote.

The Niedersächsische Kinderkommission, constituted on 6 December 2016, listed Rump as a Ratsfrau and a member of the Fachausschuss Bildung, Kultur und Soziales. The biography she gave the Bundestag says she has been a councillor since 2016, and its register of interests lists the seat as honorary, with no end date. For 13 September 2026 the local Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) placed her second on a list of 18, behind mayoral candidate Andreas Arlt. The SPD remained the largest group, with 35.62 percent and ten seats. A local roundup of named winners does not give her personal vote. The biography’s “2021 bis 2026” for the deputy group chair matches the term that began on 1 November 2021, not a recorded earlier resignation.

Committee and caucus roles

The biography also records her as deputy chair of the SPD council group from 2021 to 2026 and, from 2021 to 2025, as chair of the Fachausschuss Bildung, Kultur und Soziales. The local SPD lists two deputies, Rump and Daniel Bartsch-Romanovski, Gerald Ludewig as group chair, and Andreas Arlt as council chair. There she is a member, not the chair, of the Fachausschuss Schule, Jugend, Soziales und Kultur. A November 2021 profile, when she was 25 and a law student, already used both titles. The 2016 state report and the Bundestag say “Bildung, Kultur und Soziales”; the 2021 meeting report and the later party list say “Schule, Jugend, Soziales und Kultur.”

On 30 November 2021 she chaired the committee’s first public meeting of the term, about two and a half hours in the town hall. She proposed holding later meetings in turn at the municipality’s schools; members and the head teachers present welcomed the idea. Staff reported 511 primary-school children: 77 in Adensen, 186 in Barnten and 248 in Nordstemmen. The committee unanimously approved renewing the long-jump facilities in Rössing, costed at €74,000, after SPD member Marcus Schwenkler asked whether it could cost less.

The day before, she said education and social policy were her focus beside her law degree. She argued for free school materials and meals and for faster digitalisation, calling it unjust that opportunity still depended on parents’ income. She wanted young people to have a real say, suggested a youth mayor or a youth parliament like the one then taking shape in Hildesheim, and said pupils should be able to bring concerns to the committee. The report gives these as her aims; it does not record the council adopting them.

Party offices in the SPD

Local and state roles

Daniela Rump has been a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) since 2016. A congress of the SPD sub-district (Unterbezirk) for the district of Hildesheim, reported on 13 March 2016, elected her an ordinary member (Beisitzerin) of the sub-district executive, confirmed Waltraud Friedemann as chair, and returned Cornelia Ott, Katja Schoner, Bernd Westphal and Sven Wieduwilt as deputy chairs. At a members' meeting of the local branch (Ortsverein) Adensen/Hallerburg, in the municipality of Nordstemmen, the then 23-year-old Rump was elected branch chair. The Leine-Zeitung reported the vote on 2 March 2019.

By November 2021 she was deputy chair of the Hildesheim sub-district and a member of the SPD state executive in Lower Saxony. The same local profile recorded a second term as deputy chair of the state executive of the Young Socialists in the SPD (Jusos). The Jusos state conference in Vechta on 16 October 2021 had re-elected her to that post. On 29 May 2021, at the ordinary state congress in the city of Hildesheim, delegates elected her a Beisitzerin on the Landesvorstand when they also returned Stephan Weil as state chair. The executive's accountability report to the next ordinary congress, held in Aurich on 24 June 2023, still lists her among the Beisitzerinnen and Beisitzer in office since 29 May 2021, with no departure date beside her name. That congress chose a new slate of 18 Beisitzerinnen and Beisitzer; Rump was not among them. Her Bundestag biography, drawn from her own information, gives the state-executive term as 2021 to 2023.

Chair of the Hildesheim sub-district

Under the SPD organisational statute the party is divided into local branches (Ortsvereine), sub-districts (Unterbezirke) and districts (Bezirke), with political will formed from the bottom upward, though a Bezirk's statutes may use other names for these units. The Hildesheim Unterbezirk is the party organisation for the district of Hildesheim. On 6 May 2023 its congress, in the multi-purpose hall in Eime, elected Rump to succeed Sven Wieduwilt. She was then a 27-year-old law student from Nordstemmen and already deputy chair; the sub-district's report describes her as the only candidate and gives her 91.2 percent of the votes of 115 delegates.

The Leine-Zeitung, reporting the next day, wrote that 140 members cast their votes for her. The Hildesheimer Allgemeine called the result a good one and reported that Wieduwilt offered self-criticism and received a standing ovation. He told the congress that membership had fallen in the district and elsewhere, and that his work as office manager to Lower Saxony's economy minister Olaf Lies—who attended with the MEP Bernd Lange—had left him too little time for the party office. In her nomination speech Rump asked for more weight on policy for children and young people, education, energy, climate protection and digitalisation, and the congress elected Antonia Hillberg secretary, returned Ute Witteczek as finance officer, and chose Marion Heine, Lars Zeugner, Arne Hillberg, Alexander Lonzen and Tim Bellgardt as deputy chairs. The sub-district website still lists Rump as chair. The deputies named there are Marion Heine (Bockenem), Alexander Lonzen (Hildesheim), Annika Wehr (Elze) and Martin Wincek (Bad Salzdetfurth); Hillberg remains secretary and Witteczek finance officer.

Child protection and civic associations

Children's and youth commission

Rump sat on the first Niedersächsische Kinderkommission, which the Landtag of Lower Saxony had resolved in 2015 to establish with the state youth-welfare committee. The state government appointed the ten members. Constituted on 6 December 2016, it was, the social-affairs ministry said, only the third children's commission in Germany, after those of the Bundestag and Bavaria, and the first to join Landtag members with outside specialists. Rump was listed as a former state pupil spokesperson and a Nordstemmen councillor on the committee for education, culture and social affairs; the members elected Waldemar Stange chair and Gunda Voigts deputy.

The commission chose its own subjects and, with the 17th legislative period ending early, had about a year. Between 6 December 2016 and 5 September 2017 it met five times, took up the Convention on the Rights of the Child, participation and reporting, held an expert hearing, and had the Niedersächsisches Studieninstitut survey municipalities. A summit set for 20 November 2017 was dropped; the commission instead filed a final report, dated 28 September 2017, with the Landtag. A 2018 amendment then gave a Kinder- und Jugendkommission a statutory remit on participation, protection and children's rights, with its office in the Landesjugendamt. Rump's Bundestag biography, drawn from members' own disclosures, records the 2016–2017 seat under that later name.

Kinderschutzbund Niedersachsen

Der Kinderschutzbund, Landesverband Niedersachsen e.V., founded on 22 June 1957 with its office in Hanover, is the state branch of the German Child Protection Association and the umbrella for the local associations; it names child poverty, protection from violence and children's rights as its themes. The Nordwest-Zeitung reported that Rump had been active there since 2015, first on the youth council, and state chair since May 2022.

She had been deputy chair since 2019. When Johannes Schmidt, chair for 30 years, did not stand again, the members' assembly elected her, then 26, with no opposing candidate. On 26 May 2022 the Leine-Zeitung put the association at about 6,500 members in 58 local and district associations and quoted her on participation and equal chances for young people. In June 2023 she told the Nordwest-Zeitung that rural adolescents had fewer opportunities to take part than their peers in cities, and that funding programmes were necessary but not enough. The Bundestag disclosure register lists the unpaid chair until 26 April 2025 and Teamvorstand membership from that date. The association's transparency page places her, of Adensen, on that board for lobby and public relations, with six other honorary members, and counts 55 local associations.

Unions and local associations

The same disclosure lists further memberships and no office in them. They include the Arbeiterwohlfahrt, a welfare association founded in 1919; ver.di, whose membership it describes as spanning about a thousand occupations; and the IG Bergbau, Chemie, Energie, the union for chemicals, energy, mining and related industries such as glass, rubber, ceramics, plastics, leather and paper.

Locally she belongs to TTC Adensen-Hallerburg, a club of the Tischtennis-Verband Niedersachsen; to the Hildesheim and Sarstedt sections of the Technisches Hilfswerk, the federal agency for technical help in civil protection at home and abroad; and to the support association of the volunteer fire brigade Adensen-Hallerburg. She is also in the friends' association of the Fagus Factory in Alfeld, on the UNESCO World Heritage List; in the support association of the Kreismusikverband Hildesheim, the district music association, which runs a youth orchestra; and in Arbeit und Dritte Welt e.V., founded in Hildesheim on 15 March 1995 by local trade unionists to repair donated tools and machines for projects abroad and to provide job-centre work placements.

Candidacy for the 2025 federal election

Succession to Bernd Westphal

Bernd Westphal of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), from Giesen, had been a member of the Bundestag since 2013 and, from October 2015, the SPD parliamentary group's spokesman on economic and energy policy. In both the 19th and 20th electoral periods the Bundestag recorded him as directly elected in constituency 48, Hildesheim, in Lower Saxony.

On 11 July 2024 the Hildesheimer Allgemeine Zeitung reported that he would not stand again, describing him as the face of the Hildesheim SPD in Berlin after 13 years. Six days later the paper wrote that few members had been told in advance, that nominations had opened, and that Rump, the sub-district chair, had already said she wanted the succession. She spoke of several interested people without naming them; the paper reported that Tim Bellgardt, from Westphal's Bundestag office, was also considering a run.

Nomination

Three members reached the selection meetings: Rump, then 28 and from Adensen in Nordstemmen; Bernd Beushausen, the mayor of Alfeld; and Sebastian Wießmeyer of Hildesheim. At a members' meeting in Hildesheim, the Hildesheimer Allgemeine reported, differences in their positions became clearer than before. On 13 September, ahead of the third and last presentation, columnist Rainer Breda wrote that no favourite was apparent among about 120 delegates due to meet on 21 September in Eime. He treated Wießmeyer as the outsider because he was the least known, and wrote that it was unclear whether delegates would be guided by strategic considerations, such as who would appeal more widely to voters in the constituency.

On 18 September the executive of the Hildesheim Young Socialists in the SPD published a statement placing itself collectively behind Rump and urging delegates to do the same. The text pointed to her membership from local-branch level up to the party's state executive and to her chairmanship of the sub-district. The SPD paper Vorwärts later described that executive decision as unanimous.

At the constituency conference on 21 September 2024, in Eime's multipurpose hall, Rump received 71 percent of 113 delegate votes against Beushausen and Wießmeyer. The Hildesheimer Allgemeine called the margin surprisingly clear. She told Leinetal24 that the campaign should explain politics in person, that the local SPD should campaign together, and that social media mattered for reaching younger voters. She named social justice, a migration policy built on European solutions and rights-respecting procedures rather than closed borders, and fair collectively agreed wages as her themes. The Federal Returning Officer's directory for the 2025 German federal election also placed her 20th on the Lower Saxony SPD state list and gave her occupation as a law student in Nordstemmen.

Winter campaign

The nomination was made while a regular election was still expected in autumn 2025. After the governing coalition broke up in November 2024, Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier dissolved the Bundestag on 27 December and set a snap election for Sunday, 23 February 2025, following Chancellor Olaf Scholz's lost confidence vote. Rump told Vorwärts that the early decision on a candidate let the local party start once an early vote was in prospect. She said she had planned to finish her law degree before a September election and postponed the degree by a few months when a February date became clear in November; she no longer had lectures to attend. She said she would not campaign through the newspaper but through home visits, information stands and direct conversation.

Vorwärts editor Kai Doering, reporting on 22 February, described a January Saturday on which she spoke to about 40 retired members of the railway and transport union EVG and then worked a pedestrian-zone stand in cold, wet weather, with Jusos handing out leaflets. Westphal, 64, campaigned with her and said she could reach younger voters and women, that she was the only woman seeking the constituency mandate, and that the SPD had never sent a woman from Hildesheim to the Bundestag. The Returning Officer's directory lists nine admitted candidates for Wahlkreis 48 and records Rump, born in 1996, as the only woman; the others, all men, included CDU candidate Justus Lüder. Westphal's comparison was with Elise Bartels, who, the Hildesheim city archive records, entered the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic in 1922 as a successor deputy and the first woman from the city. Vorwärts reported a joint office-window poster, "Unsere Frau für Berlin," and her own poster motto, "Zeit für frischen Wind"; Westphal said she should use his experience but kept her own line.

On 12 February the Hildesheimer Allgemeine interviewed her under a headline that she stood for a generational change and wanted to enter the Bundestag. The introduction called the 29-year-old the candidate the SPD was fielding while the party polled poorly, noted that she had chaired the district SPD since May 2023, and said Westphal had represented the constituency for three electoral periods.

The Hildesheim result

Constituency 48

Constituency 48, named Hildesheim, is a Bundestag electoral district in Lower Saxony. For the 2025 German federal election on 23 February 2025, the Federal Returning Officer defined it as the whole district of Hildesheim (Landkreis Hildesheim). In the 20th Bundestag (2021–2025) the seat was held by Bernd Westphal of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), recorded as directly elected for Wahlkreis 048. At the 2021 election the SPD won the district with 61,857 first votes, 38.7 percent of 160,009 valid first votes, ahead of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) on 41,230 votes (25.8 percent).

First votes

In the final 2025 result, Daniela Rump (SPD) was elected in the constituency with 53,926 first votes, 30.7 percent of 175,377 valid first votes, 7.9 percentage points below the SPD share in 2021. The Federal Returning Officer’s list of elected members records both that constituency result and place 20 on the SPD state list for Lower Saxony. The Braunschweiger Zeitung’s ordered account of the same list likewise placed her 20th, after Christos Pantazis and before candidates it identified at places 27, 34 and 64. The seat entered against her name is the constituency mandate: the returning officer lists her among those elected in a Lower Saxony constituency, at 30.7 percent in Wahlkreis 048.

Justus Lüder (CDU) was the runner-up, with 51,421 votes (29.3 percent, up 3.6 points). The gap was 2,505 votes, or 1.4 percentage points, narrower than the 20,627-vote SPD lead over the CDU in 2021. The Hildesheimer Allgemeine called the evening a head-to-head race whose result was fixed only at 22:54, described Rump’s win as an “Überraschungssieg” after a “Zitterpartie”, and wrote that the outcome “was not to be expected” given her party’s downward trend.

Alternative for Germany (AfD) took 31,963 first votes (18.2 percent), up 11.1 points from 11,387 votes and 7.1 percent in 2021, and finished third. Alliance 90/The Greens received 16,511 (9.4 percent), down 4.9 points from 22,973 and 14.4 percent. Die Linke received 12,021 (6.9 percent), up 3.4 points from 5,481 and 3.4 percent, and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) 4,369 (2.5 percent), down 4.7 points from 11,507 and 7.2 percent. The Free Voters had 2,120 (1.2 percent, up 0.3 points from 1,420 and 0.9 percent), the independent candidate Bellgardt 1,630 (0.9 percent), and Volt Germany 1,416 (0.8 percent). Those nine candidacies account for every valid first vote.

Second votes and turnout

The second-vote order did not match the constituency result. Of 175,762 valid second votes, the CDU led with 47,276 (26.9 percent), up 4.1 points from 36,504 and 22.8 percent in 2021. The SPD followed with 42,610 (24.2 percent), down 10.5 points from 55,439 and 34.7 percent, so the party that won the direct mandate was second on the list vote, 4,666 votes behind the CDU.

The AfD received 31,742 second votes (18.1 percent), up 10.4 points from 12,161 and 7.6 percent. The Greens received 20,303 (11.6 percent), down 5.1 points from 26,565 and 16.6 percent, and Die Linke 14,749 (8.4 percent), up 5.1 points from 5,308 and 3.3 percent. The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), shown with no 2021 comparison in the official table, received 6,580 (3.7 percent), level in share with the FDP on 6,534 (3.7 percent, down 5.9 points from 15,397 and 9.6 percent).

Turnout was 176,681 of 211,156 eligible voters, 83.7 percent, 8.5 points above 2021, when 161,685 of 215,131 eligible voters voted (75.2 percent). The electorate was 3,975 smaller than in 2021, while the number of voters rose by 14,996. Invalid ballots numbered 1,304 first votes (0.7 percent of ballots cast, down 0.3 points) and 919 second votes (0.5 percent, down 0.7 points).

Membership of the 21st Bundestag

Taking the seat

Daniela Rump holds a constituency seat (Wahlkreismandat) for Wahlkreis 048 Hildesheim, Lower Saxony, in the 21st German Bundestag, sitting for the Social Democratic Party of Germany. At the federal election on 23 February 2025 she won the district with 30.7 percent of the first votes (53,926), ahead of Justus Lüder of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany on 29.3 percent (51,421); turnout was 83.7 percent. The 21st Bundestag has 630 members, 299 from constituencies and the rest from state lists, after second-vote coverage replaced overhang and compensatory seats.

The Bundestag dates her membership from 25 March 2025, the day the new parliament held its constituent sitting in the Reichstag building in Berlin. Gregor Gysi of Die Linke, as Alterspräsident, opened the sitting; the House then elected Julia Klöckner (CDU) President of the Bundestag with 382 of 630 votes, against 204 votes and with 31 abstentions. The stenographic report of that sitting lists Rump among the members recorded as taking part in the roll-call ballots for the presidency and the vice-presidencies. The SPD paper Vorwärts, which followed her that morning, reported that she had reached Berlin only the day before, had met Hanover-district SPD members including Defence Minister Boris Pistorius at the Jakob-Kaiser-Haus, and later called casting her ballot in the alphabetical roll moving, saying she felt what a great honour it was, as an elected member, to defend democracy.

Offices and group roles

The Bundestag biography lists Rump as a full member of the Committee on Labour and Social Affairs and of the Petitions Committee, as Obfrau of the Petitions Committee, and as a deputy member of the Committee on Education, Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, of the coronavirus enquete commission, and of the Children's Commission (Kinderkommission). Structured data on that page gives every one of those roles the start date 25 March 2025, the same day as her entry to the House. The SPD parliamentary group's member page uses later dates: from 21 May 2025 she is listed as a member of the labour and social affairs working group and of the corresponding Bundestag committee, as a full member of the Petitions Committee, as spokesperson of the petitions working group, and as a deputy member of the family-affairs working group and committee.

On 20 May 2025 the group's press office said the faction had that day elected its working-group spokespersons, whom it also calls Obleute, and named Rump for petitions. The petitions working-group page dates both her full membership and the spokesperson role from 21 May 2025. The member page also lists her as co-opted to the Fraktionsvorstand, in the role of spokesperson, from 3 June 2025; as a deputy on the enquete working group from 4 November 2025 and on the commission "Aufarbeitung der Corona-Pandemie und Lehren für zukünftige pandemische Ereignisse" from 5 November 2025; and as a deputy member of the Kinderkommission from 8 October 2025. The SPD Landesgruppe Niedersachsen/Bremen, which carries a page for her, dates the petitions spokesperson role from 20 May 2025.

Her Berlin office is Platz der Republik 1, 11011 Berlin, telephone 030 227 70252, and the constituency office in Hildesheim is Osterstraße 39A, 31134 Hildesheim, telephone 05121 4085340. A second constituency office, at Paulistraße 6, 31061 Alfeld (Leine), telephone 05181 3131, appears both on her own contact page and on the Land group's page. The Land group gives the Alfeld email as daniela.rump.ma04@bundestag.de; her contact page publishes daniela.rump.wk@bundestag.de for that office, the address it also gives for Hildesheim.

Labour and social affairs

Committee work

Daniela Rump has been a full member of the Bundestag Committee on Labour and Social Affairs since its constitution on 21 May 2025, when she was listed among the eight ordinary members the Social Democratic Party of Germany sent to the 42-member committee. From the same date the SPD parliamentary group also lists her in its working group on labour and social affairs.

She was an SPD rapporteur on the coalition’s rewrite of basic security for jobseekers. At the second and third reading on 5 March 2026, Annika Klose and CDU member Hülya Düber named Rump, with Jens Peick, Kai Whittaker and Düber, as having negotiated the Thirteenth Act amending Book II of the Social Code (Drucksachen 21/3541, 21/4087 and 21/4522), introduced under labour minister Bärbel Bas.

Pensions and basic income support

In her first plenary speech, on 17 September 2025, Rump criticised what she called a degrading tone toward people on benefits. She said one in five recipients of Bürgergeld was an Aufstocker, in work but still needing a top-up, and put the labour and social budget at about €190 billion.

On 18 December 2025 she opposed an Alternative for Germany motion to disregard 25 per cent of the statutory pension, or at least €100, in basic income support in old age and for reduced earning capacity. She called a flat disregard unfair because it ignored contribution length and did nothing for people just above the line, and said poverty began in low pay; she pointed to wages, the Grundrente and the pension commission instead.

On 15 January 2026, in the bill’s first reading, she said most recipients were children, Aufstocker, single parents, ill people or jobseekers, defended the cooperation plan Bas had kept, and said the 2026 budget added €1 billion for job centres. Sanctions, she said, must not hit people who were not responsible for their situation. On 5 March she described the final text as help with responsibility, not blanket punishment: housing costs would still be met for a year at up to 1.5 times the appropriate rent for households with children and single parents, parents would have two extra months before having to take work, and rules on undeclared work, including employer liability, would be tighter, while the cooperation plan stayed.

The Christian Democratic Union of Germany/CSU-driven bill dropped the name Bürgergeld, tightened cooperation duties and put placement into work, including lower-paid work, ahead of further training. Missed job-centre appointments could mean cuts or loss of benefit. It was to start in stages on 1 July 2026 for about 5.5 million people. For the SPD it undid a benefit the party had created in the previous term. CDU general secretary Carsten Linnemann said it restored “Fördern und Fordern”. Alliance 90/The Greens member Timon Dzienus called the sanctions inhumane; Die Linke leader Sören Pellmann said they used fear rather than creating stable jobs; AfD member Gerrit Huy said savings would be small and the administration burdened.

Recorded votes and statements

On 5 December 2025 the Bundestag held a roll-call on the bill to stabilise the pension level and equalise child-raising periods (Drucksachen 21/1929 and 21/3112). The published final result was 318 in favour, 225 against and 53 abstentions; Rump voted yes with every other SPD member. It holds the pension level at least 48 per cent through the adjustment of 1 July 2031 and extends child-raising credits for children born before 1992 to three years. Chancellor Friedrich Merz had treated 316 votes, a chancellor’s majority, as a coalition test. Seven CDU/CSU members voted no over cost; Tagesschau, citing the pension-insurance report, put the budget cost of the guarantee at about €122 billion by 2039. The AfD and the Greens voted against; Die Linke had decided to abstain.

Answering abgeordnetenwatch in April 2026, Rump said the package gave security to people with long working lives, child-raising or care, but was financially demanding. She wanted civil servants, politicians and the self-employed in the statutory pension—a step needing a constitutional amendment and a two-thirds majority she did not see—and said a commission should take up contributions and old-age poverty. She wrote that she had backed another candidate for chancellor and that cooperation did not mean sharing every position of the partner. In June 2026 she said fairness between generations was not young against old, and in September 2025 that she would press for 48 per cent past 2031.

On 5 March 2026 the final roll-call on the basic-security bill was 320 in favour, 268 against and two abstentions. Rump voted yes; SPD members Jan Dieren and Ruppert Stüwe abstained.

The Petitions Committee

SPD spokesperson

Article 17 of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany states that everyone has the right, individually or together with others, to address written requests or complaints to the competent authorities and to the legislature. Article 45c requires the Bundestag to appoint a Petitions Committee for requests and complaints addressed to it under that article, with the committee's powers of review fixed by federal statute.

The committee of the 21st electoral term first met on 21 May 2025 under Bundestag President Julia Klöckner. Its 26 full members were nine from the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union, six from the Alternative for Germany, five from the Social Democratic Party of Germany, and three each from Alliance 90/The Greens and Die Linke. The AfD nominee for chair, Manfred Schiller, failed to win a secret ballot; no deputy was named, and Andreas Mattfeldt (CDU/CSU) took acting leadership as the longest-serving member. Rump was one of the five SPD members.

The Bundestag biography lists Rump as a full member and as Obfrau, the group's lead on the committee rather than its chair; by October 2025 the acting chair was Dr. Hülya Düber (CDU/CSU). The SPD group elected her spokesperson (Obfrau) of its petitions working group on 20 May 2025; the group's list dates that role, her working-group membership and her committee seat from 21 May 2025, with Stüwe as deputy spokesperson from 24 June 2025.

Annual reports and plenary debates

On 15 October 2025 Düber gave Klöckner the 2024 activity report, printed paper 21/1900; the plenary debated it the next day. It recorded 9,260 petitions, 18.84 percent fewer than in 2023, about two thirds of them personal cases: 1,526 for Interior, 1,279 for Labour and Social Affairs, and 1,203 for Justice. From mid-2024 the co-signature period for a published petition ran to six weeks rather than four, and the quorum for a public hearing fell from 50,000 to 30,000 signatures.

Presentation of the 2025 petitions report on 10 June 2026; from left, Manfred Schiller, Andreas Mattfeldt, Bundestag President Julia Klöckner, acting chair Hülya Düber, Corinna Rüffer, Daniela Rump and Sören Pellmann.

In the 34th sitting, chaired by Vice President Omid Nouripour, the speakers were Düber, Schiller, Rump, Corinna Rüffer (Greens), Sören Pellmann (Left), Mattfeldt and Marlon Bröhr. Düber called the committee a "seismograph of society"; Schiller called 2024 the post-reunification low and a loss of trust, which Mattfeldt disputed. Rump welcomed the cross-party work but called the fall close to a trend, partly from procedure and delay, and treated the lower quorum as a gain because more people could be heard in person.

On 10 June 2026 Düber presented the 2025 report, printed paper 21/6000, to Klöckner. It recorded 12,399 petitions, 3,139 more than in 2024, a rise of 34 percent, or about 50 a day over 249 working days. Interior had 1,606, Labour and Social Affairs 1,581, and Justice and Consumer Protection 1,571. Electronic submissions were 5,807, more than a third; 652 were published online, against 413 the year before; ten passed 30,000 co-signatures and so the quorum for a public hearing. The committee met 19 times, took 378 petitions individually and sat in public four times.

In the 82nd sitting, under Vice President Bodo Ramelow, the speakers were Düber, Schiller, David Mandrella (SPD, his first speech), Rüffer, Ina Latendorf (Left), Nicklas Kappe (CDU/CSU), Nicole Hess (AfD), Rump, Tina Winklmann (Greens), Wolfgang Dahler, Olaf Hilmer and Sandra Carstensen. Kappe called the committee a seismograph of the public mood. Rump likened the portal to the Bittschriftenlinde in Potsdam, where requests were once left in a tree, and told Schiller that petitioners were flagging failures whether government or opposition was the audience.

Notable petitions

In October 2025 Rump credited petitions with easier balcony-solar rules, maternity protection after pregnancy loss, a simpler withdrawal of the mini-job exemption from pension insurance, and mammography screening at ages 70 to 75. "All diese positiven Veränderungen haben wir Petitionen von mutigen Bürgerinnen und Bürgern zu verdanken," she said. In July 2024, with every member in favour, the committee had asked the government to let mini-jobbers revoke a pension opt-out without quitting; she said the previous Bundestag had not acted and that an amending law was now intended.

On 10 June 2026 the miscarriage petition was taken up by several speakers, not only Rump. Tagesschau reported on 30 January 2025 that Natascha Sagorski of Unterföhring, told after her own miscarriage that she could work the next day, had collected more than 70,000 signatures; statutory protection then started only after the sixth month. Mandrella named her, said the committee had referred the petition "zur Berücksichtigung," and said tiered maternity protection had applied since June 2025. Rump also named Sagorski and said protection from the 13th week had been enacted; the record notes applause from the whole House. Schiller agreed every group had backed the referral and that the change was made, but noted the 2021 coalition agreement had already promised it, so how far the petition caused the law was uncertain even if it had added pressure.

Family policy, the Children's Commission and the Corona inquiry

Deputy memberships

Rump sits on family policy and on the pandemic review as a deputy, not a full member. Her Bundestag biography lists deputy membership of the Committee on Education, Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, of its Children's Commission (Kommission zur Wahrnehmung der Belange der Kinder), and of the enquete commission on the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany; structured data on that page date all three from 25 March 2025. The SPD group gives later dates: the family committee and its working group from 21 May 2025, the Children's Commission from 8 October 2025, the enquete working group from 4 November 2025, and the commission from 5 November 2025. She was not among the SPD deputies named when the commission was constituted on 8 September 2025; those were Johannes Fechner, Tanja Machalet and Truels Reichardt. Reichardt has held the full Children's Commission seat for the SPD; the minutes of 22 April 2026 list Rump as his deputy and as absent. She chaired the Kinderschutzbund in Lower Saxony from 2022 until 26 April 2025.

Children and the pandemic

The Bundestag set up the Enquete Commission "Aufarbeitung der Corona-Pandemie und Lehren für zukünftige pandemische Ereignisse" on 10 July 2025, on an amended motion of the CDU/CSU and the SPD. Printed paper 21/805 records adoption with the votes of the CDU/CSU, the SPD, Alliance 90/The Greens and Die Linke, and abstention by the Alternative for Germany; an AfD motion for a committee of inquiry was rejected by those four groups. Fourteen members of parliament and 14 external experts sit on it — five for the CDU/CSU, three each for the AfD and the SPD, two for the Greens and one for the Left. It is to describe causes, course, consequences and state measures, include citizens' perspectives, and report by 30 June 2027.

At the constitutive sitting on 8 September 2025, opened by Bundestag President Julia Klöckner, members elected Franziska Hoppermann (CDU) chair with all 25 votes; AfD nominee Claudia Weiss, with seven votes, was not elected deputy chair, and that post stayed vacant. Klöckner said too little attention had been paid to psychological effects on children and young people. On 21 September 2026 Michael Hose (CDU) opened the first public sitting after the summer recess as the new chair. The Deutsches Ärzteblatt reported that he succeeded Hoppermann after she left on becoming CDU general secretary.

On 20 April 2026 the two bodies invited 150 people aged 12 to 25 to a protected exchange in Berlin. After a welcome from the Bundestag president and the chairs, age groups discussed how they had fared, what they had missed, whether they had understood the rules, and what should go better next time, then presented recommendations.

On 22 April, chaired by Hose, the Children's Commission held a non-public discussion of education, mental health, participation and the needs of the post-pandemic generation. Hoppermann, Mechthilde Wittmann, Kay-Uwe Ziegler, Lina Seitzl, Denise Loop and Ates Gürpinar attended for the enquete commission. Sabine Andresen (Kinderschutzbund), Amy Kirchhoff and Lilli Berthold (Bundesschülerkonferenz), Wendelin Haag (German Federal Youth Council) and Julian Lagemann (German Sports Youth) spoke on trust in adult decisions, effects of closing schools and services, including violence, mental strain that studies had not shown returning to earlier levels, school emergency plans, crisis participation, and access to sport and meeting places. Only full members were to ask questions. Rump is marked absent, and the verbatim record gives her no intervention. Hoppermann said the enquete commission would return to schools and to children and young people; Hose referred to a report in 2027.

On 5 June 2026 the Hildesheimer Allgemeine Zeitung reported that, at the Hi-Zukunftsfestival in Hildesheim, speaking with managing director Max Hase, editor Joscha Röhrkasse and editor-in-chief Martin Schiepanski, Rump had positioned herself against a social-media ban for under-16s. The interview is for subscribers; the open text does not give her reasons. The federal cabinet's key points of 14 October 2026 do not set a general age of 16. It said the aim was not to exclude young people from digital life or to ban for its own sake, backed an EU KIDS Act with a social-network age of 13 and a ban on addictive design, and, pending a European rule, a national bar on use under 13, with exceptions for services shown to suit children and graduated limits from 13 to 18.