Denise Loop

Denise Loop (born 19 May 1994 in Itzehoe) is a German politician of Alliance 90/The Greens and a member of the Bundestag from Schleswig-Holstein. The Bundestag lists her occupation as a social worker. She sat in the 20th Bundestag, which was constituted on 26 October 2021, and in the 21st Bundestag, constituted on 25 March 2025, holding her seat through the Schleswig-Holstein state list after standing in constituency 2, Nordfriesland – Dithmarschen Nord.

She grew up in Beidenfleth, in the district of Steinburg, within sight of the Brokdorf Nuclear Power Plant, and lives with her family in Heide, the seat of Dithmarschen. NDR reported that she went to school in Glückstadt, helped found a Green Youth group there, first encountered the Greens at an anti-nuclear demonstration, and has been politically active since 2010. The same report described her as a committed scout who goes to summer camp with youth groups each year. The Bundestag biography, which is based on the member's own disclosure, dates her party membership from 2016 and records that she is Protestant, married and the parent of one child.

From 2014 to 2018 she took a bachelor's degree in social work at the Kiel University of Applied Sciences. She then completed state recognition as a social worker with Kreis Dithmarschen in 2018 and 2019. From 2019 she worked as a state-recognized social worker in the district's socio-pedagogical assistance unit at the youth-welfare office, and began a part-time master's in social work at the Protestant University of Applied Sciences for Social Work and Diaconia in Hamburg. Her Bundestag disclosure lists that district post, with a right to return, as her occupation before entering parliament.

In the 2021 federal election the Green candidate in Nordfriesland – Dithmarschen Nord received 20,611 first votes (14.3 percent), behind the Christian Democratic Union on 30.4 percent and the Social Democratic Party on 27.8 percent, while the Greens' second-vote share in the constituency was 15.7 percent. NDR identified Loop with that 14.3 percent and with 10.9 percent of first votes in the election of 23 February 2025, a lower personal share that still returned her through the state list. The federal returning officer recorded 16,628 Green first votes (10.9 percent) in 2025, behind Leif Erik Bodin of the CDU (32.7 percent), Truels Reichardt of the SPD (20.4 percent) and the Alternative for Germany (16.0 percent); the Greens' second votes were 18,764 (12.3 percent). Turnout in the constituency rose from 77.2 percent in 2021 to 82.7 percent in 2025.

In the 21st Bundestag she is a full member of the Committee on Education, Family, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, and a deputy member of the Committee on Tourism and of the study commission on the COVID-19 pandemic (Enquete-Kommission „Corona“). After the 2025 election she told NDR that she would argue for a higher minimum wage, a basic child benefit (Kindergrundsicherung), and greater spending on education and social infrastructure. The Bundestag also lists her as a member of the Heide city council.

Early life and education

Childhood in Steinburg

Denise Loop was born on 19 May 1994 in Itzehoe, the seat of the district of Steinburg in Schleswig-Holstein. The biography published by the Bundestag states that its personal particulars rest on the member’s own information, and on that basis lists her as Protestant, married and the parent of one child.

Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) reported that she grew up in Beidenfleth, within sight of the Brokdorf Nuclear Power Plant. Beidenfleth lies on the western bank of the Stör in the Amt Wilstermarsch, a municipality of 13.51 square kilometres and about 1,000 residents. Village children go to primary school in Wewelsfleth, about five kilometres away, to a Gemeinschaftsschule in Wilster, and to gymnasiums in Itzehoe. NDR reported that Loop’s schooling was in Glückstadt, on the Elbe in the same district.

The Brokdorf Nuclear Power Plant beside the Elbe in Steinburg, Schleswig-Holstein.

The plant in neighbouring Brokdorf is a pressurized-water reactor operated by PreussenElektra, in commercial operation since 1986, with a net capacity of 1,410 megawatts and condenser cooling drawn from the Elbe. It was shut down at midnight on 31 December 2021 under the Atomic Energy Act, after which Schleswig-Holstein had no nuclear plant left in operation. NDR reported that Loop’s first contacts with Alliance 90/The Greens came at an anti-nuclear demonstration and that she has been politically active since 2010. On her own website she places that demonstration in Beidenfleth. During her school years in Glückstadt, NDR reported, she co-founded a Grüne Jugend group and was active in it for a time. NDR also recorded her description of herself as a “passionate scout” who takes groups to summer camp each year.

Studies in social work

The Bundestag biography records a bachelor’s degree in social work at the Fachhochschule Kiel from 2014 to 2018. On 1 November 2025 the Fachhochschule was renamed Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften Kiel (HAW Kiel). The university describes the Bachelor of Arts in social work as a six-semester course, taught in German, that prepares graduates for every field of the profession, with state recognition available afterwards in a professional entry phase.

The HAW explains that the bachelor is the first qualification, while the protected professional title usually comes only with state recognition, offered as a voluntary course plus, as a rule, a one-year entry phase in an approved placement. The statute the university cites for the rules in force since 2 August 2024 is the Sozialberufe-Anerkennungsgesetz. Loop’s recognition, as the biography gives it, was earlier: 2018 to 2019 at the district of Dithmarschen. From 2019 the same text lists her as a state-recognized social worker in the Fachdienst Sozialpädagogische Hilfen of the district youth office. The parliament’s register of published interests enters that post, based in Heide, as her occupation before membership of the Bundestag, with a right to return.

From 2019 the biography also lists a part-time master’s in social work at the Evangelische Hochschule für Soziale Arbeit & Diakonie in Hamburg, without a completion date. The examination regulations for that continuing programme at the Evangelische Hochschule für Soziale Arbeit & Diakonie, Stiftung Das Rauhe Haus, took effect on 1 October 2020 and apply first to students starting in the winter semester 2020/21. They prescribe five semesters alongside employment—general social work, a research and development workshop, a specialization in ethics and management, and a thesis—after a relevant bachelor’s or diploma and, as a rule, at least a year of practice. Because the biography dates her enrolment to 2019, it does not show that she followed the curriculum those regulations introduced.

Social work

Training and first posts

Denise Loop qualified in social work. From 2014 to 2018 she completed a bachelor's degree in Soziale Arbeit at the Fachhochschule Kiel, renamed on 1 November 2025 the Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften Kiel (Kiel University of Applied Sciences).

In Schleswig-Holstein that degree is the first occupational qualification, but it is not state recognition. The university states that the protected professional title, and with it associated rights and often higher collectively agreed pay, commonly follows only with staatliche Anerkennung, obtained after the bachelor's through a voluntary further-training course and, as a rule, a one-year supervised entry into practice at a recognized placement. Since 2 August 2024 the Land has regulated the title in the Social Professions Recognition Act (Sozialberufe-Anerkennungsgesetz). Loop's recognition predates that statute. Her Bundestag biography, which the parliament notes is based on members' own statements, records state recognition in 2018–2019 with Kreis Dithmarschen.

A candidate profile in the Sylter Zeitung of 14 September 2021, written as her election presentation, lists two earlier Kiel posts: ambulatory assistance (Ambulante Hilfen) at Stiftung Drachensee, glossed there as housing and work for people with disabilities, and the open children's and youth centre "KicK" of the Arbeiterwohlfahrt (AWO) in Kiel. It gives no dates or duties for either. Stiftung Drachensee describes itself as a Kiel provider that for more than 50 years has supported people with disabilities in work, housing, education and leisure, and states that it serves more than 1,000 people. The AWO's Kiel association describes the centre, styled KiCK on its site, as an open meeting place in Kiel-Gaarden for ages 6 to 18 and young adults up to 27, run as voluntary, low-threshold open youth work under section 11 of Book VIII of the Social Code.

Youth-welfare practice

The same profile dates her work in the Fachdienst Sozialpädagogische Hilfen, the socio-pedagogical assistance unit of the Jugendamt of Kreis Dithmarschen, from May 2018. The Bundestag biography places the 2018–2019 recognition year with the district and states that from 2019 she was a state-recognized social worker in that unit. NDR, reporting her re-election in 2025, noted that after her studies she had worked as a state-recognized social worker.

The district's youth-and-family division, at the Kreishaus, Stettiner Straße 30, in Heide, describes its staff as contacts on upbringing, family crises, separation and divorce, and contact and custody, and as providing educational assistance (Hilfe zur Erziehung), including socio-pedagogical family support, residential care and day groups, alongside guardianship, foster care, adoption, early help, youth court assistance and advice on day care. Under section 27 of Book VIII, a person with custody has a claim to such help when an upbringing consistent with the child's or young person's welfare is not assured and the help is suitable and necessary; its kind and extent follow the individual educational need, and it covers in particular pedagogical and related therapeutic services.

From 2019 the biography also records a part-time master's course in social work at the Evangelische Hochschule für Soziale Arbeit & Diakonie in Hamburg, without stating that the degree was completed.

In the disclosable information on the same page, her occupation before membership is given as social worker for Kreis Dithmarschen in Heide, with a right of return (Rückkehrrecht). Under the Members of the Bundestag Act, a civil servant's rights and duties from the service relationship are suspended for the duration of membership, apart from official secrecy and the ban on gifts, from the determination of the election result or from acceptance of the mandate. Those rules, and the rules on reinstatement, apply by analogy to public-service employees, including staff of a municipality or other public-law corporation. After the mandate ends, the suspension continues for at most six months. On an application within three months, the person is to be returned within a further three months to the former employment relationship, in a post of the same or an equivalent career and with at least the same final basic salary.

Party activity before the Bundestag

Green Youth Schleswig-Holstein

Denise Loop’s path into Alliance 90/The Greens began beside the Brokdorf Nuclear Power Plant, which went online in 1986 despite large protests and was shut down at the start of 2022. NDR, profiling her after the 2025 federal election, wrote that she grew up in Beidenfleth, in the district of Steinburg, within sight of the plant, that her first contact with the Greens was an anti-nuclear demonstration, and that she had been active in the party since 2010. Boyens Medien, reporting in August 2019, placed that demonstration in Brokdorf and said she was still a schoolgirl. The same NDR profile states that during her school years in Glückstadt, also in Steinburg, she co-founded a local Grüne Jugend (Green Youth) group and was active in it for a time.

The federal Grüne Jugend describes itself as the youth organization of Alliance 90/The Greens, a status it dates to 2001, and as an independent association that also criticizes the party. The biography on the Bundestag website, which the parliament says rests on members’ self-reporting, lists her as a member of Alliance 90/The Greens only from 2016, but as spokesperson of Grüne Jugend Schleswig-Holstein from 2015 to 2017, so the state youth office began before the party-membership year she disclosed. NDR’s statement that she had been active in the party since 2010 is wider than that membership year and does not distinguish youth-organization membership from membership of the party.

An invitation on the state Green Youth site, dated 14 March 2016, summons members to the first state members’ assembly of 2017, on 18 and 19 March in Neumünster, and is signed by the Landesvorstand as “Denise, Malte, Anna, Johannes, Yella, Einhard.” The letter said the meeting would present campaign material for the 2017 state election, hold a campaign workshop, mark Equal Pay Day with an action in the city center together with Green candidate Aminata Touré, and hear lead candidate Monika Heinold on the campaign. The state association describes its executive as the body that organizes the Land organization, runs political education and coordinates actions.

The Bundestag biography then lists Loop, from 2017 to 2019, in the political management (politische Geschäftsführung) of Grüne Jugend Schleswig-Holstein. That is the last youth-organization post in the disclosed record before the district and state-party offices of 2019–2021.

District and state party offices

In September 2018, inside the years the biography gives for that political-management post, Boyens Medien reported a new Green local association in Heide, the seat of Dithmarschen, covering the town and surrounding municipalities. Loop and Rolf Martens were elected chairs, and Dieter Dluzewski treasurer. On 2 October 2018 the same paper reported that ten young people had founded a Grüne Jugend for Dithmarschen the previous Sunday at the Hotel Zur Linde in Meldorf.

On 19 August 2019 Boyens reported that Loop, aged 25, was the new co-chair of the Dithmarschen district association. The Bundestag biography styles her Kreisvorsitzende of Bündnis 90/Die Grünen Dithmarschen from 2019 to 2021. On 21 October 2019 Boyens wrote that Nils-Ole Nommensen, a co-founder of the Dithmarschen Green Youth, meant to leave the district association over internal disputes of the preceding months, and identified Loop as the sitting district chair. A caption referred to a photograph of the two from August of the previous year; the published lead does not say what the dispute was about.

Over the same 2019–2021 span the biography lists membership of the Parteirat of Bündnis 90/Die Grünen Schleswig-Holstein. The Land association describes the Parteirat as an organ that both advises and decides, elected by the Landesparteitag, alongside the state executive. Its current public account gives the council 21 members for a two-year term, including the seven members of the state executive and two Green Youth representatives among a further 14; that page does not list the 2019 intake. A dpa report on 22 October 2019, ahead of that weekend’s state congress in Büsum in Dithmarschen, said about 130 delegates would face roughly 70 motions — state chair Ann-Kathrin Tranziska called that more than twice any previous list — and would elect the state leadership.

By 1 February 2021 Boyens described Loop and Rudi Gebhardt as jointly heading the Dithmarschen association, and reported that she was seeking fifth place on the state list for the Bundestag election. The disclosed biography ends both the Parteirat seat and the district chairmanship in 2021.

Bundestag candidacies and results

Denise Loop stood for Alliance 90/The Greens in Bundestag constituency 2, Nordfriesland – Dithmarschen Nord, in 2021 and 2025, and on the party’s Schleswig-Holstein state list. She won neither direct mandate. Her seat in the 20th Bundestag, and again in the 21st, came from that list.

2021 federal election

Constituency 2 is Nordfriesland – Dithmarschen Nord. Loop was the Green direct candidate there on 26 September 2021.

The Schleswig-Holstein Greens fixed the state list on 27 March 2021 at an online conference. Luise Amtsberg took first place with about 90 percent of the delegates, and Robert Habeck second with just under 88 percent. Ingrid Nestle and Konstantin von Notz were third and fourth, without opponents. Fifth place went to Loop, from Dithmarschen, and sixth to Bruno Hönel of Lübeck, who beat Jakob Blasel in a runoff. Loop gave her nomination speech from a studio at the Wissenschaftszentrum in Kiel; the delegates took part remotely.

The constituency had 188,267 eligible voters. Turnout was 77.2 percent, 2.6 percentage points higher than in 2017, and 144,050 first votes were valid. Astrid Damerow of the Christian Democratic Union won the seat with 43,745 votes (30.4 percent), 14.8 points below the CDU share in 2017. Jens Peter Jensen of the Social Democratic Party was second with 40,026 votes (27.8 percent). Loop finished third with 20,611 votes (14.3 percent), a gain of 4.9 points. Next were Gyde Jensen-Bornhöft of the Free Democratic Party with 13,958 (9.7 percent), Sybilla Nitsch of the South Schleswig Voters’ Association with 9,410 (6.5 percent) and Andrej Clasen of the Alternative for Germany with 8,274 (5.7 percent).

On the second vote in the same constituency the Greens received 22,588 votes, 15.7 percent, up 4.7 points. The SPD led that column with 26.3 percent and the CDU followed with 24.6 percent. Across Schleswig-Holstein the Greens polled 322,763 second votes, 18.3 percent, a rise of 6.3 points on 2017.

After the partial rerun in Berlin, the Federal Returning Officer assigned the Greens’ Schleswig-Holstein list seats to places 1, 3, 4, 5 and 6. Place 2 is not among them. Habeck had won constituency 1, Flensburg – Schleswig, with 50,231 first votes (28.1 percent), ahead of Petra Nicolaisen of the CDU (23.4 percent). Amtsberg had not: in Kiel she was second on 28.1 percent, behind Mathias Stein of the SPD (29.5 percent). Fifth place, Loop’s on the conference list, was among the places filled. NDR later described her as a member of the Bundestag from 2021.

2025 federal election

The following federal election was held early, on 23 February 2025. On 8 December 2024 a special Green conference in Neumünster elected Amtsberg to head the state list, with 115 votes in favour, four against and one abstention, and Habeck second, with 116 in favour, three against and one abstention. The official return of members elected from state lists records Loop in third place on that list and von Notz in fourth.

In constituency 2, 186,019 people were eligible to vote. Turnout rose to 82.7 percent, 5.4 points above 2021, and 152,717 first votes were valid. Leif Erik Bodin of the CDU won the direct mandate with 49,866 votes (32.7 percent). Truels Reichardt of the SPD was second with 31,169 (20.4 percent), and Kurt Kleinschmidt of the AfD third with 24,474 (16.0 percent), a gain of 10.3 points. Loop was fourth with 16,628 votes (10.9 percent), down 3.4 points from 2021. Lukas Knöfler of the SSW followed with 14,254 (9.3 percent), Lars Thiele-Kensbock of Die Linke with 7,920 (5.2 percent) and Jensen-Bornhöft of the FDP with 5,750 (3.8 percent).

Green second votes in the constituency were 18,764, or 12.3 percent, also down 3.4 points. On that vote the CDU led with 29.6 percent, ahead of the SPD on 17.4 percent and the AfD on 16.1 percent. Statewide the Greens received 279,923 second votes (14.9 percent), 3.4 points less than in 2021; turnout in the Land was 83.5 percent. The seat calculation assigned the Green state list four seats.

One of the four was a constituency seat: Amtsberg is recorded as elected in constituency 5, Kiel, with 26.0 percent. The other three were list seats—Habeck at place 2, Loop at place 3 and von Notz at place 4. Habeck was not a constituency winner. Loop again missed the direct mandate. NDR reported that 10.9 percent of the first vote was still enough for a return on the state list, which is also how the Bundestag biography records her election for constituency 002.

Twentieth Bundestag

Committee assignments

Loop was a member of the 20th Bundestag from its constitution on 26 October 2021 until 25 March 2025, sitting for Alliance 90/The Greens on the Schleswig-Holstein state list. For that whole span the Bundestag listed her as a full member, and as Obfrau, of the Committee on Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, the Green parliamentary group's lead seat on that committee.

She was also a parliamentary secretary (Schriftführerin) and a full member of the Subcommittee on Civic Engagement. As a substitute she sat on the committees for labour and social affairs, for education, research and technology assessment, and for petitions. That archived list does not include the Committee on Tourism or a COVID-19 study commission.

Family, youth and social legislation

The family committee led on the government bill to end the Kostenheranziehung of young people in child and youth welfare (printed papers 20/3439 and 20/3820), amending Book VIII of the Social Code. Under section 94(6) as it then stood, young people in foster or residential care, and single parents housed with a child under section 19, had to contribute up to 25 percent of their own income. At first reading on 28 September 2022 Loop, using her youth-office experience, said young people had asked why they should train if the pay was taken back, and she called for ending that charge for them and for young single parents in care. As the Greens' rapporteur she joined a 9 November 2022 recommendation, carried by the SPD, the CDU/CSU, the Greens, the FDP, the AfD and Die Linke, which also shielded part of training allowances from what could still be counted. On 10 November she opened the final debate by quoting Careleaver e.V. — "Who owns the bed I sleep in?" — and rejected withholding pay as a lesson in money. The Bundestag passed the bill with no votes against and no abstentions. The family ministry said those young people, single parents housed with their child, and their spouses and life partners would no longer pay from their own income, a change the ministry said was to take effect on 1 January 2023.

A separate bill, printed on 6 November 2023 as paper 20/9092, proposed a Kindergrundsicherung and named the same committee as lead. It would have folded child benefit, the child supplement, children's citizen's benefit and social assistance, and education-and-participation benefits into one guarantee amount, an income-related supplement and the participation benefits, with the government putting full take-up at 5.6 million children and young people. At the hearing on 13 November 2023 the Green rapporteur on the agenda was Nina Stahr, not Loop: the group stood her and Ricarda Lang down for that sitting, with Stephanie Aeffner in Loop's place. By the September 2024 budget debate, n-tv reported, the bill had been stuck for months without being passed, and the word no longer appeared in Family Minister Lisa Paus's 2025 draft. CSU deputy Dorothee Bär told Paus it would "never come"; CDU deputy Hermann-Josef Tebroke called the omission a relief; Green deputy Bruno Hönel said it was not there in the form the Greens had wanted. Finance Minister Christian Lindner treated child-benefit rises agreed in July — five euros on 1 January 2025 and four more in 2026 — and a matching rise in the immediate child supplement as covering the benefit side.

Loop was rapporteur, with Josephine Ortleb (SPD), Silvia Breher (CDU/CSU) and others, on the second amendment of the Pregnancy Conflict Act (paper 20/10861; report 20/12151 of 3 July 2024). It described sidewalk protests and disturbing images outside counselling centres and clinics as pressure on pregnant women and on counselling, and recommended bans on defined harassment and on blocking staff, backed by fines. The committee majority was the SPD, Greens, FDP and the Left group, against the CDU/CSU and the AfD. On 5 July 2024 Loop said the House was legislating against "sidewalk harassment" and that the decision belonged to the pregnant woman; Susanne Hierl (CDU/CSU) said her group would vote no, as a step away from compulsory counselling and toward removing abortion from the Criminal Code. The CDU/CSU had called a 100-metre radius too tight a limit on speech, and Die Linke's Gökay Akbulut put the fine at up to 5,000 euros. The roll-call was 381 for, 169 against and none abstaining, with 183 not voting: Greens 106 for and none against, and every recorded CDU/CSU and AfD vote against.

On 28 September 2022, in questions dominated by plans to store IP addresses, Loop asked Paus about prevention and the independent commissioner on child sexual abuse; Paus said a further protection law was coming and that funding should travel with protection concepts. At first reading on 11 October 2024 Loop called sexualised violence the worst injury to a young person's rights and the bill a milestone for the commissioner, the inquiry commission and the survivors' council. The taz reported that every group signalled support, that the AfD was called to order, and that the office dated from the 2010 church-abuse scandal, with extra cost put at 4.4 to 7.4 million euros a year. On 31 January 2025 the ministry said the Bundestag had passed the Act to Strengthen the Structures against Sexual Violence against Children and Young People, giving the commissioner, the survivors' council and the inquiry commission a statutory basis and requiring protection concepts in youth welfare. Loop told the taz that parliament and society carried "a huge responsibility" because those bodies had rested on time-limited cabinet decisions; the interviewer cited about 18,500 police-recorded victims under 14 in 2023.

On equality policy, her 7 April 2022 speech on the Third Gender Equality Report said the systems described there reproduced stereotypes and that women were 16 percent of the digital workforce. On 30 November 2022, on the CEDAW report, she said the 2017 UN review still found Germany short on abortion law, compulsory counselling and gaps in care. On 23 February 2024 she opposed a ban on buying sex, after visits to Berlin brothels, as aimed at clients of a legal service rather than traffickers, and on 15 March 2024 she said a third of young women faced online hate and that violence was driving women out of political debate.

Twenty-first Bundestag

Education, family and youth portfolio

Denise Loop sits in the 21st Bundestag as a member elected on the Schleswig-Holstein state list of Alliance 90/The Greens. The Bundestag constituted itself on 25 March 2025. On 6 May 2025 it elected Friedrich Merz of the Christian Democratic Union chancellor, with 325 votes on a second ballot, under a coalition agreement of the CDU, the Christian Social Union and the Social Democratic Party, which left the Greens in opposition. The same day the ministers were sworn in, including Karin Prien (CDU) as federal minister for education, family, senior citizens, women and youth.

The day after the February election Loop told NDR she wanted a higher minimum wage, a basic child allowance (Kindergrundsicherung) and more spending on education and social infrastructure. On 2 May 2025 shz.de reported that the Green group had chosen the member from Heide as Prien's counterpart in the Bundestag. The group's website lists her as its spokesperson for education, family, senior citizens and youth. Her official biography records her as a full member of the Committee on Education, Family, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth. The committee, with 38 members, was constituted on 21 May 2025 under Saskia Esken (SPD): 13 from the CDU/CSU, nine from the Alternative for Germany, seven from the SPD, five from the Greens and four from Die Linke. The Green members were Misbah Khan, Loop, Anja Reinalter, Ulle Schauws and Nyke Slawik.

In the 15 May 2025 debate on the government statement, Loop congratulated Prien and spoke of an education system "in crisis", unreliable childcare and violence against women and queer people. She said Green votes for special funds removed the argument that there was no money, and she named inclusive child and youth welfare, a democracy-promotion law and the Digital Pact 2.0 as unfinished business, while calling for abortion under section 218 of the Criminal Code to be decriminalized. For the CDU/CSU, Anja Weisgerber welcomed one ministry from day care to training and argued for childcare, all-day places and language support rather than wider cash benefits.

Opposition record

She said the draft cut 11.5 million euros under "children and young people", and she called the end of new applications to the sexual-abuse fund, closed since March 2025 because the money was exhausted, a scandal. On 7 October 2025 she co-signed a Green motion for an opinion under Article 23(3) of the Basic Law on the European Commission's 2022 proposal against child sexual abuse: it welcomed harmonized action against abuse images and grooming, but asked the government to reject suspicionless scanning of private chats and client-side scanning.

A written question of 4 March 2026, with Loop as first signatory, asked what the government drew from the Epstein documents, whether children's rights in the Basic Law would strengthen protection, and how the federal Child and Youth Plan could serve as prevention. In a topical debate on 24 April 2026 she attacked a leaked working-group paper which, as the Bundestag summarized her speech, would cut support for single parents, remove protected places from unaccompanied minor refugees contrary to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and delay the right to all-day care. Wolfgang Dahler (CDU/CSU) said municipalities were calling for help and that collecting reform ideas was not a scandal. Heike Heubach (SPD) said the paper put benefits for disabled people and for children who depend on them in doubt, while Martin Reichardt (AfD) rejected the cuts but attacked Green policy on unaccompanied minors.

On 9 June 2026 Reinalter, Khan, Loop and others tabled "Education must not depend on income". Citing UNICEF's Innocenti Report Card 20 (May 2026), it put Germany 25th of 37 rich countries on child well-being, with child poverty at 15.2 percent, and demanded an extra 1 billion euros a year for day-care quality, a faster Startchancen rollout and free meals in disadvantaged schools and day-care centres. In the 10 September budget debate she said federal day-care quality funds were being halved and the reading programme "Lesestart 1-2-3" ended, while the government promoted language tests. She quoted Prien, on that week's PISA figures, as surprised that parents did not find education important, and said parents and children were being blamed for a failure of the system. She asked for more staff where need was greatest, called a planned rise in the Child and Youth Plan too small, and criticized the loss of funding for the queer youth network Lambda.

On 21 July 2026 a question led by Loop asked about the First Act on the Structural Reform of Child and Youth Welfare and about savings the minister-presidents' conference of 25 June 2026 had linked to youth welfare, integration assistance and the maintenance advance. On 23 September the group asked why the cabinet decision of 12 August had replaced a binding move of responsibility for children with physical and intellectual disabilities into youth welfare with a trial clause. The government answered on 8 October that, after objections from states and municipalities, it would not require the merger, and that municipalities could instead test those benefits under Book VIII of the Social Code.

At the first reading on 8 October Loop called the bill a missed chance that delayed inclusive youth welfare and estimated savings without solid data, and she asked for the procedure to stop and for an expert commission. The draft went to the education and family committee. At the hearing on 12 October, the Bundestag reported that reform was seen as necessary but that the bill would not ease municipal budgets: ver.di's Elke Alsago said it rebuilt youth welfare around finance rather than the rights of disabled children, and Lebenshilfe said a serious cost estimate was missing. On 19 October a question co-signed by Loop asked how the government defined child poverty and what remained of the plan "New chances for children". Another, also signed by Loop, said a coalition promise to raise the Child and Youth Plan by 10 percent and then index it was absent from the 2027 draft, and that framework agreements with Lambda and the anti-racism centre IDA had been ended.

Other parliamentary and public offices

Outside the education and family committee, Loop’s current Bundestag biography lists her as a deputy member of the Committee on Tourism and of the enquiry commission on the COVID-19 pandemic. The archived biography for the 20th Bundestag (2021–2025) does not list the tourism committee. It records her as a deputy on the labour and social affairs, education, research and technology assessment, and petitions committees, as a member of the Subcommittee on Civic Engagement, and as a parliamentary secretary (Schriftführerin).

Tourism committee and the COVID-19 study commission

The Bundestag describes its 14-member Committee on Tourism as the central forum for tourism policy in Germany, covering the country as a destination, labour and digitalisation, travel businesses, travellers’ rights, including in European Union law, and lower-resource, more climate-friendly travel. Loop is a deputy member in the 21st term. She is among the signatories from Alliance 90/The Greens of written questions on European tourism policy (printed paper 21/1626, 12 September 2025) and on the future of winter tourism (21/2645, 6 November 2025), and of a motion on climate-friendly travel to holidays (21/6930, 7 July 2026).

On 10 July 2025 the Bundestag established the Enquete-Kommission “Aufarbeitung der Corona-Pandemie und Lehren für zukünftige pandemische Ereignisse”. Printed paper 21/805 charges it with an account of the pandemic and of state measures, with assessing their appropriateness, effectiveness and proportionality, and with recommendations by 30 June 2027; it has 14 members of parliament and 14 experts, and each parliamentary member may have a deputy. The Greens’ full members are Dr. Lena Gumnior and Dr. med. Paula Piechotta; the deputies are Linda Heitmann and Denise Loop. The commission was constituted on 8 September 2025 under Bundestag President Julia Klöckner; Franziska Hoppermann (CDU) was elected chair.

Public-hearing minutes are published; minutes of closed sittings are reserved for the final report. Loop is recorded as present on 29 January 2026, as a deputy alongside the Greens’ full members, at a hearing on the balance between executive and legislature and the role of the opposition. On 11 June 2026, at a hearing on work, social security, resilience and care, the list names the deputies Heitmann and Loop rather than the full Green members. She said a crisis-resilient society needed consistent equality, family and care policy, and asked Judith Rahner of the Deutscher Frauenrat about burdens on women, especially single parents, during day-care and school closures, about incentives for fathers to do more care work, and about lessons for future crisis plans.

Advisory and foundation roles

From 31 March 2022 to 25 March 2025 the Bundestag’s disclosure lists Loop as a deputy member of the Stiftungsrat of the Bundesstiftung Gleichstellung in Berlin. The foundation’s list for the 20th legislative period names her as substitute for Ulle Schauws; for the 21st period it names Filiz Polat in that role. The foundation, created by a law of 18 May 2021, is a federal public-law body whose purpose is to strengthen equality of women and men. Its Stiftungsrat supervises the directorate and decides fundamental matters, including the work programme, the statutes and the annual budget; Bundestag members are elected in proportion to group strength, each with a deputy.

The Schleswig-Holstein Landtag lists Loop among the Bundestag members of the Gremium für Fragen der friesischen Volksgruppe. Since 1988 it has met twice a year under the Landtag president to promote the Frisian language, education and culture in Schleswig-Holstein. The Minority Secretariat also names her, with Luise Amtsberg as deputy, on the Beratender Ausschuss für Fragen der friesischen Volksgruppe, which discusses federal interior-policy questions concerning that group and may invite Bundestag members.

From 23 March 2026 the Bundestag biography lists Loop as a member of the Kuratorium of Stiftung Lesen in Mainz. The foundation’s Kuratorium page identifies her as the Greens’ spokesperson for education, family, youth and senior citizens. Stiftung Lesen is a civil-law foundation in Mainz for the promotion of reading; it states that Helmut Kohl co-initiated it in 1988. Under section 14 of the statute the Kuratorium is not a governing organ: members, barred from the Stifterrat and Stiftungsrat and appointed by the board for four years, advise the board on reading promotion. The foundation also describes it as advising on strategy and on support from politics, business and society.

Constituency, local politics and public profile

Heide city council and Dithmarschen

Denise Loop lives with her family in Heide, the seat of the district of Dithmarschen. She is a member of the Bundestag for Schleswig-Holstein on the state list of Alliance 90/The Greens, with a constituency candidacy in district 002, Nordfriesland – Dithmarschen Nord. From 4 January 2024 she has also been a Green member of Heide's city council (Ratsversammlung) for the municipal term of 1 June 2023 to 31 May 2028. She followed Rudi Gebhardt, a Green councillor from 1 June 2023 until 31 December 2023. On 30 January 2024 Boyens Medien reported that handover under the headline "Zwischen Bürgerhaus und Bundestag" and called the then 29-year-old a wanderer between two political worlds, naming the prospective Green group as Loop, Ruben Baufeld, Frauke Düßmann and Stefan Schneidewind.

The Green parliamentary group lists a constituency office at Markt 11, 25746 Heide. On 20 July 2025 Boyens Medien showed her in front of premises on the east side of the market, called them her future office, and wrote that the move was planned for the autumn while the doors were still closed.

On 16 February 2024 Bürgervorsteher Michael Stumm of the CDU swore her in by handshake and told the council that there was now "eine prominente Persönlichkeit in unserer Runde" ("a prominent figure in our circle"). The council register lists her from 13 February 2024 as a pool substitute on the committee for family, school and sport — third substitute until 22 September 2026, then second substitute from 1 October 2026 — and, for much of that period, as a substitute on the committees for culture, social affairs and seniors, for the economy and tourism, and for building matters. From 1 October 2026 she is recorded as a full member of the building committee and of the building committee for allotment matters. From 19 August 2026 the city lists her as its representative on the supervisory boards of Fernwärmeversorgung Gewerbepark Westküste GmbH & Co. KG and the related management company, on the Gewerbepark Westküste cooperation of Heide and Hemmingstedt, and on the steering group for the Heide-Ost school-centre project. Since 13 February 2024 she has also been a substitute delegate, with voting rights, to the members' assembly of the Städtebund Schleswig-Holstein. The Dithmarschen Greens' faction page still describes her only as third deputy for family, school and sport, the role that ended in September 2026.

The Bundestag's mandatory disclosures record the Heide council seat under functions in public-law bodies. In a summer interview published on 24 July 2026, under a headline that named opposition, the energy transition and the barbecue site, Dieter Höfer of Boyens Medien had her speak about her Bundestag role, the challenges for Dithmarschen and the future of Heide. The paper's summary of that interview said she called the closure of the barbecue place in the municipal park a "große Frechheit". The photograph caption with the same article identified the east side of the market as her constituency office.

Media coverage and civic affiliations

Norddeutscher Rundfunk, in a profile of 24 February 2025, presented Loop as a state-recognized social worker living in Heide who said she would argue for a higher minimum wage, a child basic security benefit (Kindergrundsicherung) and more investment in education and social infrastructure, and reported her description of herself as a "Pfadfinderin aus Leidenschaft" who goes to summer camp with groups each year. Boyens Medien had used that scout identity earlier: a 31 July 2023 interview by Dieter Höfer, headlined "Pfadfinderin im Bundestag", said a scout summer camp belonged to her summer. The paper's 20 July 2025 headline, "Denise Loop zwischen Bundestag und Zeltlager", again placed parliamentary work beside a tent camp, while the sentences readable outside the paywall were about the office move.

A 1 December 2024 SHZ article by Jonna Marlin Lausen, whose photograph caption stated that a Green meeting on 30 November had nominated her as direct candidate for constituency 002, described the social worker from Heide as campaigning on climate protection and social infrastructure. On 2 May 2025 Henning Baethge wrote that the Greens had chosen Loop, called in the piece the young MP from Heide, as the main parliamentary opponent of the new federal minister for education and family affairs, Karin Prien.

The Bundestag biography, which the parliament notes is based on members' own statements, lists membership of ver.di and of the Kinderschutzbund local branch in Itzehoe. A profile in the Evangelische Zeitung of 27 June 2022 reported that at home she takes part in congregational work and leads scout group meetings, contrasting time in the plenary with time at a campfire, without naming a scout association.