Desiree Becker

Desiree Becker (born 27 January 1994 in St. Wendel, Saarland) is a German politician of Die Linke and a trade-union secretary. She has been a member of the Bundestag since the 21st electoral term opened on 25 March 2025, holding a seat for Hesse on the state list after standing in constituency 172, Gießen. Since the state conference in Baunatal at the end of September 2024 she has been co-chair of the Hessian Linke with Jakob Migenda.

The Bundestag biography, which the parliament says is drawn from members' own disclosures, records that she passed the first state examination in 2021 for grammar-school teaching in mathematics and in politics and economics at the University of Giessen. From 2021 to 2023 she was a youth-education officer of the German Trade Union Confederation; since 2023 she has been a youth-education officer for ver.di youth in Hesse and a union secretary for youth work in central Hesse. The same filing lists a post at ver.di's federal executive in Berlin, with a right to return and protection against dismissal, and an honorary judgeship at the labour court in Giessen, which she has held since 2022. She is unmarried and lives in Gießen.

Her disclosed political path runs through the student association Die Linke.SDS in Gießen from 2018 to 2021, including the student parliament, the general student committee and the university senate, and through volunteer work for the rescue organisation Sea-Eye from 2018 to 2020, including shipyard time and organisational work on Malta. In the district of Gießen she sat on the Left's executive from 2020 to 2025 and chaired it from 2021 to 2025, and she has been a district-council member and deputy chair of its Left group since 2021. She has been a member of the federal party council since 2022 and, since 2024, of the speakers' council of the Hessian working group on workplaces and trade unions. After the party lost its seats in the Hessian Landtag, she told the Frankfurter Rundschau that the younger state executive elected in Baunatal would continue the work outside parliament and aim to return to the Landtag in 2028.

At the federal election of 23 February 2025 she received 12,444 first votes in Gießen, 7.0 percent, 3.1 points above the Left's 2021 first-vote share there, while the party's second-vote share in the constituency rose to 9.8 percent (17,359 votes). The constituency seat went to Frederik Bouffier of the CDU, with 30.4 percent. Across Hesse, Die Linke won 8.7 percent of second votes (311,058), a gain of 4.4 points, and four list seats; the state returning authority places Becker fourth, after Janine Wissler, Jörg Cezanne and Violetta Bock.

In parliament she is a full member of the defence committee and of its subcommittee on arms control, non-proliferation and international disarmament, where she is the group's spokesperson (Obfrau), and a deputy member of the committees on labour and social affairs and on research, technology, space and technology assessment, and of the subcommittee on the international order and the United Nations. She sits on the interparliamentary conference for the European Union's common foreign and security policy, and as a deputy on the Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly, the Joint Committee and the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, and she is deputy chair of the Maghreb parliamentary group. On 24 June 2025 the Left parliamentary group elected her a deputy chair, with 88.1 percent of the vote, to lead its working group on international affairs, human rights and peace; the group's profile also lists her as spokesperson for peace and disarmament policy and for space. The memberships she has declared include ver.di, the GEW and the IGBCE, Sea-Eye, Pro Asyl, the VVN-BdA and Rote Hilfe.

Early life and education

Childhood and move to Gießen

Desiree Becker was born on 27 January 1994 in St. Wendel in the Saarland. The biography published by the Bundestag notes that its personal details rest on members' own information and lists her as unmarried. In a September 2023 Gießener Anzeiger interview she described herself as the youngest of three sisters and the first in her family to study, and said she had never been poor but had felt how hard it was to advance as a child of "kleine Leute". She told the Gießener Allgemeine that her father had risen to a middle-grade civil-service post, while her mother — a "Schlecker woman", in Becker's words — had worked precariously for the drugstore chain Schlecker and later as an unskilled nursing assistant. Becker called her mother an example of discrimination against women, mothers and older workers. A school visit to the former concentration camp at Natzweiler-Struthof had politicised her, she said, and for lack of alternatives in her home town she had briefly joined the Christian Democratic Union.

She moved to Gießen to train as a teacher. On Die Linke's page for the 2024 European election, where she described herself as thirty, she wrote that she had lived for ten years in the university town.

Studies at Justus Liebig University

Becker studied for the grammar-school teaching degree (Lehramt an Gymnasien) at Justus Liebig University Giessen, combining mathematics with politics and economics (Politik und Wirtschaft). The same subjects appear on the party's 2024 European-election page and in a Frankfurter Rundschau profile.

The university dates itself from 1607, when Landgrave Ludwig V of Hesse-Darmstadt founded the Lutheran Ludoviciana in Gießen; it kept that name until 1945. In 1946 the state set up the Justus Liebig Hochschule for agriculture, veterinary medicine and related sciences, and restored university status in 1957. Its namesake, the chemist Justus von Liebig, had been appointed professor of chemistry there in 1824. In the winter semester 2025/26 it reported about 25,000 students and described its teacher training, for every school type, as the most extensive in Hesse.

The grammar-school course is the university stage of teacher education. It combines two teaching subjects — each with subject study and didactics — with education sciences (education, political science, psychology and sociology), a basic school placement, a practice semester and a work placement, and ends in the First State Examination. Only the later preparatory service (Referendariat) and the Second State Examination confer the licence to teach. Becker passed the First State Examination in 2021. She afterwards called the course hard: a year group, she said, began with about 200 students and finished with about 50, and a secure post as a mathematics teacher had been her parents' wish rather than hers. With little BAföG she worked throughout, as a waitress and counting parking spaces for a university project, and said the barrier for a working-class student was resources, not knowledge; classmates sometimes smiled when her Saarland dialect showed. She took the examination but not the Referendariat.

Student representation

The Hessian Higher Education Act makes the student parliament (Studierendenparlament) the student body's highest decision-making organ. Members are elected freely, equally and secretly; the parliament adopts the statutes and budget, sets contributions, and must choose an honorary executive to represent students and carry out its decisions. The statutes must also provide for subject groups (Fachschaften). At Giessen the university lists that executive as the General Student Committee (AStA), with the parliament and the Fachschaften. The senate, a separate body, advises on research, teaching and study of university-wide or fundamental importance and oversees the executive board (Präsidium). Its published members are professors, students, academic staff, and administrative and technical staff.

From 2018 to 2021, the self-reported Bundestag biography says, Becker sat in the student parliament, the AStA and the senate, and in Die Linke.SDS in Gießen. The Allgemeine also reported AStA work and activity in the Sozialistisch-Demokratischer Studierendenverband, and quoted her linking her turn to the party with education and that milieu.

Trade-union work

Education union and student employment

The biographical note the Bundestag publishes from members' own statements records that from 2019 to 2023 Becker was active in the Gewerkschaft Erziehung und Wissenschaft (GEW) and its youth structure, the Junge GEW. She was an ordinary board member (Beisitzerin) of a GEW district branch, treasurer of the union's central-Hesse regional association for higher education and research, and a student assistant for GEW Studis Hessen. The note also lists continuing membership of three unions in the German Trade Union Confederation (Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund, DGB): ver.di, the GEW and IG Bergbau, Chemie, Energie.

The GEW is the DGB union for pedagogical and scientific occupations, and it also organises students, represented inside the union by a federal students' committee. The Junge GEW describes itself as the body for people up to 35 in that field, including students and trainee teachers. At the end of 2025 the DGB counted 274,532 GEW members. A September 2023 Gießener Anzeiger profile reported that, as a student at the University of Giessen, she had already been active in trade unions and the student committee.

DGB youth education

For 2021 to 2023 the biography lists her as a DGB youth-education officer (Jugendbildungsreferentin), without naming the office.

The DGB, the umbrella of eight unions, reported 5,432,306 members at the end of 2025 and describes itself as independent of parties but not politically neutral. In Hesse and Thuringia its youth organisation employs officers in regional offices to run union youth work and to explain apprentices' rights in vocational schools. The central-Hesse office is in Giessen, at Walltorstraße 17. In September 2023 the Gießener Anzeiger photographed Becker on the roof terrace of the DGB union house in Gießen and wrote that she worked there as a youth-education officer and union secretary. The building is also ver.di's central-Hesse address. The parliamentary self-report separates the DGB post of 2021–2023 from ver.di employment from 2023, so the article falls where the two meet.

ver.di and the labour court

ver.di (Vereinte Dienstleistungsgewerkschaft), a DGB affiliate with its seat in Berlin, had 1,830,267 members at the end of 2025. Section 74 of its statute gives the federal executive board (Bundesvorstand) the employer function for all ver.di staff.

From 2023 the self-reported biography calls her a youth-education officer of ver.di Jugend Hessen and a union secretary for youth in central Hesse. The statutory disclosure of the last occupation before the mandate instead names the employer as "ver.di – Vereinte Dienstleistungsgewerkschaft Bundesvorstand, Berlin", the post as Gewerkschaftssekretärin, and records a right of return (Rückkehrrecht) and protection against dismissal (Kündigungsschutz). The Berlin entry names the legal employer, not a seat on the elected federal executive. Under the statute the federal board in Berlin is the employer of every ver.di employee, so the Berlin line and the central-Hesse youth assignment are one relationship: a federal contract with a regional posting. The disclosure treats the job as activity before membership, not as paid work beside the mandate. ver.di Jugend Hessen's contact list names Ani Mizrak, not Becker, as the youth-briefed union secretary for the central-Hesse district in Gießen.

Section 45 of the Members of the Bundestag Act requires notice of that last occupation and of any right of return or of dismissal protection under section 2(3). That provision bars dismissal for acquiring, accepting or exercising the mandate, allows other dismissal only for good cause, and runs from nomination, or from filing of the nomination papers, until one year after the mandate ends.

Since 2022 the biography lists her as an honorary judge (ehrenamtliche Richterin) at the labour court in Gießen, an office the Gießener Anzeiger already mentioned in September 2023. The statutory disclosure lists it among paid activities alongside the mandate. Each labour-court chamber sits with one professional judge and one honorary judge from employees and one from employers; honorary judges are appointed for five years from lists proposed by unions, independent employee associations and employer associations. In Hesse they have the same rights and duties as professional judges, are independent and bound only by statute, and are compensated by the Land under the Judicial Remuneration and Compensation Act. Union members and union employees may sit on the employee side. Becker's filings name the court and the office, not the side.

Local and party offices in Hesse

Student organisation and party membership

Becker’s organised political work in Hesse began in Die Linke.SDS, the student association of Die Linke, at Justus Liebig University Giessen. From 2018 to 2021 she was active in the Giessen group, in the student parliament and the AStA; her Bundestag biography, drawn from members’ own disclosures, also lists a seat on the university senate. A February 2025 Gießener Anzeiger profile describes that student route—opposition in the student parliament, then the AStA—as the way she came to the party. Her 2024 European-election curriculum on the party website dates both SDS activity and membership of Die Linke from 2018.

The same period included volunteer work for the rescue organisation Sea-Eye. The Bundestag biography records shipyard time and organisational work on Malta from 2018 to 2020. In the Anzeiger interview she said she had helped equip rescue ships and with human-rights observation, and had co-founded a Giessen branch of the Seebrücke alliance. She called that work treatment of symptoms and said the causes of flight were one reason she moved into party politics.

District politics in Gießen

Those disclosures list her on the Giessen district executive from 2020 to 2025 and as district chair from 2021 to 2025. In November 2023, 18 members re-elected her unanimously as chair, with Marvin Bauer as co-chair; she said she would rebuild the district association and return social policy to the centre of its work. In March 2025, after her election to the Bundestag, about 50 members unanimously chose Natalie Maurer and Maurice Jelinski to succeed her. Jelinski said membership had roughly tripled in six months, to about 500.

She has sat in the Kreistag of Landkreis Giessen since the March 2021 local elections, as a member and deputy chair of the Gießener Linke group. That list took 4.97 percent and four of 81 seats; the CDU led with 25.31 percent and 21 seats. By September 2021, as deputy chair, she put an 18-question report request on disaster protection to the district committee, covering communications if networks failed, sirens, staffing and flood risk along the Lahn and smaller rivers. The group noted that the last civil-protection stocktake dated from 2014.

State chair and the federal party council

The state association met on 28 and 29 September 2024 for its 16th congress, in Baunatal, after losing its seats in the Landtag of Hesse. Jakob Migenda of Darmstadt, who works for Attac, had shared the chair with the Landtag member Christiane Böhm since October 2022, when a congress in Dietzenbach elected them unopposed with 74.5 and 76.1 percent, succeeding Jan Schalauske and Petra Heimer. Böhm did not stand again. Migenda did, and Becker, a ver.di union secretary in Giessen, stood for the second chair. Before the meeting the Frankfurter Rundschau reported almost 3,200 members, 2.5 percent in Hesse at the June European election, and the loss of Landtag seats after the October 2023 election.

Desiree Becker and Jakob Migenda after their election as co-chairs of Die Linke in Hesse, 2024.

About 150 delegates attended. On the Saturday evening they elected both candidates. The state association published Becker’s result as 131 yes, 18 no, six abstentions and one invalid vote, 84.5 percent; Migenda received 120 yes, 24 no and 11 abstentions, 77.4 percent. The Frankfurter Rundschau reported the same percentages and named Silvia Hable, a social worker from the Werra-Meißner district, and Axel Gerntke, a Frankfurt trade unionist and former Landtag member, as deputy chairs, with Antonia Marquardt of Fulda as youth-policy spokesperson. The Gießener Allgemeine added that Giessen members Lena Schmidt and Matthias Riedl were also elected to the executive, and relayed the party’s figure of more than 420 new members in the state that year.

Delegates adopted the lead motion “Trotz alledem: Zukunft nur mit links!”, restating a commitment to overcoming capitalism and to “democratic socialism”, together with opposition to a rightward shift, redistribution, climate protection and a rejection of German arms exports. A second motion made municipal politics the priority until the 2026 local elections. The paper noted that the Hessian party, founded in 2007, had sat in the Landtag from 2008 to 2024, peaking at 6.3 percent in 2018 and leaving in October 2023 on 3.1 percent, while remaining in many councils and in the administrations in Giessen and Wiesbaden. Janine Wissler, then still federal co-chair, drew the strongest applause and said she would concentrate on Hesse again after leaving the federal office in October. She called the split that produced the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht unavoidable, and said a left party should not adapt to a right-wing zeitgeist on asylum.

In a Frankfurter Rundschau interview on 3 October 2024, Becker said the Landtag defeat had been digested, that the executive was younger, and that the association would oppose without a Landtag group while aiming to return in 2028. Both chairs described the posts as honorary. She named social policy, and expected cuts in the Land social budget, as the priority. Migenda said Hesse had lost very few members to the BSW, which then had no state association and which he expected Ali Al-Dailami to try to build; Becker thought further departures unlikely. Asked about Wissler, she said that was Wissler’s decision, and noted that Wissler remained the party’s Hessian Bundestag member. Becker said she would not have stood unless she believed the association could recover.

From 2022 she also sat on the party’s federal council. The Bundesausschuss roster for 2022–23 names her as a Hessian member, with Magdalena Depta-Wollenhaupt, Tim Dreyer and Hermann Schaus. Her Bundestag biography lists membership of the Parteirat, that council’s later name, from 2022.

Candidacies before the Bundestag

2023 Hessian state election

Becker was the constituency candidate of Die Linke in the 2023 Hessian state election, held on 8 October 2023 for the Landtag of Hesse. She stood in constituency 18, Gießen I, which covers the city of Gießen and the municipalities of Biebertal, Heuchelheim, Lollar and Wettenberg. The Gießen district returning committee admitted her on 11 August 2023, after the local party association had nominated her in July with Marvin Bauer as substitute.

In the statistical office’s report of the preliminary results, 90,521 people were eligible in the constituency and turnout was 66.2 percent. Becker received 3,148 constituency votes, 5.3 percent of 58,965 valid constituency votes, and did not win the seat. The state returning officer later recorded that corrections between the preliminary and final counts did not change the percentage results announced on election night. Frederik Bouffier of the Christian Democratic Union won the constituency with 18,857 votes (32.0 percent). Katrin Schleenbecker of Alliance 90/The Greens received 18.4 percent, Nina Heidt-Sommer of the Social Democratic Party of Germany 18.2 percent, and Sandra Weegels of the Alternative for Germany 14.6 percent. Die Linke’s list votes in the same constituency were 3,192, or 5.4 percent, compared with 9.1 percent in 2018.

Across Hesse, the final count gave Die Linke 86,842 list votes and 3.1 percent, against 181,332 votes, 6.3 percent and nine seats in 2018. Only parties and voter groups with at least 5 percent of the list vote are allocated seats. Die Linke therefore won none of the 133 seats in the Landtag whose term began on 18 January 2024. On election night Becker told the Gießener Anzeiger that the state result was bitter and that the federal dispute over a possible split of the party had contributed; being above the statewide share in her own constituency was, she said, only slight consolation.

2024 European election list

For the 2024 European Parliament election in Germany on 9 June 2024, the Federal Returning Officer recorded Becker in seventh place on Die Linke’s common list for all Länder, born in 1994 and described as a trade-union secretary and youth-education officer. The party received 2.7 percent of the valid votes, down from 5.5 percent in 2019, and three of Germany’s 96 seats in the European Parliament. Those seats went to list places one to three: Martin Schirdewan, Carola Rackete and Özlem Alev Demirel-Böhlke. Becker was published among the unelected successors and did not enter the Parliament. On 3 July 2024 the Federal Electoral Committee established the final result and stated that it did not change the preliminary allocation of seats.

Rebuilding the state association

Die Linke had sat in the Hessian Landtag from 2008 until the new term in 2024. At a two-day state congress in Baunatal on 28 and 29 September 2024, about 150 delegates elected a new executive. Becker, a secretary of the services union ver.di and a member of the Gießen district council, and Jakob Migenda, state chair since 2022, became co-chairs on the Saturday evening; Becker received 84.5 percent and Migenda 77.4 percent. Silvia Hable and Axel Gerntke were elected deputy chairs, and the congress decided that until the municipal elections in spring 2026 the association would concentrate on local politics.

In a Frankfurter Rundschau interview published on 3 October 2024, Becker said the loss of the Landtag seats had been absorbed, that the executive was younger, and that the party would continue without a Landtag group while trying to return in 2028. She described the task as extra-parliamentary opposition, with social policy first because cuts in the state social budget were expected, and said that she and Migenda held the chairmanship as volunteers and had to manage with fewer full-time staff. Migenda said the state party had gained 420 new members in 2024; the newspaper reported a membership of just under 3,200 at the end of August.

Asked about resignations after the Landtag result and the split that produced the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht, Migenda said Hesse had lost very few members to that party and that a stable core remained. Becker said she did not expect further departures, and Migenda noted that the new party still had no state association in Hesse.

The 2025 federal election

Campaign in constituency 172

The 2025 German federal election was a snap election for the 21st Bundestag, held on 23 February. Chancellor Olaf Scholz lost a confidence vote on 16 December 2024: 207 members voted for him, 394 against and 116 abstained. On 27 December, Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier dissolved the 20th Bundestag under Article 68 of the Basic Law and set the election for 23 February 2025.

Desiree Becker stood for Die Linke in constituency 172, Gießen. The constituency comprises 16 municipalities in the Giessen district, including the city of Gießen, and eight in the western Vogelsbergkreis, among them Alsfeld.

Map of constituency 172, Gießen, for the election to the 21st Bundestag.

The central-Hesse district associations nominated her unanimously, a choice the Gießener Allgemeine reported on 5 December 2024, before the dissolution. She told that meeting the party stood for affordable rents, better working conditions and social cohesion, and for climate policy tied to social measures, and she announced a local opening on 13 December at the DGB house in Gießen. In a Gießener Anzeiger interview of 12 February 2025 she described doorstep canvassing, discussions and postering across the constituency. On 17 February the Vogelsberg executive, in a notice carried by the Gießener Allgemeine, reported an information stand with her in Alsfeld and said the branch was aiming for at least 8 percent in Hesse so that list place 4 would be reached.

The Hessian returning officer's constituency slate also named Frederik Bouffier (CDU), the incumbent Felix Maximilian Döring (SPD), Michel Zörb (Alliance 90/The Greens), Robin Jünger (AfD), Dennis Pucher (FDP), Björn Feuerbach (Free Voters) and Monika Pranjic (Volt).

Results in Gießen and Hesse

The Federal Returning Officer's final figures for constituency 172 give 215,142 eligible voters and 178,656 participants, a turnout of 83.0 percent, 8.6 percentage points above 2021. Of 176,938 valid first votes, Bouffier received 53,851 (30.4 percent, up 0.8 points) and the plurality. Döring was second with 49,204 (27.8 percent, down 2.6). The AfD candidate had 33,541 (19.0 percent, up 9.9), the Green candidate 15,276 (8.6 percent, down 4.7) and Becker 12,444 (7.0 percent, up 3.1). The Free Voters took 5,122 (2.9 percent), the FDP 4,906 (2.8 percent, down 4.8) and Volt 2,594 (1.5 percent).

Of 177,248 valid second votes in the constituency, the CDU led with 47,076 (26.6 percent, up 3.9 points), then the AfD with 33,917 (19.1 percent, up 9.8), the SPD with 33,234 (18.8 percent, down 8.8) and the Greens with 21,926 (12.4 percent, down 4.0). Die Linke received 17,359 (9.8 percent, up 4.8). Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht had 7,913 (4.5 percent) and the FDP 7,410 (4.2 percent, down 6.5).

In Hesse, 3,608,634 of 4,341,919 eligible voters cast ballots, a turnout of 83.1 percent (up 6.9 points). Die Linke's 311,058 second votes were 8.7 percent, 4.4 points more than in 2021. The CDU led the state on 28.9 percent, ahead of the SPD on 18.4, the AfD on 17.8 and the Greens on 12.6; the FDP took 5.0 percent and the BSW 4.4.

Entry on the state list

Hesse filled 45 seats, six fewer than the 51 members it had in the previous Bundestag. The final allocation gave the CDU 15 seats, all from constituencies; the SPD 10 (two constituencies and eight list places); the AfD nine and the Greens seven, all from their lists; and Die Linke four, all from its list. The FDP and the BSW received none. The Federal Electoral Committee, on 14 March 2025, put the FDP at 4.3 percent of second votes nationally and the BSW at 4.981 percent, and neither was included among the 630 seats.

Since the amendment of 8 June 2023, leading a constituency does not by itself confer a seat. Seats in a Land follow the second-vote entitlement; constituency leaders are seated only up to that number, ranked by their share of valid first votes, and any seats left over go down the state list. Die Linke led no Hessian constituency, so its four seats were list places 1 to 4. The state election portal names those elected as Janine Wissler (Janine Natalie Wißler), Jörg Cezanne, Violetta Bock and Desiree Becker. The register of members records Becker, born in 1994, for Die Linke on Hesse list place 4, associated with constituency 172.

Bouffier, not Becker, took constituency 172. His 30.4 percent was high enough for the CDU's Hessian entitlement to cover him. Five other CDU candidates who finished first were not seated: those in Groß-Gerau, Schwalm-Eder, Frankfurt am Main II, Darmstadt and Frankfurt am Main I. Döring entered from SPD list place 5, and Jünger from AfD list place 3. The 21st Bundestag, to which that list seat belonged, constituted itself on 25 March 2025.

Work in the Bundestag

Committees and spokesperson roles

Desiree Becker sits in the 21st Bundestag for Die Linke. The chamber's biography, dated 27 October 2026, lists her as a full member of the Defence Committee and of the Subcommittee on Arms and Proliferation Control, Non-Proliferation and International Disarmament, and as that subcommittee's Obfrau. She is a deputy member of the Committee on Labour and Social Affairs, the Committee on Research, Technology, Space and Technology Assessment, and the Subcommittee on International Order, the United Nations and International Organisations.

The Defence Committee is required by Article 45a of the Basic Law. In the 21st term it has 38 members — 13 CDU/CSU, nine AfD, seven SPD, five Greens and four from Die Linke — chaired by Thomas Röwekamp (CDU/CSU), with Bettina Lugk (SPD) as deputy chair. At its constitution on 21 May 2025, Die Linke's full members were Becker, Zada Salihovic, Ulrich Thoden and Donata Vogtschmidt. It prepares plenary decisions on defence bills and controls the Defence Ministry, the Bundeswehr and its administration. Alone among Bundestag committees it may constitute itself as a committee of inquiry. It advises on the defence budget and on procurement of at least €25 million, follows deployments under the approval rule set by the Federal Constitutional Court in 1994 and the 2004 Parliamentary Participation Act, and meets behind closed doors.

The arms-control subcommittee of the Foreign Affairs Committee was constituted on 17 October 2025 with nine full members. Ralf Stegner (SPD) was elected chair and Florian Dorn (CDU/CSU) deputy chair; Becker is Die Linke's full member, with Janine Wissler as substitute. The Bundestag assigns it current disarmament policy and longer-term aims, including a world without nuclear weapons, a ban on cluster munitions, conventional arms control in Europe and non-proliferation, with expert hearings and scrutiny of how the government carries out international obligations. In the Bundestag glossary an Obfrau is each group's contact with the committee leadership and helps set that group's line. The post is not the chair.

On 22 May 2026, in the 81st sitting, Becker spoke for Die Linke on the arms-control reports for 2025 and 2024 (printed papers 21/5850 and 21/115). She called the two-year balance miserable and put the previous year's global military spending at $2.8 trillion. She argued that New START had in practice expired in February and that the government preferred deterrence by rearmament, including a conventionally strongest Bundeswehr in Europe and the militarisation of space; security, she said, comes from fewer weapons. Other speakers treated Russian rearmament and allied deterrence as the central security problem. Both reports were referred to committee.

Her deputy committee seats cover neighbouring fields. Labour and Social Affairs, with 42 members, handles pensions, labour-market policy, unemployment support and inclusion of disabled people. The research committee, with 30 members, covers science funding and subjects such as artificial intelligence, quantum technology and supercomputing, and steers the Office of Technology Assessment run by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. The United Nations subcommittee, also constituted on 17 October 2025 under Boris Mijatović (Greens), is the Foreign Affairs Committee's forum on rules-based multilateral cooperation. At constitution Lea Reisner was Die Linke's full member and Vinzenz Glaser the substitute; the October 2026 biography lists Becker as a deputy. The group's profile, not the Bundestag biography, also calls her spokesperson for peace and disarmament policy and for space policy.

Faction leadership

On 24 June 2025 the Die Linke Bundestag group elected its executive for the term. Heidi Reichinnek and Sören Pellmann became co-chairs with 94.8 and 72.4 percent, and Ina Latendorf first parliamentary managing director with 87.9 percent. Deputy chairs head the working groups, and the women's-policy spokesperson is a deputy chair as well. Becker was elected, on 88.1 percent, to lead "Internationales, Menschenrechte und Frieden". The other groups went to Janine Wissler, Luigi Pantisano, Nicole Gohlke and Clara Bünger, and the women's-policy post to Kathrin Gebel. The Gießener Allgemeine, quoting her constituency office, reported that the office framed the post as a brief for diplomacy and disarmament rather than war and rearmament.

Interparliamentary bodies and constituency offices

She is a full member of the Bundestag delegation to the Interparliamentary Conference for the Common Foreign and Security Policy and the Common Security and Defence Policy. Created in 2012 by the speakers of European Union national parliaments and the president of the European Parliament, on the basis of Protocol No. 1 to the Treaty of Lisbon, the conference meets twice a year in the country holding the Council presidency. It has no power of decision in foreign, security or defence policy; the Bundestag sends up to six members.

She is a deputy member of the Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly, of the Joint Committee under Article 53a of the Basic Law, and of the Parliamentary Assembly of NATO. The Franco-German assembly has 50 members from each parliament and is to meet at least twice a year, alternating between the two countries; it first sat in Paris on 25 March 2019. The Joint Committee — two-thirds Bundestag members, one-third Bundesrat members — was added to the Basic Law with the emergency laws of 30 May 1968 and establishes a state of defence only if the Bundestag cannot act in time. The NATO assembly links national parliaments and the alliance, meets twice a year, and sends reports and resolutions to allied governments and the North Atlantic Council.

She is a deputy chair of the Parliamentarian Group for the Maghreb states. These cross-party groups, 47 of them in the 21st term and covering about 180 countries, exist for parliamentary dialogue rather than legislation; a faction that does not hold the chair may send one deputy to the board. Claudia Roth (Greens) chairs the Maghreb group. Its 8–10 April 2026 delegation to Morocco, which did not include Becker, also listed Carl-Philipp Sassenrath (CDU/CSU) as a deputy chair.

Her mandate is a state-list seat for Hesse, and she was Die Linke's candidate in constituency 172, Giessen. At the 2025 federal election the party's result there was 12,444 first votes (7.0 percent) and 17,359 second votes (9.8 percent). The biography gives a Berlin office at Platz der Republik 1, 11011 Berlin, and constituency offices at Steinstr. 77, 35390 Giessen, and Elisabethstraße 9, 35037 Marburg.

Political positions

In the 21st Bundestag, Desiree Becker argues the federal line of Die Linke: no return to conscription, social spending ahead of arms spending, and asylum without conditions. She sits on the defence committee, is Obfrau of its arms-control subcommittee, and is a deputy on the labour and the research, technology and space committees.

Labour, youth and social policy

From 2023 she was a youth secretary for ver.di in central Hesse, and from 2021 to 2023 a youth educator for the German Trade Union Confederation. Her Bundestag biography also lists her as an honorary judge at the Giessen labour court since 2022 and as a member of ver.di, the GEW and the IGBCE. On 3 October 2024, after her election with Jakob Migenda to the Hessian leadership, she told the Frankfurter Rundschau that social policy would be a priority against cuts she expected in the Land social budget.

On 5 June 2025, against Alternative for Germany motions to abolish the Supply Chain Act, she called it a minimum standard because goods are made by people, and said it directly concerned not even 0.1 per cent of firms. On 16 January 2026 she called a government bill a further hollowing-out and asked when the SPD and the CDU would stop "trampling on human rights". With report checks suspended, an unenforced law was a fig leaf; without civil liability, a "toothless tiger". On 14 May 2025 she said she spoke for a generation "against military service, against compulsion, for self-determination", and that billions for arms instead of education and care meant fitness for war rather than social security.

Peace, disarmament and conscription

That speech answered plans by Defence Minister Boris Pistorius for an "attractive" service, voluntary at first and obligatory later. Becker called the label a fraud (Etikettenschwindel): registration and compulsion were "nothing less than the creeping reintroduction of conscription". The Left wanted "a society of peace, not of militarisation". The Gießener Anzeiger of 19 May 2025, from a Giessen Left press release, quoted her that the young were again supposed to serve "while others content themselves with martial speeches".

The Wehrdienst-Modernisierungsgesetz of Chancellor Friedrich Merz's cabinet, passed by the Bundestag and approved by the Bundesrat, has been in force since 1 January 2026. The government says basic conscription has been suspended since 1 July 2011 and that the new service is voluntary. From 2026 every 18-year-old receives a questionnaire, compulsory for men; men born in 2008 must be medically assessed, including intended objectors. If growth targets are missed, a further law may introduce a Bedarfswehrpflicht. Conscription would not restart automatically.

She has kept the objection. On 3 June 2025 she wrote on abgeordnetenwatch.de that conscientious objection under the Basic Law was non-negotiable: "Compulsion is no answer to social challenges—solidarity arises through voluntariness, not through militarisation." On 3 August 2026, asked how a Bundeswehr could manage without conscription, she said more weapons did not produce security, rejected a general split between offensive and defensive arms, and called "defence capability" an elastic excuse for further spending. NATO, she wrote, was a military alliance, not a community of values; she pointed to the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, and said conscription would not fix the Bundeswehr's structural problems. The Left's 2025 programme likewise says "no reintroduction of conscription" and rejects a NATO target of 2 per cent of GDP or more.

On 22 May 2026, given 30 minutes on the disarmament reports for 2024 and 2025, she called the balance "miserable and also frightening". She spoke of the greatest rearmament since the Second World War, cited global arms spending of 2.8 trillion US dollars the previous year, said New START had in effect expired in February, and blamed "not only Russia, but also the United States". The government, she said, was "flirting with" a European nuclear umbrella and with making the Bundeswehr Europe's strongest conventional force: "A secure world does not come about through more weapons, but through fewer weapons."

Tagesschau reported on 1 June 2026 that a duty, dormant since 2011, requiring men aged 17 to 45 to get Bundeswehr permission before leaving Germany for more than three months had been reactivated and then set aside by a general order. A Bundestag research-service opinion, commissioned by the Left group, found that an unlimited exception covering everyone exceeded executive power. Becker had raised this in a written question on 15 April 2026; a three-sentence reply ignored it. She called it "further evidence of incompetence and ministerial maximum failure". On 3 October 2024 she told the Frankfurter Rundschau that war and peace also concerned Hesse: the party demonstrated every year against the Bundeswehr at the Hessentag, and arms firms in northern Hesse meant members expected the debate.

Migration, asylum and anti-fascism

Her Bundestag declaration lists membership of Pro Asyl, Sea-Eye, the Association of Persecutees of the Nazi Regime – Federation of Antifascists (VVN-BdA) and Gelbe Hand, and states that in 2018–2020 she did Sea-Eye shipyard work in Malta. Those are affiliations, not a bill. The 2025 Left programme, the group's wider line, defends asylum "without ifs or buts", rejects a "Fortress Europe", and would replace Frontex with a civilian rescue programme.

On 9 October 2026, against an AfD motion on a "migration turn", she cited an 18-year-old deported to Azerbaijan while seeking a nursing-training permit, later able to return to Giessen, and families in Stadtallendorf and Dautphetal facing removal to Turkey despite school and training. She called this "organised injustice" and the motion "populist rubbish". On 3 December 2025, on the founding in Giessen of the AfD youth organisation Generation Deutschland, she said the city had "stood up", cited the murders of Walter Lübcke and Halit Yozgat and nine deaths in Hanau, and said participants quoted Höcke and the Hitler Youth and celebrated "remigration". She closed: "Siamo tutti antifascisti—we are all antifascists."

Space and research

On 24 September 2026, debating the 5 September Isar Aerospace launch of five research satellites, Becker called the flight a success and the political story the militarisation of space. She paraphrased Research Minister Dorothee Bär: without space investment, the question would be not whether the refrigerator was full but whether it had been bombed. Access to orbit was necessary, she said, but not a reason for an arms race there. Pistorius, she said, had spoken of about 35 billion euros for the sector by 2030, so the difference would be defence money, not a research strategy, while schools sat outside the "resilience portfolio". She urged a school strike against conscription the next day. On 22 May 2026 she had already said the government wanted to militarise outer space without considering confidence-building steps to demilitarise it.

Reception and controversies

Press portrait

On 3 October 2024 the Frankfurter Rundschau interviewed Becker and Jakob Migenda, new co-chairs of Die Linke in Hesse, after the party had left the Landtag and lost members to the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht. Becker said, "Ich denke, wir haben das verdaut," that the younger board would work on without a Landtag group and still aim at 2028, and that extra-parliamentary opposition and social policy came first. She called the black-red record "sehr mau," and said she would not have stood unless the party could "aus diesem Tal wieder herauskommen."

"Die Aufbauleiterin" in the Gießener Allgemeine (19 January 2025) presented the then 30-year-old Giessen district chair, Hessian co-chair and ver.di youth secretary, direct candidate in constituency 172. She said the party was "vielleicht nicht die lauteste Stimme, aber wir werden gebraucht," put new joins in Hesse at about 900 and membership near 4,000, and spoke of an "Aufbruchstimmung" and a "Kümmererpartei" on rents, prices and advice. She hoped to clear 5 percent and to beat the FDP locally, adding, "Wir werden nicht den Kanzler stellen." On 29 June 2025 it reported her election on 24 June, with Janine Wissler, Luigi Pantisano, Nicole Gohlke and Clara Bünger, as a deputy chair of the Bundestag group and head of the working group on international affairs, human rights and peace. Her office quoted a call for a world that "endlich anfängt abzurüsten."

Rote Hilfe membership

The Bundestag biography, which the parliament says rests on members' own disclosures, lists Rote Hilfe among her memberships, with ver.di, the GEW and the IGBCE, Gelbe Hand, Sea-Eye, the VVN-BdA and Pro Asyl.

The 2025 report of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution calls Rote Hilfe, founded in 1975 and based in Göttingen, the largest grouping in German left-wing extremism and one of the most important: 16,500 members, against 14,400 a year earlier, in about 55 groups. Its main field, the report says, is support for left-extremist offenders in court and in prison, in order to weaken the deterrent effect of criminal law. The association "bietet einen Legitimationsrahmen für die Begehung von Straf- und Gewalttaten," and its choice of cases shows that it "die Anwendung von Gewalt als Mittel der politischen Auseinandersetzung nicht nur befürwortet, sondern auch unterstützt." The office says its publicity seeks to delegitimise the rule of law, including as "Klassenjustiz," while the statute, as quoted there, calls it a "parteiunabhängige, strömungsübergreifende linke Schutz- und Solidaritätsorganisation."

Legal Tribune Online reported that Rote Hilfe had not sued the "linksextremistisch" label itself. The Verwaltungsgericht Bremen dismissed a challenge to the "violence-oriented" label in the 2016 Bremen report (18 September 2020, 2 K 236/18); the Oberverwaltungsgericht Bremen refused leave to appeal on 22 December 2022. On 20 May 2025 the Oberverwaltungsgericht Koblenz (7 A 10038/25) held the activity to be "gegen den Grundsatz der Rechtsstaatlichkeit." The federal report cites an Oberverwaltungsgericht Berlin-Brandenburg order of 4 November 2020 on the Hans-Litten-Archiv.

On 1 October 2026 the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported that group chair Sören Pellmann had joined two days after it became known that Berlin lead candidate Elif Eralp had belonged until 2025 and had left "wegen teilweise anderer politischer Ansichten." He wrote that a defence in court must be possible for people with little money. The paper reported that Becker wrote on Instagram she was a member of the association "als extrem wichtig eingestuft," and that help with activists' defence was not "Bekämpfung des Systems, sondern zunächst etwas, das zu den elementaren Grundlagen unseres Rechtsstaats gehört."

Public questions and parliamentary record

Abgeordnetenwatch recorded a 100 percent response rate for the current mandate, 15 of 15 questions. On 29 September 2026 she replied to a question of 22 September asking whether members should sit on committees if they belonged to organisations classed as extremist — described there as a club that aids people accused of politically motivated offences and can cut aid if they apologise in court or cooperate with prosecutors. She wrote that this pointed to Rote Hilfe "und damit möglicherweise auch auf meine Mitgliedschaft dort," and that "meine Mitgliedschaft ist kein Geheimnis." A Verfassungsschutz label alone was "kein hinreichender Maßstab": the office had watched Die Linke and Bodo Ramelow, whose observation the Federal Constitutional Court found disproportionate. She said she looked at "konkrete Positionen und Handlungen." Defendants, she wrote, have a right to a fair trial, a lawyer and silence, "elementare rechtsstaatliche Garantien." Rote Hilfe's help with costs, its advice to refuse testimony, and its practice of weighing cooperation were known and "kann und sollte man diskutieren"; judging an MP still meant asking "welche Positionen dieser selbst vertritt und wie er handelt."

Of 85 roll-call votes recorded for her 2025–2029 mandate, she voted yes 30 times, no 44 times and abstained four times, and was marked absent, with no reason given, on seven.