Dunja Kreiser

Dunja Eleonore Angelika Kreiser (born 27 June 1971 in Wolfenbüttel) is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and a member of the Bundestag for Salzgitter – Wolfenbüttel (constituency 49) in Lower Saxony. The federal returning officer lists her as the directly elected member of that constituency. The Bundestag gives her occupation as Abwassermeisterin, the master-craft qualification in wastewater management, and its biography, drawn from her own statements, records that she is Protestant, married and has one child.

She trained from 1987 to 1990 as a supply and disposal specialist (Ver- und Entsorgerin), began work in 1990 as a wastewater technician for the City of Wolfenbüttel, passed a trainer-aptitude examination in 1993 and completed a distance course as a wastewater master between 1994 and 1996. The SPD parliamentary group’s curriculum vitae also lists membership of the trade union ver.di from 1987, the SPD from 2000, and the honorary mayoralty of Evessen, including the villages of Hachum and Gilzum, from 2011. The Bundestag’s register of members’ interests lists that mayoralty at €3,600 gross a year. From 2017 to 2021 she was a member of the Landtag of Lower Saxony for constituency 9, Wolfenbüttel-Nord.

On 23 February 2021 an SPD delegate meeting in Wolfenbüttel nominated her, by 46 votes to 44, as the candidate to succeed Sigmar Gabriel in constituency 49. At the federal election of 26 September 2021 the SPD took 56,157 first votes in the constituency (38.6 percent), and Der Spiegel identified Kreiser as the winner ahead of Holger Bormann of the Christian Democratic Union (27.2 percent). She has been a member since the 20th Bundestag held its constitutive sitting on 26 October 2021. In that term the parliamentary biography lists her as a full member of the Committee on Internal Affairs and Home Affairs, and as the SPD group’s deputy spokesperson on interior policy, a full member of the Committee on the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection, a deputy member of the economic-affairs and sports committees, and chair of the German–Mexican Parliamentary Group. The same biography states that she has been a deputy state chair of the SPD in Lower Saxony since 2022.

She held the direct seat again on 23 February 2025, with 48,410 first votes (30.6 percent), 8.0 percentage points below the SPD’s 2021 share in the constituency, ahead of Reza Asghari of the CDU (44,809 votes, 28.3 percent). Turnout was 81.7 percent of 195,221 eligible voters. On the party-list ballot in the same constituency the CDU led with 26.5 percent, the SPD polled 24.4 percent and the Alternative for Germany 21.3 percent. In the 21st Bundestag she is an ordinary member of the Committee on the Environment, Climate Protection, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, the Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy, and the Parliamentary Advisory Council on Sustainable Development and Future Issues, a deputy member of the Transport Committee, and again chair of the German–Mexican Parliamentary Group. The SPD group lists her, from 22 September 2025, as a member of the board of trustees of the fund for the financing of nuclear-waste disposal and, from 3 June 2025, as deputy spokesperson of its working group on economic affairs and energy and as a member of the group’s executive. It also names Helmstedt–Wolfsburg as a further constituency in her care.

Early life and vocational training

Childhood in Wolfenbüttel

Dunja Eleonore Angelika Kreiser was born on 27 June 1971 in Wolfenbüttel, in southeastern Lower Saxony. The three forenames are those under which the federal returning officer recorded her election in Salzgitter–Wolfenbüttel in 2025, and under which Der Spiegel reported her direct mandate there in 2021.

Apprenticeship and master's examination

From 1987 to 1990 Kreiser served an apprenticeship as a Ver- und Entsorgerin, a supply and disposal specialist. The occupation had been state-recognized by the Ver- und Entsorger-Ausbildungsverordnung of 30 May 1984, in force from 1 August 1984, as a training occupation of both the public service and private industry. The Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training, which led the drafting, described it as the first recognized training occupation in technical environmental protection, a three-year dual programme of workplace and vocational school. The first year was a broad foundation in chemistry, physics and biology; the second taught material common to the branches, with short placements in those not chosen; the third was a specialization in water supply, wastewater or waste. In the wastewater branch the minimum syllabus covered collecting and conveying wastewater, treating it, handling sludge, analytical work, measurement and process control, and the relevant law and technical rules. The final examination combined practical work samples with written papers in technology, technical mathematics, and economics and social studies. Published accounts do not name Kreiser’s branch. They record that in 1990 she began work for the City of Wolfenbüttel as a Fachkraft für Abwassertechnik, a skilled wastewater post.

In 1993 she passed the Ausbildereignungsprüfung, the trainer-aptitude examination. For trainers employed in the public service, the Ausbilder-Eignungsverordnung öffentlicher Dienst of 16 July 1976, in force from 1 August 1976, required vocational and work-pedagogical knowledge in addition to occupational competence. The subjects were the fundamentals of vocational education, planning and conducting training, young people in training, and the legal basis of vocational training. The test was written, normally about five hours, and oral, normally half an hour, and included a practical lesson for apprentices. Ver- und Entsorgerin was designated a public-service training occupation, so that ordinance was the federal rule on trainer aptitude for municipal training in it.

From 1994 to 1996 she followed a Fernstudium, a distance-learning course, for Abwassermeisterin and passed the master craftsman examination (Meisterprüfung). The examination then in force was the Ver- und Entsorgung-Meisterprüfungsverordnung of 23 November 1987, effective from 1 June 1988. Issued under section 46(2) of the Vocational Training Act, it was a further-training examination, not a higher-education degree; the distance course prepared candidates for it. The wastewater title was Geprüfte Abwassermeisterin. The ordinance tested whether a candidate could perform a master’s supervisory tasks: helping to plan installations and equipment and monitoring them for quality, safety and faults; assigning work and training staff; and arranging occupational safety. It had three parts: costs, law (including water protection and waste) and workplace cooperation; wastewater technology, plant operation, sampling, safety, maintenance and a practical operational situation; and vocational pedagogy, including a practical instruction of apprentices. A candidate who had already passed a trainer examination under the Vocational Training Act could, on application, be excused from that pedagogical part. Admission normally required a final examination in a related recognized occupation and then at least three years of corresponding practice, and a pass required at least adequate marks in each part and in the operational situation. These dates are those in the Bundestag biography, which the parliament notes are the member’s own statements; the same sequence appears in her 2023 candidacy note for the SPD in Lower Saxony.

Career in wastewater management

Municipal service in Wolfenbüttel

Before her first parliamentary mandate, Dunja Kreiser worked in municipal wastewater services in Wolfenbüttel. The Bundestag biography, which the parliament states rests on the member's own information, records an apprenticeship as a Ver- und Entsorgerin (supply and disposal specialist) from 1987 to 1990, employment with the city from 1990 as a Fachkraft für Abwassertechnik (wastewater technician), a trainer-aptitude examination in 1993, and distance study from 1994 to 1996 ending in the examination for Abwassermeisterin (certified wastewater master).

The employer named in that account is the city's wastewater utility. Under an operating statute adopted in 2011 and amended in 2016, the Abwasserbeseitigungsbetrieb Stadt Wolfenbüttel (ABW) is an Eigenbetrieb of the city: financially separate, without its own legal personality, and not run for profit. Its purpose is to build, operate and maintain treatment plants, pumping stations, pressure mains and gravity sewers in the city, and it may also handle wastewater disposal for neighbouring municipalities. The utility, which describes itself as wholly owned by the city, states that a second municipal body, the Abwasserentsorgung Wolfenbüttel AöR, holds the plant built at Kälberanger between 1998 and 2001, while the ABW provides the operating staff. It reports about 238 kilometres of foul sewer, 235 kilometres of storm sewer, and about 3.2 million cubic metres of wastewater treated there each year.

The Bundestag biography lists Kreiser as deputy wastewater master (stellvertretende Abwassermeisterin) for the city from 1997 to 2003, on parental leave from 2003 to 2009, and from 2015 as deputy team leader of the city's wastewater operations. In a curriculum vitae on her own website, and in a self-description carried by Abgeordnetenwatch, she places the deputy team leadership at the Wolfenbüttel treatment plant and dates it to the period before her first mandate, in the Landtag of Lower Saxony; the Abgeordnetenwatch text also says she trained apprentices in the wastewater occupation. Separately from the biography, the Bundestag's register of disclosable interests lists her occupation before membership as Abwassermeisterin at the Abwasserbeseitigungsbetrieb Stadt Wolfenbüttel, with a right to return (Rückkehrrecht).

A federal ordinance in force since 1 March 2005 defines the Geprüfte Abwassermeisterin qualification as the ability to carry out technical, organisational and leadership work in public or private enterprises, including process control, fault response, maintenance of plant and sewers, supervision of measurements and legal requirements, staff leadership and responsibility for training.

Examination boards and vocational training

The same Bundestag biography records two roles at the Niedersächsischer Landesbetrieb für Wasserwirtschaft, Küsten- und Naturschutz (NLWKN): membership of the examination board for environmental-technology occupations in 1995, and of the vocational-training committee for those occupations in 2012. The NLWKN office at Hannover-Hildesheim is the competent body for these occupations in the public service of Lower Saxony. It states that the environmental-technology apprenticeships were introduced in 2002 in place of training as a Ver- und Entsorger, normally last three years, and include the specialisation Umwelttechnologe or Umwelttechnologin für Abwasserbewirtschaftung, covering drainage networks and wastewater and sludge treatment at municipal and industrial plants. The Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training reported that modernised regulations taking effect on 1 August 2024 replaced the 2002 ordinances and gave the occupations new titles, including Umwelttechnologe/Umwelttechnologin für Abwasserbewirtschaftung, within the dual education system.

Under the Vocational Training Act, a competent body's examination board has at least three members, with equal numbers of employer and employee representatives and at least one vocational-school teacher; employee members are proposed by trade unions in the district. Its vocational-training committee has six representatives each of employers, employees and vocational schools—the teachers with an advisory vote only—and must be informed and heard on important matters of vocational training. The biography of the SPD Bundestag group, a detail absent from the Bundestag's own biographical note, lists Kreiser as a member of the trade union ver.di from 1987. On Abgeordnetenwatch she states that she sits on the vocational-training committee as a ver.di representative.

Local government

Councils in Evessen and Sickte

Evessen is a member municipality of the Samtgemeinde Sickte, in the district of Wolfenbüttel in Lower Saxony. Since 1974 it has comprised the villages of Evessen, Gilzum and Hachum, east of Wolfenbüttel on the Elm. The joint directory of the federal and state statistical offices lists the municipality, on the territorial status of 30 September 2026, at 17.55 square kilometres and 1,220 inhabitants. The Samtgemeinde’s own register counted 1,258 inhabitants in July 2026 and names Dunja Kreiser as mayor. The other member municipalities are Dettum, Erkerode, Sickte and Veltheim; the joint administration sits in Sickte.

Under the Niedersächsisches Kommunalverfassungsgesetz (NKomVG), municipalities in a rural district with at least 400 inhabitants may form a Samtgemeinde to strengthen their administration, and the association should have at least 7,000 inhabitants. The Lower Saxony interior ministry describes a Samtgemeinde as a voluntary grouping whose members remain legally independent: it performs their tasks in the transferred sphere of state administration and, by statute and sometimes by agreement, specified tasks of their own sphere, such as land-use planning. Its organs are the Samtgemeinderat, the Samtgemeindeausschuss and a Samtgemeindebürgermeister or Samtgemeindebürgermeisterin, who in the ministry’s consolidated text of the statute is a full-time civil servant for a fixed term.

Kreiser, of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), has been a member of the Evessen council and of the Samtgemeinderat of Sickte since 2006, according to the biography of the SPD group in the Bundestag. A report of 25 November 2021 on the Evessen council’s constitutive meeting recorded an honour for 15 years of council service. The SPD biography also dates from 2011 her chairmanship of the works committee of the Sickte wastewater utility and a board seat at the Wasserverband Weddel-Lehre. The Samtgemeinderat for 2021–2026 again named her chair of that works committee. The Bundestag archive for the 20th electoral term lists her as a deputy member of the Weddel-Lehre board until April 2022; the disclosure for the 21st term does not.

regionalHeute reported on 24 October 2014 that the Samtgemeinderat, meeting in Dettum, had elected her unanimously, by show of hands, as Ratsvorsitzende. She succeeded Dieter Lorenz of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU), who had held the chair for 40 years and had resigned it at the previous meeting; she was already deputy chair. She did not continue in that role. For 2021–2026 the council elected Dr Manfred Bormann (CDU) unanimously as Ratsvorsitzender and Dr Heinrich Füchtjohann (SPD) as deputy. The current disclosure still lists Kreiser as a member of the Samtgemeinderat and as chair of the works committee of the Abwasserbeseitigungsbetriebe Sickte.

Mayor of Evessen

In a member municipality the council elects the Bürgermeister or Bürgermeisterin from among its members, at its first meeting and for the council term; only a person aged at least 18 may be chosen. Section 105 of the NKomVG makes the office honorary. On accepting election the mayor enters an honorary civil-service relationship (Ehrenbeamtenverhältnis), chairs the council, and continues after the term until a successor is elected. Dismissal requires a two-thirds majority of the council’s members, and the motion must have stood on the agenda circulated with the notice of the meeting. That post is separate from the full-time Samtgemeinde chief executive.

At the constitutive meeting reported by regionalHeute on 19 November 2011, the Evessen council elected Kreiser mayor unanimously. The report called her the first woman to hold that office in a member municipality of the Samtgemeinde Sickte, and noted that the CDU fielded no opponent. Thorsten Tiedt (CDU) and Christiane Wagner-Judith of Alliance 90/The Greens were elected deputies. She succeeded Klaus Bertram (SPD), described as a long-serving mayor and a councillor for 37 years.

The council re-elected her unanimously, with no other nomination, in the meeting reported on 9 November 2016; she spoke of a second term, with Eckhard Weddelmann (CDU) and Wagner-Judith as deputies. A Samtgemeinde press release carried on 25 November 2021 recorded another unanimous election, which she called a third term; the deputies were then Karsten Wolff (CDU) and Wagner-Judith. The Bundestag’s register of declarable interests lists the office as Bürgermeisterin of the Gemeinde Evessen at 3,600 euros gross a year. The November 2021 re-election came after she had entered the Bundestag. regionalHeute’s account, drawn from the Samtgemeinde press release, reported the vote and her thanks to the council and did not discuss combining the mayoralty with the parliamentary seat.

Roles in the Social Democratic Party

Local and district offices

Dunja Kreiser joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 2000, and the biography published by the party's group in the Bundestag records three further local posts: in 2006 she became chair of the branch (Ortsverein) in Evessen; in 2015 she joined the social-democratic women's group (Arbeitsgruppe sozialdemokratischer Frauen) of the Wolfenbüttel sub-district; and in 2016 she joined that sub-district's executive.

At district level, the SPD Bezirk Braunschweig congress in Peine in April 2025 elected her a deputy chair alongside Falko Mohrs, Philipp Raulfs and Michaela Römmeler, and confirmed Thorsten Kornblum as chair with 94 percent, regionalheute reported from a district-party statement. The district executive lists her in that role for 2025–2027.

Deputy state chair of the SPD in Lower Saxony

On 24 May 2025 the ordinary state congress of the SPD in Lower Saxony, meeting in the Lindenhalle in Wolfenbüttel, elected Kreiser as a deputy state chair (stellvertretende Landesvorsitzende). NDR, citing the party, named the five people elected to that office as Adis Ahmetovic, Kreiser, Philipp Raulfs, Svenja Stadler and Kathrin Wahlmann.

The same congress elected Olaf Lies, already chosen Minister-President by the Landtag of Lower Saxony the previous Tuesday, as state chair. He was the only candidate, succeeded Stephan Weil, who did not stand again, and received 187 of 194 delegate votes (96.4 percent), with six against and one abstention. Delegates also confirmed Dörte Liebetruth as general secretary and elected Ulrich Watermann treasurer. Regionalheute, reporting Kreiser's account, stated that she received 152 votes, the second-highest total among the five candidates for deputy chair.

She had first been elected deputy state chair on 22 May 2022, at an extraordinary congress in Hildesheim, with 88.1 percent of the vote, taking the seat left by the former state health minister Carola Reimann.

In the Bundestag faction, the SPD Landesgruppe for Lower Saxony and Bremen completed its executive on 12 May 2025. Regionalheute, citing a faction press notice, reported that Kreiser would represent Braunschweig, with Johann Saathoff as chair for Weser-Ems, Frauke Heiligenstadt for Hannover, Lars Klingbeil for northern Lower Saxony and Uwe Schmidt for Bremen; Saathoff called the vote unanimous. The faction's office list styles her deputy chair of the Landesgruppe from that date.

On 3 June 2025 the faction elected her deputy spokesperson for economic policy; regionalheute, citing her office, reported that vote as unanimous. That evening she was elected on the first ballot to the extended executive, regionalheute reported from her statement; with the chair, six deputy chairs and the parliamentary business managers, that body forms the faction executive. The faction press office listed her among the 25 members chosen.

Member of the Landtag of Lower Saxony

2017 state election

Dunja Kreiser, a wastewater master at the City of Wolfenbüttel’s wastewater works and honorary mayor of Evessen, was the candidate of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in constituency 9, Wolfenbüttel-Nord, for the Landtag of Lower Saxony. Under the state election law in the version of 8 February 2017, in force from 14 February 2017, that constituency took in, from the district of Wolfenbüttel, the city of Wolfenbüttel, the municipality of Cremlingen and the joint municipality (Samtgemeinde) of Sickte.

The election was brought forward. When Kreiser was nominated, unanimously, by the constituency delegate conference on 11 March 2017, the poll was still expected on 14 January 2018; SPD speakers at that meeting treated the seat as one to be taken from the sitting Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) deputy, Frank Oesterhelweg. The SPD–Green state government of Minister-President Stephan Weil then lost its one-seat majority after the Green deputy Elke Twesten joined the CDU, and the election was held on 15 October 2017.

In the district of Wolfenbüttel’s published count for the constituency, all 71 polling-station reports were in. Of 60,418 people eligible to vote, 40,676 cast ballots (67.32 percent). There were 40,419 valid first votes. Kreiser received 16,033 (39.67 percent) and Oesterhelweg 13,997 (34.63 percent), a margin of 2,036 votes. Weige (Greens) had 2,850 (7.05 percent), Försterling (FDP) 2,660 (6.58 percent), Heid (AfD) 2,659 (6.58 percent), Herrmann (The Left) 1,563 (3.87 percent), Lodge (Die PARTEI) 494 (1.22 percent) and Jagau, an independent, 163 (0.40 percent). The count recorded Kreiser as elected.

SPD and CDU then formed a grand coalition, described in contemporary reporting as the first in Lower Saxony in more than 40 years, after the Greens declined a Jamaica coalition and the FDP a traffic-light one. On 22 November 2017 the Landtag re-elected Weil with 104 votes; the two parties together held 105 of 137 seats, and the new cabinet had five ministers from each.

Committees, sport policy and resignation

The 18th Landtag met for its constitutive sitting in Hanover on 14 November 2017. In the name call used to establish a quorum, Kreiser was recorded as present. The presiding senior member counted 137 members, declared the house quorate and stated that the 18th electoral term had begun.

The rebuilt plenary area of the Landtag of Lower Saxony in Hanover.

At the first public sitting of the Enquete Commission on improving the conditions for voluntary work, on 2 October 2020, Kreiser said she had sat in the Landtag since 2017 for constituency 9 and was a member of the Committee on the Interior and Sport, where she was the SPD parliamentary group’s spokesperson on sport. She also said she belonged to the Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs and to its subcommittee on prisons and assistance for offenders, and that she remained honorary mayor of Evessen, with its municipal kindergarten, and honorary chair of the Sickte joint-municipality council. The minutes of the interior-and-sport committee for 27 May 2021 list her among the members present. That sitting included a government report on dual careers for Olympic and Paralympic athletes in the state service.

Her constituency office said in June 2018 that she was, in addition, a permanent substitute on the Committee on the Environment, Energy, Building and Climate Protection and a member and deputy chair of the Landtag’s data-protection commission. In March 2019 the same office said that all Landtag groups had backed ten state-administration posts so that squad athletes could combine training with employment, and that Kreiser, as sport spokesperson, had pressed for 100 million euros for municipal and club sports facilities and for easier data-protection rules for clubs. Those funding and regulatory claims were the office’s account, not a separate Landtag finding.

On 9 November 2021, at the 120th sitting, the Landtag determined losses of seats under Article 11(2), second sentence, of the Lower Saxony constitution read with section 8(2) of the state election law. Kreiser was among eleven members concerned. President Gabriele Andretta placed her with those leaving to sit in the Bundestag, noting her work on the interior-and-sport committee, the legal-and-constitutional committee and various commissions, and said she was leaving after almost four years. The Landtag agreed unanimously, with no votes against and no abstentions. The vacant seat passed to Maximilian Schmidt, who had declared that he would accept the mandate.

Twentieth Bundestag

2021 federal election

On 23 February 2021 a delegate meeting of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in the Lindenhalle in Wolfenbüttel nominated Dunja Kreiser, then a member of Lower Saxony’s Landtag and mayor of Evessen, as its candidate for Bundestag constituency 49, called at the meeting Wolfenbüttel/Salzgitter/Vorharz. She defeated Michael Letter of Salzgitter by 46 votes to 44, with two abstentions, to succeed Sigmar Gabriel, who had given up the seat at the end of 2019. RegionalHeute reported that the constituency’s only sitting Bundestag member was then Victor Perli of Die Linke, who was standing again, and named Holger Bormann of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Claudia bei der Wieden of Alliance 90/The Greens and Max Weitemeier of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) as her other opponents.

Officially named Salzgitter – Wolfenbüttel, the constituency comprised the independent city of Salzgitter, the district of Wolfenbüttel and, from the district of Goslar, Langelsheim, Seesen, Liebenburg and the collective municipality of Lutter am Barenberge (Hahausen, the Flecken Lutter am Barenberge and Wallmoden); the remaining Goslar municipalities were in constituency 52.

The election was on 26 September 2021. Of 200,922 eligible voters, 147,218 cast ballots, a turnout of 73.3 percent, 2.9 percentage points below 2017. The final first-vote totals were SPD 56,157 (38.6 percent, down 4.2 points), CDU 39,541 (27.2 percent), Greens 15,353 (10.6 percent), Alternative for Germany (AfD) 14,331 (9.9 percent), FDP 9,544 (6.6 percent) and Die Linke 5,675 (3.9 percent). The returning officer’s table does not name candidates; Der Spiegel identified the winner as Dunja Eleonore Angelika Kreiser (SPD) with 38.6 percent, ahead of Holger Bormann (CDU) on 27.2 percent, and an election-night report had placed bei der Wieden third. On second votes the SPD received 53,411 (36.7 percent, up 4.2 points), the CDU 23.0 percent, the Greens 12.4 percent, the AfD 9.9 percent and the FDP 9.2 percent.

The 20th Bundestag held its constitutive sitting on 26 October 2021, opened by Wolfgang Schäuble as the oldest member. Kreiser’s name appears in the roll call in the stenographic report of that sitting. On 9 November 2021 the Landtag in Hanover unanimously established the loss of her state seat, and the president noted that she was leaving for Berlin after nearly four years.

Interior and environment committees

For the 20th term the SPD parliamentary group lists Kreiser as a full member of the Committee on Internal Affairs and Homeland from 13 December 2021 and of the Committee on the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection from 5 July 2022, and from 13 June 2023 as deputy spokesperson of its interior working group. Her Bundestag biography, which says the biographical text rests on the member’s own information, likewise calls her the group’s deputy interior-policy spokesperson and a full member of both committees. She was a deputy member of the Economic Affairs Committee and the Sports Committee from 13 December 2021, of the Subcommittee on Civic Engagement from 15 March 2022, and from July 2024 of the second committee of inquiry into the nuclear phase-out. SPD group statements in her name covered revisions of the Online Access Act and, with Helmut Kleebank in March 2023, the cabinet’s National Water Strategy.

German–Mexican Parliamentary Group

The SPD group records her as chair of the German–Mexican Parliamentary Group from 21 March 2022. On 4 May 2022 RegionalHeute reported her statement that the inter-factional group, which has existed since 1987, would constitute in the coming sitting week, meet Mexico’s ambassador in Berlin and focus on human rights, especially women’s rights and enforced disappearance.

Members of the Bundestag delegation pose with Mexican counterparts and the German ambassador during the February 2024 visit.

From 5 to 10 February 2024 she led a delegation to Mexico City and Tapachula in Chiapas, described by the Bundestag as the first such trip in five years. With her were Erhard Grundl (Greens), Peter Heidt (FDP) and Rainer Kraft (AfD), accompanied by ambassador Wolfgang Dold; they met members of Mexico’s national assembly and representatives of government, development organisations, business and civil society. The report centres on crime, migration and energy: it records her account of a 2017 law against enforced disappearance, a search commission building a DNA database with German forensic specialists under a United Nations programme, and more than 50,000 bodies awaiting examination. At Frontera Hidalgo on the Río Suchiate, the Guatemalan border, the group looked at reception arrangements; the account gives her figure of about 1,000 arrivals a day, her description of the reception as dignified, and a local UN refugee-agency programme supported by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. It also says more than 2,000 German firms operate in Mexico and records her comments on unstable power grids, water shortages, skilled-labour shortages and recruitment through the Federal Employment Agency and German schools abroad. Before the June 2024 presidential and congressional elections the delegation visited the electoral authority. Kreiser highlighted parity rules reserving half of candidates and half of seats for women, also applied in government and administration, and the report says the Mexican government had invited her as an official election observer.

Twenty-first Bundestag

2025 federal election

The 2025 German federal election was held on 23 February 2025. In constituency 49, Salzgitter–Wolfenbüttel, in Lower Saxony, the Federal Returning Officer’s final result lists Dunja Eleonore Angelika Kreiser of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) as elected, with 48,410 first votes (30.6 percent). Dr. Reza Asghari of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) was runner-up, with 44,809 first votes (28.3 percent). Kreiser had represented the constituency since 2021.

Of 195,221 eligible voters, 159,593 voted. Turnout was 81.7 percent, 8.5 percentage points above 2021, and 158,282 first votes were valid. The Alternative for Germany (AfD) took 33,787 first votes (21.3 percent, up 11.5 points), Die Linke 11,137 (7.0 percent, up 3.1), Alliance 90/The Greens 10,911 (6.9 percent, down 3.7) and the Free Democratic Party (Germany) (FDP) 3,934 (2.5 percent, down 4.1). The Free Voters received 2,294 (1.4 percent), Volt 1,595 (1.0 percent) and dieBasis 1,405 (0.9 percent).

On the list ballot the CDU led. Of 158,601 valid second votes it had 42,084 (26.5 percent, up 3.6 points), against 38,651 for the SPD (24.4 percent, down 12.3). The AfD had 33,838 (21.3 percent, up 11.4), the Greens 13,825 (8.7 percent, down 3.7), Die Linke 12,355 (7.8 percent, up 4.7), the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) 6,408 (4.0 percent) and the FDP 5,618 (3.5 percent, down 5.7). Kreiser therefore won the constituency seat while the CDU was the strongest party on the list vote in the same district.

From this election a party candidate wins a constituency seat in the Bundestag only with the most first votes and only if that seat is covered by the party’s second-vote allocation in the Land (Zweitstimmendeckung); second votes decide how many seats a party receives. The official result records Kreiser as elected in the constituency, not merely as the leading candidate.

Committees, faction posts and the nuclear-waste fund

For the 21st term the Bundestag lists her direct mandate as constituency 049 and names her an ordinary member of the Committee on the Environment, Climate Protection, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, the Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy, and the Parliamentary Advisory Council on Sustainable Development and Future Issues (Parlamentarischer Beirat für nachhaltige Entwicklung und Zukunftsfragen). She is a deputy member of the Transport Committee and chair of the German–Mexican Parliamentary Group, the Bundestag’s group for relations with Mexico. The SPD group’s profile dates the two full committee seats and the transport deputyship from 21 May 2025, the advisory council’s working group from 9 September 2025, and the Mexico-group chair from 15 September 2025.

On 3 June 2025 the SPD Bundestag group elected her one of 25 members of its extended executive (erweiterter Fraktionsvorstand). With the faction chair, the deputy chairs and the parliamentary business managers, that body plans the group’s work and conducts its business. The same day she was elected unanimously as deputy economic-policy spokesperson; the faction profile records her as deputy spokesperson of the economic-affairs and energy working group from 3 June 2025.

On 12 May 2025 the SPD Land group for Lower Saxony and Bremen completed its executive. Citing a faction press release, regionalheute reported her election as the Braunschweig district’s representative, with Johann Saathoff remaining chair and describing the ballot as unanimous. The faction profile lists her from that date as deputy chair of the Landesgruppe Niedersachsen/Bremen.

On 25 September 2025 the Bundestag, without debate, elected the board of trustees (Kuratorium) of the public-law foundation Fonds zur Finanzierung der kerntechnischen Entsorgung (KENFO). A joint CDU/CSU, SPD and AfD motion (printed paper 21/1758) passed with the Greens and Die Linke abstaining; Kreiser and Michael Thews became the SPD members, with Nadine Heselhaus and Bettina Hagedorn as substitutes. Katharina Beck (Greens) and Christian Görke (Die Linke) were elected unanimously on separate motions. The SPD profile dates Kreiser’s membership from 22 September 2025, before that plenary vote.

The Nuclear Waste Disposal Fund Act (Entsorgungsfondsgesetz) establishes the fund to finance safe disposal of radioactive waste already arising, and still to arise, from commercial nuclear generation of electricity in Germany. Section 4 gives the Kuratorium the fundamental decisions on that purpose and on the fund’s tasks, allows it to consult the Deutsche Bundesbank, and charges it with supervising the executive board. Members come from the finance, economic-affairs and environment ministries and from the Bundestag, each with a substitute, and are appointed for a legislative term. Bundestag seats are the fewest that let every faction name at least one member, keep majority relations and reflect the plenary, and they may not outnumber the government’s representatives. KENFO states that the Kuratorium meets at least three times a year, appoints the board and chooses its chair from the ministries and a deputy chair from the Bundestag; legal supervision lies with the economic-affairs ministry, in agreement with the finance and environment ministries. It lists Bernhard Kluttig as chair, Olav Gutting (CDU/CSU) as deputy chair, and Kreiser and Thews as the SPD members.

Policy positions and constituency work

Water, climate and the environment

Kreiser's environment work follows her trade as a wastewater master for the city of Wolfenbüttel. In the 20th Bundestag she was a full member of the environment committee from July 2022; in the 21st she again sits on the Committee for the Environment, Climate Action, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety. After the SPD group made her a deputy economic-policy spokesperson in June 2025, regionalHeute reported her statement that she remained the group's water-policy spokesperson and that on the environment committee she also covered marine protection and climate adaptation.

On 19 April 2023, debating the National Water Strategy, she said household drinking water had to come first and that droughts and dry winters required preparation to 2050. She opposed easing the restriction on building in floodplains, including for ground-mounted solar plants. On the Commission's draft urban-wastewater directive she called producer responsibility for drug residues and microplastics a decisive step, to be applied from manufacture through to recovery, and said municipalities needed guidance where large projects clashed over water rights. The Goslarsche Zeitung reported a visit to the Harzwasserwerke at the Innerste dam in the Harz, describing the reservoirs as part of the strategy. In June 2025 she said climate effects required a response, for example on flood protection, that water infrastructure and "sponge city" planning needed new approaches, and that European directives were still awaiting national law.

In November 2025 she criticised a BUND study that had found PFAS in 42 of 46 water samples in Lower Saxony, some above limits due from 2026. The samples, she said, were not representative and not taken at a drinking-water abstraction point, and future limits had been applied too early. "Our drinking water is safe," she said, adding that suppliers met the rules then in force, which she said the utility association BDEW had also stated. In June 2026 Pharma Deutschland's northern branch met her at Schaper & Brümmer in Salzgitter about transposing the wastewater directive and producer responsibility for medicines. Its account sets out the association's warning on medicine supply; it does not record her reply.

Industry, energy and the regional economy

The constituency's main industrial projects are SALCOS at Salzgitter AG and cell production by Volkswagen subsidiary PowerCo on the former engine-plant site. NDR reported in October 2026 that the first SALCOS stage, meant to replace one blast furnace, was nearing completion and that one furnace would then close, while a full conversion was later than planned and the next investment decisions were not expected before 2028. About 6,000 employees of Salzgitter Flachstahl were affected; the works council and the union were involved. Chief executive Gunnar Groebler told NDR that lower-carbon steel would at first cost more, but that customers wanted it for their own emissions targets.

In September 2025 Groebler told Reuters, as reported by NDR, that conditions had "considerably deteriorated" since 2022: the first stage was still aimed at the first half of 2027, but later stages were deferred to 2028 or 2029. He asked for lower energy costs and EU trade protection. The group lost €34.6 million in the first quarter of 2025. NDR noted that ArcelorMittal had that June, for the time being, dropped conversion plans at Bremen, citing the market and weak economics. PowerCo began series production of a "unified cell" on 17 December 2025. NDR reported an investment of up to €2 billion. Analyst Stefan Bratzel called the step right but "unfortunately much too late", with Asian cell makers about 10 to 15 years ahead. In February 2026 IG Metall said the roughly 2,000 employees would be protected from operational dismissal until 31 December 2030, with pay scales up 5.5 percent.

The SPD group lists Kreiser as the member also responsible for the neighbouring constituency of Helmstedt–Wolfsburg. In May 2025 she said local industry, smaller firms and craft businesses needed a voice in Berlin, "for example when it comes to the goal of lower energy costs". That June, on her election as deputy economic-policy spokesperson, she said the region stood for change "in the automotive sector, in the production of 'green' steel, in battery-cell manufacturing, in the production of hydrogen trains and much else", and that she wanted to strengthen municipal utilities. She is a member of the economic-affairs and energy committee and, from 3 June 2025, its deputy spokesperson; she described her briefs as including industrial policy, the car industry's transformation and, on energy, offshore wind, floating photovoltaics, LNG terminals and gas storage.

Interior policy and sport

In the 20th Bundestag she was a full member of the Committee on Internal Affairs and Homeland from December 2021 and, from 13 June 2023, deputy spokesperson of the SPD internal-affairs working group, as well as a member of its migration working group and a deputy member of the sports committee. On 28 September 2023 she said the right to asylum was not up for debate, but that irregular migration should be limited because municipalities were strained — she cited her unpaid mayoralty — while legal immigration was needed against an estimated shortage of seven million workers by 2035. On 27 June 2024 she opposed third-country asylum schemes, citing British, Danish and Italian plans and the EU–Turkey deal, backed the EU reform under Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, and rejected cutting benefits for Ukrainians or deporting them. With Dirk Wiese she was rapporteur for the SPD on the Online Access Act. After the mediation-committee compromise passed on 14 June 2024, she said the once-only rule would let people reuse stored data and see, in a data-protection dashboard, which authority used them.

From 2017 to 2021 she sat in the Landtag of Lower Saxony on the committee for internal affairs and sport. regionalHeute, using a statement from her office, called her the SPD group's sport-policy spokesperson. In March 2019 it reported that the Landtag had agreed ten state-administration posts so squad athletes could combine training with a job; Kreiser said a normal full-time post alongside elite sport was becoming impossible. The same statement said she had pressed for €100 million for municipal and club facilities and that the committee was looking at how data-protection rules should not overload volunteer clubs. In the Bundestag the group records her sports role in the 20th term only as deputy membership of the sports committee.

Personal life and disclosed interests

Family and residence

Dunja Kreiser was born on 27 June 1971 in Wolfenbüttel. The Bundestag biography, which states that its biographical details are the member’s own statements, records that she is Protestant (evangelisch), married and has one child. The regional news outlet regionalHeute describes her as married, with a son, and living in Evessen in the district of Wolfenbüttel.

Evessen is a member municipality of the Samtgemeinde Sickte in Lower Saxony. The Samtgemeinde’s website names Kreiser as mayor and, as of July 2026, counted 1,258 inhabitants. In a December 2024 version of her own website she wrote that, as a native of Wolfenbüttel, she lives and works in her constituency and is Gemeindebürgermeisterin of Evessen. Under section 105 of the Lower Saxony Municipal Constitution Act the mayor of such a municipality is elected by the council from its members and, on acceptance, serves as an honorary civil servant. Residence in Evessen and that honorary office therefore overlap.

On that archived page she also gave her leisure interests, in her own words: a lot of sport, long runs in the landscape, and the hobbies long-distance running, fitness training and outings with her son. The list is self-reported and is not in the Bundestag biography.

Outside income and rules on members' conduct

Sections 45 and following of the Members of the Bundestag Act (Abgeordnetengesetz) require members to notify the President of the last occupation before membership and, during the mandate, of paid outside work, functions in companies, public-law bodies and associations, agreements on future activities or financial advantages, and certain company holdings. If income from a reportable activity exceeds 1,000 euros in a month or, if not, 3,000 euros in a calendar year, the gross amount must be stated, including compensation and benefits in kind. Notifications are due within three months of taking the seat, and changes during the term within three months; publication follows a check that a duty to publish exists.

Bundestag guidance dated 23 June 2026 places what sections 47 and 48 require to be published on the biography page, updated when changes are notified, and only in categories that contain an entry. Notifiable income is shown to the euro and cent, marked gross or as profit before tax. The label “honorary” is allowed only if an activity brings no income, or only expense reimbursement well below usual pay and not above 3,000 euros in a calendar year.

As consulted on 31 October 2026, Kreiser’s page uses two categories. Before membership she is listed as an Abwassermeisterin at the Abwasserbeseitigungsbetrieb of the city of Wolfenbüttel, with a right to return. Under public-law functions it lists mayor of the municipality of Evessen, at 3,600.00 euros gross a year; member of the Samtgemeinde Sickte council; and chair of the works committee of the Abwasserbeseitigungsbetriebe Sickte. The council seat and the committee chair carry no euro amount, and none of the three is marked “honorary”. No paid side activity, company or association post, future-benefit agreement, shareholding or donation is listed.

Separate from these disclosures, statutory members’ compensation has been 11,833.47 euros a month since 1 July 2025, and is taxable; a tax-free expense allowance of 5,467.27 euros a month is part of the Amtsausstattung (page as of July 2026).