Elisabeth Winkelmeier-Becker

Elisabeth Winkelmeier-Becker (born 15 September 1962 in Troisdorf) is a German judge and a politician of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) in North Rhine-Westphalia. She has been a member of the Bundestag since 2005 and holds the direct mandate for Rhein-Sieg-Kreis I (Wahlkreis 096).

The Bundestag’s biography, which rests on members’ own disclosures, records that she is Roman Catholic, married and the mother of three children. She completed the Abitur and passed the first state examination in law in 1986 and the second in 1992. She has been a judge since September 1992 and, from September 2001, sat at the Amtsgericht Siegburg, first in civil cases and later as a family judge; she is now außer Dienst, with a right to return to that court.

She joined the CDU in 1981, sat on the state executive of the Junge Union from 1986 to 1992, and chaired the CDU in the Rhein-Sieg-Kreis from 2010 to 2021. Since 2012 she has been a deputy state chair of the CDU in North Rhine-Westphalia, and since 2013 a deputy chair of the Christlich-Demokratische Arbeitnehmerschaft (CDA) in the state.

From 2014 to 2019 she was the CDU/CSU parliamentary group’s spokesperson for legal affairs and consumer protection, and from 2019 to 2021 Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy. From 15 December 2021 until the end of the 20th electoral term she chaired the Bundestag’s Committee on Legal Affairs. At the 2025 federal election she again won Rhein-Sieg-Kreis I, taking 35.6 percent of the first votes (70,350), ahead of Sebastian Hartmann of the SPD on 22.4 percent; in 2021 her share in the then Wahlkreis 97 had been 32.6 percent.

In the 21st Bundestag she sits as a full member of the Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy, the Committee on Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid and the Wahlausschuss, and she chairs the Parliamentary Advisory Council on Sustainable Development and Future Issues. She is a deputy member of the Committee on the Environment, Climate Action, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Consumer Protection, and of the Inter-Parliamentary Union. After the Bundestag on 11 July 2025 postponed the election of three judges of the Federal Constitutional Court because the Union opposed the SPD nominee Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf, Winkelmeier-Becker wrote in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on 17 July 2025 that the dispute was about “Grundfragen des Menschenbildes und unserer Verfassung” and that the Union parties’ natural-law understanding of human dignity could not be reconciled with the nominee.

Early life, education and the judiciary

Childhood and schooling

Elisabeth Winkelmeier-Becker was born on 15 September 1962 in Troisdorf and grew up in Siegburg, in the Rhein-Sieg district of North Rhine-Westphalia. A curriculum vitae on the Bundestag website in November 2005 names her parents as Marianne Winkelmeyer and August Winkelmeyer, the latter an Oberschulrat in church service. The Bundestag's current biography, based on members' own disclosures, records that she is Roman Catholic. From 1969 to 1973 she attended the Adolph-Kolping primary school in Siegburg, and from 1973 to 1981 the Gymnasium Alleestraße there; she took the Abitur in 1981.

Legal studies and the Referendariat

In 1981 she began studying law at the University of Bonn. In 1984 she married Jürgen Becker, also a lawyer. A Bundestag portrait in 2011 described him as a member of the Christian Democratic Union and, from 2009, a state secretary in the Federal Ministry for the Environment. She passed the first state law examination, the Referendarexamen, in 1986 at the Oberlandesgericht Köln. The 2005 curriculum vitae then lists work in 1987–1988 in the Bundestag administration, in the unit for legal affairs and data protection. Her Referendariat ran in 1988–1989 through the Amtsgericht Siegburg, the youth lay-judge court, the labour court and the district administration in Siegburg, and in 1990–1991 through the administrative court in Cologne and a law firm in Siegburg. A son, Damian, was born in 1989 and a daughter, Judith, in 1991, and in 1992 she passed the second state examination, the Assessorexamen, at the judicial examination office in Düsseldorf.

Service as a judge

The 2011 portrait says that her examination average was good enough for her, then aged 30, to enter the judiciary in the same year. She later said she could also have imagined a post in public administration, the federal ministries then still being in Bonn, but that private considerations had decided her for the bench.

The 2005 biography places that start in the 1st civil chamber of the Landgericht Bonn; later Bundestag texts date her appointment as a judge to September 1992. In 1993 she was at the Amtsgericht Königswinter. A daughter, Felicitas, was born in 1994, after which she took parental leave, and in 1996 she returned to the 7th civil chamber of the Landgericht Bonn. In 1997 she moved to the civil division of the Amtsgericht Siegburg, and from 2001 she sat in its family division. Shorter official biographies compress those years. The 2009 text said she had been a judge since September 1992 and, since 2001, at the family court of the Amtsgericht Siegburg; the current biography says that since September 2001 she has been at the Amtsgericht Siegburg, working there as a civil judge and most recently as a family judge, and is now außer Dienst.

In August 2013 she wrote on Abgeordnetenwatch that she had no reason to omit the Landgericht years. Starting in a chamber with several judges, and only later sitting alone at an Amtsgericht, was in her account the usual path before a permanent post. She said she had chosen Siegburg not least so that the work could be combined with family life: when she was given that assignment she already had three small children and a husband under heavy professional strain, so the flexibility of an independent local judge and the court's closeness to home were decisive. She added that she had enjoyed both the civil and the family jurisdictions.

In the 2011 interview she said that finishing legal studies, gaining a foothold as a judge and raising three small children had taken great effort and had sometimes gone to the limit. She called a judge an Einzelkämpferin, used to deciding alone, and named negotiation, reading what mattered to the other person, and explaining a decision as the core of the job. Biographies issued during her Bundestag membership have listed her as a judge at the Amtsgericht außer Dienst. Her current disclosure of members' interests records the occupation before the mandate as judge at the Amtsgericht Siegburg, with a right to return to that post.

Party career

Junge Union and entry into the CDU

Winkelmeier-Becker’s party activity began in the Junge Union in Siegburg, where a Bundestag profile records that she was already active at 16. She joined the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in 1981, the year of her Abitur, and from 1986 to 1992 sat on the Junge Union’s state executive in North Rhine-Westphalia, in the same years as Ronald Pofalla and Hermann Gröhe. She later said that legal training, the start of her judicial career and three children left little room for party office, and that she returned to voluntary work as her children grew older. In the same interview she traced an early affinity for the Christlich-Demokratische Arbeitnehmerschaft (CDA), the CDU’s employees’ association, to Catholic social teaching.

The Rhein-Sieg district association

She joined the executive of the CDU in the Rhein-Sieg-Kreis in 2004 and, about a year before her first Bundestag candidacy, became a deputy district chair. In November 2010 the 53rd district conference elected her to succeed Andreas Krautscheid, who after twelve years as chair did not stand again. The association’s press office reported that about 265 delegates gave the unopposed candidate 90.59 percent, and quoted her calling Rhein-Sieg the CDU’s largest district organization in Germany, with nearly 7,000 members. Local papers later kept that description at a lower membership: the General-Anzeiger reported roughly 6,100 members at a conference in Hennef, and in 2021 the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger reported 5,060, still the party’s largest district association, after a 6 percent fall since 2018.

She was returned without a challenger at later conferences. At the 55th, in Niederkassel, as the association prepared its 2013 Bundestag campaign, 233 of 261 voting members backed her; she said she wanted to remain uncomfortable on every political level rather than act in a streamlined way. At the 58th conference in Hennef, 85 percent of nearly 230 delegates voted for her, and in October 2018 about 240 delegates at the 62nd conference in Meckenheim confirmed her with 87 percent.

After eleven years she did not stand again, saying she would concentrate on her Bundestag mandate. On the evening of 5 October 2021, at the Rhein-Sieg-Forum in Siegburg, the lawyer and Landtag member Oliver Krauß of Alfter defeated Björn Franken of Ruppichteroth by 152 votes to 109 before roughly 300 delegates. She linked losses in the 2020 local elections and the federal election partly to newcomers from the cities, said social policy had come up short, and warned against leaving the centre: “Sich rechts zu positionieren, halte ich für einen Fehler.”

State-level offices

On 30 June 2012, at the CDU’s 34th state conference in the KönigsPALAST in Krefeld, she was elected one of five deputy state chairs, with 391 votes, 63.7 percent of 614 valid ballots, alongside Steffen Kampeter, Ina Scharrenbach, Sven Volmering and Jan Heinisch; Armin Laschet became state chair with 80.3 percent. She told the General-Anzeiger that she wanted to help present the CDU as a modern party and, nominated also by the Frauen-Union, would take up women’s issues; the paper described her as a critic of the Betreuungsgeld. She has held the office since 2012. At the 47th state conference in Bonn on 30 August 2025, about 680 delegates re-elected her as one of six deputies, with Matthias Hauer, Jan Heinisch, Ina Scharrenbach, Daniel Sieveke and Sabine Verheyen, while minister-president Hendrik Wüst received 98 percent as state chair and Paul Ziemiak 91 percent as general secretary.

Since 2013 she has also been a deputy state chair of the CDA in North Rhine-Westphalia. The association’s journal Soziale Ordnung identified her in that office in 2013, and the current state executive lists her as a deputy chair under Daniel Scheen-Pauls.

Elections and the Rhein-Sieg-Kreis I constituency

The constituency

Rhein-Sieg-Kreis I is one of two Bundestag constituencies in the Rhein-Sieg-Kreis, in North Rhine-Westphalia. For the elections of 2013, 2017, 2021 and 2025 the Federal Returning Officer assigned it the same ten municipalities: Eitorf, Hennef (Sieg), Lohmar, Much, Neunkirchen-Seelscheid, Niederkassel, Ruppichteroth, Siegburg, Troisdorf and Windeck. The district's remaining municipalities formed Rhein-Sieg-Kreis II.

The number changed without a change in that municipal list. The state returning officer published the 2005 and 2009 results as constituency 98. The federal number was 97 from 2013 through 2021 and 96 on 23 February 2025. WDR noted that the state's constituency names were unchanged from 2021 while the numbers shifted. On 31 December 2023 the area covered 660.7 square kilometres and had 320,400 inhabitants, a density of 485 per square kilometre.

Results from 2005 to 2025

Elisabeth Winkelmeier-Becker of the Christian Democratic Union won the direct mandate at every federal election from 2005 to 2025. On 18 September 2005, with 226,476 people eligible and turnout at 79.3 percent, she received 80,894 first votes, 45.5 percent. The Social Democratic Party had 73,513, or 41.4 percent, a margin of 7,381. The General-Anzeiger reported that SPD incumbent Uwe Göllner led the early Siegburg count, was overtaken after 19:00, and said he was leaving politics.

On 27 September 2009 turnout was 72.2 percent of 231,404 eligible voters. Her 73,959 first votes were 44.9 percent, and the SPD fell to 42,568 (25.8 percent). The Free Democratic Party, Alliance 90/The Greens and Die Linke took 11.4, 9.3 and 6.4 percent.

Her highest share came on 22 September 2013: 84,556 votes, 49.6 percent, against 50,271 (29.5 percent) for the SPD, with turnout at 73.7 percent of 234,377 eligible voters. The General-Anzeiger identified Sebastian Hartmann as her challenger and reported that the lead was relatively narrow only in Windeck.

In 2017 she took 79,987 votes (44.3 percent) to the SPD's 49,988 (27.7 percent), a margin of 29,999, on a turnout of 77.6 percent of 237,415 eligible voters. The General-Anzeiger again named Hartmann and put her strongest municipal shares in Lohmar (47.3 percent) and Much (47.1 percent), and his in Windeck (33.7 percent) and Troisdorf (30.9 percent). The Alternative for Germany had no constituency candidate.

The narrowest result was in 2021. Turnout was 78.9 percent of 238,627 eligible voters. The CDU's 60,776 first votes were 32.6 percent, down 11.7 points, and the SPD's 53,213 were 28.5 percent, a gap of 7,563. WDR named Hartmann as runner-up. The Greens, FDP and AfD took 14.1, 8.9 and 7.0 percent of first votes.

On 23 February 2025, 199,347 of 238,140 eligible voters took part (83.7 percent). The Federal Returning Officer recorded Winkelmeier-Becker as elected with 70,350 first votes, 35.6 percent, up 3.0 points. Hartmann was second with 44,274 (22.4 percent) and the AfD third with 34,564 (17.5 percent). Second votes were 31.9 percent CDU, 17.9 percent SPD and 17.4 percent AfD. WDR noted that, under that year's electoral law, a constituency plurality did not by itself decide entry to the Bundestag.

List places and local campaign themes

The CDU in North Rhine-Westphalia also placed her on the state list. The lists published by the state returning officer put her at place 27 for 2005 and place 21 for 2009. Party representative assemblies then nominated her at place 6 for 2013, place 3 for 2017 and place 5 for 2021, in 2021 together with her candidacy in constituency 97. On 14 December 2024 in Essen the assembly put Friedrich Merz first and Winkelmeier-Becker second for 2025.

Reported local themes included aircraft noise and transport. In December 2017, during a planning-approval procedure for Cologne Bonn Airport, she urged residents to record how noise, especially at night, affected them. The General-Anzeiger set that appeal against flight paths over the Wahnbach reservoir and night freight by UPS and FedEx. Before the 2021 election she described constituents as her "clients" and her work as family, legal and economic policy. Hartmann, again the SPD candidate, cited affordable housing, climate-neutral mobility, debt-free municipalities and chances for young people. In February 2025 she told the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger that a new government should start with growth, cheaper energy, less bureaucracy and higher net pay; that hospital reform should not open rural gaps; and that transport priorities included public-transport finance, the Deutschlandticket, charging stations, ICE stops in Siegburg and road and rail works.

Legal affairs, consumer protection and family policy, 2005–2019

From her entry to the Bundestag in 2005 until 29 November 2019, when she became parliamentary state secretary at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, Elisabeth Winkelmeier-Becker worked on family policy and on legal affairs, from 2014 as the CDU/CSU spokesperson for legal affairs and consumer protection.

Committee assignments

A Bundestag profile in 2011 described her as a member, since 2005, of both the Committee on Legal Affairs (Rechtsausschuss) and the Committee on Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, and noted her work on the legal committee on insolvency law. In the 16th electoral term she was also an ordinary member of the Parliamentary Advisory Council on Sustainable Development; the council’s report for 6 April 2006 to 25 March 2009 lists her among the ordinary members.

In the 17th term she was rapporteur for the bill on further facilitation of corporate restructuring (Drucksache 17/5712); the legal committee’s recommendation of 26 October 2011 names her as Berichterstatterin. On 27 October 2011 the Bundestag passed the law with the votes of the CDU/CSU and the FDP, the opposition abstaining. She said it set “einen starken Akzent auf die Sanierung”, which she tied to jobs and to the entrepreneur’s skills, and she argued for overcoming what she called the stigma of insolvency by restructuring early and strengthening creditors.

On 19 December 2013 the Bundestag kept 22 standing committees but changed the remit of several, including the committee now named for legal affairs and consumer protection. At the constitutive meetings of 15 January 2014 she was an ordinary member of that committee, chaired by Renate Künast of Alliance 90/The Greens, and only a substitute on the family committee. On 31 January 2018, when the committee was constituted for the 19th term, she was again an ordinary member and was marked on the list as the CDU/CSU spokesperson. The archived biography for the term, which records the state-secretary appointment of 29 November 2019, lists her as an ordinary member of the Wahlausschuss.

Family policy

In 2011 she described the Elterngeld and the expansion of daycare for children under three as major steps already driven through, while saying that carrying out the daycare decisions remained above all a task for the Länder and the municipalities. She called a family-conscious workplace the condition for combining family and employment, and she backed the company competition “Erfolgsfaktor Familie 2012” announced by the then family minister, Kristina Schröder. She rejected the childcare allowance the coalition was then adopting, and she said she wanted a statutory quota for women in leadership posts, fearing that a voluntary pledge of the kind Schröder preferred would come to nothing.

When the allowance was questioned inside the CDU, she defended it on 9 July 2012 as deputy chair of the party in North Rhine-Westphalia. She said it let parents care for a child for up to 14 months without a sharp loss of income and stood both for mothers not having to choose between children and work and for more care by fathers, and she warned against unsettling a benefit that had to stay reliable if family policy was to build confidence.

On 9 November 2012 the Bundestag passed the Betreuungsgeld bill by 310 votes to 282, with two abstentions, Winkelmeier-Becker among them. In a written explanation she said she could not agree to the allowance: family care in the first three years generally supported development and needed no apology, but paying parents for not using a publicly funded place was foreign to the law, would make mothers’ early return to work still less worthwhile, and would undercut the new nursery entitlement for children not adequately supported at home. On 21 July 2015 the Federal Constitutional Court held that the Federation lacked legislative competence for the Betreuungsgeld and declared the provisions creating the entitlement void.

Spokesperson for legal affairs and consumer protection

On 13 January 2014 the CDU/CSU group elected her chair of its working group on legal affairs and consumer protection, and thus its spokesperson, with 215 votes (78 percent), the group’s press office announced that day. The Bundestag biography dates the role from 2014 to 2019. The CDU/CSU Landesgruppe for North Rhine-Westphalia records her, in the same note, as a Beisitzerin on the group’s executive.

On 15 January 2016 she spoke for the CDU/CSU on the bill limiting avoidance of pre-insolvency payments (Drucksache 18/7054), amending the Insolvenzordnung. She said practice under § 133 had left firms facing unexpected clawbacks large enough to threaten their existence, and that the draft should restore planning certainty. The Bundestag passed it on 16 February 2017 with the CDU/CSU, the SPD and Alliance 90/The Greens in favour and the Left abstaining; wages were shielded where no more than three months separated work and payment, and easier payment terms alone were not to count against a creditor.

In the final debate on 7 July 2016 on the sexual-offences reform known as “Nein heißt Nein”, she spoke as the group’s legal-policy spokesperson. She said Union lawyers and the Union’s women had long pressed for a rule under which a refusal must suffice, rejected the charge that the Union had blocked the change, and stated that “Der Schutz der sexuellen Selbstbestimmung verträgt keine Einschränkungen”. She also defended a new offence for assaults committed from within a group, arguing that taking part in such a group was itself wrongful. Her positions on opening marriage to same-sex couples, on the advertising ban in § 219a of the Criminal Code, and on appointments to the Federal Constitutional Court are treated separately.

Parliamentary State Secretary for Economic Affairs, 2019–2021

Appointment and portfolio

On 29 November 2019 Elisabeth Winkelmeier-Becker became Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Energie, BMWi) under Federal Minister Peter Altmaier. She succeeded Oliver Wittke, who had left at his own request; the ministry said she would at first take his portfolio of European policy, economic policy and industrial policy. The Federal President appointed her on the proposal of Chancellor Angela Merkel, and Altmaier handed over the certificate that day. Der Spiegel reported that Wittke was moving to the Zentraler Immobilien Ausschuss, and that Winkelmeier-Becker, spokesperson of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/CSU Bundestag group for legal affairs and consumer protection, had not previously been prominent in economic policy. The ministry’s release described her as a 57-year-old former judge from North Rhine-Westphalia who had sat in the Bundestag since 2005.

By November 2020 the ministry’s profile described her responsibilities as economic policy, industrial policy, and digital and innovation policy, and no longer restated the European-policy brief given at her appointment. From 18 December 2019 she was also the federal government’s special representative (Sonderbeauftragte) for implementing the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative in Germany (D-EITI). In the state-secretary post she represented the minister politically, in particular toward the Bundestag, the Bundesrat and the parliamentary groups, and she represented the BMWi on the supervisory board of Deutsche Bahn AG.

The Bundestag’s biography lists the office as 2019 to 2021, and a December 2021 parliamentary report says she served from the end of November 2019 until the change of government. That change came on 8 December 2021, when the Bundestag elected Olaf Scholz chancellor, he was appointed and sworn in, and the new cabinet met, ending the Fourth Merkel cabinet.

Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative

The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) is the international transparency standard for oil, gas and mining that the German government had supported since 2003; Germany became a candidate in February 2016. On 8 May 2019 the EITI Board, in Decision 2019-39, agreed that Germany had made satisfactory progress overall in implementing the 2016 Standard and set re-validation for 8 May 2022. The Board said implementation had widened available information and stakeholder dialogue, including on environmental aspects, subsidies and renewable energy, despite constraints from the federal system and tax confidentiality.

Winkelmeier-Becker’s appointment as special representative, on 18 December 2019, came after that decision. The ministry described the task as coordinating Germany’s implementation of EITI. At the multi-stakeholder group’s 17th meeting, held at the BMWi in Berlin on 19 February 2020, she welcomed participants, praised D-EITI’s work and thanked the members; industry and civil-society representatives stressed the special representative’s role in raising the initiative’s visibility in Germany and abroad. The meeting reviewed the second D-EITI report and planning for the third, including follow-up to the validation recommendations and the 2019 EITI Standard.

She wrote the forewords, as special representative and parliamentary state secretary, to the D-EITI reports for 2017, 2018 and 2019. In the 2017 report she noted that Germany was, that year, a validated full member. The 2018 foreword, written during the pandemic, pointed to continued reporting, sustainability, the coal exit, and a pilot—taken up at the EITI Board’s request—on alternatives to reconciling payments. In the 2019 report she highlighted a chapter on the energy transition and domestic extraction, a section on recultivation, and further work on that pilot, which she said the EITI Board had praised.

Supervisory boards

With effect from 25 March 2020 the BMWi seconded her to the supervisory board of Deutsche Bahn AG as a shareholder representative, succeeding Wittke. The company’s report for 2020 states that she waived that year’s board remuneration. She resigned with effect from the end of 15 June 2022; from 16 June 2022 State Secretary Anja Hajduk (Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action) and State Secretary Susanne Henckel (Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport) were seconded for the rest of the term. For 2022 Deutsche Bahn reported her pay as 8,300 euros fixed, 5,400 euros variable and 800 euros in attendance fees, 14,500 euros in all, and noted a waiver of the remuneration due from 1 January to 15 March 2022.

From 26 August 2020 she was also a member of the supervisory board of DEG – Deutsche Investitions- und Entwicklungsgesellschaft mbH. DEG is a legally independent, wholly owned subsidiary of KfW and part of the KfW Bankengruppe. DEG’s report for 2022 states that she left the board with effect from 16 March 2022, before the 2017–2022 term ended at the meeting of 21 March 2022, when a new supervisory board was constituted. Both seats therefore continued for several months after her state-secretary office ended with the change of government in December 2021.

Chair of the Committee on Legal Affairs, 2021–2025

Election as chair

On 15 December 2021 the Bundestag's Committee on Legal Affairs and Consumer Protection (Ausschuss für Recht und Verbraucherschutz) elected Elisabeth Winkelmeier-Becker of the CDU/CSU as chair. Vice-president Wolfgang Kubicki (FDP) presided. She received 36 votes in favour, one against and one abstention, in a committee of 39 members.

If the groups cannot agree in the Council of Elders, chairs are allotted by an access procedure (Zugriffsverfahren) according to strength, and that procedure was used at the start of the 20th term. By a separate custom the largest opposition group chairs the Budget Committee, which went to Helge Braun of the CDU/CSU. In the previous term the legal-affairs chair had first been held by Stephan Brandner of the Alternative for Germany until the committee removed him in November 2019. In the 20th term the CDU/CSU was the largest group outside Chancellor Olaf Scholz's coalition of the SPD, Alliance 90/The Greens and the FDP. AfD nominees for three other committees failed secret ballots that week; in June 2022 the Federal Constitutional Court refused to install them provisionally.

On 12 January 2022 the committee elected Thorsten Lieb (FDP) deputy chair. Winkelmeier-Becker remained chair until the 20th electoral period ended on 25 March 2025, when the 21st Bundestag first met. She presided over the committee's sittings and hearings and signed reports whose recommendations were majority decisions.

Legislative business of the 20th Bundestag

The committee led the repeal of section 219a of the Criminal Code, the ban on advertising abortion. In spring 2022 the plenary referred the government bill and several motions, including a CDU/CSU motion on information for pregnant women and protection of the unborn. On 27 April 2022 the committee unanimously ordered a hearing after adding that motion at the Union's request, and later included a motion from Die Linke. Witnesses on 18 May included doctors, criminal-law scholars, pro familia, the physician Kristina Hänel and the Catholic Office in Berlin. On 22 June the committee recommended an amended bill repealing § 219a and adjusting the Pharmaceutical Advertising Act and the Pregnancy Conflict Act, with the SPD, Greens and FDP for, the CDU/CSU and AfD against, and Die Linke absent. Winkelmeier-Becker signed as chair and as CDU/CSU rapporteur. The plenary adopted the text on 24 June 2022.

The committee also led the 2023 sanctions reform. A hearing on 17 April considered counting two unpaid day-fines as one day of substitute imprisonment, adding gender-specific motives and motives against sexual orientation to the sentencing factors in § 46, and narrowing treatment orders under § 64. On 24 May it recommended the amended bill, the coalition for, the AfD against, and the CDU/CSU and Die Linke abstaining. In 2024 it led a cut in the minimum sentences under § 184b for distributing, acquiring or possessing child-pornography content, which a 2021 reform had made felonies and which the government said blocked discontinuation and penal orders in low-culpability cases. After a hearing on 10 April, the committee on 15 May recommended the amended bill, with the coalition and Die Linke for, the CDU/CSU against and the AfD abstaining.

It led the act implementing the EU directive on representative actions for consumers (Verbandsklagenrichtlinienumsetzungsgesetz). After a hearing on 10 May 2023 it recommended the amended bill on 5 July, the coalition for, the CDU/CSU and AfD against, and Die Linke abstaining. The Self-Determination Act, on changing a registered sex and forenames, was led by the family committee; the legal-affairs committee was only advisory. On 10 April 2024 it recommended the amended bill, with the SPD, Greens, FDP and Die Linke for and the CDU/CSU and AfD against.

Opposition scrutiny

Her signature on a recommendation did not mean the CDU/CSU agreed. The § 219a report records the Union as treating the offence as part of the abortion statute, as willing to allow value-neutral information about methods, and as opposing repeal; the coalition rejected that view. The Union motion was heard with the government bill and then recommended for rejection.

Hearings let opposition groups test drafts and nominate witnesses. On 19 February 2024 nine experts gave evidence on a Bundesrat bill to ease proof of excessive rent under the 1954 Economic Criminal Code and to raise the maximum fine from €50,000 to €100,000. Tenant groups backed the change; landlord associations, including experts proposed by the CDU/CSU, likened it to a nationwide rent cap, and the federal government said its position was not settled.

The Union's votes were not uniform: it opposed the § 219a repeal, the representative-actions act and the general § 184b reduction, abstained on the sanctions reform, and voted against the Self-Determination Act. On § 184b the report records it as accepting that some minor cases needed another response, but as preferring a differentiated offence to a cut that would also make serious cases misdemeanours. Where it was outvoted, the coalition, sometimes with Die Linke, carried the recommendation.

Roles in the 21st Bundestag

Committees and the judge-selection bodies

In the 21st Bundestag, Elisabeth Winkelmeier-Becker is a deputy member of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Consumer Protection and of the Committee on the Environment, Climate Action, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety. The legal-affairs committee, with 38 full members, handles legislation in areas such as family, copyright and criminal law and consumer-protection questions such as passenger rights, banking and online contracts, and it considers the Bundestag’s participation in proceedings before the Federal Constitutional Court. The environment committee, also of 38 members, deals with climate policy, extreme weather, biodiversity, resource use and nuclear-waste disposal.

On 21 May 2025 the plenary elected the Bundestag’s members of both judge-selection bodies. For the Richterwahlausschuss, which under section 5 of the Richterwahlgesetz elects judges of the highest federal courts, the CDU/CSU list received six full seats by d’Hondt. Winkelmeier-Becker was one of the six; substitutes were taken from the same list in name order. The Wahlausschuss for the Federal Constitutional Court is separate. Of the court’s 16 judges, half are chosen by the Bundestag and half by the Bundesrat; the Bundestag elects its half in plenary on a proposal from a committee of 12 members chosen proportionally. The CDU/CSU received five places, filled by Steffen Bilger, Ansgar Heveling, Stefan Korbach, Alexander Hoffmann and Carsten Müller. Winkelmeier-Becker was sixth on the list. Section 6(2) of the Federal Constitutional Court Act replaces a member who leaves, or who cannot attend, with the next person on that list. Heveling resigned and left the Bundestag at the end of 31 May 2026. Her biography now lists her as an ordinary member of the Wahlausschuss and does not mention the Richterwahlausschuss, where her full membership rests on the election of 21 May 2025.

Advisory council on sustainable development

On 11 September 2025, at the constitutive sitting chaired by Bundestag Vice President Andrea Lindholz (CDU/CSU), she was elected chair of the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Sustainable Development and Future Issues by open vote, unanimously.

It has 18 full members — six from the CDU/CSU, four each from the AfD and the SPD, and two each from Alliance 90/The Greens and Die Linke — and 18 substitutes. It is established for an electoral term by resolution rather than as a permanent committee. For the 21st term the basis was a joint motion of the CDU/CSU, SPD, Greens and Left (Drucksache 21/571 of 24 June 2025), so that sustainability policy, and related questions about the future, would be followed across committee lines. Its tasks are the German Sustainability Strategy, including a check on implementation and recommendations for developing it further; sustainability policy in Europe and at the United Nations, especially the Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda; and timely opinions, with amendments, for the lead committee. Committee rules of procedure apply.

She had served on the predecessor body in the 16th electoral term. The Bundestag re-established the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Sustainable Development on 6 April 2006, and the council’s report covering 6 April 2006 to 25 March 2009 lists her as an ordinary member.

Human rights and economic affairs

She is an ordinary member of the Committee on Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid and of the Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy. The human-rights committee has 14 members and is charged with the standing of human rights worldwide, which the Bundestag describes as inalienable and as applying regardless of sex, belief, skin colour or political conviction. At its constitution on 21 May 2025 she was one of five CDU/CSU members, under the chair Mechthild Heil. The economic-affairs committee follows the remit of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy: the energy transition and related climate and energy-saving policy, with grid expansion, efficiency and security of supply among the stated priorities, plus technology, industry and Mittelstand policy, the EU internal market, foreign trade and global competition. The report of its constitutive sitting on 21 May 2025 names her among the 42 ordinary members. Outside the committees, she is a deputy member of the Bundestag’s delegation to the Inter-Parliamentary Union.

Positions on family law, abortion and constitutional appointments

Partnership rights and marriage

In August 2012, after a Federal Constitutional Court ruling on civil-service benefits, Winkelmeier-Becker was one of 13 Christian Democratic Union (CDU) members calling for registered life partnerships to be taxed like marriages, including under Ehegattensplitting. She told Deutschlandfunk the Union should decide this itself. Equal tax treatment, she said, matched duties partners already owed — maintenance and the equalisation of pensions and accrued gains — and refusing it was unjust.

On 30 June 2017 the Bundestag opened marriage to same-sex couples, 393 to 226, with four abstentions, all from the CDU and the Christian Social Union, including hers. Her explanation favoured "die volle rechtliche Gleichstellung" of registered partnerships, adoption included, because the same rights and duties were lived there. She rejected an ordinary statute: on the court's case law and a May 2015 statement by the justice minister, Article 6(1) of the Basic Law required spouses of different sexes. She abstained rather than vote no, citing the signal to people persecuted for homosexuality, and blamed the Social Democratic Party for forcing the vote against the coalition agreement. On 19 July 2022 she told abgeordnetenwatch she would now vote for "Ehe für alle", as she had told Radio Bonn/Rhein-Sieg, and that her group had rejected an Alternative for Germany motion to reverse the law.

Abortion law

On 24 June 2022 she spoke for the CDU/CSU against repealing §219a of the Criminal Code, the ban on advertising abortion. Skipping the ELSA study, she said, abandoned the coalition's own standard of evidence; the rush looked like an "Erfolgserlebnis" from "Gruppendynamik". The "maßgebliche Unterschied", she said, was that the Union also weighed the child's right to life. She defended the counselling regime linked to Rita Süssmuth and the court, and said the advertising ban kept that right in public view. Repeal, she said, would allow proactive advertising and present abortion as ordinary treatment, though information was already available. The Left, SPD, Greens and FDP passed the bill; the CDU/CSU and the AfD voted no.

The Commission on Reproductive Self-Determination and Reproductive Medicine reported in April 2024. Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf was deputy coordinator of its abortion group; Winkelmeier-Becker was not a member. It recommended making early abortion lawful rather than merely unpunished, and generally barring it after viability outside the womb. Brosius-Gersdorf said labelling the act wrongful was not a formality for the women concerned. On 10 April 2024 Winkelmeier-Becker told domradio.de the Union stood by §§218 and 218a. She read the report as allowing abortion without further conditions until week 22, which she called incompatible with human dignity and the child's right to life. In October, on a draft from 26 organisations to delete §218 and legalise abortion until week 22, she called the ideas "offenkundig unvereinbar" with the court's standards and a retreat from "jedem Schutzkonzept für das ungeborene Kind".

On 10 February 2025, as CDU/CSU rapporteur, she took part in the legal-affairs committee's hearing on a cross-party bill. Brosius-Gersdorf, an expert witness, said the draft was constitutional and that parliament could reassess the constitution; Gregor Thüsing called it clearly unconstitutional. Radio Bonn/Rhein-Sieg later wrote that both had sat on a commission. Winkelmeier-Becker is not on its published membership list; the hearing is where both are documented.

The 2025 Federal Constitutional Court nominations

In July 2025 the Bundestag postponed electing three constitutional judges, Brosius-Gersdorf among them for the SPD, after part of the CDU/CSU withdrew support given in the selection committee. Tagesschau cited objections to her remarks on abortion and a possible COVID-19 vaccination mandate, and questions Stefan Weber had raised about her dissertation. On 18 July Radio Bonn/Rhein-Sieg called Winkelmeier-Becker the first CDU/CSU member to oppose her publicly: Brosius-Gersdorf was, for her, "nicht wählbar" on the ground "Nicht unser Menschenbild". She also criticised her party and group leader Jens Spahn for noticing so late.

Her Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung essay of 17 July, "Warum wir Brosius-Gersdorf ablehnen", said a natural-law view of dignity was the Union's "DNA", so "kommen wir deshalb nicht zusammen". "'Rechts' ist das nicht." The dispute, she wrote, concerned "Grundfragen des Menschenbildes und unserer Verfassung, wenn Menschsein und Menschenwürde nicht mehr unauflöslich zusammen gedacht werden". In a statement on Legal Tribune Online, Brosius-Gersdorf called some reporting an attempt to block her election and the labels "ultralinks" and "linksradikal" "diffamierend und realitätsfern". She said she had always recognised a right to life from nidation and rejected abortion until birth. If dignity that cannot be balanced attached from nidation, even abortion to protect the woman's life or health would be barred, against the law then in force; the question, she wrote, was whether dignity can be balanced or begins at birth, not whether the unborn go unprotected. Tagesschau reported that Polisphere described a campaign in right-wing and social media, and that SPD and Green leaders blamed Spahn for blocking an agreed candidate.

On 7 August 2025 Brosius-Gersdorf withdrew, writing that the CDU/CSU had made plain her election was excluded and that she would not endanger the other nominees or the coalition. On 25 September the Bundestag elected Günter Spinner (424 yes), Ann-Katrin Kaufhold (440 yes) and Sigrid Emmenegger (446 yes), who succeeded Doris König.

Civic engagements and honors

Development and memorial associations

Winkelmeier-Becker chairs Förderverein Amare e.V. in Siegburg, which supports AMARE, a social-assistance organization in Esperantina in the Brazilian state of Piauí. AMARE was founded in 1990 on the initiative of the Siegburg-born theologian Johannes Skorzak and works with children, adolescents and families in vulnerable situations. Its history says that she, then a judge, founded the Siegburg support association in 1996; another page on the same site says childhood friends of Skorzak from Siegburg created it that year and that she has remained involved.

She has chaired Förderverein Gedenkstätte Landjuden an der Sieg e.V. in Windeck since November 2019, when members chose her to succeed Michael Solf, chair from the founding meeting in December 1990 and then honorary chair. The association funds the memorial’s equipment, events and the series GedenkSchriften, and confirmed her as first chair at the meeting reported on 9 November 2025.

The memorial, run by the Rhein-Sieg-Kreis, is the former home and workplace until 1971 of the Jewish dealer Max Seligmann and his family, a timber-framed house on Bergstraße in Windeck-Rosbach that Hilde Seligmann made available to the district. Decided in 1988 as a record of Jewish life along the Sieg, it opened on 28 August 1994 and reopened on that date in 2024. At the ceremony Winkelmeier-Becker, the CDU member of the Bundestag and chair of the support association, joined online and spoke of strong antisemitism.

She also chairs Stiftung Christlich-Soziale Politik e.V. in Königswinter, which since 1986 has run political-education seminars at the Arbeitnehmer-Zentrum Königswinter to promote the Christian-social idea in public life. From 17 November 2025 the Bundestag register also lists her as honorary chair of the support association for psychosocial cancer counselling in the Caritasverband Rhein-Sieg.

Trusteeships

The register names her a trustee of the Stiftung Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland in Bonn, whose museums in Bonn, Leipzig and Berlin present German history since 1945, and a deputy trustee of the Stiftung Forum Recht in Karlsruhe, created by the Bundestag in May 2019 to discuss law and the Rechtsstaat in public. Until June 2025 she was a trustee of the Deutsche Stiftung für internationale rechtliche Zusammenarbeit (IRZ) in Bonn, which advises partner states on legal and judicial reform for the federal government, and a deputy trustee of the Bundesstiftung Magnus Hirschfeld in Berlin, founded in 2011 for research, education and remembrance against discrimination of queer people. She is also a trustee of the Katholisch-Soziales Institut of the Archdiocese of Cologne, an academy on the Michaelsberg in Siegburg that works from Catholic social teaching; of Bürger für Beethoven e.V. in Bonn, active around the Beethovenfest and Ludwig van Beethoven; and, on an honorary basis from 23 July 2026, of donum vitae in Bonn, which offers pregnancy and pregnancy-conflict counselling, including the certificate under section 219 of the Criminal Code.

Order of Merit

On 1 August 2024 the office of Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier published recipients of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, stating that names are generally announced about four months after conferral. Under Verdienstkreuz am Bande (Cross of Merit on Ribbon) the list includes “Winkelmeier-Becker, Elisabeth, Siegburg”. The notice states the class but no reason for any individual award.