Emmi Zeulner

Emmi Zeulner (born 27 March 1987 in Lichtenfels) is a German politician of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU) and a member of the Bundestag. A qualified nurse (examinierte Gesundheits- und Krankenpflegerin), she has held the direct mandate for Kulmbach in Upper Franconia, Bavaria, since 22 October 2013, the start of the 18th electoral term. In the 21st Bundestag she is the CDU/CSU parliamentary group's Obfrau on the Committee on Health and deputy chair of its health working group, and an ordinary member of the Committee on Housing, Urban Development, Building and Municipalities.

She grew up in Lichtenfels, a small Upper Franconian town with a basket-weaving tradition. Die Welt reported in 2013 that she had been elected the town's Korbstadtkönigin (basket-city queen) in 2006, that she had grown up in the village inn "Eiserne Hand" rather than in a castle, and that she had been a class and school speaker before taking the Abitur on a second-chance route, training as a nurse, and beginning a degree in European Economic Studies at the University of Bamberg. The same profile said a friend brought her into the Junge Union and that she became a Lichtenfels city councillor in 2008. The Bundestag biography, based on her own statements, lists her as Roman Catholic, unmarried, and the parent of one child.

In January 2013, CSU delegates nominated her, then 25, as the party's direct candidate in Kulmbach, the constituency Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg had left in March 2011 after his plagiarism affair. Bild reported that three candidates sought the nomination, covering Kulmbach, Lichtenfels and part of Bamberg district, and that Zeulner, already a city and district councillor and a student, prevailed; Die Welt added that Guttenberg's former office chief had been the favourite. The Federal Returning Officer's final results for the CSU direct candidacy in the constituency (numbered 240 through 2021, and 239 in 2025) were 56.9 percent in 2013 (68,903 votes), 55.4 percent in 2017 (74,105), 47.8 percent in 2021 (65,163) and, with Zeulner named on the 2025 return, 49.3 percent in 2025 (69,446), ahead of Sebastian Johannes Görtler of the Alternative for Germany on 21.8 percent.

Her parliamentary work has stayed close to nursing and regional health care. In June 2026 the Deutsches Ärzteblatt reported that, as the Union's health-committee Obfrau, she opposed a draft by federal health minister Nina Warken of the Christian Democratic Union that would reduce pension points for relatives who cut their working hours to provide care, saying the CSU would not accept relatives—mostly women—being penalised in retirement. Outside the chamber, the Bundestag's disclosure of members' interests lists her as a member of the Lichtenfels city and district councils, a trustee of Coburg University of Applied Sciences, and honorary chair of the board of Health Care Bayern e.V.

Early life and education

Family and upbringing

Emmi Zeulner was born on 27 March 1987 in Lichtenfels, the seat of a rural district in Upper Franconia, Bavaria. Bundestag biographies, which the parliament states are drawn from members' own information, record her as Roman Catholic.

Campaign profiles in 2013 described her as an innkeeper's daughter whose childhood was spent in the village inn "Eiserne Hand" rather than in any grander setting. The Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote that she helped in the house early and followed the political conversation at the regulars' table, sometimes sitting in on rounds of Schafkopf. Die Welt gave a matching picture of a busy inn: cards were played, her grandfather played a Schifferklavier, and local notables kept a Stammtisch at which politics was argued, with Zeulner in the middle of it. The same article said she had been a class representative and later a school representative. The Bundestag biographies do not name her parents or siblings. A sister is mentioned only in passing in the Welt profile, which reported that Zeulner's sister was looking for a hall for election night in 2013.

Korbstadtkönigin of Lichtenfels

Lichtenfels calls itself the Deutsche Korbstadt and says the name is known well beyond Franconia because of the traditional Korbmarkt, the Korbstadtkönigin, what it describes as Germany's only vocational school for woven-work design (Berufsfachschule für Flechtwerkgestaltung), and the old craft of weaving, also taught in year-round courses. The Korbmarkt is fixed on the third weekend in September and is presented as an international weaving festival, with craftspeople from across Europe showing work in the old town. The German Commission for UNESCO includes Flechthandwerk in Germany's nationwide inventory of intangible cultural heritage; its entry names the vocational school in Lichtenfels and the September festival there among the ways the craft is maintained.

The city publishes a list of its Korbstadtköniginnen and enters Zeulner as Emmi I. for 2006–2008. Die Welt reported that she was elected in 2006 and that the office included, among other things, promoting the town. By August 2013 the paper described her as locally well known in the old basket-making town at least since that election. On its own account the city treats the woman crowned at the Korbmarkt as the representative of the basket town and of the weaving craft.

Schooling, nursing qualification and university

The published record agrees that Zeulner holds the Allgemeine Hochschulreife, the general higher-education entrance qualification normally conferred by the Abitur, trained as a nurse, and studied European Economic Studies at the University of Bamberg. It does not agree on which qualification came first.

In June 2013 the Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote that she was a trained nurse who took the Abitur afterwards and was studying European Economic Studies in Bamberg alongside the campaign. In August 2013 Die Welt reversed that order: she had taken the Abitur on the zweiter Bildungsweg, the second-chance route, and had then trained as a nurse, a profession she said deserved greater recognition.

Her statements to the Bundestag date the training and the university course but not the Abitur. The biography for the 18th electoral period lists the Allgemeine Hochschulreife, training as a Gesundheits- und Krankenpflegerin, and study at the University of Bamberg in European Economic Studies until the summer semester of 2013. The archived biography for the 20th electoral period, again marked as self-reported, states that the nursing training ran from 2007 to 2010 at the Klinikum am Europakanal in Erlangen and that European Economic Studies at the Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg ran from 2011 to 2013. The current biography still lists the Allgemeine Hochschulreife and examinierte Gesundheits- und Krankenpflege, and records her occupation before she entered parliament as that of a student in Bamberg. It does not list a completed university degree.

Local politics in Upper Franconia

Joining the Junge Union and the CSU

Emmi Zeulner’s party career started in Lichtenfels, the Upper Franconian town where she was born. A friend brought her into the Junge Union, the youth organisation of the CDU and the CSU. The CSU historical archive dates her joining the party, and her seat on the district council, to 2008. Die Welt reported that she became a Lichtenfels city councillor that year, and quoted her description of the council as preparation for federal politics. In the same 2013 profile the paper named Christian Meißner, then Landrat of Lichtenfels and a former Bavarian Landtag member, as her most important mentor.

Lichtenfels city council and district council

In Bavaria a town council (Stadtrat) consists of the first mayor and honorary councillors, the number fixed by population. A Lichtenfels bylaw of 9 June 2026, effective from 1 May 2026, sets the Stadtrat at the full-time first mayor and 30 honorary members, the figure prescribed for municipalities of more than 20,000 and up to 30,000 inhabitants. The district council (Kreistag) consists of the Landrat and, in a rural district of up to 75,000 inhabitants, 50 honorary district councillors. The Lichtenfels district election of 8 March 2026 filled 50 seats.

Zeulner entered the Lichtenfels Stadtrat in 2008. After Meißner took office as Landrat on 15 December 2011, Mayor Bianca Fischer told the council that he could no longer sit as an honorary member of a municipal parliament. At the sitting reported on 18 January 2012, Sabine Rießner was sworn in as his CSU successor, and Zeulner took over leadership of the Junge Bürger faction. Junge Bürger is a separate local list, not the CSU group: on 8 March 2026 it won 2 of the 30 city-council seats with 6.2 percent of the vote. Bundestag biographies for the 18th legislative period (2013–2017) and the 19th (2017–2021) still described Zeulner as chair of the Junge Bürger faction and as a member of both the city council and the Kreistag. The archived biography for the 20th period (2021–2025), and the biography for the 21st, list the two memberships without that chairmanship.

She has continued to stand on CSU lists. Under Bavarian local-election rules the order of those elected from a list follows the valid votes cast for each person. At the district election of 15 March 2020 she received 33,013 votes on the CSU list and was placed first among the councillors returned from it; the CSU won 19 seats. On 8 March 2026 she received 35,842 votes and was the first of 18 CSU district councillors elected. The notice described her, on the ballot, as a sitting district councillor and city-council member, a member of the Bundestag, and a resident of Lichtenfels. In the city-council election the same day she stood for the CSU, received 8,829 votes, reached first place on that list by personal vote and was elected; the CSU took 8 seats and 27.4 percent.

In the side-activity disclosures published with her biography for the 21st legislative period, under the code of conduct in the Members of the Bundestag Act, the city-council office is itemised at 196.92 euro gross a month, plus irregular payments in 2025 totalling 1,171.26 euro gross. The district-council membership is listed with no income figure. The monthly sum matches the flat expense allowance the 2026 city bylaw sets for honorary councillors; the bylaw also adds 98.46 euro for each council or committee sitting attended as a voting member.

Bundestag candidacies and election results

The 2013 nomination

The constituency Zeulner later won had been held by Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU). At the 2009 federal election he received 68.1 percent of the first votes in constituency 240 Kulmbach (86,658 votes). Die Welt described that share as the strongest first-vote result of any direct candidate in Germany. On 1 March 2011 he resigned as federal defence minister over the plagiarism scandal concerning his doctoral thesis; within days he also gave up his Bundestag seat with immediate effect, which the Bundestag confirmed. Because the CSU held three overhang mandates in Bavaria, the direct seat was not refilled, and Kulmbach had no constituency member until the next election.

On 24 January 2013 CSU delegates met at the Stadtschloss in Lichtenfels to nominate a candidate. The Nordbayerischer Kurier reported that the district associations were nearly equal—Bamberg 55 delegate votes, Kulmbach 53 and Lichtenfels 52—and that an absolute majority would require 81 votes if the delegations voted in full. Three candidates stood, one from each area covered by the constituency: Zeulner from Lichtenfels; Jörg Kunstmann, put forward by the Kulmbach CSU; and Alexander Hummel, an IT specialist from Pettstadt. Kunstmann, then 39, had for years been Guttenberg's constituency manager (Wahlkreisleiter) and political adviser. Die Welt described him as Guttenberg's former office chief and as the favourite before the meeting.

Published counts differ by a vote or two. The Deutsche Presse-Agentur, carried by Die Welt, reported that Zeulner took 68 votes on the first ballot and 81 in a runoff against Kunstmann, an upset after a speech that the Frankenpost described as centred on social policy. The Kurier reported that Kunstmann led the first ballot with 71 votes, two ahead of Zeulner, while Hummel received 19 after many Bamberg delegates did not support him. Zeulner, then 25, a trained nurse studying European Economic Studies in Bamberg and already a member of the Lichtenfels town and district councils, became the CSU direct candidate.

The Kulmbach constituency

Constituency 240 Kulmbach, in Upper Franconia, comprised the districts of Kulmbach and Lichtenfels in full and part of the district of Bamberg: the municipalities of Bischberg, Breitengüßbach, Gundelsheim, Heiligenstadt in Oberfranken, Kemmern, Litzendorf, Memmelsdorf, Oberhaid, Rattelsdorf, Scheßlitz, Viereth-Trunstadt and Zapfendorf; Baunach, Gerach, Lauter and Reckendorf in the Baunach administrative community; and Königsfeld, Stadelhofen and Wattendorf in the Steinfeld administrative community. The Federal Returning Officer listed the same municipalities for the 2021 election, with the rest of Bamberg district in constituency 236.

For the election of the 21st Bundestag the division of constituencies was reset by the 27th amending act to the Federal Elections Act of 7 March 2024, in force from 14 March 2024. Population change moved one constituency from Saxony-Anhalt to Bavaria, which rose from 46 to 47 seats (numbers 211–257), and the numbering of former constituencies 72 to 255 changed; the new Bavarian seat and the redrawn boundaries in Bavaria were in Swabia, not in Upper Franconia. Kulmbach was renumbered from 240 to 239. The 2025 description again lists both districts and the same Bamberg municipalities, with the remainder of that district referred to constituency 235.

Results, 2013–2025

At the 2013 federal election the CSU won constituency 240 with 56.9 percent of valid first votes (68,903), 11.2 points below the 2009 CSU share. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) was second with 22.8 percent (27,587). Turnout was 70.9 percent: 122,307 of 172,449 eligible voters. On the second vote the CSU took 52.3 percent and the SPD 21.5 percent; the Alternative for Germany (AfD), on the ballot for the first time, received 4.0 percent. The official constituency table names the winning party rather than the candidate. Zeulner had been nominated as that candidate, and the CDU/CSU Bundestag group records her as a directly elected member from 22 October 2013, the start of the 18th electoral term.

She held the direct mandate in the 19th term (2017–2021) for constituency 240 Kulmbach. In 2017 the CSU received 55.4 percent of first votes (74,105), 1.5 points less than in 2013, with the SPD second on 16.1 percent (21,494). The AfD rose to 11.6 percent of first votes and 13.4 percent of second votes, while the CSU second-vote share fell from 52.3 percent to 43.4 percent. Turnout was 79.0 percent of 170,897 eligible voters.

In 2021 Der Spiegel reported that Zeulner again took the direct mandate, with 47.8 percent, ahead of Simon Bodo Moritz of the SPD on 16.2 percent. The Federal Returning Officer's final figures are 65,163 first votes (47.8 percent) for the CSU and 22,103 (16.2 percent) for the SPD, on a turnout of 81.2 percent among 168,923 eligible voters. Second votes were 36.2 percent for the CSU (down 7.2 points), 19.8 percent for the SPD, 11.6 percent for the AfD and 8.8 percent for Alliance 90/The Greens; the Free Voters reached 7.6 percent. The Bundestag's record for the 20th term lists her as the member elected for Kulmbach, Lichtenfels and rural Bamberg.

At the 2025 election, in renumbered constituency 239, the final result names Emmi Zeulner (CSU) as elected with 49.3 percent of first votes (69,446), 1.6 points above 2021. Sebastian Johannes Görtler of the AfD was runner-up with 21.8 percent (30,698); the SPD fell to 9.4 percent of first votes. Turnout was 85.5 percent, 141,525 of 165,464 eligible voters. Second votes split 40.3 percent for the CSU and 23.4 percent for the AfD, with the SPD on 10.9 percent. The Bundestag lists her mandate in the 21st electoral term as the constituency seat for Kulmbach.

Work in the Bundestag

Committees by legislative period

Zeulner has sat in the Bundestag since 2013. In the 18th electoral term (2013–2017) she was an ordinary member of the Committee on Health and a deputy member of the Committee on Food and Agriculture and of the Defence Committee. In the 19th term (2017–2021) she was an ordinary member of the Committee on Building, Housing, Urban Development and Municipalities and of the health committee, and Obfrau of the CDU/CSU on the building and housing committee. Deputy seats that term were the Defence Committee, the Committee on Labour and Social Affairs, and the defence committee's first inquiry into consultant contracts under Article 45a (2) of the Basic Law. In the 20th term (2021–2025), on the renamed Committee on Housing, Urban Development, Building and Municipalities, she was again an ordinary member and the group's Obfrau, remained on the health committee, and stayed a defence deputy.

An Obfrau or Obmann is not the committee chair. In the Bundestag's glossary the Obleute are each group's link to its leadership in a committee: they help fix its line, agree agendas and report the detail back to the group. Berichterstatter are different. For each item of business the groups name rapporteurs for particular subjects in their working parties; they state the group's view in committee and steer those deliberations. In February 2025 the Ärzte Zeitung reported that Zeulner's health-committee responsibilities had most recently covered non-physician health professions, psychiatry and psychotherapy, and self-administration, centred on the Gemeinsamer Bundesausschuss, the Medizinischer Dienst and social-insurance elections.

In the 21st term the Bundestag lists her as an ordinary member of the health committee and of the housing, urban-development, building and municipalities committee, and as Obfrau for health. Deputy memberships are the Committee on Education, Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, its Kinderkommission, and the Defence Committee. The CDU/CSU group's own list, separate from those seats, names her deputy chair of its health working group and a member of that group, of its housing and building working group, the employees' group, the local-government association, the women's group and the parliamentary circle for small and medium-sized business.

Coalition talks

Working groups that draft a coalition agreement are party delegations, not Bundestag committees. In the 2018 Union–SPD talks, the Pharmazeutische Zeitung named Zeulner among the CSU members of the health-and-care group, with Georg Nüßlein as CSU lead and with Melanie Huml, Erich Irlstorfer and Barbara Stamm. The CDU side was led by the then federal health minister Hermann Gröhe; the SPD side by Rhineland-Palatinate's minister-president Malu Dreyer, with Karl Lauterbach as co-chair. The paper reported two disputes still open: SPD plans to align physicians' fees for statutorily and privately insured patients, which the Union rejected, and mail-order of prescription medicines, which the Union wanted banned and the SPD did not.

After the 2025 election the Deutsches Ärzteblatt again placed her in that working group for Union–SPD talks. On 12 March 2025 it said 16 negotiators had been named for about ten days; Karl-Josef Laumann was to lead for the CDU, and the CSU members were Stephan Pilsinger, Zeulner and Klaus Holetschek. Katja Pähle was to lead for the SPD, with Lauterbach as deputy. The same article relayed a CDU timetable running from 13 to 23 March.

Plenary speeches and recorded votes

Committee work reaches the plenary as timed speeches and, on contested bills, as roll-call votes that publish each member's position.

On 24 April 2015, in the 101st sitting of the 18th Bundestag, she spoke for the CDU/CSU on a Green motion to strengthen hospice and palliative care. She said a government bill would follow from agreed key points, that access should not depend on residence or insurance status, and that sickness funds should inform insured people and reimburse advance care planning in nursing homes.

Roll calls show both breaks with her group and votes in line with it. In the division on opening marriage to same-sex couples, published by Die Welt on 30 June 2017, she appears among the CDU/CSU members voting no. The paper gave the result as 393 yes, 226 no and four abstentions, with the CDU/CSU dividing 75 in favour and 225 against. On 14 November 2019 the roll call on the Measles Protection Act records her vote as no: 459 voted yes, 89 no and 105 abstained, while in the CDU/CSU 232 voted yes, two voted no and one abstained. On 17 October 2024 she voted no on the Hospital Care Improvement Act, which passed by 373 to 285 with one abstention; of the CDU/CSU members who cast a vote, 181 voted no and none voted yes.

Health, nursing and hospital policy

In the 21st Bundestag, Emmi Zeulner, a qualified nurse, is the Christian Social Union member who serves as the Union’s Obfrau on the health committee and as deputy chair of the CDU/CSU health working group. An Ärzte Zeitung profile recorded that her brief had covered non-physician professions, psychiatry and psychotherapy, and self-government, including the Federal Joint Committee (Gemeinsamer Bundesausschuss, G-BA).

Long-term care and nursing professions

In 2026 Zeulner pressed for changes to a care-insurance draft associated with Federal Health Minister Nina Warken of the Christian Democratic Union. She rejected cuts to the pension credits the care funds pay for family carers, telling Der Spiegel that it was mostly women who reduced their hours and that the CSU would not accept their later being “punished” in the pension. She asked for a risk equalisation drawing privately insured people and civil servants into social long-term care insurance, on the ground that private insurers can refuse pre-existing conditions and that education among civil servants is associated with better health, so high care risks sit in the statutory scheme. Deutsches Ärzteblatt compared the idea with the citizens’ insurance long sought by the Social Democratic Party and the Greens and previously rejected by the Union.

The argument split the Union. Zeulner said the threshold “gives young families room” and that her party had fought for it; Achim Brötel of the Deutscher Landkreistag called the line clearly too high. The pension-credit cut did not survive: Warken’s successor, Carsten Linnemann, dropped it, and on 12 October 2026 the CDU presidium, presented by Chancellor Friedrich Merz, said counting care time toward the pension would remain.

Hospital reform and rural provision

Zeulner’s criticism of the reform associated with Karl Lauterbach turned on rural and specialist capacity rather than on concentration as such. At a September 2024 meeting she hosted with the Katholischer Krankenhausverband, managers called the draft standby payment in the Krankenhausversorgungsverbesserungsgesetz (KHVVG) unusable: 60 per cent of operating costs were to follow service groups and planned or previous-year case numbers, with the rest still paid by diagnosis-related groups. Zeulner said hospitals were hiring doctors in order to qualify for groups, a “survival of the fittest” rather than a move off volume. Lauterbach answered the closure charge in February 2023 by saying the opposite was true: without reform, hospitals would close in an uncontrolled way, whereas pay for maintaining care, not for case volume, should let small basic-care hospitals survive and should raise quality. The KHVVG passed at the end of 2024. The CDU/CSU–SPD Krankenhausanpassungsgesetz, adopted on 6 March 2026, kept specialisation as the stated aim but cut service groups from 65 to 61, allowed exceptions of up to six years, delayed the standby payment’s full effect until 2030, and shifted the federal share of the transformation fund from sickness-fund contributions to the infrastructure special fund. Warken said money would still go only to hospitals that adapt. Bavaria’s health minister Judith Gerlach (CSU) called Länder opt-outs “entirely justified” where rules were locally impossible. Janosch Dahmen of the Greens, a co-author of the KHVVG, said the fund was being turned into support for the existing stock.

Midwifery and obstetrics

As the Union’s rapporteur on midwifery, Zeulner said in May 2023 that safe birth had to be planned “from the end” with midwives, doctors, nurses and families, and that the hospital-reform commission contained neither a midwife nor a nurse. With the Deutscher Hebammenverband she argued that the restructuring threatened area-wide obstetrics and training posts. On her initiative the CDU/CSU in September 2024 called for a statute ahead of the KHVVG to stabilise inpatient obstetrics and children’s hospitals, to pay standby finance independently of volume, and to fund midwife-led delivery rooms.

Employed midwives had already been written out of the hospital nursing budget. The GKV-Finanzstabilisierungsgesetz of autumn 2022 limited that budget, from 2025, to qualified nurses and assistants on bed-leading wards. The Hebammenverband said this made midwives on prenatal and postnatal wards unfinanceable and endangered training. A petition passed 1.6 million signatures. In July 2022 Bavarian health minister Klaus Holetschek had already demanded corrections, warning that refinancing only selected professions would add to the burden on hospital nurses. Lauterbach was quoted as saying obstetrics and paediatrics must not follow the old system’s austerity logic. By late November the ministry moved, through the Krankenhauspflegeentlastungsgesetz, to count midwives’ costs in full from 2025, with €108 million for obstetric sites.

Freelance Beleghebammen, who attend hospital births but bill the funds themselves, were then caught by fee arbitration. A Schiedsstelle set a Hebammenhilfevertrag in April 2025. The GKV-Spitzenverband highlighted a supplement for one-to-one care; the Hebammenverband said freelancers in hospital faced a 20 per cent cut from the first birth-related service and 70 per cent from a second. Zeulner said one-to-one care was the ideal but not always possible, and that a supplementary agreement should soften the start. Changes from 1 April 2026 restored some outpatient fees and loosened the one-to-one rule; association president Annika Wanierke called the deal “little more than a sticking plaster.”

Palliative care, psychiatry and self-administration

On 17 October 2024 the Bundestag gave a first reading to a CDU/CSU motion on area-wide palliative care and hospice work (Drucksache 20/11430); Zeulner spoke. The motion treated the 2015 act as only partly successful, cited hospital under-provision reported by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Palliativmedizin, and asked for a full evaluation. Her recorded committee brief also covered psychiatry and psychotherapy.

The 2025 coalition agreement promised near-term laws on nursing competence, a nursing-assistant qualification and an “Advanced Practice Nurse,” and a fixed G-BA seat with a vote for nursing. Zeulner said on 21 May 2025 that nursing was ready to take that responsibility, including through the Advanced Practice Nurse master’s degree. On 6 November 2025 the Bundestag passed the Gesetz zur Befugniserweiterung und Entbürokratisierung in der Pflege: qualified nurses may, according to training, perform tasks previously reserved to physicians in diabetes, chronic wounds and dementia. The coalition voted in favour; Greens and the Left abstained and the AfD opposed. Warken said nurses could already do more than they were allowed to do, while Green member Simone Fischer called the retention of medical delegation half-hearted and Left member Evelyn Schötz called the law a “part-time reform.” A G-BA vote was already disputed. In July 2024 former federal social judge Ulrich Wenner warned of a fresh fight over the committee’s legitimacy, while Torsten Rantzsch of the university-hospital nursing directors demanded a full vote rather than only a right to propose items. The Ärzteblatt account of the November statute described the new clinical tasks and not a change to who votes in the G-BA.

Housing, family, children and defence

Housing, urban development and local government

In the 19th Bundestag (2017–2021) Zeulner, of the CDU/CSU, was a full member and Obfrau—the group’s lead member, not the chair—of the Committee on Building, Housing, Urban Development and Municipalities. In the 20th term (2021–2025) she again held both roles on the renamed Committee on Housing, Urban Development, Building and Municipalities, and the disclosure register listed her from March 2022 until 25 March 2025 on the jury for the federal programme Nationale Projekte des Städtebaus. From 25 March 2025, in the 21st term, she remained an ordinary member of that committee; the Obfrau function on her biography is the Health Committee.

On 28 June 2019, in the first reading of the law strengthening Wohngeld, she backed a rise from 1 January 2020 which she said would lift benefits by about 30 percent on average for 660,000 households, add a rent band for expensive areas and adjust the benefit every two years. She thanked Building Minister Horst Seehofer and preferred this household subsidy to a general rent cap, including higher income disregards for severe disability and for money spent on care.

On 12 May 2023 she described Städtebauförderung as the means to reuse buildings when private money would not, citing a former brewery in Melkendorf, in the district of Bamberg, and about 12 hectares of a disused spinning mill in Mainleus, in the district of Kulmbach. She said one euro of funding drew seven to nine euros of private investment, that federal and state aid together could reach 80 percent, and she asked the then coalition not to end Nationale Projekte des Städtebaus, an all-party jury programme that could cover up to 90 percent of schemes often costing five or six million euros.

In March 2026 Coburg University of Applied Sciences announced an endowed professorship in barrier-free building for winter semester 2026/27 and called the project unique in Bavaria so far. It credited the idea to Zeulner with the CSU disability forum, chaired by Benedikt Lika, and Sabine Saam, disability officer in Baunach, and the finance to the Oberfrankenstiftung, the Rainer Markgraf Stiftung and 200,000 euros arranged by Landtag members Jürgen Baumgärtner and Martin Mittag. Zeulner, listed on the university’s board of trustees, was quoted calling barrier-free building a basic right rather than a luxury. On 26 March 2026, on a Left motion about homeless women, she said she accepted figures of 62 percent experiencing violence and 27 percent sexualised violence, cited 23.5 billion euros for social housing through 2029, and said her group would reject the motion so the Länder kept responsibility.

Family, seniors, women, youth and the Children's Commission

Since 25 March 2025 she has been a substitute, not a full, member of the Committee on Education, Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth and of its Children’s Commission. The minutes for 14 January 2026, a hearing on young carers, mark her absent and record no speech by her. Before that seat, on 23 November 2019 in Deutschlandfunk’s Streitkultur, she opposed extra father-months as a condition of full Elterngeld, saying the choice had to stay with families, and described Elterngeld Plus as already allowing part-time work.

Defence committee

The Bundestag lists her as a substitute member of the Defence Committee in the 18th term (2013–2017), the 19th, the 20th and the 21st, not as a full member or group spokesperson. In the 19th term she was also a substitute on that committee’s first inquiry, under Article 45a of the Basic Law, into consulting contracts. On 15 January 2026 she closed the CDU/CSU side of a debate referred to the Health Committee, on a Left motion against preparing civilian health care for war. She said members of the Bundeswehr were watching, called it a parliamentary army, and said a Gesundheitssicherstellungsgesetz would follow in the first half of 2026, backing a civil-military approach she linked to General Hoffmann.

Offices in the CSU

Lichtenfels district association

In the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU), a Kreisverband normally covers a rural district, a district-free city, or a Landtag constituency in a large city. Its assembly elects a Kreisvorstand, led by a Kreisvorsitzende and up to five deputies, which represents the party locally, runs day-to-day business and publicity, and supervises internal elections in the Ortsverbände. The assembly also chooses delegates to the party congress and the Bezirksparteitag and candidates for public office.

Zeulner was deputy Kreisvorsitzende of the CSU in Lichtenfels from 2015, as a September 2019 invitation from the Wirtschaftsjunioren Lichtenfels recorded. On 27 May 2025 the Kreisverband announced that she had that day been elected unanimously as Kreisvorsitzende, thanking Landrat Christian Meißner for his work in the district. Meißner, Landrat since 15 December 2011, had chaired the association since 2001. The Main-Post afterwards used the title for her: in the caption of its report on the Kreisverband’s 80th anniversary in Altenkunstadt on 26 October 2025, and again in its account of the Hochstadt assembly that nominated the CSU list for the March 2026 district-council election, where it quoted her as Kreisvorsitzende and member of the Bundestag.

Upper Franconia and the party executive

A Bezirksverband normally covers a Regierungsbezirk. Upper Franconia is one of ten CSU regional associations, alongside the other Bavarian regions and separate associations for Munich, Nuremberg–Fürth–Schwabach and Augsburg. The Bezirksparteitag elects a board, with a chair and up to five deputies, that represents the party in the region and supervises internal elections in the Kreisverbände and in Bundestag-constituency conferences. Chairs are influential enough that reporting has called them “Bezirksfürsten”; in 2019 they were confirmed for a further two years.

The CSU’s historical register lists Zeulner on the executives of the Junge Union and the CSU in Upper Franconia, and as deputy chair of the CSU Bezirksverband since 2019. A local event on 5 September 2019 already introduced her in that deputy role. Hans-Peter Friedrich, chair since 2011, was re-elected in Bamberg on 6 July 2019 with 96.1 percent.

On 28 June 2025, at a Bezirksparteitag in Naila’s Frankenhalle, she stood against Martin Schöffel. Frankenpost reported that Schöffel, 48, a state secretary in the Bavarian Ministry of Finance from Wunsiedel, took 73 of 132 votes cast (55.3 percent) and Zeulner, 38, took 59; Bezirksgeschäftsführer Reinhold Rott announced the figures. She had the backing of the Junge Union. A Deutsche Presse-Agentur report in the Süddeutsche Zeitung called the race unusually narrow and her candidacy a surprise to many observers. She remained a deputy chair. Friedrich, after 14 years, did not run. Markus Söder, who attended, later called Schöffel a strong representative of Upper Franconia in the cabinet and wrote of his respect for a fair contest. The report added that Bezirkschefs traditionally wield great influence and that state-cabinet members often hold the office.

The Parteivorstand sits with the Parteitag, the Parteiausschuss and the Präsidium among the party’s highest organs. The congress elects the chair, up to five deputies, two treasurers, two secretaries and 32 further members, meant to reflect the Bezirksverbände; the general secretary, the chief executive and the chairs of the CSU groups in the European Parliament, the Bundestag and the Landtag of Bavaria belong by office. The board represents the party in public, handles urgent political business, draws the boundaries of the Bezirksverbände, and appoints the general secretary and chief executive on the chair’s proposal. The historical register records Zeulner as a Parteivorstand member since 2017. The list of voting members dated 12 December 2025 in the party’s filing with the federal returning officer names her, as Emmi Zeulner, MdB, among those 32 further members.

Roles outside parliament

Health Care Bayern

Health Care Bayern e.V., based in Munich, describes itself as a Bavaria network of about 500 members from medicine, rehabilitation, science, administrations, health insurers and associations, using working groups for discussions, projects and conferences. At its 2021 annual meeting, Health & Care Management reported, members elected Emmi Zeulner, a CSU member of the Bundestag and a qualified nurse, as chair with 99 percent of the vote. She succeeded Barbara Stamm, former president of the Bavarian state parliament, who had chaired the association for more than 17 years. The Bundestag register lists the chairmanship as honorary, with no income, and abgeordnetenwatch.de carries the same entry.

REGIOMED-Kliniken

Zeulner sat on the supervisory board of REGIOMED-KLINIKEN GmbH. The 19th-term disclosure names the company in Coburg but gives no amount. The 20th-term register records the seat as held ex officio (“von Amts wegen”) at the company in Sonneberg until 3 January 2024, at €300 gross a month, plus irregular gross payments of €800 in 2022 and €800 in 2023.

On 2 January 2024 the group applied to the Amtsgericht Nürnberg for insolvency in self-administration. The filing covered hospitals in Coburg, Lichtenfels, Hildburghausen, Neustadt and Sonneberg, with senior centres, residential homes and the rescue service. A return of the hospitals to the participating municipalities had failed after the city and district of Coburg opposed it. The group cited higher material and staff costs, shortages of skilled workers and the after-effects of the pandemic. In October 2023 the Main-Post reported that Zeulner, as a supervisory-board member, had criticized leadership failures in the group and meant to join the restructuring. Its headline quoted her, “Das Personal ist unser Schatz” (“The staff is our treasure”).

On 1 November 2023 the Neue Presse Coburg reported that Steffen Harzer, of Die Linke on the Hildburghausen council, accused managing director Musick and supervisory-board members Müller and Brodführer of withholding information and of decisions that had hurt the local hospital, and called for the managing director and two board members to resign. Zeulner is not named.

Creditors later approved insolvency plans. From 1 November 2024, the Deutsches Ärzteblatt reported, Sana Kliniken AG was to take the Bavarian hospitals in Coburg, Lichtenfels and Neustadt, with outpatient centres and the medical school, while hospitals in the Thuringia districts of Sonneberg and Hildburghausen were to pass to those districts. Sana said the Nuremberg court had ended the proceedings and that those Bavarian operations, the medical school and central administration — about 3,200 employees, previously owned by municipal authorities — transferred on 1 November as Sana Kliniken Oberfranken. Her disclosed board membership ended on 3 January 2024, the day after the application.

Universities, European associations and disclosed income

Zeulner sits on the Kuratorium of the Coburg University of Applied Sciences, which the university describes as a body that supports its public interests and its work, with members from the regional economy and public life. The Bundestag lists the seat without remuneration. A bulletin of 7 November 2018 named her among the CDU/CSU nominees for the Kuratorium of the Federal Magnus Hirschfeld Foundation, founded in 2011 to support education and research on the Nazi persecution of homosexuals, the life and work of Magnus Hirschfeld, and discrimination against them. The 19th-term biography records her as a member; the 20th-term disclosure lists the unpaid role as ending on 19 October 2022. Europa-Union Deutschland lists her in its Bundestag parliamentarians’ group for the 21st electoral term, 2025–2029.

Section 45 and the following provisions of the Members of the Bundestag Act require notice to the President, within three months of taking the seat and of later changes, of company and public-body posts, paid outside work above set thresholds and holdings above 5 percent, plus income above €1,000 a month or €3,000 a year. The Bundestag publishes what it finds notifiable. For the 21st term the paid outside sum is the Lichtenfels city-council allowance, €196.92 gross a month plus irregular gross payments of €1,171.26 in 2025, beside the unpaid Health Care Bayern chair, the Coburg trusteeship and Lichtenfels district-council membership, with no separate district income. The 20th- and 21st-term disclosures show no shareholding or paid consultancy; the only company pay in the 20th term is the REGIOMED fee.

Personal life and public image

Family and private life

The Bundestag biography, which the parliament notes rests on members' own statements, lists Zeulner as Roman Catholic, unmarried (ledig), and the parent of one child. In October 2016 the Main-Post, the Frankenpost and the Nordbayerischer Kurier reported that she was pregnant and expecting a child with her partner, Jürgen Baumgärtner, a Christian Social Union member of the Landtag of Bavaria. The Main-Post, citing her office, said both looked forward to the "little miracle" (kleines Wunder) and that her mandate would not change. She told the other two papers she was "pregnant and not ill", would work while she and the child were well, and meant to return to politics as soon as possible after the birth. They called Baumgärtner her partner, not her husband, and gave neither the child's name nor a birth date; the Bundestag entry still lists one child and unmarried status.

In a June 2013 Der Spiegel profile she described growing up at the inn "Eiserne Hand", kept by her late parents near Lichtenfels, where her grandfather played music and the mayor and Landrat kept a regulars' table. She called herself the Brunzkartler in the card game Schafkopf—the player who fills in when someone steps away.

Media portrayal

Coverage in 2013 turned on the contrast with Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, who had left the Kulmbach seat after the plagiarism scandal. Papers presented the nurse, student and former Korbstadtkönigin—Lichtenfels's "basket-town queen" of 2006—as the person chosen to succeed him.

On 25 January 2013 Bild reported the nomination of the 25-year-old councillor and quoted Lichtenfels CSU chair Christian Meißner, who had called her "not a quota woman" (keine Quotenfrau). Die Welt headlined an ex-Korbstadtkönigin inheriting the seat. A campaign profile wrote that strategists might have carved "someone like Emmi Zeulner"—young, trained, engaged, rooted, outspoken, "and female"—and called her a stroke of luck for a party weak among younger women. A "youthfully shy charm", it said, could mask her drive: the baron was liked for being affable, while she was liked in Lichtenfels as "one of them", from the inn rather than a castle.

She told Welt that without him she would draw less notice, "but KT and I are two completely different boots" (zwei komplett verschiedene Stiefel). The paper said she rejected the newcomer label—"I have political experience"—and was glad to escape the "stamp of the quota woman" after beating two men, including Guttenberg's former office chief. Its own line was that a female hope had been given a chance once the male one was gone.

Der Spiegel's profile of 10 June 2013, "Die Brunzkartlerin", described a 26-year-old nurse sent into a region still hung over from "the baron". It set the inn against an 800-year noble line, called the district "KT-Country", and wrote that she would not appear as a "Guttenberg plagiarism". With her, it argued, politics had to be "a size smaller", and "the CSU is playing in the regional league again." She said one knock on a table had produced "Ah, the Herr Baron"; she was expected to shake every hand.

In February 2025 Ärzte Zeitung, profiling members linked to health care, presented the Upper Franconian nurse from a Lichtenfels innkeeping family, born in 1987 and directly elected a fourth time, and quoted her that good nursing was "one of the central issues of our time."