Hansjörg Durz

Hansjörg Durz (born 29 July 1971 in Augsburg) is a German politician of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU) and a member of the Bundestag for Augsburg-Land. He has sat in the Bundestag since 22 October 2013, the constituent sitting of the 18th electoral term, and the chamber's archived biographies list the mandate as a direct seat. On 21 May 2025 the Committee on Digital Affairs and State Modernization (Ausschuss für Digitales und Staatsmodernisierung) elected him chair by secret ballot, with 23 votes in favour and seven abstentions, at a sitting presided over by Bundestag vice-president Andrea Lindholz.

His Bundestag biography records primary school in the Neusäß district of Täfertingen, in Bavarian Swabia, from 1978 to 1982, the Abitur in 1991 at the Rhabanus-Maurus-Gymnasium St. Ottilien, and an apprenticeship as a bank clerk at Kreissparkasse Augsburg from 1991 to 1993. He studied business administration at the University of Augsburg from 1993 to 1999 and graduated as a Diplom-Kaufmann. From 1999 to 2008 he was managing director of an e-commerce company; the CSU organisation in Augsburg-Land identifies that company as fabial GmbH and also lists him as commercial director of the firm Johann Durz from 1993 to 2008.

Durz joined the CSU in 1992. He was a Neusäß city councillor from 1996 to 2013, deputy mayor from 2002 to 2008 and first mayor from 2008 to 2013, and he has been a member of the Augsburg district council since 2002. The same biography describes him as Roman Catholic, married and the father of two children.

He entered the Bundestag in place of Eduard Oswald. On election night in 2013 the Augsburger Allgemeine reported that the Neusäß mayor, standing as the direct candidate, had taken 60.6 percent of the first votes, more than seven percentage points above the outgoing member. The Federal Returning Officer's final result for the then constituency 253, Augsburg-Land, records 105,841 CSU first votes, 60.6 percent of 174,639 valid ballots, ahead of the Social Democratic Party on 17.7 percent, with a turnout of 72.2 percent among 244,203 eligible voters. Archived biographies list him as directly elected in constituency 253 again in the 19th term (2017–2021) and the 20th (2021–2025). In those elections the CSU first-vote total in the constituency was 94,252 (47.8 percent) in 2017 and 82,423 (40.6 percent) in 2021. At the 2025 federal election the seat was numbered 252; Durz received 88,388 first votes (44.5 percent), and Gabrielle Mailbeck of the Alternative for Germany was second with 18.9 percent.

In the 19th Bundestag he was deputy chair of the Committee on the Digital Agenda and a full member of that committee, of the Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy, and of the enquete commission on artificial intelligence. From 2021 to 2025 he was the CDU/CSU group's spokesman on the economic-affairs committee and deputy chairman of the CSU Landesgruppe in the Bundestag. In the 21st Bundestag he is also a full member of the Committee on Research, Technology, Space and Technology Assessment and a deputy member of the enquete commission examining the COVID-19 pandemic.

Early life and education

Childhood and family background

Hansjörg Durz was born on 29 July 1971 in Augsburg, in the Bavarian administrative region of Swabia. The Bundestag biography, which the parliament states is based on members' own information, records him as Roman Catholic, married, and the father of two children. He grew up in Täfertingen, a district of the town of Neusäß in Augsburg (district). The town describes Täfertingen as its oldest district, about 1,900 people east of the Schmutter, with farmsteads along the village street and the church of Mariä Himmelfahrt. It joined Neusäß in the 1978 territorial reform, with Ottmarshausen and Steppach; Neusäß became a town on 10 June 1988.

A June 2025 curriculum vitae on his website, and a biography published by the Christian Social Union in Bavaria constituency association for Augsburg-Land, both place his primary schooling at the elementary school in Neusäß-Täfertingen from 1978 to 1982, years the shorter Bundestag text does not include. In a January 2025 interview he said he had been active from childhood in the parish and the sports club, and that he played football for TSV Täfertingen from the youth teams through to the first team. In a December 2017 interview for a series at the Sankt Ägidius library in Neusäß, published by Focus, he named Der Räuber Hotzenplotz, Die kleine Hexe and Jim Knopf as childhood reading, and said that as a boy he had already admired Jim Knopf and Lukas the engine driver at the Augsburger Puppenkiste.

Schooling and bank apprenticeship

From 1982 to 1991 he attended the Rhabanus-Maurus-Gymnasium St. Ottilien and took the Abitur there. It is a state-recognized private Gymnasium (Ersatzschule) of the Schulwerk der Diözese Augsburg, at Erzabtei 23 in St. Ottilien, in Eresing in Landsberg (district), on the grounds of St. Ottilien Archabbey. In 2025/26 the Bavarian education ministry listed humanist (Latin, English, Greek) and modern-language (Latin, English, French) tracks, with 737 pupils and 57 full-time or mainly full-time teachers.

After the Abitur he trained from 1991 to 1993 as a Bankkaufmann, the German vocational qualification for a bank clerk, at the Kreissparkasse Augsburg. The bank's own history records that in 2022 it merged with Sparkasse Memmingen-Lindau-Mindelheim to form Sparkasse Schwaben-Bodensee. In the 2025 interview he described himself as a trained bank clerk who had also studied business.

University studies

From 1993 to 1999 he studied Betriebswirtschaftslehre (business administration) at the University of Augsburg and graduated as a Diplom-Kaufmann (Dipl.-Kfm.). Founded under a law of 18 December 1969, the university began teaching on 12 October 1970 in an economics and social-sciences faculty, the origin of the present business faculty. The Diplom course, later named informationsorientierte Betriebswirtschaftslehre, was abolished by the university council on 16 July 2008, with no new intake from winter semester 2008/09. Abgeordnetenwatch lists his qualification as Diplom-Kaufmann and his birth year as 1971.

The CSU Augsburg-Land biography also records two 1997 placements during the degree, an internship in Switzerland and one at the Bavarian economics ministry, which appear neither in the Bundestag biography nor in the June 2025 curriculum vitae. In the 2025 interview he said that, alongside the degree, he was elected to the Neusäß city council in 1996, at 24, and founded an internet company while still a student.

Business career

Family bicycle trade

In Neusäß-Täfertingen the Durz name is attached to a bicycle and garden-equipment shop. Directories list Durz Johann Fahrräder, Gartengeräte, a Honda and Stihl dealer, at Portnerstraße 8. The register at the Amtsgericht Augsburg records Johann Durz e.K. (HRA 22251), proprietor Johann Georg Durz, with Prokura for Alexander Durz. That form was entered on 18 May 2026, not the shop’s founding date.

Johann Durz is not the politician. In 2020 the Täfertingen fire brigade honoured him for 55 years’ membership, a period beginning before Hansjörg Durz’s birth in 1971, and in 2024 the local Christian Social Union honoured Johann Durz for 50 years and Hansjörg Durz for 30. Bundestag biographies give Hansjörg Durz no role at the shop, recording instead that from 1999 to 2008 he managed an e-commerce firm. A CSU historical profile styles him “Geschäftsführer Kaufmännischer Leiter, MdB” without an employer, and published register summaries do not show him as commercial director of Firma Johann Durz.

fabial and e-commerce

Durz has said that, during business studies at the University of Augsburg, he founded an internet company in order to work on his own account. Biographies for the 20th and 21st Bundestag state that from 1999 to 2008 he was managing director of an e-commerce company, without naming it.

The register and trade press identify that firm as fabial GmbH, Amtsgericht Augsburg HRB 17445, seat Neusäß, first entered on 10 November 1999. Its object was the sale of sports and leisure goods, non-craft services and marketing of related websites; an entry of 15 July 2002 recorded €60,000 of capital and one managing director. In January 2000 Horizont described fabial.de as an online auction for mountain bikes, clothing and accessories, and by April the trade press was calling the site a “Bike-Funshop” with auctions and a bargain shop. The Augsburger Allgemeine has called Durz a former online retailer of two-wheeler accessories.

On 7 April 2009 the register recorded a change of managing director; the public summary does not name either person. Durz told the Augsburger Allgemeine that, after his election as mayor of Neusäß, he transferred management in 2008 to the man later under investigation. Insolvency came years afterwards. A decision of the Amtsgericht Augsburg of 25 April 2016 (file IN 431/16) over the company’s assets was registered on 26 April 2016, and liquidation on 14 July 2016. An insolvency-notice index lists fabial GmbH under 4 IN 431/16, with a notice of 1 July 2016. On 21 February 2025 the register recorded that file 5 IN 431/16 had ended after final distribution.

On 9 October 2017 the Augsburger Allgemeine reported that Fabial, seller of bicycles, accessories and Bergziege clothing, stopped trading in June 2016, that 18 employees lost their jobs, and that, on the paper’s information, an older couple had lent the managing director more than €300,000. Spokesman Matthias Nickolai confirmed investigations into suspected delayed insolvency filing, embezzlement, withholding of wages and fraud. The paper wrote that Durz, a co-founder and manager until 2008, still held one-sixth of the shares and the Bergziege mark, but was not under investigation.

A related company, AHD Vertriebs-GmbH (HRB 24046), was registered on 10 February 2009 at Trentiner Ring 2 in Neusäß to distribute sports and leisure goods, with Alexander Durz as initial managing director and capital of €25,000. Disclosures for the 20th Bundestag record a participation by Hansjörg Durz in that company until 30 September 2024.

Municipal politics

Neusäß city council

Hansjörg Durz's local career was in Neusäß, a town in the Augsburg district of Bavaria. A member of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU), he joined the city council in 1996 and was deputy chairman of the CSU group from 1998 to 2002. In 2002 he became deputy mayor (Zweiter Bürgermeister), holding that post until 2008, and was elected the same year to the district council (Kreistag). He remained a city councillor until 2013.

On 20 June 2007 a CSU assembly nominated him for first mayor with 71 of 72 votes. He promised a citizens' counter, help for local firms, more schools and a town centre, and said he wanted the town kept almost free of debt. The Social Democratic Party of Germany nominated Christian Rindsfüßer, a statistician on the council since 1984, who accused the CSU majority of reacting rather than planning.

Deputy mayor and first mayor

At the Bavarian municipal elections of 2 March 2008 Durz was elected first mayor (Erster Bürgermeister). The Augsburger Allgemeine later recorded his share as 64 percent. He left the office in 2013 on entering the Bundestag. Richard Greiner, also of the CSU, was elected his successor on 16 March 2014 with 60.8 percent.

In December 2009 he said town-hall hours had been lengthened and that a citizens' office and step-free access to the council chamber were nearly ready. After an ideas competition, public walks and a workshop, the council adopted a plan for the town centre. Construction on the Glogger site, for neighbourhood shops, was to start in 2010, and a business park by the relief road was planned for manufacturers already in the town. By late 2011 the retail centre had opened. Durz said the town expected 7.6 million euro in trade tax in 2012, to be spent on the centre, the business park, sewers, schools, kindergartens and a House of Music. An agreed plan with Deutsche Bahn covered step-free station access and higher platforms, though work on the north side waited on a possible third track.

School repairs used the federal government's second economic stimulus package. The city reported that work at four schools was on schedule. The St. Ägidius primary school was costed at about 2 million euro, with a subsidy of nearly 1.7 million that required completion and billing in 2011; a former caretaker's house at the Westheim school, converted for afternoon care, was put at 279,000 euro, including 78,000 euro from the government of Swabia. Durz said the 2010 budget would keep investment high while the economy was weak. He put debt per resident at 32.45 euro, under a 40-euro target, with reserves above the debt, and said a 3.9 million euro children's area at the Titania pool had been postponed because tax receipts were falling.

The main dispute of the term was Titania itself, leased since March 2001 to the Starwaters Deyle group until 30 June 2015. After chlorine warnings in 2010, the public-health office—not the operator—told the city in September 2012 of elevated Legionella counts. The pool closed, and a woman who had visited it developed severe pneumonia; Helmut Hübsch, head of the Augsburg health office, said no further cases were then known. Operator Uwe Deyle blamed pipework installed for the city's sports-facilities company and withheld rent, leaving about a quarter of a million euro unpaid. Durz said an expert had found the pipes compliant with standards, that the pool had had no Legionella problem from 2001 until 2012, and that the operator's silence had broken trust. The council unanimously backed ending the lease.

In 2013 the sides settled before the regional court in Augsburg. Judge Iris Gross urged them to avoid a trial she said could last about two years and cost up to 30,000 euro in expert reports. The city agreed to end the contract on 30 September and to forgo about 400,000 euro in rent; the operator was to leave and drop its claims. The pool closed on 21 September. From 1 October it was run through Sportstätten Neusäß GmbH and a new subsidiary, Titania Neusäß Betriebs GmbH, founded on 17 September. Durz welcomed the company, which the council had backed, and called the pool important to the town's public image.

District council of Augsburg

Durz has sat on the Augsburg district council since 2002 and kept the seat after entering the Bundestag. At the election of 8 March 2026 he headed the CSU list with 77,551 votes. The election committee certified the result on 24 March: 131,986 of 202,266 eligible voters took part, and the CSU received 3,125,351 votes and 28 of 70 seats. The notice places him first among the CSU councillors, described as a Bundestag member and district councillor from Neusäß.

Elections to the Bundestag

Nomination and the 2013 election

Durz first stood for the Bundestag in Augsburg-Land, a constituency in Bavaria then numbered 253, as the direct candidate of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU). On the evening of Friday, 18 January 2013, delegates from the districts of Augsburg and Aichach-Friedberg nominated the mayor of Neusäß, then 41, with 100 percent of the valid votes, to succeed Eduard Oswald after two Landtag terms and seven in the Bundestag.

At the 2013 German federal election on 22 September, turnout was 72.2 percent of 244,203 eligible voters and 174,639 first votes were valid. The CSU candidate received 105,841, or 60.6 percent. The result tables name the winning party rather than the person; reporting that matched those shares identified Durz and the other candidates. Bernd Bante of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) was second with 30,879 votes (17.7 percent). Claudia Eser-Schuberth of Alliance 90/The Greens received 12,067 (6.9 percent), Hermann Mayer of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) 7,912 (4.5 percent), Daniel Böck of Die Linke 5,177 (3.0 percent) and Johannes Pabst of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) 3,974 (2.3 percent). A plurality of first votes was then enough, by itself, to fill the seat.

The 2017 and 2021 elections

The CSU renominated Durz in autumn 2016. Candidates filed by July 2017 included Herbert Woerlein (SPD), Franz Bossek (Greens), Karlheinz Faller (FDP), Rainer Kraft (AfD) and Markus Brem of the Free Voters. On 24 September 2017, at the 2017 German federal election, Durz took 94,252 first votes, 47.8 percent of 197,263 valid ballots, 12.8 points below 2013. Turnout was 80.0 percent of 248,812 eligible voters. Woerlein's SPD was second with 27,813 (14.1 percent), ahead of Kraft's AfD on 24,279 (12.3 percent), the Greens on 14,809 (7.5 percent), the Free Voters on 13,080 (6.6 percent) and the FDP on 11,976 (6.1 percent).

Before the 2021 German federal election the Augsburg-Land CSU again backed Durz, as did the neighbouring district association. The SPD nominated online: on 24 February 2021 Heike Heubach of Stadtbergen defeated Michael Haupeltshofer of Schwabmünchen by 53 of 67 votes, subject to a postal confirmation on 6 March. In September Durz received 82,423 first votes, 40.6 percent of 203,087 valid ballots, 7.1 points below 2017 but 52,988 votes clear of the SPD. Turnout was 82.1 percent of 249,372 eligible voters. The SPD's 29,435 votes (14.5 percent) were second, then the Greens with 24,806 (12.2 percent), the AfD with 19,660 (9.7 percent), the Free Voters with 19,230 (9.5 percent) and the FDP with 16,032 (7.9 percent). The 2013–2021 pages name parties more clearly than candidates.

The 2025 election

On 31 July 2024 the CSU district executive in Augsburg-Land unanimously proposed Durz for constituency 252. On Friday, 25 October 2024, in Königsbrunn, Landrat Martin Sailer nominated him and 123 delegates gave him 100 percent. Durz noted that Königsbrunn was being added to Augsburg-Land.

Constituency 253 in 2021 covered western Aichach-Friedberg and most of the surrounding district of Augsburg, including Schwabmünchen and Fischach, but not Königsbrunn. As constituency 252 in 2025 it kept that part of Aichach-Friedberg, gained Königsbrunn and Altenmünster, and lost Schwabmünchen, Fischach, Graben and other southern communities to Memmingen–Unterallgäu and Ostallgäu. Eligible voters fell from 249,372 to 232,095.

The 2025 German federal election on 23 February was the first under the reformed law fixing the Bundestag at 630 members. A plurality of first votes no longer filled a seat by itself: winners were ranked by first-vote share, and only as many as the party's second votes allowed in the Land were elected. The Federal Constitutional Court upheld that coverage rule on 30 July 2024. The CSU won 47 Bavarian constituencies but received 44 seats, all constituency seats; certification on 14 March 2025 left the preliminary allocation unchanged. Augsburg-Land, at 44.5 percent, ranked 13th and was covered. The uncovered CSU pluralities were Augsburg-Stadt (31.1 percent), Munich-South (30.4 percent) and Nuremberg-North (30.2 percent).

Of 232,095 eligible voters, 199,564 voted (86.0 percent) and 198,616 first votes were valid. Durz won with 88,388 votes (44.5 percent), 4.2 points above the CSU share recorded for the predecessor constituency in 2021. Gabrielle Mailbeck of the AfD was runner-up with 37,563 (18.9 percent). The state returning officer's candidate list matches the remaining party totals to Heike Heubach (SPD), already a member of the Bundestag, 25,217 (12.7 percent); Helmut Horst-Werner Schmidt (Greens), 18,278 (9.2 percent); Otmar Krumpholz (Free Voters), 10,256 (5.2 percent); Markus Rainer Reinthaler (Die Linke), 7,842 (3.9 percent); and Birgit Geier (FDP), 5,509 (2.8 percent).

Parliamentary offices

The 18th and 19th Bundestag

Hansjörg Durz has been a member of the Bundestag since 22 October 2013, the date given for the start of his membership in the 18th electoral term, as the directly elected member for Augsburg-Land. He sits for the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU) in the CDU/CSU group.

The Committee on the Digital Agenda (Ausschuss für Digitale Agenda) was created in that term. A Bundestag press note of 19 February 2014, a Wednesday, reported that the 16-member committee had constituted itself that day in closed session under Vice-President Petra Pau of Die Linke, with Jens Koeppen (CDU/CSU) as chair and Gerold Reichenbach as deputy chair. Durz was among the CDU/CSU ordinary members. For the 18th term the archived biography lists him as an ordinary member of that committee and of the Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy (Ausschuss für Wirtschaft und Energie), and as a deputy member of the Finance Committee (Finanzausschuss).

In the 19th Bundestag the committee, enlarged to 21 members, was constituted on 31 January 2018 under Vice-President Hans-Peter Friedrich (CDU/CSU). Jimmy Schulz of the Free Democratic Party was chosen as chair, and on 21 February 2018 Durz was named deputy chair, the first item on that sitting’s agenda. The archived biography lists him as deputy chair and ordinary member of the Digital Agenda committee, as an ordinary member of the economic-affairs committee and of the study commission on artificial intelligence (Enquete-Kommission „Künstliche Intelligenz“), and again as a deputy member of the Finance Committee. Its register of disclosable offices also records membership of the advisory board (Beirat) of the Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur).

Press statements of the CSU Landesgruppe called him the group’s digital-policy spokesman (digitalpolitischer Sprecher der CSU im Bundestag). One, on voice-assistant data protection and a committee invitation of 20 May 2019, also described him as acting chair of the Digital Agenda committee; another, on the publication of the European Union’s digital strategy, called him both spokesman and deputy chair.

The 20th Bundestag

The biography for the 20th electoral term lists Durz as an ordinary member of the Committee on Digital Affairs (Ausschuss für Digitales) and of the Economic Affairs Committee (Wirtschaftsausschuss), and as Obmann—the CDU/CSU group’s lead member—on the economic committee. That note, which the Bundestag says rests on members’ own information, dates the Digital Agenda deputy chairmanship to 2018–2021, Beirat membership from 2018, and from 2021 both the Obmann role and the deputy chairmanship of the CSU Landesgruppe. The Landesgruppe’s biography gives 2021–2025 for those two posts, and the term’s disclosure register lists the Beirat seat as unpaid.

On 16 February 2022 the SPD, CDU/CSU, Greens, FDP, AfD and Left jointly nominated Beirat members in Drucksache 20/710; Durz was proposed as a CDU/CSU member and Reinhard Brandl as his substitute. At the 2025 constitutive sitting of the successor committee, the Bundestag reported, he described the move from a 17th-term study commission to a Digital Agenda committee without lead responsibility, and then to the first lead responsibilities (Federführung) in the 20th term.

Chairmanship since 2025

On 21 May 2025 the Committee on Digital Affairs and State Modernization (Ausschuss für Digitales und Staatsmodernisierung) was constituted under Vice-President Andrea Lindholz (CSU). In a secret ballot the committee elected Durz, then 53, as chair, with 23 votes in favour and seven abstentions. The account notes his 19th-term deputy chairmanship, his Augsburg-Land mandate since 2013, and his membership of the digital committee in earlier terms.

The committee has 30 ordinary members and 30 substitutes. The same day the Committee on Research, Technology, Space and Technology Assessment (Ausschuss für Forschung, Technologie, Raumfahrt und Technikfolgenabschätzung) was constituted under Vice-President Josephine Ortleb and elected Karl Lauterbach chair, with Durz among the ordinary CDU/CSU members. The current Bundestag biography lists him as chair and ordinary member of the digital and state-modernization committee, as an ordinary member of the research committee, and as a deputy member of the Enquete Commission on the COVID-19 pandemic (Enquete-Kommission „Corona“).

A nomination of 17 September 2025 by the CDU/CSU, the AfD and the SPD (Drucksache 21/1651 (neu)) again proposed Durz for the Bundesnetzagentur Beirat, with Ralph Brinkhaus as substitute. The agency’s member list of 23 September 2026 names Durz as a Bundestag member of the Beirat and Brinkhaus as his alternate. The CSU Landesgruppe biography treats the Landesgruppe deputy chairmanship and the economic Obmann role as having ended in 2025, and gives his office in the 21st term as chair of the Committee on Digital Affairs and State Modernization.

Digital policy

Digital Agenda committee

The 19th Bundestag’s Committee on the Digital Agenda was constituted on 31 January 2018, with Jimmy Schulz (Free Democratic Party) as chair, after Jens Koeppen of the CDU in the previous term, and Hansjörg Durz of the CSU, for the CDU/CSU, named deputy chair on 21 February. Alongside him sat Thomas Jarzombek and Ronja Kemmer for the Union, Jens Zimmermann for the SPD, Anke Domscheit-Berg for Die Linke, and Anna Christmann for Alliance 90/The Greens. The committee’s brief was to discuss digitisation and networking across subject areas and to set directions for the digital transition. After Schulz died at the end of November 2019, Durz ran the meetings until Manuel Höferlin (FDP) was elected chair on 18 December 2019; Durz continued as deputy chair.

Platform regulation

At the first reading of the Network Enforcement Act on 19 May 2017, Durz said large networks, citing Facebook, removed illegal content too slowly, but that the Union would not accept deletion “on stock.” He wanted the scope tightened so that email services, review portals and start-ups were not caught, and the two-million-user exemption revisited where a smaller platform was still socially relevant. Borderline cases, he argued, should go to regulated self-regulation rather than be decided by the operator alone. Lars Klingbeil (SPD) treated a judicial reservation on civil disclosure as a red line, and Petra Sitte (Die Linke) warned of legal speech being deleted at scale. The attack on online anonymity in that debate came from Elisabeth Winkelmeier-Becker, not from Durz.

On 26 April 2018, on a Green motion on fair digital markets (Drucksache 19/1852), he backed an interoperability duty already in the coalition agreement: telephone customers can call across networks, but a WhatsApp user cannot message another messenger, whereas interfaces would create competition without cutting users off from one another. He rejected the motion’s collective actions and break-up powers. Domscheit-Berg had made the same interoperability case so people could leave Facebook without losing contacts, and Jens Zimmermann (SPD) said the coalition was moving toward a statute; the AfD opposed forcing platforms to cooperate.

On 5 November 2020 Durz said researchers could not study how opinion forms online without social-network data, and pledged that the Union and the SPD would insert a research clause (Forschungsklausel) into the NetzDG reform. The amending act of 3 June 2021 brought most changes in on 28 June 2021; the new § 5a took effect on 1 February 2022. A researcher could demand qualified information on automated detection systems—technologies, purposes, criteria, parameters and training data—and on how complained-about or removed content spread, including user interactions, for public-interest research and against a data-protection concept. Providers could refuse where competing interests substantially outweighed the research interest, and data were to be anonymised or pseudonymised where possible. Heise reported that transparency reports would also have to say whether researchers were shown signs of organised hate campaigns, including those aimed at women and minorities. Section 5a was repealed from 14 May 2024 by the German law implementing the Digital Services Act.

Artificial intelligence

In June 2020 Durz sat on the inquiry commission “Artificial Intelligence—Social Responsibility and Economic, Social and Ecological Potential,” in the project group on AI and the economy, chaired for the CDU/CSU by Ronja Kemmer, and in the group on AI and media, chaired by Joana Cotar (AfD); Daniela Kolbe (SPD) chaired the commission. The report, printed paper 19/23700, was debated on 5 November 2020 and taken note of. Durz took a Twitter label on posts by the then US president about the 2020 election as an example of algorithmic curation that was discussed more than it was researched. He linked the inquiry’s demand for data access to the NetzDG research clause and to competition-law reform, so that the data artificial intelligence needs would not stay with a few firms, and he called for human-centred systems, checks on deepfakes, and labels on automated sport, weather and traffic copy. Falko Mohrs (SPD), from the same economy group, described the report as “human and AI,” not “human or AI,” with sandboxes and transfer into smaller firms; Durz criticised Die Linke for withholding assent.

At the first reading on 20 March 2026 of the bill implementing the European Union’s Artificial Intelligence Act, Durz said European guardrails were justified because technology should serve people, but that the Act was not yet friendly enough to innovation. He credited Digital Minister Karsten Wildberger with relief for industry, the Mittelstand and smaller firms, asked for more simplification in Brussels and one national supervisory contact, and said the greater risk was falling behind in mechanical engineering, cars, chemicals and specialist medium-sized firms that hold industrial data. Rebecca Lenhard (Greens) attacked the delay, the missing register of administrative AI and moves to weaken standards; Matthias Mieves (SPD) defended the Act against US capital-led and Chinese state-led models; Ruben Rupp (AfD) called it bureaucracy favouring US incumbents. The Bundestag passed the law in June 2026 with CDU/CSU and SPD votes, against the AfD, Greens and Left. The Federal Network Agency became market supervisor where no specialist regulator is competent, with a coordination centre, a complaints point and at least one testing sandbox; motions to ban remote biometric identification in public space and to require a transparency register failed. AlgorithmWatch said those demands, and an independent advisory body, had been dropped, while Bitkom warned that involving the Länder could split assessments of the same systems.

Economic and competition policy

Commission on Competition Law 4.0

In September 2018 Peter Altmaier, Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy, appointed the Commission on Competition Law 4.0 (Kommission Wettbewerbsrecht 4.0) to recommend how European competition rules should be adapted to the data economy, platform models and Industry 4.0. The Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy treated the body as a forum for that debate, especially in Europe, and wanted proposals by autumn 2019 for use after the European elections and during Germany’s 2020 Council presidency. The joint chairs were Martin Schallbruch of the European School of Management and Technology, the competition lawyer Heike Schweitzer and Achim Wambach, then president of the ZEW. The other voting members were Wolfgang Kirchhoff, a judge of the cartel senate at the Federal Court of Justice; Bernd Langeheine, formerly in merger control at the European Commission’s competition directorate; Freiburg law professor Jens-Peter Schneider; Munich economist Monika Schnitzer; competition lawyer Daniela Seeliger; and Berlin private-law professor Gerhard Wagner.

Three Bundestag members from the governing parties had speaking rights but no vote: Hansjörg Durz of the Christian Social Union, Matthias Heider of the Christian Democratic Union and Falko Mohrs of the Social Democratic Party. The report lists them separately as members without voting rights. The commission met six times, heard experts and received 21 written submissions.

The September 2019 report, Ein neuer Wettbewerbsrahmen für die Digitalwirtschaft, argued that power in digital markets had to remain contestable and that enforcement had to become faster without abandoning competition-law principles. Its 22 recommendations included revised guidance on market definition for platforms; stronger data portability and a study of data trustees; a platform regulation with conduct rules, subject to objective justification, for dominant online platforms above set thresholds, including a ban on unjustified self-preferencing; a voluntary EU notification procedure for novel cooperations; and closer links between competition law and other digital regulation. It did not call for an immediate change to EU merger thresholds, but for closer monitoring of acquisitions of innovative start-ups.

Those proposals entered a ministry draft, not a bill of the three non-voting parliamentarians. The draft of 24 January 2020 for a tenth amendment of the Act against Restraints of Competition cited the report, including recommendations 9 to 11 on conduct rules for dominant platforms. The GWB Digitalisation Act took effect on 19 January 2021. Section 19a allows the Federal Cartel Office to designate undertakings of “paramount significance for competition across markets” and to prohibit practices such as self-preferencing even where a firm is not yet dominant, with appeals going directly to the Federal Court of Justice. President Andreas Mundt said comparable European instruments were still only under discussion. The Digital Markets Act, in force from November 2022 and applicable from May 2023, later let the European Commission impose obligations on designated gatekeepers. The Cartel Office describes that regulation as complementing, not replacing, German and European abuse control, including section 19a.

Economic affairs committee

In the 20th Bundestag (2021–2025) Durz was the CDU/CSU Obmann on the Economic Affairs Committee (Wirtschaftsausschuss): the group’s coordinator, not the chair. Michael Grosse-Brömer (CDU) chaired the committee and Hannes Walter (SPD) was deputy chair. Other coordinators included Bernd Westphal, the SPD’s Obmann and spokesman; Reinhard Houben, Obmann and spokesman of the Free Democratic Party; Malte Kaufmann for the Alternative for Germany; and Sandra Detzer as Obfrau for Alliance 90/The Greens. The Bundestag assigned the 33-member committee technology, industry and Mittelstand policy, the EU internal market, external trade and global competition.

On 19 December 2024 Durz spoke for the CDU/CSU on its motion “Politikwechsel für Deutschland – Soziale Marktwirtschaft statt grüner Planwirtschaft.” He called large industry a pillar of prosperity and the usual focus of debate, but said small and medium-sized firms—on his figures, 99.4 percent of German companies—were “the heart of our economy,” and that they had faced bureaucracy, an unclear coalition course and a “roller-coaster” of energy prices. He argued for tax cuts, accelerated depreciation and a moratorium on new burdens rather than subsidies for a few large firms, and presented that as the social market economy. Maik Außendorf of the Greens replied that industrial production had been falling since 2017, under an earlier Union-led government, and that tax cuts would not remedy structural problems in energy and skills.

State modernization and technology policy

The NEUSTAAT project

In 2020 Thomas Heilmann and Nadine Schön, Christian Democratic Union (CDU) members of the Bundestag, published NEUSTAAT: Politik und Staat müssen sich ändern with the FinanzBuch Verlag, offering 103 proposals from “64 parliamentarians and experts.” An exposé from the initiators traces the text to a sub-project Heilmann started inside the CDU/CSU “Innovation” group, which Schön chaired, and lists Hansjörg Durz of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria among that group’s co-authors. Not every co-author endorsed every proposal, but they shared a call to reform politics and administration. Handelsblatt reported that about 30 Union members of parliament and 35 administrative experts worked on the book over some 18 months, mostly before the pandemic.

The book calls the state a “complexity trap”—too hierarchical, bureaucratic and slow for digitalization, international competition, climate change, pandemic preparedness and social change. Its “learning state” would decide from data, set clearer goals, keep reviewing them and test services experimentally. Chapters argue for a “double pension” mixing pay-as-you-go and funded provision, open data, a larger role for artificial intelligence, blockchain ideas in a “contest over the monetary standard,” digital education, and a digital ministry designed from scratch. Heilmann later cited a ministry for state modernization, personnel and digitalization, and a “green zero” climate target.

In a review for the 2020 German Business Book Prize, Handelsblatt treated NEUSTAAT as a political overall concept for a state whose role the financial crisis and the pandemic had enlarged, and on 27 August 2020 listed it among the prize’s ten shortlisted titles. In December 2020 the economist Gernot Weißhuhn, writing on socialnet, called the project ambitious but said many proposals lacked theory or cost-benefit analysis, and he judged a historical “welfare ratio,” a 2017 McKinsey skills projection and the case for a digital euro under-supported.

Administrative reform and research committees

In the 21st Bundestag Durz is a full member of the Committee on Research, Technology, Space and Technology Assessment. Constituted on 21 May 2025 with 30 members, it elected the Social Democratic Party of Germany politician Karl Lauterbach as chair. The same day the Committee on Digital Affairs and State Modernization, which Durz chairs, was constituted; the Bundestag describes its focus as digital sovereignty, digital infrastructure, the digital economy and the digital state, after state modernization was added to its brief.

That brief parallels a Federal Ministry for Digital Affairs and State Modernization, created by Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s decree of 6 May 2025 and led by Karsten Wildberger. The decree assigns it digital administration and federal IT steering, digital infrastructure and data policy, better regulation and bureaucracy reduction, the National Regulatory Control Council’s office, and lead implementation of the EU AI Act, plus consent over major IT spending by the direct federal administration outside defence, security and police, foreign intelligence and tax administration.

On 17 October 2025 the Bundestag debated the government’s “Modernization Agenda for State and Administration” (printed paper 21/2150) and referred it to that committee as the lead committee. The agenda lists five fields: bureaucracy reduction, better lawmaking, services for citizens and firms, personnel, and a more efficient federal administration. In the debate Durz treated a 1925 decree on horseshoe nails, and the 2006 Farrier Act, as rules that outlast their object. He said the annual compliance burden on business had risen from about €5 billion before 2021 to €15 billion, and argued that delivery had to be demanded from every ministry, not only the new digital ministry; he also said the National Regulatory Control Council had told the committee the government was “on a good path.”

On 11 May 2026 he visited the German Aerospace Center at Oberpfaffenhofen for application-oriented robotics, interference-resistant communication and navigation, and satellite crisis mapping. At the Robotics Institute Germany on the Technical University of Munich campus on 15 September 2026, he said Germany had to be a systems developer in robotics, not only a supplier and user. On 24 September 2026 he told the Bundestag that Isar Aerospace’s orbital Spectrum flight from Andøya on 5 September supported a model in which the state is the first customer rather than the rocket builder.

Party roles, outside activities and personal life

CSU and the Young Union

Durz joined the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU) in 1992. The Bundestag biography, which the parliament states rests on members' own information, lists him on the CSU Kreisvorstand (district executive) since 1997 and on the Bezirksvorstand (regional executive) since 2014. After the Augsburg-Land assembly of 17 May 2025 in Gersthofen, the district association publishes him as a co-opted member of that Kreisvorstand. Its constituency profile also records membership, since 1996, of the Kommunalpolitische Vereinigung, the CSU's local-government organisation, and identifies him as chairman of the Bundestag-constituency conference for Augsburg-Land, covering essentially the rural districts of Augsburg and Aichach-Friedberg. It does not list an office in the Young Union, the joint youth organisation of the CDU/CSU, and nor does the Bundestag biography.

Disclosed offices and remuneration

Section 44a of the Members of the Bundestag Act (Abgeordnetengesetz) makes exercise of the mandate the centre of a member's activity, while leaving other professional work generally permissible. A member may not keep a monetary donation, and paid lobbying of the Bundestag or the federal government is forbidden. Section 45 requires notice to the Bundestag President within three months of taking a seat, and within three months of any later change, for board or advisory roles in companies, public-law bodies and associations or foundations that are not purely local, for company holdings above 5 percent, and for outside income above 1,000 euro in a month or 3,000 euro in a year. The administration publishes an item after checking that publication is required.

Durz's notice for the current term, also carried by abgeordnetenwatch, shows 4,056.65 euro gross for 2025 from the Augsburg district council; a seat on the administrative board of Sparkasse Schwaben-Bodensee at 692.52 euro a month gross until 31 December 2025 and 730.30 euro a month from 1 January 2026; and ordinary membership of the Sparkassenverband Bayern advisory board on savings-bank policy, paid 2,945 euro gross for 2025 and 1,250 euro gross for 2026.

Posts marked unpaid are the supervisory board of IT-Gründerzentrum GmbH in the city of Augsburg; from 31 October 2025, the council of Agora Digitale Transformation gGmbH in Essen; at the Technical University of Applied Sciences Augsburg, the chair of the HSA_innos advisory board, a seat on the HSA_funkenwerk founding advisory board and membership of the board of trustees; the foundation council of the Brunnhuber Sozialstiftung; and the council of the Caritas association for the city and district of Augsburg. From 11 November 2025 the notice also lists the advisory board of Mobilfunkinfrastrukturgesellschaft mbH in Naumburg (Saale), with no income figure, and a participation in Sedu GmbH of Gersthofen, likewise without published income.

In 2021 CORRECTIV.Lokal asked all 735 members of that Bundestag whether they saw gaps in the rules on donations to parliamentarians and whether they had accepted any since 2016; it reported that 363 replied. Durz did not. On 14 April 2021 he told abgeordnetenwatch that he supports public transparency rules and therefore does not take part in such surveys, that donations are already governed by the accountability provisions of the Political Parties Act, and that he accepts none for himself, with campaign money booked through his party.

Family and local associations

The Bundestag biography describes him as Roman Catholic, married and the father of two children, without naming his wife or children. The CSU constituency profile dates his service on the executive of TSV Täfertingen, the sports club in Täfertingen, a district of Neusäß, to 1994–2010. In a January 2025 interview he said he had played football there from the youth sides through the first team, had sat on the club board, and remains a member of numerous clubs. The Augsburg chapter of the non-partisan Europa-Union Deutschland lists him among its members.