# Harald Ebner

# Harald Ebner

Harald Ebner (born 8 July 1964 in Göppingen) is a German agricultural engineer and a politician of Alliance 90/[The Greens](/organizations/the-greens). He has been a member of the Bundestag since 25 May 2011, returned on the state list of Baden-Württemberg while standing in constituency 268, Schwäbisch Hall – Hohenlohe. In the 21st Bundestag he is an ordinary member and the Green group coordinator (Obmann) on the Committee on the Environment, Climate Protection, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, and a deputy member of the Committee on Agriculture, Food and Homeland.

He passed the Abitur in 1983 in Ebersbach an der Fils, performed civilian service from 1984 to 1986, and studied agricultural sciences at the University of Hohenheim from 1986 to 1992, graduating as a Diplom-Agraringenieur. From 1993 to 2000 he worked as a freelance landscape ecologist, and from 2000 until he entered parliament he was employed in Baden-Württemberg’s state nature-conservation administration, at the district office in Schwäbisch Hall, the Stuttgart regional council and the ministry for rural areas. The Bundestag’s register of members’ interests records that employment with a right to return. He joined the Greens in 2002, sat on the Schwäbisch Hall district executive in 2003–2004 and 2007–2008, chaired the district association from 2008 to 2017, and was a member of the party’s Baden-Württemberg state executive in 2009–2011 and again in 2013–2021.

When Alexander Bonde and Winfried Hermann left the Bundestag in 2011 to become ministers in the new Baden-Württemberg government, Ebner was the first successor on the Green state list. He sat for the remainder of that term and has been re-elected on the state list since. At the federal election of 26 September 2021 he took 15.1 percent of the first votes in Schwäbisch Hall – Hohenlohe. At the 2025 election, with Ebner as the Green constituency candidate, the party’s first votes in Schwäbisch Hall – Hohenlohe were 18,528 (10.0 percent, 5.1 points fewer than in 2021) and its second votes 18,083 (9.8 percent). The seat went to Christian Freiherr von Stetten of the [Christian Democratic Union of Germany](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany) with 36.4 percent.

On 15 December 2021 the environment committee of the 20th Bundestag, meeting under Vice-President Katrin Göring-Eckardt, elected him chair by secret ballot. The committee then also covered consumer protection and had 38 full members. Deutschlandfunk identified him in July 2018 as the Green group’s spokesperson on genetic engineering; after a judgment of the European Court of Justice on gene-editing techniques, he argued that new methods which intervene directly in the genome should go through authorisation, risk assessment and labelling, and described the ruling as regulation rather than a blanket refusal of the technology. In a 2019 Deutschlandfunk Kultur interview he said genetic engineering would not solve global food supply and pointed instead to soil, water, food waste and mixed cropping. *Südwest Presse* headlined him an opponent of glyphosate and quoted his view that the sheer quantity used is a problem for ecosystems.

He is an ordinary member of the Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly, a member of the German–Canadian parliamentary group, and deputy chair of the German–South Caucasus and Cono Sur parliamentary groups. The same disclosure register lists him as a member of the supervisory board of the federally owned Bundesgesellschaft für Endlagerung, paid 4,000 euros gross a year, as a deputy member of the board of trustees of the nuclear-waste disposal fund KENFO, and as a member of the board of trustees of the Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt, paid 1,100 euros gross a month through 31 December 2025 and 1,130 euros from 1 January 2026. He is married, with two children and three grandchildren.

## Early life and education

### Childhood and schooling

Harald Ebner was born on 8 July 1964 in Göppingen, Baden-Württemberg. The biography kept by the Bundestag states that its life sketches rest on members’ own information, and it lists him as married, with two children and three grandchildren.

He grew up on a farm. In a profile published on 2 January 2023 in *Das Parlament*, he said that succession was taken out of his hands in the 1970s, a period of widespread farm closures, when the last animals left the holding while he was a teenager. His father changed occupation and took charge of the local municipal works yard. Ebner told the paper that he had never got free of that loss and had never overcome the pain of it (“Ich hab mich nie davon gelöst, den Verlustschmerz nie überwunden”).

A curriculum vitae published on the Bundestag website in 2013 records primary school in Göppingen-Faurndau from 1970 to 1974, then a Gymnasium in Ebersbach an der Fils from 1974 to 1983, with the Abitur in 1983. The shorter biography now on the Bundestag site gives the same place and year for the Abitur and does not repeat the earlier school stages.

From 1984 to 1986 he did Zivildienst, together with a practical placement, on the farm of the Sozialtherapeutische Gemeinschaften Weckelweiler. Zivildienst was the civilian substitute for conscripts recognized as conscientious objectors. A statute of 28 February 1983, in force from 1 January 1984, set that service at 20 months, one third longer than basic military service, and replaced the oral examination of conscience with a written credibility test for most men who had not yet served.

The Weckelweiler communities describe themselves as one of the oldest and largest centres of anthroposophical social therapy in Germany. They date the start of that work to 1 April 1959, when Wolfgang Feuerstack and his wife Marion took it up in the farming village of Weckelweiler, near Kirchberg an der Jagst, as a continuation of the association Jugendhilfe Land. In 1951 the farmer Fritz Strempfer had already converted a farm there to biodynamic agriculture, founded the Bauernschule Hohenlohe, and brought Jugendhilfe Land to the village. *Das Parlament* summarizes Ebner’s own sequence in the same terms: civilian service on the farm of a social institution, followed by the agricultural degree.

### Studies at the University of Hohenheim

From 1986 Ebner studied general agricultural sciences (*Allgemeine Agrarwissenschaften*) at the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart.

The 2013 Bundestag curriculum vitae dates that course from 1986 to 1993 and records a *Diplom* with the grade *sehr gut* (very good). The biography on the current Bundestag site dates the same studies from 1986 to 1992 and names the qualification *Diplom-Agraringenieur*, the title under which the parliament lists him as an agricultural engineer.

The university is based at Hohenheim Palace. It began in 1818, when King William I of Württemberg founded a teaching, experimental and model institution whose assigned task was to answer the hunger crises of the early nineteenth century, combining basic research with practical work for agriculture. Ebner later told *Das Parlament* that the degree was where he concluded how much had to change in farming and in the protection of species, and that he wanted a post from which ecology could be strengthened as a whole.

## Professional career

Before he entered the Bundestag in 2011, Harald Ebner worked for nearly two decades as a landscape ecologist and in the state nature-conservation administration of Baden-Württemberg. The parliament's current biography, which it states is drawn from members' own information, gives freelance practice from 1993 to 2000 and public administration from 2000 to 2011. A 17th-Bundestag biography preserved in the [Internet Archive](/organizations/internet-archive) lists the duty stations year by year and describes him as a Diplom-Agraringenieur after general agricultural sciences at the University of Hohenheim.

### Freelance landscape ecology

From 1993 to 2000 that account lists self-employed work as a landscape ecologist. The expert directory of the Berufsverband der Landschaftsökologen Baden-Württemberg (BVDL) lists him at Kirchberg an der Jagst under the entry "Landschaft und Mensch." Founded in 1989, the BVDL represents landscape ecologists in the state, freelance or salaried. Its directory sorts members by services such as landscape plans, impact studies, Natura 2000 assessments and species surveys. That biography names no individual contract from the freelance years. In 1993–1994 the same account lists him at the Bezirksstelle für Naturschutz und Landschaftspflege Tübingen, a state specialist nature-conservation office. From 1996 to 1999 he taught at the haus- und landwirtschaftliche Berufsfachschule in Schwäbisch Hall, on the course for administrative and business assistants in environmental protection and landscape management. He has remained a BVDL member; the current biography also lists the Naturschutzbund Deutschland local group in Kirchberg.

### Nature conservation administration

From 2000 until he took his Bundestag seat he was employed in the state nature-conservation administration. The archived biography places him in 2000–2001 at the Bezirksstelle für Naturschutz und Landschaftspflege Stuttgart, attached to the Regierungspräsidium Stuttgart; in 2002–2004 and again in 2006–2011 at the nature-conservation authority of the Landratsamt Schwäbisch Hall; and in 2004–2006 in the ministry unit for fundamental questions of nature and landscape protection (Ministerium für Ernährung und Ländlichen Raum). The current text names the same three bodies and shortens the ministry's title to the Ministry for Rural Areas.

A 2001 Landtag statute defined the Bezirksstellen as specialist authorities attached to the regional governments, advising on protected areas, Natura 2000 sites, species programmes and large projects, and required the Land to place its own specialist staff with the districts. From 1 January 2005 the Bezirksstellen were absorbed into the Regierungspräsidien, a change described in a 2005 newsletter of the Bundesverband Beruflicher Naturschutz (BBN) that names Ebner as spokesperson of its Baden-Württemberg group. The lower authority at the Landratsamt Schwäbisch Hall, his recorded duty station for most of the later years, handles protected areas, funded landscape management, species protection, planning comments, permits and advice under the federal and state statutes; the district lists 13 Habitats Directive sites and three bird-protection areas. The biography does not attach particular case files to his name.

Separately from that post, he held office in the BBN, the professional association for staff in nature conservation and landscape management. The association describes itself as representing that profession across administration, organizations, private practice, science and education. Its Baden-Württemberg group was founded on 8 October 2004. Minutes of the 5 May 2011 meeting, which he opened as spokesperson, record work on the state's Nature Conservation Strategy 2020, biodiversity events and a comment on the eco-account ordinance; he then stood down on entering the Bundestag and was elected an adviser (Beirat). The Bundestag biography calls the 2004–2011 role Vorsitzender and notes the advisory post from 2011.

The Bundestag register of members' interests lists the pre-parliamentary job as employment with the Land Baden-Württemberg nature-conservation administration in Stuttgart, with a right to return. An earlier disclosure named the same state employer and the Landratsamt Schwäbisch Hall as the place of work. The account closes the administrative career with his entry into parliament on 25 May 2011.

## Local politics and party offices

### Kirchberg and Schwäbisch Hall

The earliest elected office listed for Ebner is a seat on the council of Kirchberg an der Jagst, in the Schwäbisch Hall district. The Bundestag biography for the 19th electoral term states that he joined the Unabhängige Grüne Liste Kirchberg/Jagst (UGL) in 1999 and served as its Stadtrat from 1999 to 2004. In a December 2017 candidacy for the Baden-Württemberg Green party council he described the same post as Gemeinderat, the name used for a municipal council in the state. He joined Alliance 90/The Greens in 2002, while that council term was still running; the UGL was a local independent list, not the party's district branch. Later Bundestag biographies omit the UGL term and begin the party record in 2002.

Inside the Kreisverband Schwäbisch Hall he moved from an ordinary board seat to the chair and, years later, back to a non-executive seat. Biographies for the 20th and 21st Bundestag terms, and the Green Bundestag group's profile, list him on the district executive in 2003–2004 and again in 2007–2008, and as Kreisvorsitzender from 2008 to 2017. The 2017 candidacy gives the same chairmanship dates. The district association describes its board as the body that conducts business between membership assemblies: a three-person executive, two chairs and a treasurer, plus up to six Beisitzer, elected for two years. After the assembly of 8 December 2025 the chairs were Lea Geldner and Jo Härtig and the treasurer was Werner Straub. Ebner was one of six assessors, with Johanna Enssle, Caterina Winkaus, Gaby Bruckschen, Jürgen Lieser and Jutta Niemann, and was not a chair.

### Baden-Württemberg state executive

Parliamentary biographies place Ebner on the Landesvorstand of the Greens in Baden-Württemberg from 2009 to 2011 and again from 2013 to 2021. Under the state statute that body is wider than the day-to-day leadership. It consists of the Geschäftsführender Landesvorstand—two equal co-chairs, at least one a woman, and a treasurer—together with the Parteirat. Members of parliament and members of the government may not be elected to the executive trio, while up to half of the Parteirat may be office-holders, and the whole Landesvorstand is re-elected every two years. Ebner's December 2017 papers identify his seat as the Parteirat. For the Landesdelegiertenkonferenz in Heidenheim on 9 and 10 December 2017 he was candidate PR-18 from the Schwäbisch Hall district association. He wrote that the council had become a place where the party could be heard beside the Landtag group and the state government, and he asked to keep linking the state party to the Bundestag group. In the same text he wrote that the Baden-Württemberg Landesgruppe in the Bundestag, then 13 members, had unanimously made him its spokesperson and unanimously supported the candidacy.

Coalition work is on the record in two different ways. In that 2017 biography he listed the programme commission for the 2011 state election and participation (*Mitarbeit*) in the Green–SPD negotiations and in later Green–CDU talks. The state agency for civic education records that, after the 2011 Landtag election, the Greens and the SPD adopted a coalition agreement at party conferences on 7 May 2011, with the Landtag then due to elect [Winfried Kretschmann](/people/winfried-kretschmann) on 12 May as the first Green minister-president of a German Land. That account does not name Ebner among the negotiators. A later assignment is in a party list rather than only in his own summary. On 14 March 2021 the Greens won the state election with 32.6 percent of the vote and the CDU finished second with 24.1 percent. The Greens' working-group list for the coalition negotiations, dated 13 April 2021, put Kretschmann, state chairs [Sandra Detzer](/people/sandra-detzer) and Oliver Hildenbrand, parliamentary-group chair Andreas Schwarz and finance minister Edith Sitzmann in the main group. Ebner was not in that group. He was named in working group 02, on rural areas, agriculture, consumer protection, animal welfare and tourism, coordinated by state secretary Andre Baumann and also including Martina Braun, Reinhold Pix and regional president Wolfgang Reimer.

## Bundestag elections

### Succession in 2011

Harald Ebner has been a member of the Bundestag since 2011. He was not among the Green members returned at the 2009 federal election. On 11–12 October 2008 the Baden-Württemberg branch of Alliance 90/The Greens placed him 12th on its state list, associated with constituency 268, Schwäbisch Hall–Hohenlohe. The federal returning officer’s preliminary register of elected state-list candidates named eleven Green members from Baden-Württemberg, through list place 11; Winfried Hermann was place 6 and Alexander Bonde place 8. The constituency seat went to [Christian von Stetten](/people/christian-von-stetten) of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), with 65,474 first votes (43.3 percent).

On 18 May 2011 *politik&kommunikation* reported that Ebner would enter the Bundestag because Bonde and Hermann had been appointed ministers in the new Baden-Württemberg government, and that he was the first of two successors on the Green state list. The Schwäbisch Hall daily *Südwest Presse* dated his entry to 25 May 2011, during the formation of that Green-led government, and noted his re-election in 2013.

### Direct candidacies in Schwäbisch Hall – Hohenlohe

Von Stetten’s Bundestag biography describes him as the directly elected member for Schwäbisch Hall–Hohenlohe since October 2002, and his current mandate is the constituency seat for Wahlkreis 268. *Südwest Presse* wrote that after a 2009 redrawing the seat covered the districts of Schwäbisch Hall and Hohenlohe in full, and that CDU candidates had always won it directly.

For the election of 22 September 2013 the constituency returning officer admitted von Stetten (CDU), Annette Sawade of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and Ebner (Greens). The final count gave the CDU 81,427 first votes (52.3 percent), the SPD 35,728 (22.9 percent) and the Greens 15,569 (10.0 percent, down 2.0 points from 2009); turnout was 70.6 percent, and the CDU was recorded as the party of the elected constituency candidate, with the SPD runner-up.

In 2017 the federal returning officer again listed Ebner as the Green direct candidate, on list place 8, opposite von Stetten and Sawade. Christian Alexander Freiherr von Stetten was elected with 40.5 percent of first votes; Sawade was runner-up with 18.5 percent. Green first votes were 21,468 (12.6 percent, up 2.6 points) and Green second votes 20,512 (12.1 percent), on a turnout of 76.1 percent.

Before the election of 26 September 2021 Ebner was the Green nominee on list place 7, von Stetten the CDU candidate and Kevin Leiser the SPD candidate. Ebner received 15.1 percent of the first votes, the Green total of 25,825 (up 2.5 points from 2017). Von Stetten was elected with 32.1 percent (54,894 votes); Leiser was runner-up on the SPD’s 19.6 percent (33,568).

On 23 February 2025 the final result gave the Greens 18,528 first votes (10.0 percent, down 5.1 points) and 18,083 second votes (9.8 percent). The CDU received 67,218 first votes (36.4 percent) and [the Alternative](/organizations/the-alternative) for Germany 44,363 (24.0 percent); turnout was 82.9 percent. SWR had identified Ebner as the Green direct candidate, and the federal returning officer’s preliminary report named Freiherr von Stetten as the elected constituency candidate and Benjamin Pascal Götz (AfD) as runner-up, with the CDU lead covered by second votes.

The final CDU and AfD shares match, at one decimal place, the preliminary figures for von Stetten and the AfD.

### State-list seats, 2013–2025

The federal returning officer describes the system as personalized proportional representation: a first vote for a constituency candidate and a second vote for a party’s state list, with the second-vote total deciding how many seats the party receives. The lists are closed, in an order fixed by the party, and from 2025 a party candidate wins the constituency only with the most first votes and with second-vote coverage.

The Bundeswahlausschuss minutes of 9 October 2013 record him among the finally elected Green state-list candidates at list place 8, between places 7 and 9. The constituency seat that year was the CDU’s. In 2017 he stood at list place 8, and the Bundestag archives him as a member of the 19th electoral period (2017–2021) while von Stetten held the constituency mandate. In 2021 he was list place 7 and, with 15.1 percent of the first votes, re-entered on the Baden-Württemberg list for Schwäbisch Hall – Hohenlohe.

For 2025 the preliminary directory of elected candidates lists him eighth on the Green state list and seventh among the Greens seated from it, skipping list places 7 and 9, and records the constituency candidacy in Wahlkreis 268. The Bundestag biography states that he sits by the Baden-Württemberg list, with that constituency candidacy. Under the 2025 count a first-vote lead carried a seat only with second-vote coverage, which the CDU had in constituency 268; Ebner’s mandate was the list seat.

## Parliamentary roles

### Environment committee

Committees of the Bundestag prepare the plenary's decisions and may also take up subjects in their own remit. Full members alone have a vote; deputy members may attend but vote only when replacing an absent full member of their group. The chair prepares, convenes and conducts meetings. Groups negotiate who receives each chair; failing agreement, chairs are allocated by the Sainte-Laguë/Schepers access procedure.

*Harald Ebner as chair of the Bundestag Committee on the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection, December 2021.*

In the 19th electoral term (2017–2021) Ebner was a deputy member of the Committee on the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety. On 15 December 2021 the Committee on the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection elected him chair by secret ballot at its constitutive meeting, chaired by Bundestag Vice-President Katrin Göring-Eckardt of Alliance 90/The Greens. The committee had 38 full members: 11 from the SPD, 10 from the CDU/CSU, six from the Greens, five from the FDP, four from the AfD and two from the Left. The archived biography for the 20th term lists him as both chair and full member.

The 21st-term committee, renamed the Committee on the Environment, Climate Protection, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, was constituted on 21 May 2025 under Vice-President [Bodo Ramelow](/people/bodo-ramelow). Members elected Lorenz Gösta Beutin of the Left as chair, with 24 votes in favour, three against and 10 abstentions. Of 38 full members, 13 were from the CDU/CSU, nine from the AfD, seven from the SPD, five from the Greens and four from the Left; Ebner was one of the five Green members. The current Bundestag biography lists him as a full member and as the committee's Obmann. Each group names one Obmann or Obfrau per committee as its leadership's main contact there: they shape the group's line, agree agendas and plan the business, and they give the group an overview of the detailed work. In the 19th term the food and agriculture committee called its Obleute the groups' speakers in the committee, and their preparatory talks normally met every sitting week under the chair.

### Agriculture committee and other Bundestag bodies

Ebner entered the Bundestag on 25 May 2011 in the seat given up by Alexander Bonde. A biography captured on 29 September 2013, near the end of the 17th term, listed him as a full member of the Committee on Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection, a deputy member of the Committee on Transport, Building and Urban Development, and a Schriftführer. Schriftführer are members elected on their groups' nomination to assist the President in the plenary: two sit with the presiding officer as the Sitzungsvorstand, keep the speakers' list, receive motions and establish vote results.

In the 18th term (2013–2017) he was a full member and Obmann of the Committee on Food and Agriculture, and a deputy member of the Committee on Education, Research and Technology Assessment, the Committee on Transport and Digital Infrastructure, and the Parliamentary Advisory Council on Sustainable Development. In the 19th term he remained full member and Obmann of the Committee on Food and Agriculture, then a 38-member body chaired by Alois Gerig (CDU/CSU), with Carina Konrad (FDP) as deputy chair and Ebner as the Green Obmann. He was also a deputy member of the education and technology-assessment committee. In the 20th term, while chairing the environment committee, he was a deputy member of the Committee on Food and Agriculture. In the 21st term he is a deputy member of the Committee on Agriculture, Food and Heimat. The current biography also lists him as a full member of the Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly and as deputy chair of the German–South Caucasus parliamentary group and of the parliamentary group for the Cono Sur states.

### Roles inside the Green parliamentary group

A [Heinrich Böll Foundation](/organizations/heinrich-boll-foundation) profile states that Ebner has been the Green Bundestag group's spokesperson on genetic-engineering policy since 2011, and the same text still describes him as the group's member and Obmann on the Committee on Food and Agriculture. An April 2019 article published by the foundation identified him as spokesperson for genetic-engineering and bioeconomy policy. On 28 July 2018, introducing an interview about the [Court of Justice of the European Union](/organizations/justice-cjeu)'s ruling on genome editing, Deutschlandfunk called him the Greens' spokesperson on genetic engineering. A report of a Green meeting in Waldenburg on 12 July 2018 described him as spokesperson for forest policy, genetic engineering and bioeconomy policy. In a guest article dated 2 August 2020, t-online described him as the Greens' Obmann on the agriculture committee and as spokesperson for forest policy. The group's current profile lists him as a full member of the environment committee and a deputy member of the agriculture committee, without those subject titles.

## Agriculture and genetic engineering

### Cultivation bans and opt-out rules

In December 2014 Ebner led a motion by Alliance 90/The Greens in the Bundestag for nationwide bans on cultivating genetically modified plants. It answered the planned change to Directive 2001/18/EC, which was to let member states restrict or prohibit cultivation of authorised genetically modified organisms beyond the safeguard clause. It asked for statutory nationwide bans on every authorised or pending genetically modified crop, and for No votes in the Council whenever Germany intended to opt out. The agriculture committee recommended rejection, CDU/CSU and SPD against the Greens and [The Left](/organizations/the-left-slovenia), with Ebner as a rapporteur.

Directive (EU) 2015/412 of 11 March 2015 lets member states prohibit or restrict cultivation of genetically modified plants. The Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety says an amendment of the Genetic Engineering Act is to transpose the directive, and that applicants accepted Germany’s request to drop the whole country from pending cultivation authorisations, all for genetically modified maize, so those plants cannot be grown there. MON810 remained the only GMO authorised for cultivation in the EU; Germany has treated that authorisation as inactive since 2009, but has not banned sale of EU-authorised genetically modified food or feed.

### New genomic techniques

In January 2017 *Die Zeit* reported Ebner arguing that CRISPR should stay under genetic-engineering law, with risk checks and labels, because a direct genome change could have unexpected effects. Stephanie Franck, then chair of the German plant breeders’ association, said a genetic-engineering label would make such a variety unsellable in Europe.

On 25 July 2018 the European Court of Justice held in Case C-528/16, *Confédération paysanne*, that organisms from mutagenesis are GMOs and in principle fall under the GMO directive. Long-used mutagenesis with a safety record is exempt, though states may still regulate it within EU law; newer techniques are not exempt, because leaving them out would weaken health and environmental protection and the precautionary principle. Ebner told Deutschlandfunk three days later that this was not a hard no to the technology, only a requirement of authorisation, a safety check and a label, with “no back door”, and that the methods do not merely copy nature. Plant researcher Stephan Clemens, interviewed the same morning, said the Court lacked a scientific basis for treating targeted mutagenesis as riskier than conventional mutagenesis.

In 2019, and again in January 2023, the Leopoldina and the German Research Foundation, with the academies’ union on the earlier text, called for differentiated, product-based rules on genome-edited plants, argued that labels could still protect choice, and said strict GMO law was pushing field trials out of Europe. The German Farmers’ Association says the judgment ignores the type of change, that edited point mutations cannot be distinguished from natural or random ones, and that the methods are one tool, not a substitute for better cropping systems.

On 5 July 2023 the [European Commission](/organizations/european-commission) proposed a separate regime for targeted mutagenesis and cisgenesis, not for transgenesis. Plants that could also arise naturally or by conventional breeding would be verified and then treated as conventional, without a GMO risk assessment; other NGT plants would remain under GMO authorisation.

In January 2020 the agriculture committee recommended rejecting an FDP motion for a technology-open rewrite—opposed by CDU/CSU, SPD, The Left and the Greens, with the AfD abstaining—and the Greens’ motion to keep new techniques inside existing EU law, opposed by CDU/CSU, SPD, AfD and FDP. On 16 March 2023 the plenary rejected a CDU/CSU call for an “innovation framework” and EU GMO-law reform, after the agriculture committee—SPD, Greens, FDP, AfD and The Left against the CDU/CSU—recommended rejection.

In May 2025 Ebner co-signed a Green motion, first signed by [Karl Bär](/people/karl-bar), asking the Bundestag to demand binding food labels and traceability for NGT plants and products, following [European Parliament](/organizations/european-parliament) amendments of 7 February 2024, and to refuse the regulation otherwise. The Bundestag press service reported that the demand failed. Tagesschau reported that the compromise would allow patents on the new varieties and methods, listed in a public database. SPD environment minister [Carsten Schneider](/people/carsten-schneider) had called the December agreement a serious mistake because buyers should see whether genetic engineering was used; Union-led research and economy ministries backed the change, and Germany abstained in the Council in April.

### Organic farming and plant breeding

Ebner’s September 2019 motion “Agrarwende statt Gentechnik” read the 2018 judgment as keeping new techniques under Directive 2001/18/EC, including risk assessment, authorisation, traceability and labelling. It urged Berlin to block any weakening of precaution, choice or process-based labels, to favour soil care, mixed crops, agroforestry and biological plant protection, and to fund agroecology and conventional breeding rather than edited traits whose patents, the motion said, would squeeze smaller breeders. The agriculture committee recommended rejection.

Article 11 of Regulation (EU) 2018/848 already forbids GMOs, and products made from or by them, in organic food, feed and plant reproductive material. The 2023 proposal would have excluded even “conventional-like” NGT plants from organic production and required measures such as distances between fields. Tagesschau reported after the 2026 vote that organic growers would still be barred from both NGT categories.

The Farmers’ Association instead treats regionally adapted varieties as essential to yields and genome editing as a way to speed disease-resistance breeding and the domestication of landraces.

## Pesticides, biodiversity and forests

### Glyphosate and pesticide policy

On 15 December 2021 the Bundestag elected Harald Ebner of Alliance 90/The Greens, an agricultural engineer and member since 2011, by secret ballot as chair of the Committee on the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection; in the 20th term he was also a deputy member of the agriculture committee. The 2021 coalition agreement of the SPD, the Greens and the FDP promised a substantial cut in pesticide use and stated: "Wir nehmen Glyphosat bis Ende 2023 vom Markt."

France, Hungary, the Netherlands and Sweden prepared the renewal dossier, with Germany's Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) in the peer review. On 6 July 2023 the [European Food Safety Authority](/organizations/european-food-safety-authority) found no critical area of concern that would block renewal of glyphosate, while leaving open an impurity, consumer dietary risk and risks to aquatic plants. It said biodiversity evidence did not support firm conclusions, so risk managers could consider mitigation, and a conservative assessment found a high long-term risk to mammals for 12 of 23 proposed uses. The BfR noted that in 2022 the [European Chemicals Agency](/organizations/european-chemicals-agency)'s risk-assessment committee had judged a carcinogenic classification unjustified, a conclusion that differs from the International Agency for Research on Cancer, which in March 2015 placed glyphosate in Group 2A, "probably carcinogenic to humans".

Member states reached no qualified majority on 13 October or 16 November 2023. The Commission said it then had to act before expiry on 15 December 2023 and adopted a ten-year renewal. Implementing Regulation (EU) 2023/2660 of 28 November 2023 renewed the approval until 15 December 2033, with a ban on pre-harvest desiccant use, impurity limits, maximum rates and a later duty to submit data on indirect biodiversity effects; member states kept product authorisations and could add restrictions.

Deutschlandfunk reported that Germany abstained, with six other countries, because the cabinet was split: the Greens wanted the approval to lapse and the FDP backed the Commission. Agriculture minister [Cem Özdemir](/people/cem-ozdemir) said he would have voted no under the coalition agreement and that the Commission could not rule out harm to biodiversity. Norbert Lins, the CDU chair of the European Parliament's agriculture committee, called the extension an important step for European farming, while Green MEP Martin Häusling said the member states had surrendered the decision. Hubertus Beringmeier, president of the Westphalian-Lippian farmers' association, said regional farmers welcomed continued use. At the 2023 German Farmers' Day, Deutscher Bauernverband president Joachim Rukwied warned that coalition measures risked weakening Germany as a place to farm.

On 19 November 2023 the *Südwest Presse* interviewed Ebner, still committee chair; its headline called him a glyphosate opponent and quoted him: "Alleine die schiere Menge an Glyphosat ist ein Problem für unsere Ökosysteme". The paper reported that he called the extension a mistake and wanted permitted uses at least sharply limited. A separate Commission proposal of 22 June 2022 would have set a binding EU target to cut the use and risk of chemical pesticides by 50 percent by 2030. On 6 February 2024 [Ursula von der Leyen](/people/energy-ursula-von-der-leyen) called that proposal "a symbol of polarisation", noting Parliament's rejection and the stall in the Council, and said she would propose its withdrawal; the Commission withdrew it on 27 March 2024.

### Biodiversity and nature conservation

The coalition treaty called protection of biological diversity a human task and an ethical obligation, and said Germany would press for 30 percent of areas to be protected and effectively managed, and would give the national biodiversity strategy binding targets. Target 7 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework calls for cutting, by 2030, the overall risk from pesticides and highly hazardous chemicals by at least half, including through integrated pest management. Ebner's reported objection located the harm in the volume applied to ecosystems. On 17 June 2024, during the term in which the Bundestag listed him as environment-committee chair, the Council gave final approval to the Nature Restoration Law. Regulation (EU) 2024/1991 requires restoration measures on at least 20 percent of EU land and 20 percent of sea areas by 2030, and national restoration plans.

### Forest policy

On 10 September 2019 Ebner led the Green motion "Aktionsplan für einen gesunden und artenreichen Wald" (printed paper 19/13079), with Steffi Lemke and the group. It said more than a third of Germany is forested, treated near-natural deciduous forest as the largest natural heritage by area, and argued that policy was unprepared for drought, storms and heat. The demands included a one-billion-euro fund over five years, priority for natural regeneration, retained deadwood and habitat trees, and leaving 10 percent of public forests to natural processes.

The coalition agreement said climate damage was already visible in forests and that conversion should produce species-rich, climate-resilient stands of predominantly site-native trees, with the forest law amended to match. On 4 July 2022 the agriculture committee heard the Scientific Advisory Board for Forest Policy; the ministry reported about 400,000 hectares damaged since 2018, out of about 11 million hectares, and said a strategy due by summer 2024 should lead to a new Federal Forest Act. Experts agreed conversion was needed and should be better funded, but not on the means. A *Frankfurter Rundschau* column of 25 August 2024 wrote that Özdemir's draft then on the table contained little of the expected rules on conversion, a comprehensive clear-cut ban, or soil protection.

## Nuclear safety and waste disposal

### Phase-out and lifetime extensions

After the Fukushima disaster the Bundestag, on 30 June 2011, voted to phase out commercial nuclear power, with Isar 2, Emsland and Neckarwestheim 2 due to close on 31 December 2022. Russia's war against Ukraine reopened the question of lifetimes in the 2022 energy crisis. Economy minister Robert Habeck of Alliance 90/The Greens proposed an emergency reserve only for the two southern plants until mid-April 2023. Finance minister Christian Lindner of the Free Democratic Party wanted all three kept online into 2024. On 17 October 2022 Chancellor [Olaf Scholz](/people/mig-olaf-scholz) of the Social Democratic Party ordered stretch-out operation of all three on fuel already on site until 15 April 2023 at the latest, and said nuclear plants in Germany would then be finished. Habeck said he could live with the decision; environment minister [Steffi Lemke](/people/steffi-lemke) said the phase-out remained and that no new fuel would be bought; Lindner called the ruling clarity after seeking a longer run.

The Bundestag amended the Atomic Energy Act on 11 November 2022 by 375 votes to 216, with 70 abstentions. The governing coalition cast the yes votes, but nine Greens voted no; most no votes came from the CDU/CSU and The Left, and most abstentions from the AfD. A CDU/CSU bill for operation until 31 December 2024 was rejected, as were AfD motions to lift lifetime limits and to promote civilian nuclear research. Harald Ebner, then chair of the environment committee, opened for the Greens and called the change a burden accepted so that the phase-out would stand and no new fuel assemblies would be procured. The three plants shut down on 15 April 2023 and passed into post-operation and dismantling.

### Repository search and the BGE

The 2017 Site Selection Act requires a participatory, science-based, transparent, self-questioning and learning search, inside Germany, for the site with the best possible safety for high-level waste for one million years, in rock salt, claystone or crystalline rock. Retrieval must remain possible during operation and recovery for 500 years after planned closure; the procedure is reversible, a decision is aimed at for 2031, and disposal abroad is excluded.

The federally owned Bundesgesellschaft für Endlagerung (BGE), formed in Peine in July 2016, conducts the search, is building the Konrad repository at Salzgitter for low- and intermediate-level waste, is to retrieve waste from the Asse II mine, and is preparing to close Morsleben and Gorleben. The environment ministry is the shareholder and bears political responsibility; the Federal Office for the Safety of Nuclear Waste Management reviews BGE proposals and organises public participation, and the Bundestag decides by law at each phase.

The BGE's September 2020 sub-area report, in the still unfinished first phase, left about half of Germany under consideration, and proposals for siting regions are due by the end of 2027. Timetables published at the end of 2022 put completion well after the Act's 2031 aim; BASE and the BGE have suggested accelerations that would not reduce safety or participation, and the environment ministry has been drafting an amendment. Ebner sits on the supervisory board, which monitors management and must approve major business decisions. His Bundestag disclosure lists that post at Bundesgesellschaft für Endlagerung mbH, Peine, at €4,000 gross a year.

### KENFO

The Nuclear Waste Disposal Fund (Fonds zur Finanzierung der kerntechnischen Entsorgung, KENFO) is a public-law foundation financing interim and final storage of waste from commercial reactors. It was established on 16 June 2017 and on 3 July 2017 received €24.1 billion from the operators of 25 plants, with no further inflows. The capital is invested globally to cover disposal costs through 2099, and the foundation reimburses the environment ministry. At the end of 2025 assets were about €25.6 billion, and payments to the federal budget since 2017 totalled €5.3 billion.

Trustees from the economy, finance and environment ministries and from every Bundestag group are appointed for a legislative period, decide fundamental questions, and appoint and oversee a three-member executive board. Legal supervision lies with the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, in agreement with the finance and environment ministries. In the 21st Bundestag Katharina Beck is the Green member and Harald Ebner the deputy. The disclosure lists him as deputy member of the KENFO board of trustees in Berlin and states no payment for the post.

## International parliamentary work

Ebner’s international roles are memberships in bilateral bodies of the Bundestag. Parliamentary groups are reconstituted each electoral term, draw members from all party groups, and are meant to keep up conferences, information trips and personal contact with legislators abroad.

### Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly

He is an ordinary member of the Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly. It has 50 members from the Bundestag and 50 from the [French National Assembly](/organizations/french-national-assembly), and is to meet at least twice a year, alternating between the two countries. It was constituted in Paris on 25 March 2019 under a Franco-German parliamentary agreement adopted that month, after a working group set up on 22 January 2018, the 55th anniversary of the [Élysée Treaty](/facts/elysee-treaty). In the 19th electoral term the Bundestag already listed him as an ordinary, voting member.

He was a voting member of the assembly’s working group on the European Green Deal, set up at the third sitting on 5–6 February 2020 to follow climate cooperation and the deal’s implementation in both countries. On 23 November 2020 that group, including its German and French members, discussed the agricultural transition with ministers [Julia Klöckner](/people/julia-klockner) and Julien Denormandie.

On 1 December 2025, at the 12th plenary sitting in Berlin, he spoke for Alliance 90/The Greens on a draft calling for an ambitious global agreement against plastic pollution. He called for reduction targets, less single-use plastic and a plastics tax, and said talks begun after a decision in Montreal should not be left to fail. The assembly adopted the resolution the same day, asking both governments to restart treaty talks and to support cuts in global plastic production, limits on single-use plastics where no comparable safe alternative exists, and controls on chemicals of concern. Under Article 7(2) of the parliamentary agreement, Bundestag president Julia Klöckner transmitted it for both parliaments to take up; it is printed paper 21/3867 of 28 January 2026.

### Other interparliamentary groups

The Bundestag’s formal list names him deputy chair of the German–South Caucasus Parliamentary Group and of the Parliamentary Group for the Cono Sur states. The biography’s narrative, which the Bundestag says rests on members’ own information, also lists the German–Canadian Parliamentary Group and a Cono Sur board seat. Published boards show the Cono Sur deputy role in the 19th term and the 20th, but not an officer’s post for him on the South Caucasus or Canadian groups in either term.

The Cono Sur group covers Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay. In spring 2019 he travelled with a delegation chaired by Stefan Müller (CDU/CSU) to Chile and Uruguay. Its account, quoting Müller rather than Ebner, centres on the June 2019 EU–Mercosur agreement to cut industrial and agricultural tariffs, and on the Cerro Dominador solar plant and the environmental legacy of the Chuquicamata copper mine.

*The Cono Sur delegation in Montevideo in 2019, with Harald Ebner third from the left in the Bundestag’s caption.*

A notice of 3 March 2023 named him for a 4–12 March trip to Argentina and Paraguay, with sustainable agriculture, EU–Mercosur, energy and dictatorship reckonings on the agenda. A notice of 28 May 2026 named him for a 30 May–7 June trip to Chile and Argentina, covering energy, climate protection, a synthetic-fuels pilot plant and Mercosur.

The South Caucasus group’s partners are Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. On 23 April 2026 the Bundestag named him on a delegation led by [Mirze Edis](/people/mirze-edis) (The Left) to Azerbaijan from 25 to 30 April, for political and economic talks and a visit to Karabakh on reconstruction. A later account describes peace between Azerbaijan and Armenia and German energy security; the published remarks are Edis’s. The German–Canadian group, founded on 9 December 1970, has discussed environment, climate change and the EU–Canada agreement CETA, its chair [Bernd Rützel](/people/bernd-rutzel) said in 2020.

## Reception and public debate

Published replies that name Harald Ebner have concentrated on agricultural genetic engineering and glyphosate, with environmental and consumer groups often on his side and farm, industry and Free Democratic Party voices against him.

### Environmental and consumer organisations

His Bundestag biography, drawn from his own disclosures, lists membership of the Naturschutzbund Deutschland (NABU), the Interessengemeinschaft für gesunde Lebensmittel (IG FÜR), the Berufsverband der Landschaftsökologen Baden-Württemberg and the Bundesverband Beruflicher Naturschutz, and a trusteeship at the Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt. The page says those details rest on self-reporting, so they record affiliation rather than an endorsement of his bills.

In September 2015 the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment told *taz* that its main glyphosate assessment had missed some mechanistic studies used by the World Health Organization's cancer agency. Ebner said studies that could make the substance look dangerous were being discarded—"Das stinkt zum Himmel"—whether from sloppiness or interested influence, and Heike Moldenhauer of BUND said decisive information had slipped the institute's net and criticised closeness between producers and the reviewing authority.

foodwatch reported press accounts, which it said it had not seen in the original, of a Bundestag scientific-service opinion Ebner commissioned on the planned EU agreements with Canada and the United States. As relayed there, stricter labelling of meat, milk, cheese or eggs from animals fed genetically modified crops could draw complaints from those states and collide with the agreements.

After the European Court of Justice ruled on 25 July 2018 that newer mutagenesis falls under EU rules for genetically modified organisms, Alexander Hissting of the Verband Lebensmittel ohne Gentechnik called the judgment wise and said the plants would still need regulation and labels, a view Ebner shared as protection of precaution and consumer choice.

### Farming, industry and scientific criticism

In May 2018 *agrarheute* published a debate between Ebner and the farmer Susanne Günther on glyphosate, mechanical alternatives, research and biodiversity; the full text ran in the May print issue.

The court ruling split the bodies that answered it. Joachim Rukwied, president of the German Farmers' Association, said it blocked breeding for climate change, including drought-tolerant varieties, and that Europe could fall behind. The Federal Association of German Plant Breeders called it a retreat from innovation, because comparable products were already sold abroad without those conditions, and Ricardo Gent of the Deutsche Industrievereinigung Biotechnologie said extending the GMO directive across the board blocked genome editing. FDP deputy Carina Konrad said conventional and organic farming could both have gained from the breeding progress.

In November 2020 the Ecological Democratic Party accused the Greens of leaving a clear no to agricultural genetic engineering, and Ebner replied that delegates had kept strict approval and labelling for old and new methods and had rejected deregulation with 80 percent of the votes. Konrad called that a step backwards, saying anyone serious about sustainability must not block the gene scissors CRISPR-Cas9, "denn Ideologie macht weder satt noch gesund." Momme Matthiesen, for the Grain Club of grain and oilseed associations, said the programme lacked the distinction between classical genetic engineering and genome editing that he called a scientific consensus.

A 2019 statement by the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the German Research Foundation and the Union of the German Academies of Sciences did not name Ebner. It said a process-based European rule was no longer rationally justifiable, because risks could come only from altered traits, not from the method, and that genome editing should be reassessed and the law revised. In August 2021 a questioner on Abgeordnetenwatch cited that statement against the Green line. Ebner answered that there was no consensus on open release, which usually cannot be reversed; that CRISPR-type methods were about ten years old, not thirty; and that only 1.6 percent of relevant EU research money had gone to risk assessment, detection and monitoring, so the party would keep strict authorisation, precaution and labelling.

In August 2024, after the federal nuclear-waste safety office published a scenario in which a site might not be named until 2074, against a statutory aim of 2031, he told RBB Inforadio that holding the waste without a destination was unacceptable and that longer-term Castor safety claims had to be checked. That report quotes no farm association, industry group or environmental organisation in reply.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/harald-ebner