Hauke Finger

Hauke Horst Ernst Hans Finger (born 17 August 1968 in Willich) is a German politician of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and a member of the Bundestag since 25 March 2025. He sits for North Rhine-Westphalia on the AfD state list, at place 18, after standing in constituency 113, Krefeld II – Wesel II. The Bundestag biography, compiled from his own disclosures, lists him as a banking business economist (Bankbetriebswirt), divorced, with two children.

Finger took the Abitur in Krefeld in 1987, did basic military service from 1987 to 1988, trained as a bank clerk from 1988 to 1990, and completed a part-time course as a Bankbetriebswirt from 1991 to 1995. From 1990 to 2017 the same biography places him in securities advice and trading at Dresdner Bank, then in treasury posts at Hypothekenbank in Essen, Deutsche Hypothekenbank in Hanover, and IKB Deutsche Industriebank in Düsseldorf, where he is described as treasury head, director and managing director.

He joined the AfD in 2013. Since 2015 he has sat on the party's Krefeld district executive and on state and federal specialist committees concerned with the budget and finance, and since 2022 he has been treasurer of the AfD district association of Düsseldorf. In the 2025 federal election the AfD, whose candidate in constituency 113 was Finger, received 23,421 first votes (16.9 percent), behind Kerstin Radomski of the CDU (32.0 percent) and Jan Dieren of the SPD (30.2 percent); the party's second-vote share in the constituency was 16.6 percent.

In the 21st Bundestag he is an ordinary member of the Finance Committee and a deputy member of the Budget Committee. He is also one of the nine ordinary members of the panel under section 80 of the Customs Investigation Service Act, which the Federal Ministry of Finance informs about restrictions of postal and telecommunications secrecy. Since November 2025 he has been a member of the Krefeld city council and of the Mitte district assembly, and the Bundestag has published seats at Sparkasse Krefeld and on the board of trustees of the Sparkassenstiftung Sport und Umwelt Krefeld among his disclosable activities.

In February 2026 t-online reported that Finger worked with a long-term partner in his own Bundestag office, citing an extract from an internal parliamentary staff database and a shared residential address, and wrote that he did not answer its inquiry. The report called the case the third involving AfD members from North Rhine-Westphalia in a wider staffing controversy, after earlier accounts concerning Stefan Keuter and Markus Matzerath, and said Die Zeit had reported the partner's role first.

Early life and education

Childhood and family

Hauke Horst Ernst Hans Finger was born on 17 August 1968 in Willich, in North Rhine-Westphalia. The federal returning officer’s roll of members elected in 2025 records that full name and the birth year 1968; in parliament he is listed as Hauke Finger. The municipality states that it has a little over 50,000 inhabitants and lies on the eastern edge of the Viersen district, near Düsseldorf, Krefeld and Mönchengladbach. Its present boundaries date from 1970, when Willich, Anrath, Schiefbahn and Neersen were combined, two years after his birth.

The Bundestag biography, which rests on members’ own disclosures, states that he is divorced and has two children. In an interview published on 11 February 2025 by Welle Niederrhein, he said that he lived in the Krefeld district of Oppum, was divorced and in a new relationship, and had two daughters and two grandchildren. Neither that interview nor the parliamentary biography names his parents or describes his childhood beyond the birthplace.

School, military service and professional education

He passed the Abitur in Krefeld in 1987, the school-leaving examination that confers a general higher-education entrance qualification. In the same interview he said that he had gone to school in the Krefeld inner city, “zum damaligen Arndt-Gymnasium” (at the then Arndt-Gymnasium).

The Rheinische Post reported that from August 2018 the Arndt-Gymnasium and the neighbouring Fichte-Gymnasium operated jointly, with sites on Dionysiusstraße and Lindenstraße, and that the school had been named the Hannah-Arendt-Gymnasium since 1 April 2019. The school’s page on the Dionysiusstraße site states that those buildings are the former Arndt-Gymnasium.

From 1987 to 1988 he performed Grundwehrdienst, basic military service, in the Bundeswehr. Compulsory service for men was still in force: on 24 March 2011 the Bundestag suspended the general peacetime duty of military or civilian alternative service from 1 July 2011. The biography names neither a unit nor any length of service beyond those two years.

Between 1988 and 1990 he completed a Berufsausbildung as a Bankkaufmann, the vocational apprenticeship for bank clerks. It then records a part-time course of study, described as berufsbegleitend (taken alongside work), from 1991 to 1995 for the qualification Bankbetriebswirt. His own website dates an intermediate Bankfachwirt certificate to 1993 and the Bankbetriebswirt to 1995. Neither source lists a university degree. The Bundestag uses Bankbetriebswirt as his occupational title.

Banking career

From 1990 to 2017 Hauke Finger worked in securities and then in treasury at four German banks. The years, titles and places are those in the Bundestag biography, compiled from his own disclosures. It does not describe transactions or reporting lines, and it does not place him on the executive board (Vorstand) of any of the four.

Securities trading

From 1990 to 1996 he was a securities adviser (Wertpapierberater) at Dresdner Bank AG, and from 1996 to 1998 a securities trader (Wertpapierhändler) at the bank in Frankfurt am Main, where he held a Prokura. Frankfurt is the seat of Deutsche Börse. The Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) defines investment advice, the regulated activity closest to a bank securities adviser, as a personal recommendation to a customer on a transaction in a specific financial instrument, based on the customer's circumstances or presented as suitable for that customer. A securities trader buys and sells. The biography does not say which markets Finger traded, or whether the book was customer business or the bank's own account.

Prokura, under section 49 of the Commercial Code, authorises every judicial and extra-judicial act that a commercial business ordinarily requires, but not the sale or encumbrance of land unless that power is added. His Dresdner years end in 1998. On 1 April 2001 the supervisory boards of Dresdner Bank and Allianz approved Allianz's takeover of the bank. In August 2008, during the 2007–08 financial crisis, Commerzbank agreed to buy Dresdner Bank from Allianz. Both changes of control came after he had left.

Treasury management

From 1999 to 2003 he was deputy head of treasury, with the title Bankdirektor, at Hypothekenbank in Essen AG in Essen. From 2003 to 2007 he was head of treasury, with the title Direktor, at Deutsche Hypothekenbank (Actien-Gesellschaft) in Hanover. Both issued Pfandbriefe. BaFin treats that business as the issue of covered bonds: mortgage Pfandbriefe against acquired mortgages, and public Pfandbriefe against claims on state bodies. Creditors and derivative counterparties must be covered at all times, at nominal value and on a present-value basis with a further 2 percent. Until 19 July 2005 issuance was essentially limited to mortgage banks and public-law credit institutions. A treasury in this business raises the funds and manages the interest-rate and liquidity position those cover rules require. The biography does not list desks or limits.

Commerzbank, already holder of 51 percent of the Essen bank, said on 9 November 2007 that it concentrated on public-sector finance, and on 31 January 2008 announced a merger into Eurohypo backdated to 1 January 2008. Finger's Essen post ends in 2003. Deutsche Hypothekenbank, founded in Berlin on 13 February 1872 to issue mortgage bonds, later financed commercial property from Hanover. Norddeutsche Landesbank launched a bid at the start of December 2007 and, by the close reported on 4 January 2008, had been tendered 96.5 percent of the shares. The biography ends his Hanover post in 2007. The company was absorbed into NORD/LB on 1 July 2021; the Deutsche Hypo name continued for commercial property finance.

From 2007 to 2017 he was head of treasury at IKB Deutsche Industriebank AG in Düsseldorf, with the titles Direktor and managing director. Unlike the two mortgage banks, IKB was known as a lender to German mid-sized industry.

That start year is also the year IKB became the first large German bank caught by the US subprime crisis. It managed Rhineland Funding, a vehicle set up in the United States in 2002 and not formally a subsidiary, and had promised it liquidity. When investors stopped buying the paper that refinanced the vehicle, IKB faced drawings on those lines. On 20 July 2007 the bank confirmed its profit forecast and said a Moody's review of US mortgages would have practically no effect beyond a single-digit million amount. On 27 July, as the Süddeutsche Zeitung later reconstructed it, Deutsche Bank refused to extend credit lines and warned the supervisors. Over that weekend KfW, IKB's largest shareholder, led a rescue. On 30 July IKB said the subprime crisis had hit it, that Rhineland Funding's refinancing was in danger, and that the forecast could not be kept. Jochen Sanio, then head of banking supervision, said Germany faced the worst financial crisis since 1931 if IKB still failed.

The biography gives 2007 to 2017 and no month of arrival, so it does not show whether Finger was already head of treasury when those lines were at issue. The account of the rescue names the bank's statements, Deutsche Bank, the supervisors and KfW. It does not name him, and it does not attribute the Rhineland exposure to the treasury post. The years he records, 2007 to 2017, cover the crisis and the decade after it.

Party activity in North Rhine-Westphalia

Local organization in Krefeld

Hauke Finger joined the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in 2013, the year the party was founded, and his political work has been based in Krefeld, in North Rhine-Westphalia. The biography published by the Bundestag dates his membership of the AfD district executive in Krefeld from 2015 and lists, from the same year, membership of state and federal specialist committees on the budget and finance. On his own website he describes the Krefeld board role as uninterrupted, names the state committee as “Banken, Währung, Finanzen,” and states that he led a local working group on municipal policy from 2016 to 2020.

The Krefeld organization was small in those years and lost much of its elected presence. At the 2014 municipal election the AfD received 3,463 votes (4.3 percent) and two seats on the city council. It also won one seat on each of the city’s nine district assemblies, eleven mandates in all. By September 2018 the Rheinische Post reported that both council members, Ruth Brauers and Jürgen Heitzer, had left the party and sat as independents; that the joint AfD/UWG council group had dissolved at the end of August 2014, after which the expert citizens it had sent to committees held personal rather than party mandates; and that most district-assembly seats had been vacated or were no longer held by AfD members. Two district-assembly members, in Ost and Uerdingen, were still in the party. District spokesman Frank Wübbeling called the losses a feature of a party’s early phase.

The same article recorded a cluster of AfD officers in a non-party association. On the board of the Bürgerverein Oppum, Wübbeling was chair and an AfD assessor, Finger was the association’s deputy chair and deputy speaker of the Krefeld AfD, and Michael Würdinger was association cashier and AfD treasurer. Wübbeling told the paper that the overlap was coincidence, not an attempt to capture the association, and that politics was kept out of its work. He said he had been in the Free Democratic Party from the age of 16 and had moved to the AfD about eighteen months earlier, citing euro-area debt rules and refugee policy.

Council results later moved the other way. On 13 September 2020 the AfD polled 4,476 votes (5.4 percent), 1.2 points more than in 2014, and won three seats, with turnout at 46.5 percent. On 14 September 2025 it polled 13,848 votes (15.5 percent), a gain of 10.1 points, and won nine seats, behind the Christian Democratic Union on 18 and the Social Democratic Party on 15. Turnout was 51.4 percent.

District offices and the 2021 candidacy

The Bundestag biography lists Finger as treasurer of the AfD Bezirksverband Düsseldorf from 2022. That association covers a group of district branches along the Lower Rhine and in the Ruhr, including Krefeld. On 15 June 2024 it held its regular congress in the Rheinhausen-Halle in Duisburg. The Rheinische Post reported that about 200 delegates were expected, that the executive was to be elected, and that the meeting had not been publicized in advance so as to limit protests outside the hall. The association’s newsletter afterwards reported 202 voting members present. It said Finger, as treasurer, had persuaded the meeting that the financial documents were in order, that the outgoing executive was discharged by a large majority after debate on the audit, and that he was re-elected treasurer without an opposing candidate, for two years, together with most of the rest of the board. The same issue said that on 7 June 2024 he had addressed a Krefeld district meeting on the “Great Reset,” and identified him as a member of the Krefeld executive as well as district treasurer.

In 2021 Finger was the AfD direct candidate for the Bundestag in constituency 114, Krefeld II – Wesel II. The seat then comprised the Krefeld districts Nord, Hüls, Mitte and Ost, plus Moers and Neukirchen-Vluyn in the Wesel district. The AfD candidate in the neighbouring Krefeld I – Neuss II constituency was Christof Rausch. In late August the Chamber of Industry and Commerce hosted a candidates’ forum in its Krefeld building for constituency 114. The Westdeutsche Zeitung named six participants—Jan Dieren (SPD), Kerstin Radomski (CDU), Ulle Schauws (Greens), Michael Terwiesche (FDP), Sebastian Schubert (The Left) and Finger—and reported an audience of more than 30. It wrote that a sharp clash over economic policy did not materialize, although differences were visible.

Hauke Finger speaks beside an IHK banner at a Krefeld candidates’ forum during the 2021 Bundestag campaign, with a name card identifying him as the AfD candidate.

The federal returning officer’s final table for 26 September 2021 records 9,077 AfD first votes in the constituency (7.0 percent), 1.6 points below the party’s 2017 share there, and 9,189 second votes (also 7.0 percent), down 2.2 points. With one AfD candidate on the constituency ballot, those first votes were Finger’s. The SPD won the seat with 45,852 votes (35.2 percent); the CDU was second with 37,033 (28.4 percent). The AfD finished behind the Greens (13.4 percent) and the FDP (8.4 percent). Turnout was 74.9 percent among 175,852 eligible voters. The direct mandate therefore went to the SPD. Finger’s later entry into the Bundestag, at the 2025 election, was a separate candidacy.

In a Rheinische Post profile published on 3 September 2021, Finger, then 53, said the AfD was the party he had long waited for and described it as “konservativ, freiheitlich, patriotisch.” He said racist and nationalist excesses were not what he knew from party work, and that much reporting of that kind was intended to damage the party. He presented nearly 30 years in bank management, concentrated on treasury and proprietary trading, as his basis for work on European policy and on banking and capital-market regulation, and said he was then a political aide to an AfD member of the Bundestag dealing with the finance committee. He said he did not believe in human-caused climate change, called climate policy socially unjust, and criticized the level of taxes and charges. Asked about Björn Höcke, he said he had no points of contact with the Thuringian AfD. He did not distance himself from Höcke: he called him “nicht ganz unerfolgreich,” said there was nothing false in the content of Höcke’s positions, and added that he did not always agree with Höcke’s manner.

Path into the Bundestag

Parliamentary staff roles

Hauke Finger reached the Bundestag through its staff rather than by winning a constituency. The parliament's biography, which it states is drawn from members' own information, lists him from 2017 to 2024 as political adviser (politischer Referent) in Berlin to Stefan Keuter, then an Alternative for Germany (AfD) member, and from 2024 to 2025 as coordinating adviser (Koordinierungsreferent) on the executive of the AfD parliamentary group. The same page's register of pre-membership employment gives his last occupation as adviser to the AfD group in the Bundestag in Berlin.

Local reporting described the work without always naming the member. In a September 2021 portrait the Rheinische Post wrote that he was political adviser to an AfD member of the Bundestag, with the Finance Committee as his main brief, after what he described as almost 30 years in bank management, especially treasury and proprietary trading. On 10 February 2025 the Westdeutsche Zeitung said he was already familiar with the AfD Bundestag group and was working as its coordinating adviser while seeking a seat himself.

The 2025 election and list mandate

At the federal election of 23 February 2025 Finger stood for the AfD in constituency 113, Krefeld II – Wesel II, and at place 18 on the party's state list in North Rhine-Westphalia. The state party fixed the list at a five-day assembly in Marl at the start of January; on 3 January delegates chose Kay Gottschalk for first place with 61 percent. The Federal Returning Officer's roll of those elected from that list puts Finger at place 18.

The 2025 contest used a fixed Bundestag of 630 seats and personalized proportional representation: a first vote for a constituency candidate and a second vote for a party's state list. Second votes alone set a party's seats. They are converted by the Sainte-Laguë/Schepers method, first nationwide and then among that party's state lists, and overhang and compensatory seats no longer arise. A first-vote leader wins the constituency only if the seat is covered by the party's second-vote allocation in the Land (Zweitstimmendeckung): those leaders are ranked by first-vote share and the Land's seats are assigned in that order. State lists are closed, so voters cannot change the order the party has set.

In North Rhine-Westphalia the AfD took 1,770,379 second votes, 16.8 percent, and 26 seats. No AfD candidate appears among the state's constituency winners. The Returning Officer's list of AfD members elected from the North Rhine-Westphalian list runs without a gap from place 1, Gottschalk, through place 26, with Finger at 18, and that list place is recorded as the seat on which he was elected.

Constituency 113 covers the Krefeld boroughs Nord, Hüls, Mitte and Ost, plus Moers and Neukirchen-Vluyn in the district of Wesel. Of 173,314 people eligible to vote, 140,222 did so, a turnout of 80.9 percent, 6.0 points higher than in 2021. Finger received 23,421 first votes, 16.9 percent and 9.9 points above the AfD's 2021 share, and placed third. Kerstin Radomski of the Christian Democratic Union won the constituency with 44,412 votes (32.0 percent). Jan Dieren of the Social Democratic Party of Germany was runner-up with 41,999 votes (30.2 percent) and entered on the SPD state list at place 17. Alliance 90/The Greens, whose constituency candidate was Ursula Schauws, took 12,133 first votes (8.7 percent); she was elected from Green list place 5. Die Linke received 8,552 first votes (6.2 percent) and the Free Democratic Party 4,841 (3.5 percent). AfD second votes there were 23,203 (16.6 percent, up 9.6 points); the CDU led that column with 28.8 percent and the SPD followed with 22.4 percent.

Finger told the Westdeutsche Zeitung he wanted to represent "workers, families, pensioners" and "all Germans who make their contribution every day," and that he would work for a "sovereign German monetary policy": replacing the Grundsteuer with a larger municipal share of income tax, a simpler tax system, and full application of the Konnexitätsprinzip so that municipalities were not left paying for decisions of the EU, the federation or the Land. He also named rail and road schemes around Krefeld, and said the "comfort level" for what he called "poverty migrants into the social systems" should be lowered. In February he joined Dieren, Ansgar Heveling, Schauws and Otto Fricke at a forum of the Chamber of Industry and Commerce Mittlerer Niederrhein in Krefeld on bureaucracy, energy prices and the economy.

The day after the election the Rheinische Post reported that place 18 had sent him to the Bundestag for the first time. The workplace was not new, the paper wrote, because he had already worked for the group; Finger said, "But now it is of course a new role." After two election-night parties he drove to Berlin and was told around half past four in the morning that he was in. He said he was glad of the support, which he had also felt at the campaign stalls. Schauws, quoted in the same article, said she would not keep in contact with the incoming AfD member, because his last campaign appearance had again shown "how far-right his thinking and his attitude are." His mandate is dated from 25 March 2025, the constitutive sitting of the 21st Bundestag.

Bundestag committees and oversight

Finance and Budget Committees

In the 21st Bundestag, Hauke Finger sits for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) as an ordinary member of the Finance Committee and as a deputy member of the Budget Committee. The parliament's biography records both assignments as beginning on 25 March 2025. An ordinary member has one vote in committee. Deputies may attend every sitting, but they may vote only when they stand in for an absent ordinary member of their own parliamentary group.

The Finance Committee at its constituting meeting on 21 May 2025.

The Finance Committee has 42 members, and its remit follows that of the Federal Ministry of Finance except for budget policy. It considers bills, motions, government reports and European Union items referred by the plenary, and is as a rule the lead committee for financial-market regulation (banks, securities and insurance), customs and tax policy.

The committee constituted itself on the afternoon of 21 May 2025 and did not elect a chair. Of the 42 ordinary seats, 14 were held by the CDU/CSU, ten by the AfD, eight by the Social Democratic Party (SPD), six by Alliance 90/The Greens and four by Die Linke. Finger was among the ten AfD members. The right to nominate the chair belonged to the AfD, as Bundestag vice-president Andrea Lindholz (CDU/CSU), who presided, explained. The group proposed Kay Gottschalk, who was not in the room. At the CDU/CSU's request the vote was secret: Gottschalk received 11 yes votes and 31 no votes out of 42 cast. The AfD did not call another ballot, so the chair stayed vacant. Olav Gutting (CDU/CSU), a member of the Bundestag since 2002 and the longest-serving member of the committee, took the chair until a chair or a deputy chair was chosen.

On the morning of 25 June 2025 the committee elected Christian Görke (Die Linke) deputy chair, by secret ballot at the AfD's request and with the agreement of every group except Die Linke, which withheld its agreement. Görke received 23 votes in favour and 15 against, with two abstentions, and took the chair for the time being because Gottschalk had not been elected in May. The Bundestag's roll lists him as acting chair. Each group names an Obmann or Obfrau, its main contact for the group leadership in that committee. The roll gives that AfD post to Gottschalk and lists Finger only as an ordinary member, with no Obmann or chair function. The AfD group's own site has nevertheless described him as stellvertretender Obmann, a deputy coordinator, of the group in the Finance Committee.

Rapporteurships are assigned bill by bill rather than as a standing office on that roll. The minutes of a public hearing on 26 January 2026 name Finger and Philipp Rottwilm (SPD) as rapporteurs for the government draft of a Fund Risk Limitation Act (Fondsrisikobegrenzungsgesetz, printed paper 21/3510), on which the Finance Committee was the lead committee.

The Budget Committee, also of 42 members, is where the Bundestag decides in the annual procedure how much the Federation spends and on what, and it continuously scrutinises budget execution and financial assistance tied to euro-area stabilisation. Finger's recorded place there is as a deputy, so any vote of his depends on substituting for an absent ordinary member of the AfD.

Customs investigation oversight panel

Finger is also an ordinary member of a separate oversight panel under section 80 of the Customs Investigation Service Act (Zollfahndungsdienstgesetz). The Bundestag describes the panel as a body of nine members, appointed on 30 January 2014. It succeeded the panel under section 41(5) of the Foreign Trade Act and was created with the law that reorganised preventive telecommunications and postal surveillance by the Customs Criminal Office (Zollkriminalamt).

Section 80 requires the Federal Ministry of Finance to inform that panel, at intervals of no more than six months, about the conduct of measures under the relevant part of the Act, including in conjunction with sections 82 and 93 and sections 105 and 106. For measures in the reporting period the report is to cover in particular their occasion, scope, duration, result and cost, and the notification of the people affected. In the Bundestag's account, the ministry regularly informs the panel about restrictions, imposed by the Customs Criminal Office, of the secrecy of correspondence, posts and telecommunications under Article 10 of the Basic Law. The office may restrict that right in individual cases, after a court order, in order to prevent offences under the Foreign Trade Act and the War Weapons Control Act.

The panel's published list of ordinary members names Ingo Vogel (SPD) as chair; Anja Karliczek, Carl-Philipp Sassenrath and Mechthilde Wittmann for the CDU/CSU; Finger and Gottschalk for the AfD; Michael Thews for the SPD; Lukas Benner for Alliance 90/The Greens; and Katrin Fey for Die Linke. The biography page that lists Finger's places on the Finance Committee and the Budget Committee does not repeat this panel seat.

Positions on tax, money and transport levies

Inheritance, gift and wealth taxation

On 13 November 2025 the Alternative for Germany (AfD), with Hauke Finger as first signatory, tabled printed paper 21/2804. It asked the Bundestag to demand a bill abolishing inheritance and gift tax. The motion called the levy double taxation of wealth already taxed as income, put the 2024 yield at about 13.3 billion euros, about 1.4 percent of tax revenue of about 948 billion euros. It cited burdens of about 14 percent up to 200,000 euros against about 2.9 percent above 20 million, and rejected giving the tax to the Länder.

The House debated the motion on 30 January 2026 and referred it, with no vote on the merits, to the Finance Committee (lead) and the committees on legal affairs and the budget. Finger called it an occasion-based wealth tax, unrelated to ability to pay, and a threat to succession in firms whose value was not cash. Frauke Heiligenstadt of the Social Democratic Party of Germany interjected that the firms he named were not liable. Olav Gutting (CDU/CSU) said both abolition and a sharp rise were wrong and that a moderate tax belonged to the social market economy.

On 6 March 2026 the House gave a first reading, and then the same referral, to two other motions. Die Linke (21/4029) asked for 1 percent from one million euros of net wealth, plus five million for business assets, rising to 12 percent above one billion. Alliance 90/The Greens (21/4456) asked to stop housing companies passing on more than 300 dwellings under the business-asset relief. Parsa Marvi (SPD) said his party’s programme, unlike the coalition, favoured a wealth tax. Finger called a yearly take above 100 billion euros implausible and rates up to 12 percent confiscation of income already taxed.

On 8 October 2026 roll-call votes adopted committee recommendations to reject Green motions ending the needs test for business transfers above 26 million euros (21/6647; report 21/7081) and the 300-dwelling rule (21/4456; report 21/4892). The printed result on each was 578 votes cast, 445 in favour, 132 against and one abstention. Finger said the reliefs protected family landlords and that only the AfD wanted the tax abolished. Heiligenstadt interjected a loss of 12 billion euros for the Länder. AfD bill 21/7251 of 22 July 2026, again led by Finger, would stop the taxes after 31 December 2025 without repealing the Act, so competence under Article 72(1) of the Basic Law stayed with the federation. It put the relief at 8.5 billion euros for heirs and 4.8 billion for gifts.

Aviation tax

The coalition’s Second Act amending the Aviation Tax Act (21/5688) had its first reading on 7 May 2026 and went to the Finance Committee. From 1 July 2026 rates would return to the level before 1 May 2024: 13.03, 33.01 and 59.43 euros a passenger on short-, medium- and long-haul, down from 15.53, 39.34 and 70.83, with about 330 million euros less revenue estimated for 2027. Finger called it symbolism without a measurable climate effect. An AfD call in October for the same reversal had been voted down, and he cited 19 million fewer departing passengers. Katharina Beck (Greens) called the cut a subsidy and a budget hole; Doris Achelwilm (Die Linke) called it a kerosene rebate and wanted a European tax on kerosene.

After a hearing on 18 May, at which industry witnesses favoured a cut or abolition and nominees of the Greens and Die Linke opposed it, the committee adopted the bill unchanged on 20 May. On 21 May it passed with the CDU/CSU, AfD and SPD against the Greens and Die Linke. Otto Strauß spoke for the AfD and demanded abolition. Resolution 21/6071, co-sponsored by Finger, asked for pre-1 April 2020 rates from 1 July 2026 and a zero rate from 1 December, without taxing both legs of a domestic flight; only the AfD voted for it. Green resolution 21/6072, to keep and sharpen the tax, was backed by the Greens and Die Linke and opposed by the other groups.

On 9 June Finger led printed paper 21/6353, demanding repeal. It cited German supply at 89 percent of the pre-crisis level and a kerosene shortage it blamed on the war with Iran, stating about 55 percent import dependence and about 40 days of stocks. On 11 June an AfD motion announced under that title was taken off the agenda. The House instead adopted CDU/CSU–SPD motion 21/6329, the AfD abstaining and the Greens and Die Linke opposed, asking for the cut to be evaluated and for any further relief to come from the general budget.

Cash and central-bank digital currency

Finger co-sponsored two AfD motions of 2 December 2025. Printed paper 21/3038, led by Jörn König (“Bargeld ist gedruckte Freiheit”), recorded the European Central Bank investigation of a digital euro from October 2021 and a preparation phase from 1 November 2023, with introduction, it said, not before 2027 or 2028 and only after EU law. It asked for opposition under Article 23 of the Basic Law, a referendum under Article 20(2), and retention of cash as legal tender under Article 128 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. A central bank digital currency, it argued, invoking Gresham’s law, could drain deposits and enable surveillance. Printed paper 21/3039, led by Iris Nieland and signed by Finger, sought compulsory cash acceptance in shops, hospitality and in-person services, not online or at machines and with no cap, citing joined cases C-422/19 and C-423/19. On Commission proposals COM(2023) 364 and COM(2023) 369 the government was to resist delegated exceptions.

Debated on 5 December 2025 with an AfD bitcoin motion (21/2301), the texts were referred, not voted on. Finger did not speak. Nieland rejected treating cash payers as money-laundering suspects. Anja Karliczek (CDU/CSU) said a digital euro would complement cash. Philipp Rottwilm (SPD) said the SPD rejected all three motions and backed an EU cap of 10,000 euros. Max Lucks (Greens) focused on untaxed crypto gains; a Left speaker required privacy and use during a power cut. Paper 21/3038 went to the Finance Committee (lead) and to legal affairs, economic affairs, digital affairs, EU affairs and the budget; 21/3039 to Finance (lead) and to legal affairs, economic affairs and EU affairs.

Municipal offices in Krefeld

Council and district assembly

At the municipal election of 14 September 2025, certified on 17 September, Hauke Finger of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) was returned to the council of Krefeld, in North Rhine-Westphalia, and to the Bezirksvertretung of Krefeld-Mitte. He stood seventh on the AfD reserve list for the council and third for the central district.

Of 175,677 people eligible for the council, 90,269 voted, a turnout of 51.4 percent, against 46.5 percent in 2020. From 89,380 valid votes the 58 seats went to the Christian Democratic Union with 27,378 votes (30.6 percent) and 18 seats, the Social Democratic Party with 23,195 (26.0 percent) and 15, the AfD with 13,848 (15.5 percent) and nine, Alliance 90/The Greens with 9,980 (11.2 percent) and six, Die Linke with 4,900 (5.5 percent) and three, and the Free Democratic Party with 3,152 (3.5 percent) and two. The Free Voters took 2,907 votes (3.3 percent) and two seats, the Liste für Umweltschutz, Klimagerechtigkeit & Soziale Gerechtigkeit (LUKS) 2,493 (2.8 percent) and two, and Die PARTEI 1,502 (1.7 percent) and one. Against 2020 the AfD rose by 10.1 points, from three seats to nine, and the Greens fell by 9.0 points, from 12 to six. All nine AfD councillors, including Finger, came from the reserve list. His Bundestag biography dates the seat from November 2025.

In an independent city each Stadtbezirk elects a Bezirksvertretung for five years, with 11 to 19 members including the chair. Krefeld-Mitte has 19 members, and turnout was 35.1 percent (12,433 of 35,463 eligible voters). Of 12,262 valid votes, the SPD received 3,072 (25.1 percent) and five seats, the CDU 2,689 (21.9 percent) and four, the AfD 2,129 (17.4 percent) and three, the Greens 1,745 (14.2 percent) and three, Die Linke 1,484 (12.1 percent) and two, the FDP 406 (3.3 percent) and one, and Die PARTEI 400 (3.3 percent) and one; the Free Voters had 337 votes (2.7 percent) and no seat. The AfD members are Jens Heinrich van der Linde, Thomas Mayer-Steudte and Finger.

On 11 December 2025, in the Seidenweberhaus, the council elected him as a councillor to the audit committee (first AfD place) and the finance and holdings committee (third AfD place), not under the label used for non-councillors. The audit committee examines the annual accounts and management report and reports to the council. The Bundestag return still calls him an advisory member of the audit committee and a sachkundiger Bürger of the finance committee and of the committee for the economy, international affairs and digitalisation; the biography dates committee work from 2021. A sachkundiger Bürger is a person of at least 16 who could otherwise sit on the council and is appointed to a committee beside the councillors; the post is voluntary, expert citizens must be outnumbered by councillors on the committee, and a decision requires more councillors than expert citizens to be present. A group without a seat may name a councillor or expert citizen who may speak but not vote. For the city offices the return lists a monthly gross of 760.20 euro plus irregular 2026 payments of 374.78 euro gross, without splitting council and district assembly.

Savings bank and foundation seats

Sparkasse Krefeld is a public-law institution carried by a special-purpose association of Krefeld and the district of Viersen. North Rhine-Westphalian savings banks are municipal undertakings in the form of an Anstalt des öffentlichen Rechts. They supply money and credit on commercial principles, but profit is not the main purpose; the organs are the Verwaltungsrat and the executive Vorstand. The Verwaltungsrat sets policy guidelines, supervises management, appoints the Vorstand and adopts the accounts. Members are not bound by instructions and must compensate the bank for loss caused intentionally or by gross negligence; pay is an attendance fee plus travel costs, not a statutory salary. The non-employee members are elected by the owners, by proportional vote, from people eligible for the member councils who can follow the bank's affairs.

On 11 December 2025 the council chose 20 members and deputies of the Zweckverbandsversammlung. Finger was member 14, with AfD councillor Frank Wübbeling as deputy; the AfD list received nine votes. The Bundestag return dates that seat from 1 November 2025 and the Verwaltungsrat from 1 January 2026, with 1,400.00 euro gross in 2026. The bank's 2026 prospectus lists the Verwaltungsrat from 20 January 2026, chaired by Landrat Bennet Gielen, with Finger as a member and Kay Gottschalk as his deputy.

From 1 November 2025 the same return places him on the Kuratorium of the Sparkassenstiftung Sport und Umwelt Krefeld, with no payment shown. Recognised on 10 December 2012 (file 1630, Düsseldorf district), it is a charitable foundation seated in Krefeld and contacted through the Sparkasse, for nature conservation, environmental protection and sport; the registered board is Jochen Dohmen and Silvia Pfaar.

Office employment controversy

Reporting in February 2026

On 25 February 2026 t-online reported that Hauke Finger, an Alternative for Germany member of the Bundestag from North Rhine-Westphalia who had taken his seat in 2025, was working with a long-term partner in his own parliamentary office. It said an extract from an internal staff database listed her name, that such an entry ordinarily reflects employment, and that the two shared an address; the partner was not named, and Finger did not reply. The article said Die Zeit had already reported her position in the office.

t-online called this the third case, in a wider staffing controversy, to involve a Bundestag member from the North Rhine-Westphalia association. It had reported that deputy group chairman Stefan Keuter employed his girlfriend in his own office, and that Markus Matzerath, also elected in 2025, had the wife of Landtag member Klaus Esser in his office. On 20 February t-online reported that Keuter confirmed the job, did not confirm or deny the relationship, and denied a shared household, saying her name at his Duisburg address was only so he could take in her post. The same article placed the partner of federal executive member Dirk Brandes in the office of Lower Saxony member Stefan Henze. t-online dated the wider series to the AfD leadership in Saxony-Anhalt.

The Finger report followed crisis meetings that party and group leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla held into Monday night. On Tuesday Weidel said "individual cases" had been checked and that the media allegations were "in fact baseless and completely exaggerated" ("haltlos und völlig aufgebauscht"). t-online reported that Keuter was handled differently and had been asked to consider, by the following week, consequences of the coverage. In an overview updated on 16 March 2026, t-online wrote that Finger had told it he had ended the employment, and that Keuter had said inside the group he would dissolve the contract. None of these accounts reports a charge or a judgment against Finger.

The Rheinische Post took the allegation to Krefeld on 26 February. It reported that Die Zeit had a photograph of the partner's name on Finger's private mailbox, repeated the shared address and the database listing, and wrote that Finger indirectly rejected the nepotism charge while the local Social Democratic Party of Germany made serious accusations. On 28 February it quoted district spokesman Frank Wübbeling that the Krefeld AfD executive did not comment on individual personnel decisions of its members of parliament, and noted that a similar case in Lower Saxony had already produced resignation demands from inside the AfD.

Rules on relatives and comparable cases

Staff costs are set by section 12(3) of the Members of the Bundestag Act (Abgeordnetengesetz). In the Bundestag administration's edition of January 2025, a member is reimbursed, against proof, for employees who assist with parliamentary work. Reimbursement is inadmissible in principle ("grundsätzlich unzulässig") for employees who are or were related to the member, married to the member, or related by marriage, and the same rule applies to a Lebenspartner. Other provisions use that word for a registered life partnership, in parallel with a spouse. The rule bars payment from the federal budget rather than private hiring, and "in principle" leaves detail to the budget law and the Council of Elders.

Coverage treated unmarried partners as outside that list. In May 2013 n-tv, citing the Bundestag, wrote that non-marital cohabitation was not covered, after Social Democratic member Gernot Erler employed his partner in his Freiburg constituency office and said the arrangement met the Act and the Bundestag's rules. The same report said CSU member Dorothee Bär had employed her husband until shortly before their wedding and that the administration saw no breach. After the 2026 reports, CDU/CSU parliamentary secretary Hendrik Hoppenstedt said the Union wanted to state that a member may not employ someone with whom they share a household, have a relationship and stand by one another. On 10 March 2026 beck-aktuell reported that this proposal was meant to cover unmarried couples, that close family in one's own office was already forbidden, and that cross-employment was not.

Cross-employment was what Die Zeit asked other parties about in the same days. Die Welt, summarizing that survey on 25 February, reported three cases in the Christian Democratic Union of Germany: Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul's sister-in-law worked at constituency level for another CDU member and had, he said, worked for the party for more than 30 years; Leif Bodin employed the sister-in-law of another Schleswig-Holstein member; and a relative of a district councillor worked for Mark Helfrich. Replies from the SPD, Alliance 90/The Greens and Die Linke contained no such cases; 41 percent of 630 members answered, which Welt said does not show how common the practice is. SPD parliamentary secretary Johannes Fechner told Zeit the group would soon discuss a tighter Act with the Union. Those CDU posts concerned relatives of other politicians, which section 12(3) does not forbid. The Finger and Keuter reports instead concerned a member's own unmarried partner in that member's office: a relationship the January 2025 text does not name, and which the coalition was in March 2026 proposing to spell out.