# Ina Scharrenbach

# Ina Scharrenbach

Ina Scharrenbach (born 30 September 1976 in Unna) is a German politician of the [Christian Democratic Union](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany) (CDU). Since 29 June 2022 she has been Minister for Homeland, Municipal Affairs, Building and Digitalisation of North Rhine-Westphalia. From 30 June 2017 to 29 June 2022 she held the predecessor portfolio of homeland, municipal affairs, building and equality. She represents the state in the Bundesrat, as a deputy member from 30 June 2017 until 30 June 2022 and as a full member from that day, on the committees for digital affairs and state modernisation, internal affairs, and urban development, housing and spatial planning. She serves in the cabinet of Minister-President [Hendrik Wüst](/people/hendrik-wust).

After the Abitur in 1996 she trained as a bank clerk at the municipal savings bank in Kamen from 1996 to 1999 and stayed on as an employee until 2001. From 2001 to 2005 she studied accounting, tax and controlling at the Fachhochschule Dortmund and qualified as a Diplom-Betriebswirtin (FH). From 2005 to 2017 she worked for an auditing firm. She joined the CDU in 1996 and was a member of the Kamen city council from 1999 to 2017. She sat in the Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia from 2012 to 2017 and again from 2022. For the May 2022 state election the CDU placed her second on its state list, directly behind Wüst.

Since 2011 she has been deputy chair of the CDU in the Unna district, and since 2012 deputy state chair of the CDU in North Rhine-Westphalia. In the Frauen-Union she was deputy state chair in North Rhine-Westphalia from 2011 to 2017 and state chair from 2017, and from 2014 chair of the Ruhr district association. Since 2022 she has been a member of the CDU federal presidium.

From 23 to 25 July 2021, days after severe flooding in the state, she flew to Mallorca with [Serap Güler](/people/serap-guler) for a birthday celebration for the husband of then environment minister Ursula Heinen-Esser. She told WDR that she had visited flooded districts from 16 July and had put municipal emergency aid in motion before the trip, and that she was infinitely sorry for the impression the journey created. Heinen-Esser resigned; Wüst said trust in that office had been damaged and that the others involved had expressed regret for the false impression. In March 2026 *[Der Spiegel](/organizations/der-spiegel)* reported staff accounts of an atmosphere of “fear and terror”, conduct harmful to health and “disastrous leadership”, under the quoted line “This woman destroyed me.” Scharrenbach wrote that the reported statements affected her and that she accepted the criticism. The state chancellery confirmed to WDR that it had known of the allegations for longer than previously stated, and the Social Democratic Party demanded an independent special investigator. On 19 June 2026 the Landtag set up a committee of inquiry titled “Possible abuse of power and a lack of duty of care?” with the votes of the SPD and [the Alternative](/organizations/the-alternative) for Germany; speakers for the CDU and Alliance 90/[The Greens](/organizations/the-greens) called the mandate too broad and warned that it could be used in the campaign for the election due in April 2027.

On 17 June 2025 she announced that an incidental medical finding had produced a cancer diagnosis, that she would undergo four months of outpatient chemotherapy and cut back public appointments, and that she would continue to run the ministry and hold her political offices. Wüst and SPD state chair Sarah Philipp publicly wished her a full recovery.

## Early life, education and professional career

### Upbringing and training

Ina Scharrenbach was born on 30 September 1976 in Unna, in North Rhine-Westphalia. Munzinger records that she grew up with a twin brother and that her parents ran a nursery (Gärtnerei). A 2025 biographical sketch in the *Rheinische Post* placed that nursery in Kamen, reported that her great-grandparents had founded it, and said that her twin brother still led it. In an October 2017 interview with the *Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger* she said that her brother still ran the business, that her youth had marked her, and that she had never been drawn “into the wide world” and still lived in Kamen. The same profile described her as a Westphalian from down-to-earth circumstances.

She has written that she went to primary school in Kamen and then to the Städtisches Gymnasium Kamen, the municipal Gymnasium, where she took the Abitur in 1996. The state government’s curriculum vitae and the Bundesrat’s biography both date the Abitur to 1996 without naming the school.

From 1996 to 1999 she completed an apprenticeship as a bank clerk (Bankkauffrau) at the Städtische Sparkasse Kamen, the town’s municipal savings bank, and stayed on as an employee until 2001. Munzinger gives the same sequence: the apprenticeship at that Sparkasse, then work in the trade she had learned, then the start of higher education in 2001. The Bundesrat’s shorter note dates the bank qualification to 1999 and employment at a municipal savings bank to 1999–2001. From 2001 to 2005 she studied at the Fachhochschule Dortmund, taking accounting, tax and controlling, and graduated as a Diplom-Betriebswirtin (FH), the business diploma then awarded by German universities of applied sciences.

### Auditing career

After the diploma she joined the audit firm Ernst & Young. Biographies issued by the state government and the Bundesrat do not name the employer: both list her, from 2005 to 2017, only as an employee of “a large auditing firm” (*eine große Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft*). Munzinger identifies the firm as Ernst & Young and uses the same years, describing the post as that of an *Angestellte* (employee) and giving no specialist audit title.

Public descriptions of the work itself are brief. In November 2016 the *General-Anzeiger* in Bonn wrote that, before her time as a member of the Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia, she had gone through annual financial statements for Ernst & Young. Her own website says she worked at a large auditing firm until 2012, the year she entered the Landtag. The *Rheinische Post* likewise places the move to Ernst & Young in 2005 and the Landtag entry in 2012, without describing audit assignments during the mandate. On 29 June 2017, the day she became a state minister, the *Westfälischer Anzeiger* still identified her professionally as a trained bank clerk who had most recently been an employee of an auditing firm. The official curricula vitae end that employment in 2017, in line with the ministerial appointment, but they do not say whether the years after 2012 were spent on audit work or only in a continuing employment relationship alongside the mandate.

## Municipal politics

### Kamen city council

Ina Scharrenbach was a member of the council of Kamen, in Kreis Unna in North Rhine-Westphalia, from 1999 to 2017, sitting for the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU). At the municipal election of 30 August 2009 she was the CDU candidate in electoral district 11 and second on the reserve list, behind Ralf Eisenhardt; the official return seated her from that list rather than as a constituency winner. The CDU took 4,587 votes (23.1 percent) and 10 of 44 seats, against 24 for the [Social Democratic Party of Germany](/organizations/social-democratic-party-of-germany) (SPD). On 25 May 2014 she headed the CDU reserve list and again stood in district 11, with the nomination giving her occupation as a member of the state parliament. The CDU rose to 4,666 votes (25.2 percent) but stayed at 10 seats in a council reduced to 40, while the SPD held 22, leaving the CDU the largest opposition group.

She chaired the CDU council group from autumn 2011. In February 2013 the group clashed with the administration over the second stage of the noise-action plan for Unnaer Straße in Südkamen. The administration said she had confused the EU Environmental Noise Directive’s traffic-volume thresholds with decibel limits the town had set itself, and rejected her claim that the plan had nothing to do with vehicle counts; it also noted that she had already urged faster action at the July 2011 council meeting. Replying as group chair, she accused SPD mayor Hupe of deflecting from his own errors and distinguished the plan’s scope from a Hochstraße traffic signal the council had not approved. The CDU said a 30 km/h limit and cycle lanes there had cross-party support—the lanes, it said, a CDU demand since 2001—while a 26 September 2012 oral briefing to the transport committee had tested only whether a signal at the B233 junction was feasible, not its wider effects, and members had received no written paper beforehand.

On 12 July 2017 the group elected Eisenhardt as chair and Ralf Langner as deputy chair, and confirmed Susanne Middendorf as business manager. Eisenhardt said the ballot was required because Scharrenbach had been appointed a state minister, and thanked her for work done since autumn 2011; the group’s rules also called for the executive to be reelected at mid-term. The *Ruhr Nachrichten* reported that she left the council with that first cabinet appointment and had led the group for six years.

### CDU in the Unna district

The state government’s biography records Scharrenbach as deputy chair of the CDU district association (Kreisverband) Unna from 2011. On 17 December 2025 more than 100 delegates from the district’s ten municipalities, meeting in the Hansesaal in Lünen, elected her district chair. She succeeded Marco Morten Pufke of Bergkamen, chair since 2013, who did not stand again and remained chair of the CDU group on the district council (Kreistag). Her candidacy speech called for a CDU that would be heard in the district and would put its effort into protecting democracy. Deputy chairs returned that evening were Annika Brauksiepe (Werne), Annette Droege-Middel (Lünen) and Dr. Tilman Rademacher (Bönen); Vera Volkmann (Unna) and Jon Lennart Wulff (Schwerte) were new.

## Party leadership

### CDU North Rhine-Westphalia and the Frauen-Union

Scharrenbach has been a deputy state chair of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in North Rhine-Westphalia since 30 June 2012. At a congress in Krefeld after [Norbert Röttgen](/people/norbert-rottgen) resigned following the lost Landtag election, delegates elected Armin Laschet state chair and five deputies. Scharrenbach, then a member of the Landtag from Unna, received 441 of 614 votes (71.8 percent). Hendrik Wüst, later minister-president, was not elected, on 46.6 percent. Deputies sit on the state executive, which runs the Land association between congresses. She was returned with 72.5 percent in Düsseldorf in April 2014, 89.8 percent on 23 October 2021, when Wüst became state chair, and 85.2 percent (529 votes) in Hürth on 28 October 2023. On 30 August 2025 in Bonn she was elected again, one of six deputies, with more than 90 percent, though she stayed away while being treated for cancer.

In the Frauen-Union, the CDU's women's organisation, the Bundesrat lists her as deputy state chair from 2011 to 2017, state chair since 2017, and chair of the Ruhr district association from 2014. Delegates in Ahaus in March 2017 chose her to succeed Ingrid Fischbach, state chair for six years, and in 2021 she was re-elected with 96.1 percent. By December 2025 Bianca Seeger had succeeded Anette Bunse as Ruhr district chair; Scharrenbach addressed that meeting as state chair and said women's perspectives belonged in politics. The federal association had about 95,000 members, and its chair sits automatically on the CDU federal executive.

On 24 May 2025, at the 36th federal delegates' conference in Reutlingen, she stood for that chair against [Nina Warken](/people/nina-warken), the federal health minister. Warken won the contested ballot with 62.1 percent to Scharrenbach's 37.4 percent. [Annette Widmann-Mauz](/people/annette-widmann-mauz), chair for ten years, did not stand and was made honorary chair.

Scharrenbach had already tied representation to how leaders were chosen. In October 2021, after the Bundestag defeat, she opposed a membership ballot for the federal chair, telling dpa that it usually rewarded whoever "shouts the loudest," while congress delegates had followed candidates for years. With only men from North Rhine-Westphalia then discussed, among them Jens Spahn, [Friedrich Merz](/people/friedrich-merz) and [Carsten Linnemann](/people/carsten-linnemann), she said women had to join that debate: "Fifty percent of the population are women, and so the state can be made only with women." In February 2026, as state Frauen-Union chair, she rejected party talk of ending a right to what critics called "Lifestyle-Teilzeit." For many women, she said, part-time work followed responsibility for children, family or care, and it reduced promotion chances and raised the risk of poverty in old age.

### Federal presidium

The Präsidium is the CDU's narrower executive: it carries out federal-board decisions and handles current and urgent business. Congress elects its core — chair, general secretary and deputy, deputy chairs, treasurer and further members — at least every second calendar year. The chancellor and the CDU/CSU Bundestag group chair sit ex officio if they belong to the CDU; CDU minister-presidents attend only in an advisory role.

Until then an ordinary member of the wider federal board, Scharrenbach entered the Präsidium at the digital 34th federal congress on 22 January 2022, which made Merz party chair, with 68.38 percent in the online count. A postal ballot on 31 January made that result binding: 752 of 896 valid votes, or 83.93 percent. The 36th congress in Berlin re-elected her on 6 May 2024 with 769 votes (81.90 percent). At the 38th congress in Stuttgart on 20 February 2026 she received 750 votes (81.88 percent). From the congress presidium she told about 1,000 delegates that unexplained technical irregularities forced a paper ballot instead of a digital one, and that the party was prepared for it. Warken, by then Frauen-Union federal chair, took a seat on the same body with 751 votes (81.99 percent).

## Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia

### First term, 2012–2017

Scharrenbach entered the Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia, the parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia, at the election of 13 May 2012. In constituency 117, Unna III – Hamm II, the Christian Democratic Union of Germany candidate received 11,574 first votes (20.2 percent). Rüdiger Weiß of the Social Democratic Party of Germany won the seat with 32,875 (57.3 percent). She was returned from place 15 on the CDU state list.

In the 16th period she sat in opposition to the SPD–Green government under Hannelore Kraft. In 2015 the Landtag’s magazine reported that she was deputy chair of the committee for women, equality and emancipation, a member of the committees for family, children and youth and for budget and finance, and CDU spokesperson on the parliamentary inquiry into WestLB.

On 14 May 2017 she again lost Unna III – Hamm II to Weiß, with 16,026 first votes (26.6 percent) to his 29,399 (48.7 percent). Eighth on the CDU list, she was not initially elected and could not vote when Armin Laschet became minister-president on 27 June. The next day two women colleagues were made civil-servant state secretaries and had to resign their seats. The mandate that would have passed to her she waived for a party colleague from East Westphalia. The returning officer named Kirstin Korte of Minden as Andrea Milz’s successor from 30 June 2017. Scharrenbach took ministerial office then without a seat. Ministers may sit in the Landtag; Article 52 of the state constitution requires membership only of the minister-president, a rule she later said she had not considered. She was outside the Landtag until 2022 because she was not elected and waived the seat that opened, not because the ministerial office itself was incompatible with a mandate.

### Cologne New Year’s Eve inquiry

In January 2016 the Landtag set up a committee of inquiry into the sexual assaults and thefts in Cologne on New Year’s Eve 2015/16, the 2015 Cologne New Year’s Eve sexual assaults. Scharrenbach was Obfrau of the CDU, the largest opposition group. By November 2016 the committee had sat more than 50 times and heard nearly 160 witnesses; she questioned interior minister Ralf Jäger for seven hours. Government members called the exercise a political tribunal. She said that pressing the government was her role.

The majority report of 31 March 2017, after 61 sittings and nearly 180 witnesses, ran to almost 1,400 pages. It found that failures of leadership, cooperation and communication had made the assaults easier, and it listed errors above all by the Cologne police and city administration, and also in coordination with the state and federal police. Hundreds of women had been harassed by men described as apparently mainly of North African origin. Prosecutors in Cologne received 1,222 criminal complaints, 513 of them for sexual offences; few offenders were convicted. Police had first said the night was calm. A study by criminal psychologist Rudolf Egg found that signs of an unprecedented pattern of offending were already available early that evening.

The CDU and the Free Democratic Party (Germany) withheld agreement. Their minority opinion accused the SPD and Alliance 90/The Greens of cutting and smoothing passages to keep Jäger and the interior ministry out of the line of fire. Scharrenbach said criticism of the ministry and the SPD minister was to “disappear from the report,” and spoke of “täuschen, tricksen, verheimlichen” — deceiving, tricking and concealing. FDP Obmann Marc Lürbke said the governing parties were “not prepared to name errors openly and honestly.”

### Mandate since 2022

At the [2022 North Rhine-Westphalia state election](/facts/2022-north-rhine-westphalia-state-election) on 15 May she stood in constituency 116, Unna II, and received 17,281 first votes (32.4 percent). Rainer Schmeltzer (SPD) won with 19,901 (37.3 percent). On the CDU state list she stood immediately after lead candidate Hendrik Wüst. The list did not reach her, so she was not initially a member.

On 30 June 2022 she succeeded Daniel Sieveke, who resigned to become a state secretary in the ministry she leads. Landtag president André Kuper swore her in the same day. Her profile records her as a CDU member from that date, returned in Sieveke’s place, with no committee assignment listed; Unna II stayed with Schmeltzer. She has held the mandate while remaining minister. A committee of inquiry opened in 2026 into her ministry is a separate body from the Cologne inquiry.

## Minister for homeland, municipalities, building and equality (2017–2022)

### Appointment and portfolio

When the Christian Democratic Union of Germany and the Free Democratic Party formed a government in North Rhine-Westphalia in June 2017, Scharrenbach entered the cabinet of Minister-President Armin Laschet as minister for homeland, municipalities, building and equality. On 13 July 2017 Laschet, under the state constitution and the organisation act, gave that title to the former Ministry for Health, Emancipation, Care and Age. Equality stayed, and the house took over building supervision, urban development and planning law, monuments, housing promotion, state building not placed elsewhere, municipal law and finance including the fiscal-equalisation scheme shared with the finance ministry, and rural settlement and village renewal.

She kept the portfolio in the First Wüst cabinet. The Landtag swore in the ministers of Hendrik Wüst on 3 November 2021; apart from the transport post he had left, the CDU–FDP line-up did not change. Equality left the ministry when the black-green cabinet was presented on 29 June 2022 and Josefine Paul of Alliance 90/The Greens took the ministry for children, youth, family, equality, integration and flight.

The interior ministry later put the death toll from the floods of 14–15 July 2021 at 49. On 22 July the cabinet approved €200 million in immediate aid; Laschet said the federal government had promised to double the Länder packages, and Scharrenbach said €65 million was for municipalities. Her circular that day paid the municipal share as a discretionary grant under section 53 of the state budget code, for first repairs and for clearance and cleaning. The guideline “Wiederaufbau Nordrhein-Westfalen” of 10 September 2021, published on 13 September, then offered grants for public and private infrastructure, usually up to 80 percent of eligible costs and up to 100 percent in hardship, with municipal plans sent to a staff in her ministry.

Subsidised-housing approvals in 2019 covered 8,513 dwellings with €937.8 million, against 8,662 dwellings and €923.4 million in 2018; rented flats and hostels fell 11.3 percent, which Scharrenbach linked to scarce land and higher building costs.

### Equality and homeland policy

“Heimat” was the frame Laschet put on municipal and building policy. Presenting the cabinet, he said it was understood differently in the Sauerland than in Duisburg, and that urban-development funds and municipal finance should join those needs. Christian Dahm, deputy leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany group, said the minister still had to define the term, and Green floor leader Monika Düker said she could not yet see a programme. On 17 March 2018 Scharrenbach held a Heimatkongress in Münster to thank volunteers. She told the epd news agency that homeland could not be decreed and had to grow from below, and that the government used the theme to support civic community.

On 8 March 2021 she presented the state’s first equality atlas. Women held about a quarter of the two highest tiers of the Land service in 2017, 20 percent of police leadership posts, and 60 of 427 full-time mayors and district administrators; most figures stopped in 2017. She said state-administration leadership should be filled equally by 2025. In 2018 Roland Staude of the civil-service federation said women entered in numbers but stalled higher up, rejecting her suggestion that a review of assessment rules might find no obvious disadvantage. An earlier SPD–Green promotion change had been halted after men won interim rulings; the coalition agreement promised a legally secure replacement.

### Building supervision and the Hambach Forest

The Hambach Forest, designated for extraction in the Hambach lignite plan, had been occupied since 2012 by opponents of opencast lignite mining, with barricades, huts and tree platforms, some above 20 metres. On 2 July 2018 the mine operator, RWE, asked Kerpen to clear the occupation so authorised mining could continue; the city refused on 1 August. Decrees of 4 and 12 September told the higher building-supervision authorities to order Kerpen and the other lower authorities to clear and remove the tree houses by immediate enforcement from 07:00 on 13 September, for lack of permits and breaches of the rules on rescue routes and falls. Kerpen said it would comply without agreeing, and warned that building law was being used to clear the forest for logging.

*NRW police face activists' tree houses during the Hambach Forest clearance, September 2018.*

On 13 September the administrative court in Cologne refused interim relief against an oral ban on one tree house (23 L 2060/18), finding the order justified to protect the occupant and against forest fire, including the 30-minute deadline. The next day the higher administrative court in Münster refused a stay (7 B 1354/18): it left the final legality open, but held that enforcement prevailed and that the occupation was not a peaceful assembly under Article 8 of the Basic Law, given reported violence against police and RWE staff.

On 8 September 2021 Cologne set the immediate clearance on Kerpen’s land aside as unlawful (23 K 7046/18). The ministry had not examined individual structures against the safety rules it cited, and an email of 6 September — suggesting a short delay because logging was not to start before mid-October — showed that the urgency was not the fire risk. On 16 June 2023 Münster reversed that result for the plaintiff’s own tree house only (7 A 2635/21): it had no permit, broke fire-protection and traffic-safety rules, and removal was proportionate to protect life and limb. Appeal on points of law was refused.

## Minister since 2022

On 29 June 2022 the Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia swore in the second cabinet of Minister-President Hendrik Wüst, a Christian Democratic Union–Alliance 90/The Greens coalition after the state election of 15 May 2022. Ina Scharrenbach stayed on as Minister for Heimat, Kommunales, Bau und Digitalisierung: equality left the title, and digitalisation moved from the economics ministry.

### Digitalisation of the state administration

In March 2025 the ministry told the Landtag's building and digitalisation committee that a shorter digital strategy was still being finished with other departments. In May, deputies of the Free Democratic Party asked why that text, and related data, IT and skills strategies, had not appeared. The chief information officer's post was vacant for a long period and from mid-2024 was held part-time by state secretary Daniel Sieveke. The audit office's 2025 report said the CIO still could not decide across ministries and recommended a digital minister at the state chancellery. Scharrenbach had rejected that; on 27 March 2026, FDP spokesperson Angela Freimuth said, she accepted concentration in one set of hands, while telling the committee that in 2022 the ministry had first had to understand the brief and that other departments slowed it.

The Institut der deutschen Wirtschaft's Behörden-Digimeter, which counts how many services are available online, ranked North Rhine-Westphalia first among the Länder. WDR specialist Jörg Schieb said that did not measure efficiency: there was no state AI strategy, and after about eighteen months NRW.Genius reached 10,000 of more than half a million public employees. About €287 million for 2026, including "digital state" money, went back to the finance ministry, which said earlier lines had been underspent; the Taxpayers' Association called that a bad sign. IT.NRW president Oliver Heidinger wrote in March 2026 that around €200 million had been returned at the turn of 2025/26, €80–100 million of it for digital projects, citing unpaid bills and a lack of strategic decisions.

### Housing, urban development and heritage

Dwellings finished in new residential buildings fell from 42,278 in 2023 to 34,467 in 2024 and 31,237 in 2025; with conversions, 37,185 dwellings were completed in 2025, 9.4 percent fewer than in 2024 and the lowest total since 2011. Subsidised approvals did not replace homes leaving rent control. For 2025 the ministry reported 13,356 approved dwellings and about €2.37 billion, of which the German Tenants' Association counted 8,037 as new subsidised rental homes and the rest as modernisation, occupancy-right deals or ownership grants. Citing NRW.BANK, it put price-controlled rental homes at a little over 414,000 at the end of 2024, about a third of the 1990 level, with about 110,000 bindings ending by 2030. Chair Hans-Jochem Witzke said 8,037 new social homes could not offset that and called for a state housing company, noting only €172 million of state money planned for 2026 against about three times as much from the federation.

From 1 March 2025 the rent brake covered 57 municipalities rather than 18: new rents at most 10 percent above the local reference, rises capped at 15 percent in three years, and own-use eviction after sale barred for eight years. Scharrenbach said federal law should go further against rent gouging. Municipal associations and the Tenants' Association called the study outdated, and SPD deputy Sarah Philipp called the list a "prevention strategy" omitting about 85 percent of municipalities, including Bochum and Essen. The ministry said the May 2024 study already used the 2022 census and was not refreshed while it waited for a federal legal base. In 2024 she called the federal heating law a mistake "in two respects"—too detailed, and aimed at single buildings—and preferred a carbon price with municipal heat planning.

On 17 March 2026 she presented a "fair housing" bill to replace the 2021 act, cutting permission-free short lets from 90 days to 56 nights, allowing trusteeship and last-resort expropriation of neglected buildings, and setting fines up to €500,000. She cited the Europahaus in Oberhausen and expected 20 to 25 municipalities, including Gelsenkirchen, to use the powers; the SPD called the bill "clearly too late".

On 6 April 2022 the Landtag passed a new monument law against protest from conservation bodies. Municipalities became the main decision-makers over about 87,000 monuments, roughly 80 percent of them private, and regional specialist offices were in general only heard. Scharrenbach said that after 42 years towns could take more responsibility; Green deputy Johannes Remmel called the timetable a law "broken over the knee".

In 2025 further changes were tied to an amendment of the state building code. Lawyer Wilhelm Achelpöhler, for the Green groups in the two Landschaftsverbände, found them unconstitutional under Article 18(2) of the state constitution: defence and disaster sites would leave monument law, third parties could no longer seek listing of state and federal property, and the ministry could take cases against a municipality. He called reliance on a federal defence guideline legally insufficient; the Greens added that the 2022 law had not been evaluated.

### Municipal affairs

The draft Municipal Finance Act for 2025, adopted on 31 August 2024, projected about €15.68 billion for municipalities, counties and regional associations, about €358 million or 2.34 percent more than in 2024, with their share of state tax revenue left at 23 percent. Scharrenbach said 2023 brought the first municipal financing deficit since 2017, with social spending up €2.1 billion, and that Berlin should pay costs of the citizen's benefit. In September 2026 the state said it had taken over almost €9 billion of excessive liquidity loans—half the stock at the end of 2023—for 167 municipalities, a scale she called unprecedented, and that the tax share would rise to 23.5 percent from 2027, the first increase since the mid-1970s. Urban-development grants announced on 24 April 2025 covered 133 projects and about €302 million, roughly €152.4 million from the state and €149.5 million from the federation, including a special area in Gelsenkirchen for surplus housing and problem properties.

## Bundesrat and other public offices

### Bundesrat

Ina Scharrenbach has represented North Rhine-Westphalia in the German Bundesrat since 30 June 2017, as a deputy member until 30 June 2022 and as a full member since that day, and sits on the committees for digital affairs and state modernisation, internal affairs, and urban development, housing and spatial planning.

Article 51 of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany provides that the Bundesrat consists of members of the Land governments. Those governments appoint and recall the members, who may be represented by other members of the same government. Each Land sends only as many full members as it has votes—six for North Rhine-Westphalia, out of 69—and the remaining ministers are ordinarily appointed as deputies. Votes may be cast only uniformly, by members present or their substitutes, and in practice one member casts a Land's votes as a single bloc. For the rules of procedure, deputies are members of the Bundesrat and of its committees, and the chamber's handbook treats them as equal to full members: the minister for the subject attends whether or not that minister is a full member, and membership ends on leaving the Land government.

### NRW.BANK and foundations

Her transparency declaration of 29 April 2025 lists offices at NRW.BANK, the Land's public-law development bank, based in Düsseldorf and Münster, which supports the Land and its municipalities in structural, economic, social and housing policy. She is deputy chair of the administrative board (Verwaltungsrat), which supervises the executive board, and of the guarantors' meeting (Gewährträgerversammlung), which exercises the guarantor's rights. She chairs the promotional committee and the advisory board on housing promotion, is deputy chair of the presidential and nominations committee and of the remuneration-control committee, and sits on the building committee.

She chairs the board of trustees of Baukultur Nordrhein-Westfalen e.V., an association supported by her ministry that promotes architecture and planning, and sits on the state executive of the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge in North Rhine-Westphalia, which cares for war graves. She is second vice-president of the German National Committee for Monument Protection, a federal forum for monument conservation, and a member of the Dombaukommission of Cologne Cathedral, which reviews the cathedral's restoration and building budget. She is deputy chair of the council of the North Rhine-Westphalia Foundation for Nature Conservation, Homeland and Cultural Care, founded by the Land in 1986 to fund nature, homeland and cultural projects; chairs the Foundation for the Preservation of Industrial Monuments and Historical Culture, founded in 1995 by the Land and RAG to preserve threatened industrial sites, and Stiftung Zollverein, founded in 1998 by the City of Essen and the Land to maintain the UNESCO-listed Zollverein Coal Mine Industrial Complex; and sits on the board of trustees of the House of the History of North Rhine-Westphalia, founded in 2019 to present the state's recent history.

## Controversies

### Mallorca trip after the 2021 floods

Flooding that began in North Rhine-Westphalia on the night of 14–15 July 2021 killed 49 people in the state. A little more than a week later, on 23 July, Ina Scharrenbach, the Christian Democratic Union minister responsible for municipalities and reconstruction, flew to Mallorca until 25 July. By her account she travelled with Serap Güler, then state secretary for integration, for a private birthday for the husband of environment minister Ursula Heinen-Esser; European affairs minister Stephan Holthoff-Pförtner was also there. A spokesman said she had visited affected areas from 16 July, that immediate municipal aid was already under way, and that she stayed reachable and on duty over the weekend.

The celebration became public on 7 April 2022, the day Heinen-Esser resigned. The next day in Düsseldorf she said: "Ich bin seit 2017 exakt einmal privat ins Ausland geflogen - zweieinhalb Tage, aber es waren schlicht und ergreifend die falschen. Ich ärgere mich unendlich über den Eindruck, den ich durch diese zwei Tage erweckt habe." She added, "Es tut mir sehr, sehr leid und ich entschuldige mich dafür." Hendrik Wüst, speaking in Cologne, said he had learned of the celebration only in the preceding days and rejected calls for further resignations, including hers. Thomas Kutschaty, leader of the Social Democratic Party opposition, said a municipal minister responsible for destroyed towns should not have left the state for a birthday, and that in Wüst's place he would no longer trust her. She did not resign. As the flood inquiry's last witness, on 14 February 2025, she said: "Im Nachhinein, das habe ich auch mehrfach erklärt, würde ich das heute nicht mehr machen." A former aide told the committee she had kept working by email that weekend.

### Heino gift

At the first NRW Heimatkongress in Münster on 17 March 2018, the Schlager singer Heino, one of 47 state "Heimatbotschafter", presented Scharrenbach with the 1981 double album *Die schönsten deutschen Heimat- und Vaterlandslieder*. *Der Spiegel* reported that several of the 24 tracks had been in the SS songbook, including "Der Gott, der Eisen wachsen ließ" and "Wenn alle untreu werden" (1814), which the SS had treated as its "Treuelied"; the *Westdeutsche Zeitung* had noted the overlap first. The SPD group asked why Heino, long criticised for an uncritical attitude to *völkisch* songs, had been invited and featured rather than other ambassadors. The ministry said all 47 ambassadors were invited and that only Heino came among the best-known; the gifts, two records and four CDs, were not checked for "political correctness" at the handover. Scharrenbach strictly rejected any link with National Socialist ideology. Heino told *Bild*: "Die Lieder können doch nichts dafür, wenn sie instrumentalisiert worden sind." His wife, Hannelore, called the discussion unjust.

### Leadership allegations and the 2026 inquiry

On 19 March 2026 *Der Spiegel* reported allegations from current and former staff, under a headline quoting one senior official: "Diese Frau hat mich zerstört." The magazine described an atmosphere of "Angst und Schrecken", conduct it called damaging to health, and "desaströses Führungsverhalten". As later set out in the inquiry, *Spiegel* also reported that Oliver Heidinger, president of the state IT authority IT.NRW, had written to state-chancellery chief [Nathanael Liminski](/people/nathanael-liminski) accusing her of wanting to be rid of him and of humiliating and shouting at him in meetings. People familiar with the events told WDR that complaints had been raised. The accounts were allegations, not findings of a court or of the inquiry.

The same day Scharrenbach wrote that the remarks affected her, that she accepted the criticism, and that neither high standards nor pressure should leave staff feeling unvalued or ill at ease. She regretted that employees had felt hurt and acknowledged not having done justice to every colleague "durch meine persönliche Arbeitsweise". She rejected the label of mobbing, and announced an anonymous complaint channel, a staff assembly and a retreat with senior managers. She had made a cancer diagnosis public in June 2025, before these allegations. A chancellery spokesman told WDR that Liminski had already discussed the case in person and by telephone, although personnel management normally rests with each ministry. SPD general secretary Frederick Cordes said the statement did not answer claims of systematic pressure; the party demanded a special investigator, which the state government refused.

On 19 June 2026 the Landtag established a parliamentary inquiry, "Möglicher Machtmissbrauch und mangelnde Fürsorge?", with the votes of the SPD and the Alternative for Germany; the CDU, the Greens and the FDP abstained. The remit runs from 30 June 2017, when Scharrenbach took office, and covers her ministry, the interior ministry under Herbert Reul, and what Wüst and the state chancellery knew and did about the duty of care toward staff. The committee was constituted on 9 July 2026, with Klaus Voussem of the CDU as chair, and began public evidence after the summer recess, ahead of the state election due at the end of April 2027.

Staff surveys on psychological strain in 2021 and 2025, which WDR reported having seen, recorded constant time pressure for half of 2025 respondents, 72 percent saying there was no sustained review of workloads, and a rise from 43 to 57 percent in managers who said they lacked support in difficult situations. The ministry said the 2025 figures were not peculiar to the house, had been discussed at a managers' retreat, and had not yet been fully passed to staff. On 5 October state secretary Daniel Sieveke said he knew of no mobbing allegations and had not witnessed shouting, while calling work with Heidinger very difficult. A witness from the Bochum institute that ran a risk survey said nothing had been particularly conspicuous, noted a 52 percent response rate, and said questions concerned direct superiors rather than the minister. On 12 October the British barrister Adam Tolley, who had investigated bullying allegations against [Dominic Raab](/people/dominic-raab), warned that anonymous accusations contained an "Element von Unfairness", because the person accused had little means of defence. The inquiry was still sitting that autumn. Scharrenbach remained in office.

## Personal life

### Private life

The government of North Rhine-Westphalia records Scharrenbach as unmarried and without children. In an interview with the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger published on 7 October 2017 she said she had never been drawn “into the wide world” and still lived in Kamen. In December 2025 the *Ruhr Nachrichten* still described her as a state minister from Kamen.

### Illness in 2025

On 17 June 2025 Scharrenbach, the Christian Democratic Union state minister, wrote on Facebook that an incidental finding had produced a cancer diagnosis. She said she would undergo four months of outpatient chemotherapy, reduce public appointments, and continue to run the ministry and her political offices.

She gave a fuller account to *Bunte*, carried on 26 November 2025 by the Deutsche Presse-Agentur in the Süddeutsche Zeitung and by the Rheinische Post. She said that on 5 June a cough that would not go away was first called mild pneumonia; bilateral pulmonary embolisms were then found, and a week of examinations at the University Hospital in Cologne ended in a cancer diagnosis, whose type she did not name. The *Rheinische Post* account also recorded a thrombosis together with the embolisms. She said her first question to the doctors was whether she could keep working, and that they answered they did not know when or whether she would.

In an interview with Westdeutscher Rundfunk published on 10 July 2025 she said she had received a second chemotherapy the week before and felt better and worse by turns. She had cancelled many appointments since 6 June, some taken by her state secretary, and had spoken publicly to stop speculation about her absence. On 2 September she told the Deutsche Presse-Agentur that, after about three months without external appointments, early results allowed her to resume them only in reduced number, while further treatment still required restraint; she said she continued to lead the ministry in full. On 26 November she said the chemotherapy had not worked as hoped, that she was on a tablet therapy and was not yet cured, and that she had never considered leaving politics but was now declining more invitations.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/ina-scharrenbach