Iris Nieland

Iris Nieland (born 20 June 1960 in Dortmund) is a German politician of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) who represents Rhineland-Palatinate in the federal parliament. She lives in Altleiningen, in the district of Bad Dürkheim. She was a member of the Landtag of Rhineland-Palatinate from 2016 until 27 March 2025, when she left the state parliament after taking a seat in the Bundestag. The 21st Bundestag, of which she is a member, held its constituent sitting on 25 March 2025.

The biography published by the Bundestag, which states that the biographical details rest on information supplied by the member, records that she attended the Käthe-Kollwitz-Gymnasium in Dortmund from 1971 to 1979 and trained as a savings-bank clerk (Sparkassenkauffrau) at the Stadtsparkasse Dortmund from 1980 to 1982. In 1983 she spent a year in France and the United States for the Dortmund firm Hoesch/Rothe Erde, and in 1985 she passed the examination as a foreign-language correspondent in English and French. From 1984 to 1988 she worked at KSB in Frankenthal as a finance officer responsible for the company's subsidiaries worldwide. The same account lists a family-related break from 1989 to 1994 and commercial employment from 1995 until 2016.

She belonged to the Free Voters group Leiningerland from 1990 to 1996 and has been a member of the AfD since 2013. Since 2014 she has sat on the district council of Bad Dürkheim, where the Bundestag's register of outside interests also lists her as a deputy member of the district committee, the youth-welfare committee, the hospital committee and the medical-care-centre committee, and as a deputy member of the administrative board of Sparkasse Rhein-Haardt. In 2016 she entered the Landtag from twelfth place on the AfD state list after receiving 11.10 percent of the constituency vote in Bad Dürkheim. She returned in 2021 from sixth place on the list. From 2021 until 2025 she was deputy chair of the AfD group in the Landtag and its spokesperson on budget and finance policy.

At the 2025 German federal election on 23 February she stood for the AfD in constituency 209, Pirmasens, and in sixth place on the party's Rhineland-Palatinate list. In that constituency she received 34,424 first votes (25.1 percent), second to Florian Bilic of the Christian Democratic Union, who was elected with 45,682 votes (33.3 percent); the AfD's second-vote share there was 27.1 percent. Across Rhineland-Palatinate the AfD received 498,695 second votes (20.1 percent). The state returning officer lists her among seven AfD members elected from the state, all by the state list, with Nieland in sixth place. In the Bundestag she is a full member of the Finance Committee and the Audit Committee, a deputy member of the Budget Committee and of the Mediation Committee under Article 77 of the Basic Law, and deputy chair of the German-Greek Parliamentary Friendship Group.

Early life and education

Childhood in Dortmund

Iris Nieland was born on 20 June 1960 in Dortmund, in the Ruhr region of North Rhine-Westphalia. The day and month come from her biography on the website of the German Bundestag, which states that members' biographical entries rest on their own disclosures; the regional daily Die Rheinpfalz, in a profile published on 2 March 2016, likewise recorded a 1960 birth in Dortmund. Those accounts do not name her parents or describe a family household. She was still in Dortmund for secondary school at the beginning of the 1970s.

Schooling and vocational training

From 1971 to 1979 she attended the Käthe-Kollwitz-Gymnasium, a municipal Gymnasium in Dortmund named for the artist Käthe Kollwitz. The city of Dortmund maintains the school, whose present address is Erzbergerstraße 1–3 in the Innenstadt-Ost. The neighbouring Goethe-Gymnasium records that the Käthe-Kollwitz-Gymnasium was founded in 1954, when overcrowding caused ten classes to be transferred to the new school. Die Rheinpfalz reported that she passed the Abitur, the general qualification for university entrance, in Dortmund.

The Käthe-Kollwitz-Gymnasium in Dortmund, the municipal secondary school Nieland attended from 1971 to 1979.

After school she served an apprenticeship at the Stadtsparkasse Dortmund, the city's savings bank, from 1980 to 1982, and qualified as a Sparkassenkauffrau (savings-bank clerk). That is the occupation given at the head of her Bundestag biography.

In 1983 she spent a year in France and the United States for Hoesch Rothe Erde of Dortmund, a manufacturer of large-diameter bearings. The successor firm, thyssenkrupp rothe erde, dates the Dortmund works to 1861, records a factory in the United States from 1962, and states that in 1966, after the combination with Hoesch AG, the Dortmund-Hörder Hüttenunion — which held Rothe Erde — entered the Hoesch group. Die Rheinpfalz described her 1983 step as a move into industry, with jobs in Paris and the United States, and placed her from 1984 in the commercial department of the pump-maker KSB in Frankenthal. The Bundestag entry specifies a finance post there from 1984 to 1988, concerned with the company's subsidiaries worldwide, and states that in 1985 she passed the examination as a foreign-language correspondent (Fremdsprachenkorrespondentin) in English and French.

In 1988, the newspaper reported, she married and moved to the property of Klaus Nieland and his three children, between Höningen and Altleiningen. The Grünstadt and Neustadt editions use the same attribution: the three children are described as his, not as hers, and neither profile names any children of her own. Höningen is a district (Ortsteil) south of the main village of Altleiningen, in the Bad Dürkheim district of Rhineland-Palatinate. Her Bundestag biography records a family break from 1989 to 1994 before a return to commercial work.

Professional career

Banking and corporate finance

Official lists do not use one job title for Nieland’s training. The Bundestag biography, which the parliament states rests on the member’s own information, gives her profession as Sparkassenkauffrau and records an apprenticeship at the Stadtsparkasse Dortmund from 1980 to 1982. The roll of the Landtag of Rhineland-Palatinate, printed on 18 May 2021, instead enters “Bankkauffrau, Altleiningen,” pairing that occupation with residence in Altleiningen, and Abgeordnetenwatch records the qualification as Bankkauffrau. A profile in Die Rheinpfalz on 2 March 2016 described the Dortmund training as that of a Sparkassenkauffrau; a report in the same paper on 27 November 2024 called it training as a Bankkauffrau.

The Bundestag entry places a year abroad in 1983, in France and the United States, for Hoesch/Rothe Erde of Dortmund. The March 2016 Rheinpfalz profile specifies jobs in Paris and the United States and describes the year as a move from banking into industry. Rothe Erde, based in Dortmund, makes large-diameter slewing bearings and seamlessly rolled rings. Its company history states that, after a merger with Hoesch AG, the predecessor Dortmund-Hörder-Hüttenunion was brought into the Hoesch group and the bearing business operated as Hoesch Rothe Erde.

From 1984 to 1988 she was a finance officer (Referentin Finanzen) at KSB in Frankenthal, handling the company’s subsidiaries worldwide, according to the Bundestag biography. KSB, founded in 1871 and headquartered in Frankenthal, manufactures pumps and valves. The 2016 local profile dates the start of that commercial work to 1984, after her return from abroad. In 1985, during the KSB employment, she passed the examination as a foreign-language correspondent in English and French. The parliamentary biography lists that qualification beside the finance post rather than as work for a separate employer.

Later commercial employment

In 1988, Die Rheinpfalz reported, she married and moved to the property of Klaus Nieland and his three children, between Höningen and Altleiningen. The Bundestag biography then records a family break from 1989 to 1994, and commercial work from 1995 to 2016. That later entry says only “kaufmännische Tätigkeit,” with no employer, sector or working time.

On 27 November 2024 Die Rheinpfalz wrote that, after her bank training, she had worked in several firms and had most recently spent 16 years in a wine-growing business in Grünstadt. The paper did not name the business, and it did not describe the post as part-time. The reported 16 years do not fill the whole 1995–2016 interval in the parliamentary biography, and neither that biography nor the 2016 profile identifies a winery. The two accounts can be set side by side only in outline: several unnamed employers after the family break, and a final spell in viticulture in Grünstadt, inside a longer period that she herself describes merely as commercial work.

The commercial dates in the published biography end in 2016. Under the Bundestag rules on members’ disclosures, the occupation she reports for the time before taking her Bundestag seat is membership of the Landtag in Mainz, not a further private-sector job.

Local politics and entry into the AfD

Free Voters

Iris Nieland’s earliest recorded political membership was local and non-party, in the Leiningerland around Altleiningen, in the district of Bad Dürkheim in Rhineland-Palatinate. The biography published by the German Bundestag, which the parliament states rests on the member’s own information, lists her as a member of the Freie Wählergruppe Leiningerland from 1990 to 1996. A profile in Die Rheinpfalz on 2 March 2016 reported that she had for years sat on committees of the free-voters group at district level and at the level of the Verbandsgemeinde. The same article, giving the date as her own account, placed the start of her move toward the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in 2012. The Bundestag biography states that she has been a member of the AfD since 2013.

District council of Bad Dürkheim

She has been a member of the Kreistag, the elected council of the district of Bad Dürkheim, since 2014. On 2 June 2014 the district election committee certified the result of that year’s Kreistag election: the AfD entered the council for the first time, with 5.1 percent of the vote and two seats, on a turnout of 57.5 percent. The other seats were allocated to the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) with 18, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) with 13, the Freie Wählergruppe (FWG) with six, Alliance 90/The Greens with four, the Free Democratic Party (FDP) with two and Die Linke with one. Die Rheinpfalz later described Nieland as one of those two AfD councillors and reported that she sat on the council with the AfD’s Wolfgang Kräher.

She was returned in 2019, when the AfD’s share rose to 10.6 percent and five seats. In the comparison published by the Rhineland-Palatinate state returning officer, the rest of the 46-seat council then comprised the CDU with 14 seats, the SPD with 10, the Greens with seven, the FWG with six, the FDP with three and Die Linke with one. Landrat Hans-Ulrich Ihlenfeld obligated the members at the constitutive sitting on 26 June 2019. The AfD names published with that sitting were Wolfgang Kräher of Bad Dürkheim, Peter Stuhlfauth of Haßloch, Thomas Weisbrodt of Haßloch, Gerd Mücke of Grünstadt and Nieland of Altleiningen.

At the municipal elections of 9 June 2024 the AfD vote in the district rose further, to 14.9 percent and seven seats, on a turnout of 68.6 percent. The same official table gives the CDU 31.6 percent and 15 seats, the SPD 18.8 percent and nine, the FWG 13.7 percent and six, the Greens 10.6 percent and five, the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht 5.0 percent and two, and the FDP 4.9 percent and two; Die Linke, at 0.4 percent, won none. Die Rheinpfalz reported on 11 July 2024 that the new council had constituted itself the previous Tuesday, 9 July, the twelfth such sitting in the history of the district, which the paper described as 55 years old. Ihlenfeld, of the CDU, called the sitting a significant point in the district’s life, and the paper reported that the CDU and the SPD, with 15 and nine seats, had again formed a coalition. The district administration’s notice of the sitting, posted on 10 July 2024, states that Ihlenfeld obligated the 46 members and lists the AfD councillors as Franz-Josef Dietzen of Haßloch, Frank Jünger of Dackenheim, Wolfgang Kräher of Bad Dürkheim, Karin Minges of Gönnheim, Iris Nieland of Altleiningen, Thomas Stephan of Haßloch and Peter Stuhlfauth of Haßloch.

In the disclosures required of members of the Bundestag for functions in public-law corporations, Nieland is recorded not only as a member of the Kreistag but as a deputy member of the district’s Kreisausschuss, Jugendhilfeausschuss, Krankenhausausschuss and MVZ-Ausschuss, and as a deputy member of the administrative board of Sparkasse Rhein-Haardt in Bad Dürkheim.

Landtag of Rhineland-Palatinate

Elections of 2016 and 2021

Iris Nieland, a bank clerk living in Altleiningen, entered the Landtag of Rhineland-Palatinate at the state election of 13 March 2016. She was the candidate of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in constituency 41, Bad Dürkheim, with Wolfgang Kräher named as substitute, and she stood in twelfth place on the AfD state list. She received 5,812 constituency votes, 11.1 percent of the valid votes in that district. The direct seat went to Manfred Geis of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) with 18,166 votes (34.8 percent); Markus Wolf of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) was second with 16,619 (31.8 percent). AfD list votes in the constituency were 6,648 (12.7 percent). Turnout was 76.1 percent among 69,757 people eligible to vote.

Across Rhineland-Palatinate the AfD took 268,628 list votes, 12.6 percent, and 14 of the 101 seats in the 17th Landtag. All 14 were list seats; the party won no constituency. Turnout statewide was 70.4 percent. The SPD won 39 seats, the CDU 35, the Free Democratic Party (FDP) seven and Alliance 90/The Greens six. With 14 AfD seats, list place 12 was reached, and Nieland entered as a list member.

At the state election of 14 March 2021 the Bad Dürkheim constituency was numbered 42. Nieland again stood there for the AfD and was sixth on the state list. She received 3,751 constituency votes (7.8 percent). Wolf won the direct mandate for the CDU with 15,396 votes (32.0 percent), ahead of Christoph Spies of the SPD with 14,511 (30.1 percent). AfD list votes in the constituency were 3,811 (7.9 percent). Turnout was 69.7 percent of 70,042 eligible voters. Statewide the AfD fell to 160,293 list votes, 8.3 percent, and nine seats, again without a direct mandate. The final result, certified by the state electoral committee on 26 March 2021, gave the SPD 39 seats, the CDU 31, the Greens 10, the FDP six and the Free Voters six, in a Landtag that remained at 101 members. Turnout was 64.3 percent. Nieland was one of the nine AfD members elected from the list.

Roles, committees and finance policy

In the 17th electoral term Nieland was a full member of the Budget and Finance Committee and of its audit subcommittee, the Rechnungsprüfungskommission. She was a substitute member of the Committee on the Environment, Energy, Food and Forests, the Petitions Committee, and the Committee on Equality and the Advancement of Women. Opening the equality committee of the next term, she described that earlier work as representing her group on the budget, environment and petitions committees.

On 10 June 2021 the Committee on Equality and Women of the 18th Landtag met to constitute itself in the lobby of the Steinhalle of the Landesmuseum in Mainz. Vice-President Matthias Lammert said that, as he understood it, the proposal was to elect Nieland chair. The committee elected her with the vote of the AfD alone: the CDU and the Free Voters abstained, and the SPD, the Greens and the FDP did not take part. Susanne Müller (SPD) was then elected deputy chair unanimously. Nieland, who said she was 61, told the committee that the equality principle of the Basic Law was her standard for its work, and she offered what she called respectful, trust-based and matter-of-fact cooperation. A Landtag roster issued on 16 January 2024 still lists her as chair and as a full member of that committee.

The same roster lists her as a full member of the Budget and Finance Committee and of the audit commission, with Jan Bollinger as her substitute on both, and as a full member of the Committee on the Economy and Transport. She was a substitute on the interim committee (Zwischenausschuss) and on the committees for education; family, youth, integration and consumer protection; climate, energy and mobility; culture; agriculture and viticulture; and the environment and forests. Die Rheinpfalz, reporting an announcement by Bollinger, the AfD group chair, stated that from 2021 to 2025 she was deputy chair of the AfD Landtag group and its spokesperson for budget and finance policy.

Her questions and plenary speeches in the 18th term were concentrated on how the state budget was drawn up and spent. On 5 February 2024 a written question in her name asked the state government in which budget lines the global spending reductions (globale Minderausgaben) set in the 2023/24 double budget had actually been carried out. The question listed planned reductions including 33 million euros in the economy ministry chapter, 6.9 million in the environment ministry, and smaller sums for interior, family, education, state building works and health. On 19 December 2024, during the second reading of the Landeshaushaltsgesetz for 2025 and 2026, she spoke for the AfD on the economy, transport, agriculture and wine portfolio and again on the budget as a whole. She called for lower taxes and charges, for an end to municipal street-improvement contributions, and for municipal finance such that the property tax need not rise further. She criticised a plan to take on new debt while drawing on reserves, and she said the AfD budget proposed 16 million euros a year to compensate farmers and winegrowers for the end of the agricultural-diesel rebate.

Resignation in 2025

Nieland left the Landtag after her election to the Bundestag in February 2025. On 24 February Die Rheinpfalz reported that she would give up the Landtag seat she had held since 2016, and that Bollinger had announced the change. Eugen Ziegler, from the district of Südliche Weinstraße, was named as the member who would follow her. Under the state constitution a Landtag member may resign at any time by a personal declaration to the president of the Landtag, and the resignation is irrevocable; the state electoral law treats that declaration as one of the ways membership ends. Abgeordnetenwatch records that she left on 27 March 2025 after entering the Bundestag, with Ziegler as her successor. Ziegler's profile on the same site dates his own entry to 28 March 2025, as the member who moved up for her.

2025 Bundestag election

Candidacy

The election of the 21st Bundestag on 23 February 2025 was brought forward, before the end of the legislative term. Chancellor Olaf Scholz of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) tabled a confidence motion on 11 December 2024 after the coalition of the SPD, Alliance 90/The Greens and the Free Democratic Party had broken up. On 16 December the Bundestag withheld confidence by 394 votes to 207, with 116 abstentions among 717 members voting; 367 votes would have been required. Scholz then proposed dissolution. On 27 December President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, having found no stable majority for a government of any composition, dissolved the 20th Bundestag under Article 68 of the Basic Law and set the election for 23 February 2025. The article allows dissolution within 21 days of a lost confidence vote and requires the new election within 60 days.

Iris Nieland was the direct candidate of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in constituency 209, Pirmasens, in Rhineland-Palatinate, and was placed sixth on the AfD state list. The constituency comprises the independent cities of Pirmasens and Zweibrücken, the whole Südwestpfalz district, and part of the Kaiserslautern district—the collective municipalities of Bruchmühlbach-Miesau, Landstuhl and Ramstein-Miesenbach. The district’s remaining municipalities belong to constituency 208.

A nominating meeting on 14 December 2024 in the Grenzlandhalle in Schweix chose the constituency candidate. Of 26 members entitled to vote, 20 backed Nieland, who lives in Altleiningen; Sigurd Denger received one vote and Karin Leissing four. Associations in Zweibrücken and Kaiserslautern had been invited because the constituency reaches into their areas; few members from Zweibrücken attended and none from Kaiserslautern. In her address she called for less bureaucracy, safer public places in the evening, a special economic zone for areas such as the Südwestpfalz and Pirmasens, and a change to migration policy, which she described as mishandled.

The state electoral committee admitted the Land lists for Rhineland-Palatinate on 24 January 2025, and the state returning officer published them on 28 January. On the AfD list, Sebastian Münzenmaier, Nicole Höchst, Andreas Bleck, Bernd Hans Schattner and Thomas Stephan held places 1 to 5. Nieland, recorded as a Landtag member, born in 1960 in Dortmund and resident in Altleiningen, was sixth; Jörg Zirwes was seventh.

Result in Pirmasens

In the final result for constituency 209, 139,067 of 169,645 eligible voters cast ballots, a turnout of 82.0 percent, 5.9 percentage points higher than in 2021. Of 137,227 valid first votes, Florian Bilic of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) won the constituency with 45,682 votes (33.3 percent, up 3.2 points) and was elected. Nieland was runner-up with 34,424 votes (25.1 percent), a gain of 12.4 points. The SPD received 28,474 votes (20.7 percent), down 9.7 points.

Second votes in the constituency placed the CDU first, with 41,658 (30.3 percent, up 4.6 points), ahead of the AfD with 37,286 (27.1 percent, up 13.9 points) and the SPD with 23,976 (17.4 percent, down 11.9 points). Across Rhineland-Palatinate the AfD polled 498,695 second votes, 20.1 percent, up 10.9 points on 2021.

The state returning officer’s list of members elected from Rhineland-Palatinate, confirmed with the final federal result on 14 March 2025, names seven AfD deputies, all on the state list and none as constituency winners: list places 1 through 7, including Nieland at place 6 and Zirwes at place 7. The same notice states that, because of the amended electoral law, the candidate with the most first votes in a constituency does not automatically receive a Bundestag seat. Bilic is recorded as the direct member for constituency 209; Nieland entered on the state list rather than with a direct mandate.

The following day Die Rheinpfalz reported that Nieland, speaking in Altleiningen, called the high turnout an “außerordentlicher Erfolg” (“extraordinary success”) and credited conversations with voters.

Work in the Bundestag

Iris Nieland sits in the 21st Bundestag for Alternative for Germany. She was elected on the state list of Rhineland-Palatinate and had also stood in constituency 209, Pirmasens. The constituent sitting was held in Berlin on 25 March 2025, opened by the Alterspräsident Gregor Gysi; the House then elected Julia Klöckner president. The stenographic report places Nieland on the name list of members who took part in that roll-call, and on the lists for the later votes on vice-presidents. Neither that report nor the Bundestag’s account of the sitting records an oath by members. The formal business was adoption of the rules of procedure and election of the Presidium.

Committees

Her Bundestag biography lists her as an ordinary member of the Finance Committee and of the Audit Committee (Rechnungsprüfungsausschuss), a deputy member of the Budget Committee, and a deputy member of the Mediation Committee under Article 77(2) of the Basic Law. In the factions’ joint nomination of 25 June 2025 she is the AfD substitute paired with Sebastian Münzenmaier.

The Finance Committee, with 42 ordinary members, constituted itself on the afternoon of 21 May 2025. Vice-president Andrea Lindholz said the right to propose the chair lay with the AfD, which nominated Kay Gottschalk. He was absent. In a secret ballot he received 11 yes votes and 31 no votes. With no further ballot requested, the chair stayed vacant, and Olav Gutting of the CDU/CSU, the longest-serving Bundestag member on the committee, presided in the interim. Nieland was one of ten AfD ordinary members. Seats were 14 CDU/CSU, ten AfD, eight SPD, six Alliance 90/The Greens and four Die Linke.

On 12 January 2026, at the committee’s 19th sitting, Christian Görke of Die Linke was acting chair of a public hearing on the draft Bankenrichtlinienumsetzungs- und Bürokratieentlastungsgesetz (printed paper 21/3058). The bill transposes Directive (EU) 2024/1619, known as CRD VI, on supervisory powers, sanctions, third-country branches and environmental, social and governance risks, and includes measures to cut bureaucracy for credit institutions. Nieland asked Hilmar Zettler of the Association of German Banks whether the draft was a one-to-one transposition or contained national additions, called gold-plating in the exchange, that could weaken Germany as a financial centre, referring to a submission by the Association of Foreign Banks. Zettler said the association saw gold-plating especially in ESG risk plans, and would have preferred lighter rules on governance, fitness and propriety, and the designation of risk-takers. She put a similar question to Matthias Bergner of the German Savings Banks Association, who cited wider duties under section 25 of the Banking Act, including diversity reporting and staff below board level.

The agenda for the Audit Committee’s seventh sitting, on 30 January 2026, names her as rapporteur for two Federal Ministry of Finance items. One is a Bundesrechnungshof finding, printed as paper 21/3200 no. 3, titled as a €35 million misinvestment in smartphones the audit office called unfit for use. The other is a ministry paper on limiting business influence over the electronic tax balance sheet (E-Bilanz). The agenda assigns rapporteurs for a non-public sitting; it is not a minute of the outcome.

In the AfD Bundestag group she is deputy leader of the finance working group, led by Kay Gottschalk. The group says the working group is where its Finance Committee members prepare positions for committee sittings.

Plenary and legislative work

On 27 June 2025, in the 15th sitting, she spoke for the AfD on a motion by Die Linke (printed paper 21/135) to abolish value-added tax on basic foodstuffs, hygiene products, and bus and rail fares. She said the AfD had proposed VAT cuts in the previous term, including on children’s goods and against inflation, and that those motions had failed, including with Die Linke. She called the 2025 text shaped by what she termed socialist and climate ideology, opposed a proposed public price supervisor, and argued instead for ending carbon pricing, cutting energy tax on fuels and electricity, and cutting VAT on children’s goods at once.

On 5 November 2025, in the 36th sitting, she spoke on a Green motion for a levy on advertising turnover of digital platforms and search engines (printed paper 21/2247) and a Left motion for a digital tax (21/2536). She called such a tax unnecessary bureaucracy and redistribution, treated tax competition between states as legitimate, and said that still left room for a separate debate on minimum taxation.

In the second reading of the 2026 federal budget on 25 November 2025 she spoke on the chapters of the Federal Ministry of Finance and the Bundesrechnungshof. She called the draft an ideological end in itself, criticised payments toward Brussels, climate and transformation spending, and borrowing, and quoted the Bundesrechnungshof as saying that 30 per cent of the federal budget was credit-financed while investment fell. She set out AfD proposals on energy costs, income tax and municipal support, and said an AfD budget would cut spending by €125 billion. Later that day, on the environment chapter, she described much of the spending as a continuation of what she called green ideology, said programmes lacked a systematic test of results, and stated that the AfD had tabled more than 120 amendments to that chapter. Those figures are claims made in debate, not amounts adopted by the House.

On 6 May 2026 she was lead signatory of an AfD minor interpellation (printed paper 21/5772) on gold-plating when European Union law is written into tax legislation, asking about over-implementation, unused national options, how the finance ministry records such cases, and comparisons with other member states.

Interparliamentary posts

The Bundestag biography lists her as deputy chair of the German-Greek Parliamentary Friendship Group. On 16 June 2025 the Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly held its 11th plenary at the National Assembly in Paris, under Yaël Braun-Pivet and Julia Klöckner, with Andreas Jung and Brigitte Klinkert already the bureau’s co-chairs. Klöckner read out the Bundestag groups’ candidates. For the AfD they were Alexander Arpaschi, Malte Kaufmann and Iris Nieland, with Adam Balten, Michael Blos and Christian Zaum as substitutes. Braun-Pivet recorded no objection, and the nominees were declared members of the bureau.

Political positions

Fiscal and tax policy

In the Landtag of Rhineland-Palatinate, Nieland argued for the Alternative for Germany that relief from taxes and charges was “the order of the day.” On 19 February 2025 she said Rhineland-Palatinate had not used the real-estate transfer tax to cut bills, while trade-tax multipliers had risen. She set out an AfD package to simplify the code, raise the basic allowance to €15,000, abolish inheritance tax, introduce family splitting and scrap carbon charges, which she said would add 22 cents a litre to fuel by 2027.

On property tax she said in December 2024 that revenue neutrality under the federal model had been illusory and that the AfD had wanted an area-based assessment since 2019. SPD deputy Nico Steinbach interrupted that she had misunderstood differentiated rates and called an area model unsolidarisch. At second reading on 19 February 2025 she said housing land was being loaded, accepted split rates only as a stopgap, and moved a clause barring a higher rate on homes than on other land. She said abolition, and replacement by small municipal surcharges on income and corporation tax, would have to be debated, as the AfD Bundestag group had proposed.

In the Bundestag she has argued for lower consumption and energy taxes rather than new levies. On 27 June 2025 she opposed a Die Linke motion to remove value-added tax from staple food, hygiene goods and local transport as redistribution, and called instead for a lower rate on children’s goods, no carbon tax and lower energy tax. SPD deputy Michael Thews answered that shops might not pass a VAT cut on. On 5 November 2025 she called a digital-advertising levy unnecessary bureaucracy. On 25 November 2025 she quoted the Bundesrechnungshof that 30 percent of the federal budget was credit-financed while investment fell.

On 8 October 2025 she wrote that Germany was already a high-tax country and that the AfD wanted “more net from gross, instead of the minimum wage,” because a higher statutory minimum is an employer cost that feeds into prices. On 5 May 2026 she said the one-year holding period for Bitcoin should stay so private gains remained tax-free, a position she had co-sponsored in a group motion of 17 October 2025.

Social policy and migration

Die Rheinpfalz reported that, taking the Pirmasens candidacy on 15 December 2024, Nieland linked public places usable “without fear” to a stop to what she called “misguided migration.” Four days later she tied municipal deficits to asylum and youth welfare for unaccompanied minors, and called for an “asylum turn and deportation offensive.”

On 20 February 2025, on violence against women, she said safety had worsened and that rising sexual offences were not explained only by the 2017 law reform. From the state government’s reply she cited a near-50 percent rise in sexual assaults since 2016, a non-German suspect share above 29 percent in 2023, and over-representation of post-2015 immigrants and of people required to leave. Steps under the Istanbul Convention plan were often welcome, she said, but symptomatic if they stressed “patriarchal structures” and passed over immigration from places “in which women are often worth little.” She asked for more police, doubled shelter grants and deportation of serious offenders under a “German guiding culture.”

On 10 July 2026 she wrote, for the AfD Bundestag group, against linking the pension age automatically to life expectancy. She favoured a full pension after 45 contribution years, incentives to work longer by choice, politicians inside the statutory scheme, and stronger private provision. The same day she said the group had rejected the health-insurance contribution-rate law as drafted, preferring less bureaucracy, non-insurance benefits removed from the system, and foreign recipients of Bürgergeld paying their own medical costs. On 8 May 2026 she answered that 27 January was for her a day of quiet remembrance of the victims of National Socialist crimes, that Auschwitz and the Holocaust were an immovable part of German history, and that she rejected any suggestion that she or her party relativised those crimes.

Municipalities and democracy

Her case in Mainz was that municipalities carried tasks the state did not fully fund. In December 2024 she called for an end to street-construction contributions and for local finance good enough that property tax need not rise, with programme money passed through fiscal equalisation without conditions. She opposed drawing more than €1 billion from the state reserve and new borrowing of €314 million in 2026 while credit interest exceeded the return on reserves. On 20 February 2025 she said a CDU easing of liquidity-credit controls would barely speed approval, and pointed to an AfD paper, “Out of the debt swamp,” stressing connexity for daycare and transport and lower asylum-related welfare costs. She preferred unconditional grants to earmarked regional programmes.

On 5 December 2025 she backed a duty to accept euro cash in face-to-face retail and services, arguing that cash leaves no data trail and keeps people without digital means in ordinary trade. CDU deputy Heiko Hain said he knew of no serious plan to abolish cash and noted an earlier AfD text that had pressed for bank accounts. She is a named initiator of the AfD draft of 22 July 2026 to write federal referendums into the Basic Law. Its reasoning, the sponsors’ and the group’s rather than a speech by her, would make the expressed popular will the highest law, subject to the eternity clause, require votes on constitutional changes and on treaties transferring sovereignty, and let one million voters force a referendum. The memorandum calls a state without such instruments an “amputated democracy.”

Party offices and civic life

Party offices

The Rhineland-Palatinate state association of the Alternative for Germany lists Iris Nieland as recording secretary (Schriftführerin) of its executive, the Landesvorstand, and Bailey Wollenweber as deputy recording secretary. The same page names Sebastian Münzenmaier as state chair and Damian Lohr as general secretary, the senior posts filled when a congress in Bingen am Rhein elected a new executive on 27 June 2026; the published account of that congress did not report the vote for recording secretary.

In the Zweibrücken district association she has held a deputy’s seat on the Kreisvorstand. The Pfälzischer Merkur reported that four board members, including chair Moritz Bächle, resigned their party offices on 19 October 2025, and that a members’ meeting on 18 November 2025 elected a new board. Citing the association’s homepage, the paper named Ralf Tiedtke as chair and Sergej Weber and Nieland as the two deputies, and noted that she had been an assessor (Beisitzerin) on the board chosen in June 2025. On her own website she still describes the state post as stellvertretende Schriftführerin and the Zweibrücken office as stellvertretende Kreissprecherin. The Bundestag biography, which the parliament says rests on members’ own statements, also records that she has sat on the district council of Bad Dürkheim since 2014.

Her move from the Landtag of Rhineland-Palatinate to the Bundestag left the AfD group there without a woman. Südwestrundfunk, reporting in June 2025 on the party’s list congress in Idar-Oberstein, wrote that the group then consisted of six men and had included no woman since Nieland’s election to the Bundestag that spring. Die Rheinpfalz returned to the gap when Damian Lohr, the group’s parliamentary business manager, who had taken her place on the Landtag committee for equality and women, sought that committee’s chair, which she had held. After the March 2026 state election, SWR reported that the new AfD group of 24 members included three women, and recalled that the outgoing group had been entirely male once Nieland, its only woman, changed parliaments.

Residence and associations

Nieland lives in Altleiningen, in the district of Bad Dürkheim. In a candidate profile, Die Rheinpfalz wrote that she married in 1988 and moved to a property of Klaus Nieland and his three children situated between Höningen and Altleiningen.

The Hauptstraße in Altleiningen.

The Bundestag biography lists membership of the Landesjagdverband, the Reiterverein Altleiningen, the support association of the Altleiningen volunteer fire brigade, the Krankenpflegeverein Altleiningen bis Höningen, and the Waldbesitzerverband Rheinland-Pfalz. Her website repeats those affiliations and states that she is treasurer of an association she calls “Starke Frauen e.V.” That treasurership is absent from the parliamentary biography and has not been reported independently.

Public record and scrutiny

Intelligence assessments

In February 2021 the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz completed a follow-up assessment of the Alternative für Deutschland, published in full by netzpolitik.org on 3 February 2025. The office used it to raise the party from a “Prüffall” to a “Verdachtsfall,” finding actual indications, of sufficient weight and number, of efforts against the free democratic basic order. The document assesses the party and does not record a personal classification of Iris Nieland. A glossary lists her then as a member of the Landtag of Rhineland-Palatinate, an assessor on the AfD state executive and a member of the Bad Dürkheim district association.

It cites open Facebook posts. On 27 March 2020 she shared a post by Damian Lohr, then also an AfD member of that Landtag, whose text referred to a report on the website of Ein Prozent. A Facebook entry of 16 September 2019 is cited as one example of Landtag members who, by sharing statements from the magazine Sezession, showed what the office called a supportive attitude toward the Institut für Staatspolitik and that publication. The same assessment describes Götz Kubitschek as the institute’s head, its deputy chair and the responsible editor of Sezession. On 16 March 2021 the Hamburger Morgenpost reported that the assessment listed connections to Ein Prozent and to the institute, which it described as also under observation, for Nieland and Lohr among other deputies.

On 26 April 2023 the federal office said it had treated the institute as a suspected case since April 2020 and Ein Prozent since June 2020, and that both were now confirmed right-wing extremist efforts. It attributed to the institute’s leaders an ethnic, descent-based concept of the people and an aim of an ethnically and culturally homogeneous citizenry, with statements against human dignity, and to Ein Prozent völkisch-nationalist, racist and anti-migrant positions. Neither that notice nor the 2021 assessment classifies Nieland herself or records an order for her individual observation.

Such an order would face a higher test than inclusion in a party assessment. On 17 September 2013, in case 2 BvR 2436/10, the Federal Constitutional Court held that monitoring a deputy interferes with the free mandate in Article 38 of the Basic Law—extended to Landtag members through Article 28—and is constitutional only under strict proportionality. That interest outweighs the mandate in particular where there are indications the deputy misuses it against that order or fights the order actively and aggressively; long-term monitoring based only on party membership was held disproportionate.

Disclosure and press coverage

The Bundestag states that the narrative biography is the member’s own information. The disclosures required under the code of conduct, §§ 45 ff. of the Members of the Bundestag Act, list her pre-Bundestag occupation as membership of the Rhineland-Palatinate Landtag in Mainz and, with no euro amount, these functions in public-law bodies: member of the Bad Dürkheim district council; deputy member of its Kreisausschuss, youth-welfare committee, hospital committee and MVZ-Ausschuss; and deputy member of the administrative board of Sparkasse Rhein-Haardt. abgeordnetenwatch.de shows the same functions for the 2025–2029 Bundestag, entered on 26 November 2025, again without an income figure. Members must file within three months of taking their seats, and changes within three months; publication follows a check of whether it is required. The page records no sanction under those rules.

On 24 February 2025 Die Rheinpfalz reported that Nieland, of Altleiningen, had entered the Bundestag, second in the Pirmasens constituency with 25.1 percent of the first votes, behind Florian Bilic of the CDU on 33.3 percent. She called the high turnout an “außerordentlicher Erfolg,” linked to conversations with voters. Citing AfD Landtag chair Jan Bollinger, the paper reported that she would give up the Landtag seat held for eight years; from 2021 to 2025 she had been deputy chair and budget and finance spokesperson, and Eugen Ziegler, from the Südliche Weinstraße, was to succeed her. On 26 February 2025 the Volksfreund reported that she and Ellen Demuth, both sitting Landtag members, were moving from Mainz to Berlin, changing the Landtag’s composition. Neither report records a court judgment or an ethics finding against her.