# Isabelle Vandre

# Isabelle Vandre

Isabelle Vandre (born 27 July 1989 in Eberswalde-Finow) is a German politician of [Die Linke](/organizations/die-linke) and a political scientist. She was a member of the Landtag of Brandenburg from 2014 to 2024 and has sat in the Bundestag since the 21st Bundestag was constituted on 25 March 2025. She holds a seat from the Brandenburg state list, where she was placed second, after standing in constituency 61 (Potsdam – Potsdam-Mittelmark II – Teltow-Fläming II).

She attended primary school in Eberswalde from 1996 to 2002 and passed the Abitur in 2009 at the Luise-Henriette-Gymnasium in Oranienburg. From 2009 to 2019 she studied political science at the Free University of Berlin and completed a Bachelor of Arts. The same biography, which the Bundestag publishes from members' own statements, records anti-fascist activity in Oranienburg in 2008–2009, student politics at the university from 2009 to 2013, work in Linksjugend ['solid] Brandenburg from 2010 to 2024, and membership of Die Linke in Brandenburg since 2011, including service as deputy state chair.

In the Landtag she listed higher education, culture and housing as her subjects. When the chamber passed a reform of the state police law on 13 March 2019, she and fellow Left deputy Volkmar Schöneburg said in a joint statement that the remaining powers were still neither necessary nor suited to balancing civil liberty and special police authority, and press reports recorded her as the only member of the Left group to vote against the bill. At the state election of 22 September 2024 Die Linke received 44,706 second votes (2.98 percent) and no direct mandate, and it left the Landtag. She had been a city councillor in Potsdam since 2019 and chair of the Left group there from June 2024; the Bundestag's register of members' interests lists both roles as ending on 16 June 2025.

In the federal election of 23 February 2025 she received 27,522 first votes in constituency 61, 13.8 percent of 199,111 valid ballots. [Olaf Scholz](/people/mig-olaf-scholz) of the Social Democratic Party held the constituency with 43,332 votes. Across Brandenburg, Die Linke took 176,224 second votes (10.7 percent). In the 21st Bundestag she is a full member of the Finance Committee and of the body under § 28a of the Money Laundering Act, and a deputy member of the Budget Committee and the Committee on Housing, Urban Development, Building and Local Government. The money-laundering body, which the Bundestag set up on 9 October 2025 to receive periodic, confidential briefings on the Financial Intelligence Unit, lists her as a member.

## Early life and education

### Childhood and schooling

Isabelle Vandre was born on 27 July 1989 in Eberswalde-Finow. That double name was the official style, after the 1970 merger of Eberswalde and Finow, of the town in Brandenburg, Germany. In 1993 the district of Barnim was formed and Eberswalde became its district town; Sommerfelde and Tornow were incorporated, and the Finow element of the municipal name was dropped. From 1996 to 2002 she attended Grundschule Finow in Eberswalde, which the city lists at Schulstraße 1. In 2009 she passed the Abitur at the Gymnasium in Oranienburg that her Bundestag biography calls the Luise-Henriette-Gymnasium and that the Brandenburg school directory lists as the Louise-Henriette-Gymnasium.

The directory places the school in the district of Oberhavel, whose administrative seat is Oranienburg. An archived vita of the Die Linke group in the Landtag of Brandenburg uses the same Luise spelling as the Bundestag text. Neither account states when she entered the Gymnasium, and neither names a school for the years between leaving Grundschule Finow in 2002 and the Abitur in 2009.

### Studies in Berlin

From 2009 to 2019 Vandre studied political science at the Free University of Berlin. The Bundestag biography, which states that its biographical details are based on information supplied by the member, records the degree as a Bachelor of Arts and her profession as political scientist (Politikwissenschaftlerin). At the university the bachelor's program in political science is offered by the Otto-Suhr-Institut für Politikwissenschaft, part of the Department of Political and Social Sciences.

The Bundestag dates her activity in university politics to the years 2009 to 2013. The Landtag group's archived vita, which her own site summarizes for 2009–2013 without splitting the offices by year, lists her as a member of the university's student electoral board (Studentischer Wahlvorstand) from 2009 to 2010, active in the student association dielinke.SDS from 2010 to 2011, a member of the student parliament (Studierendenparlament) from 2011 to 2012, and a student member of the departmental council (Fachbereichsrat) for political and social sciences from 2011 to 2013.

A faculty election notice gives a narrower account of the council. In the provisional result of the election of 11 and 12 January 2011 to the departmental council of Political and Social Sciences, she stood, under the spelling Isabelle Vandré, on the list "SDS.OSI für eine solidarische Uni!" and received 10 votes. The list, with 69 votes in all, was allocated one of the three student seats; that seat went to Sarah Walz, and Vandré was named as Walz's substitute (Nachrückerin). The notice does not record her as one of the students elected to the council.

## Political beginnings

### Youth organization

In the booklet for Die Linke's 2014 state list in Brandenburg, Isabelle Vandre wrote that she joined Linksjugend ['solid] Brandenburg in April 2010, after becoming active when the neo-Nazi scene in Oranienburg strengthened around 8 May 2008. She wrote that antifascist work alone had not seemed enough, and that she joined the party on 1 January 2011 because she saw the youth association and Die Linke as a way for movements outside parliament to be heard inside it. Her Bundestag biography, which the parliament says rests on the member's own information, records political-science studies at the Free University of Berlin from 2009 to 2019.

The federal statute of Linksjugend ['solid], in the text current on 28 September 2024, calls the association the youth organization of Die Linke and a registered association legally independent of a party. The same statute describes it as socialist, antifascist, grassroots-democratic and feminist, and sets active membership from the 14th birthday until the 35th. Linksjugend ['solid] Brandenburg e.V., seated in Potsdam, states in its statute—adopted in 2007 and last amended on 19 September 2020—that it is the federal body's state branch and the youth association of Die Linke Brandenburg.

Its highest body, the state members' assembly, elects a Landessprecher:innenrat for one year to run the association between meetings and to represent the assembly's decisions in public. As amended through 2020, the statute seats on that council two spokespersons and up to nine further members, chosen on a gender quota, plus a treasurer; the two spokespersons and the treasurer form the legal board. Vandre's 2014 profile listed her on that council from 2011, as a youth-association delegate to Die Linke's state and federal congresses from 2012, and as the association's youth candidate for the 2014 state list, while also standing in constituency 10 (Uckermark III/Oberhavel IV) and living in Potsdam. The Bundestag biography places her in Linksjugend ['solid] Brandenburg from 2010 to 2024, including the council, and says she was a youth candidate twice. She was born on 27 July 1989, so that closing year is the year she reached the federal age limit of 35. A state-party statement of 7 May 2019, issued with lead candidate Sebastian Walter before that year's Landtag election, again called her the candidate of the youth association solid.

### Offices in Die Linke Brandenburg

The state party's biography dates two further offices: the executive of the district association in the Uckermark from 2014 to 2019, and the state executive as deputy chair (*stellvertretende Landesvorsitzende*) from 2018 to 2020. The self-reported Bundestag text says she has been a member of Die Linke in Brandenburg since 2011 and names the deputy chair among her party roles, without the years.

On Saturday, 17 March 2018, *nd* reported, 128 delegates at the Kongresshotel in Potsdam elected Social Affairs Minister Diana Golze (78.5 percent) and state business manager Anja Mayer (82.3 percent) to succeed chair [Christian Görke](/people/christian-gorke). The deputies, the paper reported, were Bundestag member Kirsten Tackmann, re-elected in her absence with 90.2 percent; Landtag member Isabelle Vandre, spelled Vandré there, with 75.6 percent; and Mario Dannenberg with 70.7 percent. *Tagesspiegel* also reported Golze and Mayer's election, at that Potsdam congress, as a female dual leadership before the 2019 state election.

At its congress of 22–23 February 2020 in Templin, the state party reported Anja Mayer re-elected and Katharina Slanina newly elected as chairs (61.7 and 85.2 percent) and Martin Günther and Kirsten Tackmann, not Vandre, as deputies (74.8 and 89.0 percent). Before the congress of 2–3 April 2022 in Schönefeld, *nd* reported that Vandre was again standing for deputy chair, as was Julia Wiedemann, district chair in Oder-Spree. The party's account of that congress named Katharina Slanina and Sebastian Walter as chairs and Julia Wiedemann and Justin König as deputies, and did not list Vandre.

## Landtag of Brandenburg

### Elections and terms

Isabelle Vandre was a member of the Landtag of Brandenburg from October 2014 until the parliament elected in September 2024 convened. The September 2023 Landtag handbook lists her as a Die Linke deputy from the state list, living in Potsdam, with a bachelor's degree in political science from the Free University of Berlin (2009–2019).

At the election of 14 September 2014 she was the Left's direct candidate in constituency 10, Uckermark III/Oberhavel IV, in northeastern Brandenburg. She received 3,211 first votes, 16.9 percent, and placed third behind Henryk Wichmann of the CDU (7,198 votes, 38.0 percent) and Lothar Kliesch of the SPD (5,230 votes, 27.6 percent). Turnout in the constituency was 43.2 percent, and the constituency returning officer declared Wichmann elected. On the state list of Die Linke Brandenburg, published by the state returning officer on 18 August 2014, Vandre stood in ninth place, then described as a student born in 1989 in Eberswalde-Finow. Statewide, Die Linke took 183,178 second votes (18.55 percent) and 17 seats, four of them direct mandates and 13 from the list. The statistical office's final roll of those elected names her as the list deputy in place 9.

She again missed a constituency seat in 2019. For the election of 1 September the returning officer had admitted her in seventh place on the Left list, by then a political scientist living in Potsdam, and as the party's candidate in constituency 21, Potsdam I. In that district the Left's 6,178 first votes (15.25 percent) were cast for her. Marie Schäffer of Alliance 90/[The Greens](/organizations/the-greens) won the seat with 10,956 votes (27.04 percent), ahead of [Klara Geywitz](/people/klara-geywitz) of the SPD on 10,813 (26.69 percent). Die Linke won no direct mandate in the state and received ten seats, all from the list; the state election committee on 13 September 2019 recorded Vandre as the seventh of those ten.

### Portfolios and committees

Her briefs were higher education, culture and housing. The Landtag calendar identified her as the Left group's spokesperson for higher-education policy, including while the Brandenburg higher-education act was being revised, and, with group leader Sebastian Walter, as spokesperson for construction, housing and rent policy. The group's own profile also assigned her culture and urban development.

She was a full member of the Committee for Science, Research and Culture from its constituting meeting on 3 December 2014, one of two Left members with Gerrit Große. For the sixth term, the parliamentary-monitoring site Abgeordnetenwatch also lists her as a substitute on the petitions committee and the committee for education, youth and sport, and as a substitute on the inquiry into the National Socialist Underground (Untersuchungsausschuss 6/1). The September 2023 handbook still seats her, in the seventh term, as a full member of the science, research and culture committee, with Kathrin Dannenberg as substitute, and as a full member of the Committee for Infrastructure and Regional Planning. The same volume lists her as a substitute on petitions and on education, youth and sport, and as a substitute member of the inquiry into cost and schedule overruns at Berlin Brandenburg Airport.

Housing produced a set-piece debate reported on 22 September 2023. The opposition Left group asked the Landtag to seek the transfer of at least half of the rental stock into a revived non-profit housing regime (*Wohngemeinnützigkeit*). Every other group voted the motion down. Vandre told the chamber that social housing in Brandenburg had fallen from 101,500 homes in 2000 to 21,900 twenty years later and might stand at about 12,500 by 2030, because new subsidised building could not replace homes leaving rent and occupancy controls. Deputies of the AfD and the [Free Voters](/organizations/free-voters) called the proposal a route back to expropriation; the SPD also voted no, citing a federal reform still in draft. In the March 2019 vote on the revised Brandenburg police law she was the only Linke deputy to vote no, while the bill passed with SPD support and that of most of her group; her objection is covered under civil liberties and social policy.

### The 2024 state election

On 22 September 2024 Vandre stood third on the Left list, behind Sebastian Walter and Kathrin Dannenberg, and again as the direct candidate in Potsdam I. She received 3,633 first votes, 8.2 percent, 7.1 points below her 2019 share. Manja Schüle of the SPD won the constituency with 15,281 votes (34.4 percent). Turnout there was 83.5 percent, and the Left's second votes in the district were 3,292, or 7.4 percent.

The party missed the statewide threshold. Meeting on 7 October 2024, the state election committee fixed Die Linke's second-vote total at 44,706, or 2.98 percent, down 7.74 points, with 77,151 first votes (5.17 percent). Because the list neither cleared five percent nor won a constituency, it received no seats. Of 88 seats, the SPD took 32, the AfD 30, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance 14 and the CDU 12. Turnout was 72.90 percent. The eighth Landtag met for the first time on 17 October 2024; with that constituting session the seventh term ended, and Vandre, whose party was not returned, left the state parliament.

## Municipal politics in Potsdam

### City council and faction leadership

Isabelle Vandre joined the Stadtverordnetenversammlung of Potsdam, a 56-member city council, at the municipal election of 26 May 2019. Standing for Die Linke in Wahlkreis 3, she received 2,574 votes and was one of two councillors the party elected in that district, together with Ralf Jäkel. Citywide, Die Linke took 46,761 votes, 18.1 percent of valid votes, and 10 seats. Of 141,443 eligible voters, 62.3 percent cast a ballot, and the election committee confirmed the result on 6 June 2019.

She was returned on 9 June 2024. In Wahlkreis 3 — Eiche, Golm, the Brandenburger Vorstadt, Potsdam-West and the Templiner Vorstadt — she polled 1,797 votes, the highest personal total among Die Linke candidates in the district, and was the party's only councillor elected there. Across the city the party fell to 25,778 votes and 8.7 percent, and its group was cut from ten seats to five: Iris Burdinski in Wahlkreis 1, Tina Lange in Wahlkreis 2, Vandre in Wahlkreis 3, Michél Berlin in Wahlkreis 4 and Anja Günther in Wahlkreis 5. Turnout in Potsdam was 70.4 percent.

From June 2024 she chaired that five-member group. The date appears in the biographical note on her Bundestag page, which the parliament states is supplied by the member, and on the website of Die Linke in Brandenburg. In June 2025 the *Tagesspiegel* still identified her as chair of the Left group on the city council.

Housing was a recurring local theme. In April 2024, before the municipal election, the Potsdam Left set out a six-point plan to treat the whole city as a tenant-protection area: citywide social-preservation statutes to limit rent increases after modernization and to block displacement through luxury renovation; an end to sales of land and buildings owned by the city or municipal companies, with further purchases for affordable housing; trustees to let vacant homes in the public interest; a five-year cap on rents charged by the municipal landlord Pro Potsdam; and more staff so that housing-benefit applications would be processed within four weeks. Vandre said the council group had pressed many of those demands for years without finding a majority.

Published council papers also list her among a cross-party group of women councillors sponsoring the motion "Keine sexistische Werbung in Potsdam / bei Auftragnehmern städtischer Unternehmen" (no sexist advertising in Potsdam, or by contractors of municipal companies), on the agenda printed in the official gazette of 28 October 2021.

Her mandatory Bundestag disclosure, separate from the narrative biography, records two further city roles: membership of the Beirat Lottenhof until 16 June 2025, and an unpaid chairmanship of the Beirat Rechenzentrum. The Lottenhof project, at Geschwister-Scholl-Straße 34, is the conversion of the former Charlottenhof excursion restaurant into a neighbourhood house for Potsdam-West and the Brandenburger Vorstadt; in July 2024 the city commissioned its municipal company Pro Potsdam to manage the works, with €2.95 million from the federal programme Nationale Projekte des Städtebaus. The operator of the Rechenzentrum states that a specialist advisory board, whose composition rests on a city-council resolution, decides applications to rent space there and accompanies the operator.

### Resignation of the local mandate

Vandre gave up the Potsdam mandate after taking her seat in the Bundestag. The *Tagesspiegel* reported on 17 June 2025 that she was leaving municipal politics because of that federal role, which she had held for about four months, and that the Left group was choosing Tobias Woelki as its new chair. The paper named Konstantin Gräfe as the councillor who would take her seat. At the 2024 election Gräfe had been the first substitute for Die Linke in Wahlkreis 3, with 1,047 votes.

The same Bundestag disclosure gives 16 June 2025 as the end date for the council seat, the group chairmanship and the Lottenhof board. For 2025 she declared €2,529.34 gross from the City of Potsdam for membership of the Stadtverordnetenversammlung. The Rechenzentrum chairmanship was still listed as unpaid and without an end date. According to the *Tagesspiegel*, she said the new task deserved her full attention and that, for her party, political strength came from structures rather than from individuals.

## Election to the Bundestag

### Constituency and list placement

Isabelle Vandre stood for Die Linke in constituency 61, Potsdam – Potsdam-Mittelmark II – Teltow-Fläming II, at the 2025 German federal election on 23 February 2025. The constituency comprises the independent city of Potsdam; the municipalities of Kleinmachnow, Michendorf, Nuthetal, Schwielowsee, Stahnsdorf and Teltow in Potsdam-Mittelmark; and, from Teltow-Fläming, only Ludwigsfelde. Eleven candidates appeared on the first-vote ballot. The direct contest included the outgoing chancellor, Olaf Scholz of the [Social Democratic Party of Germany](/organizations/social-democratic-party-of-germany), and the outgoing foreign minister, [Annalena Baerbock](/people/annalena-baerbock) of Alliance 90/The Greens, who had already stood against each other in the constituency in 2021. The other principal candidates were Tabea Gutschmidt of the [Christian Democratic Union](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany), Alexander Tassis of [the Alternative](/organizations/the-alternative) for Germany and Linda Teuteberg of the Free Democratic Party, with further candidates from the Free Voters, Volt and [Bündnis Deutschland](/organizations/bundnis-deutschland) and two independents.

Die Linke nominated Vandre, its only applicant for the constituency, on the evening of 18 December 2024 at a members' meeting in the Thalia cinema in Potsdam-Babelsberg. About 80 of roughly 700 party members in the constituency attended, and she was selected by 77 votes to 3. The next evening, at a state delegates' assembly in Luckenwalde, she challenged Christian Görke for first place on the Brandenburg state list. Görke, a member of the Bundestag since 2021 and then parliamentary managing director of the Left group, had been put forward by the state executive. rbb reported that he won the ballot with 55.7 percent of the vote to Vandre's 41.7 percent, the latter figure supplied by the party. The list had six places. Vandre was placed second, behind Görke and ahead of [Christin Willnat](/people/christin-willnat).

### Result and entry

Of 234,264 people eligible to vote in the constituency, 200,726 cast ballots, a turnout of 85.7 percent, 3.8 points higher than in 2021. There were 199,111 valid first votes. Scholz won the direct mandate with 43,332 (21.8 percent). Gutschmidt was second with 40,956 (20.6 percent) and Tassis third with 37,796 (19.0 percent). Baerbock received 31,629 (15.9 percent) and Vandre 27,522 (13.8 percent), 6.0 points above Die Linke's 2021 share in the constituency. Teuteberg took 7,959 (4.0 percent). The remaining valid first votes went to Michael Reichert of the Free Voters (3,905; 2.0 percent), Benjamin Körner of Volt (3,404; 1.7 percent), Marco Schulz of Bündnis Deutschland (1,372; 0.7 percent) and the independents Hermann Krämer (685) and Edmund Müller (551), 0.3 percent each. The constituency electoral committee, chaired by returning officer Stefan Tolksdorf, certified that result on 28 February 2025.

The list vote in the constituency was similarly split. Of 199,636 valid second votes, the CDU led with 38,291 (19.2 percent), ahead of the AfD on 36,922 (18.5 percent) and the SPD on 34,038 (17.1 percent). Die Linke received 29,407 (14.7 percent), narrowly ahead of the Greens on 29,116 (14.6 percent). The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, which had no constituency candidate, took 16,658 (8.3 percent), and the FDP 8,600 (4.3 percent).

Across Brandenburg, Die Linke polled 176,224 second votes, 10.7 percent of the valid list vote and 2.2 points more than in 2021, and it won no constituency in the state. The Federal Returning Officer distributed the 630 Bundestag seats by the Sainte-Laguë/Schepers divisor method. Die Linke's 4,356,532 national second votes produced 64 seats; Brandenburg's share, 176,224 divided by the divisor 70,000, came to 2.517 and rounded to three. With no covered constituency wins to deduct, all three seats were filled from the state list, in order Görke, Vandre and Willnat. The state returning officer's final list of those elected on Brandenburg lists records Vandre, born in 1989 and described as a political scientist, alongside Görke and Willnat. The 21st Bundestag, of which they were members, constituted on 25 March 2025; that day the chamber elected [Julia Klöckner](/people/julia-klockner) as its president with 382 of 630 votes.

## Roles in the Bundestag

### Committees and the money-laundering body

In the 21st Bundestag, Isabelle Vandre is an ordinary member of the Finance Committee (Finanzausschuss). The committee constituted itself on 21 May 2025 with 42 ordinary members: 14 from the CDU/CSU, ten from the Alternative for Germany (AfD), eight from the Social Democratic Party (SPD), six from Alliance 90/The Greens and four from Die Linke—[Doris Achelwilm](/people/doris-achelwilm), Uwe Foullong, Christian Görke and Vandre. It did not elect a chair that day. The AfD, which held the right of nomination, proposed Kay Gottschalk, who was absent; a secret ballot gave him 11 votes to 31, the group sought no further round, and [Olav Gutting](/people/olav-gutting) (CDU/CSU), the longest-serving Bundestag member on the committee, presided in the interim.

The committee's field matches that of the Federal [Ministry of Finance](/organizations/ministry-of-finance) except for budget policy. It considers items referred by the plenary, chiefly government, group and Bundesrat bills, group motions, government reports and European Union documents, and is usually the lead committee for financial-market regulation (banks, securities and insurance), customs and tax policy.

Vandre is a substitute member (stellvertretendes Mitglied) of the Budget Committee and of the Committee on Housing, Urban Development, Building and Local Government. Groups name both ordinary committee members and their substitutes. Substitutes may attend every sitting but may vote only when standing in for an absent ordinary member of their own group. The Budget Committee, also of 42 members, conducts the annual procedure on how much the federation spends and on what, and it continuously examines budget execution and financial assistance connected with euro-area stabilisation. The housing committee has 30 members and deals with construction and housing, federal urban-development programmes, and the finances and self-government of municipalities.

On 9 October 2025 the Bundestag unanimously adopted a CDU/CSU and SPD motion (Drucksache 21/1789) establishing, for the 21st term, a body under section 28a of the Money Laundering Act (Geldwäschegesetz). Section 28a, inserted by a statute of 13 November 2023, requires the Finance Ministry to brief that body at least every six months on the Central Office for Financial Transaction Investigations (Zentralstelle für Finanztransaktionsuntersuchungen), the German Financial Intelligence Unit in Cologne. The office collects, analyses and forwards information on money laundering and terrorist financing so that competent authorities can detect, prevent or prosecute such acts. The ministry and the central office are permanently represented; the body may call in further authorities whose legal responsibilities are affected; and members must keep secret what they learn through the work.

The body was set at nine members. The AfD nominees [Hauke Finger](/people/hauke-finger) and Kay Gottschalk (Drucksache 21/2053) were rejected, with the CDU/CSU, SPD, Greens and Die Linke voting against, so seven seats have been filled. Vandre was elected on Die Linke's proposal (Drucksache 21/2056) by those four groups, against the AfD. Also elected were Philip M. A. Hoffmann, [Stefan Korbach](/people/stefan-korbach) and [Mechthilde Wittmann](/people/mechthilde-wittmann) (CDU/CSU), all unanimously; [Sebastian Fiedler](/people/sebastian-fiedler) and [Ingo Vogel](/people/ingo-vogel) (SPD); and [Max Lucks](/people/max-lucks) (Greens). Abgeordnetenwatch lists Korbach as chair and Vandre as an ordinary member, with Hoffmann, Wittmann, Fiedler, Vogel and Lucks.

### Spokesperson roles and offices

The Die Linke group designates Vandre its spokesperson for combating financial crime and real-estate speculation (Sprecherin für Bekämpfung von Finanzkriminalität und Immobilienspekulation), and lists Christian Görke for finance policy, Doris Achelwilm for tax policy, Lisa Schubert for monetary and financial-market policy, [Dietmar Bartsch](/people/dietmar-bartsch) for budget policy, and Caren Lay for rent and housing policy. Her group profile repeats her title for Arbeitskreis I, the working area on labour, redistribution and social security led by [Janine Wissler](/people/janine-wissler).

Her Bundestag office is Platz der Republik 1, 11011 Berlin; the group gives the telephone number 030/227-70813 and the address isabelle.vandre@bundestag.de. The official biography lists four constituency offices in Brandenburg: Zeppelinstr. 7 in Potsdam, Große Straße 45 in Strausberg, Berliner Str. 17 in Bernau bei Berlin, and Maxim-Gorki-Straße 10 in Ludwigsfelde. It records her seat as the Brandenburg state list and her candidacy as constituency 061, Potsdam – Potsdam-Mittelmark II – Teltow-Fläming II.

On 9 September 2025 a members' meeting of the Verein der Bundestagsfraktion DIE LINKE e.V. elected Sascha Wagner chair, [Mandy Eißing](/people/mandy-eissing), Vandre and Anne Zerr deputy chairs, and Annetta Juckel treasurer. The association groups sitting and former Bundestag members and group staff; founded around November 2000 to support political and cultural events, projects and exhibitions, it is financed by contributions and donations and works voluntarily, without its own office or staff. The Bundestag's register of disclosable activities records Vandre, from 9 September 2025, as a member of that board.

## Housing, finance and taxation

### Housing and the property market

In the 21st Bundestag, Isabelle Vandre treated high rents, hidden ownership and housing benefit as one problem. In a January 2026 *Tagesspiegel* interview she said that in Potsdam “the money of individuals decides what urban development looks like.” On 12 June 2026, debating motions from Die Linke and Alliance 90/The Greens against cuts to Wohngeld, she said firms such as Vonovia had passed 41 cents of every euro of rent to shareholders rather than into repairs or new homes. A 2023 Finanzwende Recherche study of listed landlords, including Vonovia and LEG, reported that about 41 percent of rent collected went to shareholders; that ratio compares payouts with rental receipts and is the study’s presentation, not a regulator’s finding. [Michael Kießling](/people/michael-kiessling) (CDU/CSU) replied that returns drew private capital into housing and that Vonovia’s average net cold rent in Berlin was €7.60 a square metre. The motions answered an announced saving of about €1 billion against a Wohngeld line put at €2.4 billion in the 2026 construction budget, after housing minister [Verena Hubertz](/people/verena-hubertz) (SPD) signalled a restructuring.

The government’s later bill (Drucksache 21/8284) projected federal savings of €1.156 billion in 2027 and €1.486 billion in 2028 by suspending one uprating, halving the heating component and changing the formula. The Bundesrat warned that weaker relief could push households into basic income support and onto municipal budgets; the government said the federation would bear most of that cost.

On 18 June 2026 Vandre was lead signatory, with [Caren Lay](/people/caren-lay), Janine Wissler and the Left group, of a motion for a real-estate transparency register (Drucksache 21/6566). It asked for the access point required by Article 18 of the European Union’s sixth anti-money laundering directive by 10 July 2029, covering owners, prices, charges and ownership history, and later for rents, vacancy and energy data, with open data where legal persons hold property. It cited the national risk assessment and the [Financial Action Task Force](/organizations/financial-action-task-force) 2022 Germany report, which class real estate among the sectors most exposed to laundering, and a 2025 University of Trier study. That study estimated that a 10 percent cut in laundering in the sector could lower flat prices in the seven largest cities by about 1.9 percent, roughly €6,380 on a €360,000 flat.

The Finance Committee, with Vandre as rapporteur, recommended rejection on 8 July 2026; the housing committee did the same. CDU/CSU, the Alternative for Germany and the SPD voted to reject, the Left against and the Greens abstained. The Union called the extra rent and contract data “gold-plating” that mixed laundering control with a universal housing register and burdened small landlords; the SPD said the 2029 deadline would be met by linking registers already in place; the AfD called the motion a public pillory. The Greens wanted owners, prices and beneficial owners recorded, but objected to reporting every contract change. [The Left](/organizations/the-left-slovenia), citing a government reply, said a 14 percent gap and more than eight million unmatched land-register records remained.

On 23 September 2026 the plenary rejected both that motion and a second Left text limiting market access for property companies. Vandre cited a Mafia? Nein danke estimate—15 to 30 percent of criminal assets, about €30 billion a year, in German property, that group’s figure rather than an official total—and Lay’s calculation that Vonovia distributed €166 per flat per month to shareholders in 2025, and called for socialising housing companies. [Florian Dorn](/people/florian-dorn) (CDU/CSU) said the EU access point would exist by summer 2029 but forced sales would build no homes; [Hanna Steinmüller](/people/hanna-steinmuller) (Greens) put the yearly transfer-tax loss from share deals at €1 billion.

### Financial crime and tax enforcement

On 29 January 2026, on a Green motion on financial crime (Drucksache 21/3248), Vandre called Germany a “money-laundering paradise.” She quoted estimates—labelled as such—of €100 billion a year laundered and €125 billion in unpaid tax, said the BKA had searched [Deutsche Bank](/organizations/deutsche-bank) the day before, and warned that non-implementation of the UN Palermo Convention’s confiscation rules risked a first high-risk listing. The FATF’s 2022 evaluation had instead placed Germany in enhanced follow-up; it was not on the high-risk list. Mechthilde Wittmann (CDU/CSU) cited her own estimates, tax evasion of up to €200 billion and laundering of €100 billion, and said Länder prosecutors were the bottleneck. Max Lucks (Greens) used the same €100 billion figure and wanted one federal authority.

On 8 October 2026, debating Green tax texts, Vandre said Vonovia had cheated Berlin of €1 billion in real-estate transfer tax through share deals. Those deals, in which shares rather than buildings change hands, have been reported as lawful avoidance: the *Tagesspiegel* headlined that Vonovia paid no transfer tax and that Berlin came away empty, and *WirtschaftsWoche* called Vonovia and Deutsche Wohnen structures “entirely legal tax tricks.” She called for a ban on share deals, socialisation of housing companies, an end to the 300-unit inheritance-tax threshold, pursuit of cum-ex and cum-cum trades, and taxation of cryptoasset gains as investment income once the one-year exemption ended, rather than as the Greens proposed. [Parsa Marvi](/people/parsa-marvi) (SPD) shared the criticism of large inheritance reliefs but said the coalition would wait on a Federal [Constitutional Court](/organizations/constitutional-court) hearing. [Lukas Krieger](/people/lukas-krieger) (CDU/CSU) said the drafts would tax long-standing private owners and discourage building, and that the Federal Central Tax Office was already pursuing cum-ex and cum-cum.

## Civil liberties and social policy

### The 2019 Brandenburg police law

On 13 March 2019 the Landtag of Brandenburg, in the 73rd sitting of its sixth term, adopted the state government's twelfth amendment to the police act of Brandenburg (Drucksache 6/9821; committee recommendation 6/10824) on a roll-call vote demanded by the CDU. The roll-call list records 45 votes in favour, 37 against and one abstention. The yes votes were the SPD members on the list, most of the Die Linke group and non-attached member Iris Schülzke; the no votes were the CDU, the AfD, Alliance 90/The Greens, four non-attached members and Isabelle Vandre. She, sometimes reported as Vandré, was the only Linke deputy to vote no; Volkmar Schöneburg abstained.

The act allowed preventive detention of people classed as Gefährder for up to four weeks, reporting orders, checks on federal trunk roads (Schleierfahndung), body-worn cameras, and storage of public video for two weeks rather than two days. Online searches and source surveillance of messenger services (Quellen-TKÜ) were dropped in SPD–Linke talks. Interior minister Karl-Heinz Schröter (SPD) said he would have kept Quellen-TKÜ and might return to it if the Federal Constitutional Court upheld it. Vandre and Schöneburg said the remaining intrusions still went too far: the law was "weder erforderlich noch geeignet, um ein ausgewogenes Verhältnis von bürgerlicher Freiheit und polizeilichen Sonderrechten herzustellen." Ursula Nonnemacher, for the Greens, objected on similar grounds, and a CDU bill keeping those surveillance powers was defeated.

### Social policy in the Bundestag

In the 21st Bundestag, on 5 March 2026, the 62nd sitting passed the thirteenth amendment to Book II of the Social Code (Drucksachen 21/3541, 21/4087 and 21/4522, letter a) by 320 votes to 268, with two abstentions. Vandre was one of 55 Linke members voting no. CDU/CSU speakers presented the bill as replacing Bürgergeld with a basic-security scheme that restored priority for job placement and would end benefits after repeated missed appointments or refusal of reasonable work.

On 27 March 2026 she opposed the Old-Age Provision Reform Act, carried by the CDU/CSU and the SPD against Die Linke, with the Greens and the AfD abstaining. From 2027 it replaced Riester pensions with a subsidised private depot that dropped the rigid full capital guarantee. She said a single parent of two on €30,000 paying in €425 would receive about €800, much the same as someone on €70,000, and called that a gain for higher earners rather than for the public pension. On 12 June 2026, on motions against housing-benefit cuts (Drucksachen 21/6363 and 21/6339), both referred to committee, she said Vonovia had distributed 41 cents of every euro of rent to shareholders rather than to renovation or new building, alongside planned cuts in Wohngeld. On 16 October 2026 the coalition passed the Frühstartrente — €10 a month from age six into a children's depot — against the Greens and Die Linke, the AfD abstaining. She contrasted €83,520 after twelve years at the maximum parental top-up with €1,440 from the subsidy alone, and said the money should instead strengthen the statutory pension and reverse cuts to the maintenance advance from age 16, Wohngeld and a €25 child supplement.

## Memberships and other roles

### Civic and union memberships

The Bundestag biography of Isabelle Vandre, which the parliament states is drawn from the member's own information, lists membership of the Gewerkschaft Erziehung und Wissenschaft (GEW), Bildungspartisanen Berlin-Brandenburg e.V., Bildungswerk für Politik und Kultur e.V., Rote Hilfe e.V., the Bund Demokratischer Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftler, frauensommerakademie e.V., and the Vereinigung der Verfolgten des Naziregimes – Bund der Antifaschistinnen und Antifaschisten (VVN-BdA). The GEW is the education and science union inside the German Trade Union Confederation (Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund, DGB). The DGB's table for 2025 records 274,532 GEW members, among eight affiliated unions.

Bildungspartisanen Berlin-Brandenburg e.V., registered at the Potsdam court as number 8930, organizes CampCommune, a weekend it presents as a forum for political discussion. The association styled frauensommerakademie* e.V. has run feminist summer academies with the [Rosa Luxemburg Foundation](/organizations/rosa-luxemburg-foundation); the 2019 meeting in Lütow was the tenth, for women and people who define themselves as female. Bildungswerk für Politik und Kultur e.V. and the Bund Demokratischer Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftler are on the same list, with no office stated.

Rote Hilfe describes itself as a cross-current solidarity organization giving political and financial support to left-wing people prosecuted for political activity, with only individual members and more than 50 local groups. The VVN-BdA describes itself as a non-party association of Nazi persecutees, resistance fighters and later antifascists, founded in 1947, opened to younger members in the 1970s, and merged in 2002 with the eastern VVdN-BdA. *[Der Spiegel](/organizations/der-spiegel)* has described a 1946 cross-zone assembly as conceived as an alliance of Communists, [Social Democrats](/organizations/social-democrats), [Christian Democrats](/organizations/christian-democrats), and Jewish and Christian representatives. Membership of Rote Hilfe and of the VVN-BdA is politically disputed, including in domestic-intelligence reporting.

### Sport and disclosed offices

Vandre's self-reported biography says she joined the board of SV Babelsberg 03 in autumn 2019. The club, in Potsdam's Babelsberg district, is listed by the DFB data center in the Regionalliga Nordost for 2025/26.

The club announced that the previous board's term ended on 31 October 2025 after chairs Katharina Dahme and Kristian Kreyes stepped down. It named Isabelle Vandré — the club's spelling — among the outgoing members, with Paul Bachmeyer, Wolfgang Hadlich, Katja Herzberg and Thoralf Höntze, and said Hadlich and Vandré left when the supervisory board appointed a new executive. The Bundestag register of disclosable interests records the seat as honorary and as ending that day.

Further entries fall under sections 45 and following of the Members of the Bundestag Act, which require reportable interests within three months. From 9 September 2025 she is a board member of Verein der Bundestagsfraktion DIE LINKE e.V. in Berlin. That day the association elected Sascha Wagner chair and Vandre, with Mandy Eißing and Anne Zerr, deputy chairs. Founded around November 2000, it is a body of current and former members of the Die Linke Bundestag group and of group staff, funding political and cultural projects from fees and donations, without its own office or paid staff.

For the City of Potsdam the register lists assembly membership until 16 June 2025, a gross 2,529.34 euros for 2025, the council-group chair until that date, the Lottenhof advisory board until 16 June 2025, and the honorary chair of the Rechenzentrum advisory board. Abgeordnetenwatch records the payment as a one-off gross sum for the 2025–2029 mandate. The city describes the Lottenhof board as steering conversion of that East-modernist building into a neighborhood house. The register also lists her previous occupation as a member of the Landtag of Brandenburg. The narrative biography still calls the assembly seat current and gives the Babelsberg board no end date; those dates are only in the mandatory register.

## Reception and controversies

### Coverage of her parliamentary record

On 13 March 2019 the Landtag of Brandenburg passed an amended police law by 45 votes to 37, with one abstention. *[Die Welt](/organizations/die-welt)* and *Der Tagesspiegel* reported that Isabelle Vandre, sometimes spelled Vandré, was the only Die Linke deputy to vote no; Volkmar Schöneburg, a former justice minister, abstained. In a joint statement they said that, even after the SPD–Left coalition had dropped online searches and messenger surveillance, the law was still “weder erforderlich noch geeignet, um ein ausgewogenes Verhältnis von bürgerlicher Freiheit und polizeilichen Sonderrechten herzustellen.”

In June 2025 *Tagesspiegel* reported that she was giving up her Potsdam city-council seat and the Left group’s chair about four months after entering the Bundestag. She said the federal role “deserves my full attention,” and that the party’s strength lay in structures rather than in individuals. The paper named Konstantin Gräfe of Potsdam-West to succeed her on the council and Tobias Woelki as the new group chair. Bundestag disclosures end both offices on 16 June 2025; the city lists Woelki as chair of the Left group.

### Debate over organizational affiliations

That biography, which the parliament says rests on her own information, lists membership of Rote Hilfe e.V. and of the VVN-BdA. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, in its 2024 report, treats Rote Hilfe as an observation object and the largest grouping in German left-wing extremism, with about 14,400 members. It says the group’s main work is legal and financial help for left-wing extremist offenders, meant to weaken criminal deterrence, and that its cases show support for violence, while it calls judgments “class justice.” Brandenburg’s 2024 report calls it “violence-justifying and violence-supporting” but not itself violent, counts about 400 members in the state, about 250 in Potsdam, and says the activity opposes the free democratic basic order.

Rote Hilfe calls itself a party-independent solidarity organization “for all of the left,” set against what it terms [state repression](/drivers/state-repression). Asked on Abgeordnetenwatch in August 2019 about a Verfassungsschutz claim that the group justifies violence, Vandre confirmed her membership, invoked the Rote Hilfe Deutschlands of 1924, dissolved in 1936 under Nazi rule, and wrote that as a democrat she saw defence counsel as part of the rule of law. On 22 September 2026 a user asked whether deputies in organizations classed as extremist should sit on committees, using a hypothetical member of the Alternative for Germany whose group funds legal help in politically motivated cases and may withdraw it if the accused apologizes or cooperates with prosecutors. On 16 October she replied by urging a ban proceeding against that party, saying Die Linke stood with people it threatens, and citing section 57 of the Bundestag rules, under which every member should have a committee seat; she did not discuss the hypothetical or her own memberships.

*Der Spiegel* reported in 2022 that Bavaria’s service had in 2018 called the VVN-BdA Germany’s largest “left-extremist-influenced” antifascist organization, that Hesse had relayed a similar assessment, and that the judgment was disputed. Berlin’s tax office removed the association’s charitable status in November 2019 because of the Bavarian report and restored it in April 2021 after protests and affidavits of commitment to parliamentary democracy. Neither the 2024 federal report nor Brandenburg’s report for that year mentions the VVN-BdA.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/isabelle-vandre