Jan Dieren

Jan Ulrich Dieren (born 29 July 1991 in Moers, North Rhine-Westphalia) is a German lawyer and a politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). He has been a member of the Bundestag since the 20th electoral term, which constituted itself on 26 October 2021. The parliament’s biography, based on his own information, lists him as unmarried and gives his profession as Rechtsanwalt.

At the federal election of 2021 he won the direct mandate in constituency 114, Krefeld II – Wesel II, with 45,852 first votes (35.2 percent). Kerstin Christiane Radomski of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany, who had held the seat since 2017, came second with 37,033 votes (28.4 percent). Turnout in the constituency was 74.9 percent. On 23 February 2025, in the renumbered constituency 113, Radomski took the district with 44,412 first votes (32.0 percent) to Dieren’s 41,999 (30.2 percent). He entered the 21st Bundestag on the SPD state list of North Rhine-Westphalia and is again the party’s candidate for Krefeld II – Wesel II, a district named for Krefeld and Wesel.

The same biography records that he passed the Abitur in 2011, spent a voluntary social year in Bogotá, and from 2012 studied law, philosophy and Romance studies in Düsseldorf and Bochum. He completed a B.A. in philosophy and Romance studies in 2016, the first state examination in law in 2017, the second state examination in 2021 and an M.A. in philosophy in 2021, and he has been an admitted lawyer since 2021. Before his mandate he worked as a lawyer at TowaRA:Arbeitsrecht in Cologne. The disclosure register shows that practice continuing beside parliamentary work, with 3,570 euros gross reported for 2025.

He joined the SPD in 2008 and in 2020 was directly elected to the Moers city council for the district of Meerbeck, a mandate the register records until 5 November 2025. In the 20th Bundestag he was a full member of the Committee on Labour and Social Affairs and of the Committee on the Scrutiny of Elections, Immunity and the Rules of Procedure, and a substitute on the Committee on Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid and the Legal Affairs Committee. In the 21st term he is a full member of the Committee on Labour and Social Affairs and the Petitions Committee, and a substitute member of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Consumer Protection. The register lists him as chair of the board of Forum Demokratische Linke 21.

Early life and education

Upbringing and schooling

Jan Dieren was born on 29 July 1991 in Moers, in the Wesel district of North Rhine-Westphalia. In a January 2014 interview the Rheinische Post described the then 22-year-old law student from Moers-Repelen as the son of Andrea Dieren and Mark Rosendahl, at that time chair of the Social Democratic Party of Germany group on the Moers city council, and as the grandson of Heinz-Wilhelm Rosendahl, a former SPD chair in Rheinkamp. The same interview recalled a local-branch meeting that December at which the grandfather argued for a grand coalition, Dieren spoke against it, and Rosendahl then returned to the case for joining government; Dieren said the argument continued at home for a while, then turned into mutual teasing.

On his own site he writes that he was his parents’ first child, born at Krankenhaus Bethanien, that the family moved from Utfort to Repelen after about a year, and that he grew up there with three sisters; that he attended an Arbeiterwohlfahrt kindergarten in Repelen and then the primary school on Talstraße, later renamed the Lindenschule; and that he played football for VfL Repelen and later handball, including for the Moerser Sportclub, before transferring to the Gymnasium Adolfinum, where he joined the student representation early, served as student speaker from year 12, and with others revived the district student representation in Kreis Wesel. He passed the Abitur in 2011; the Bundestag biography that records the date states that such biographical details come from the member.

Studies and examinations

After the Abitur he spent a voluntary social year in Bogotá, Colombia. A profile published by the federal weltwärts programme dates the placement to 2011, names ICJA as the sending organisation, and says he worked with the Tanai Jawa project, which supports marginalised groups, including street vendors; in that profile he said the year taught him about inequality and, by comparison, about social conditions in Germany, and about how events in one place affect people elsewhere. He has written that the work included a community canteen (comedor comunitario), where children received a free midday meal, and that he prepared English and theatre courses for them. Asked what he still missed from the year, he named fresh fruit; he also said it had left him more open toward other people, and that he has since told young people to spend a year of that kind.

From 2012 he studied law, philosophy and Romance studies in Düsseldorf and Bochum. The 2014 Rheinische Post interview already described him as reading law in Düsseldorf. The biography does not assign each subject to a university, but the finishing dates are staggered. In 2016 he received a B.A. in philosophy and Romance studies, and in 2017 he passed the first state examination in law. In 2021 he completed an M.A. in philosophy and passed the second state examination, which he dates to January of that year; he writes that the philosophy master’s thesis treated the philosophy of right of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and the European Union. The same sequence—Abitur in 2011, the voluntary year in Bogotá, study in Düsseldorf and Bochum, the 2016 B.A., the 2021 M.A., and the two state examinations in 2017 and 2021—appears in the archived biography for the 20th electoral term. The hbz union catalogue lists a master’s thesis by him at Ruhr University Bochum under the title Hegels Rechtsphilosophie und die Europäische Union; the text was published in Würzburg in 2024 by Königshausen & Neumann and runs to 173 pages.

Legal practice

Admission to the bar

In Germany, use of the title lawyer (Rechtsanwalt) requires the qualification for judicial office: a university law course ended by the first examination, then a two-year preparatory service, the Referendariat, ended by the second state examination. The preparatory service includes stages at a civil court, in criminal justice, at an administrative authority and, for nine months, with a lawyer. Only someone with that qualification may be admitted to the bar. Admission takes effect when the regional bar hands over its certificate, after the oath and proof of professional-liability insurance, and the title may be used from then on.

Jan Dieren studied law, together with philosophy and Romance studies, in Düsseldorf and Bochum, and passed the first legal state examination in 2017. He has stated that he passed the second examination in January 2021. The Bundestag biography, which rests on members’ own information, records the second examination in 2021 and lists him as an admitted lawyer since that year, with the occupation Rechtsanwalt. It gives his professional activity before membership as a lawyer at TowaRA:Arbeitsrecht in Cologne. A successful candidate acquires a Bundestag seat when the new parliament’s first sitting opens; for the 20th electoral term that sitting was on 26 October 2021.

Practice alongside the mandate

In August 2020 JUVE reported that Jörg Towara was leaving the Düsseldorf boutique Silberberger Lorenz Towara, which advised employees, and was opening Towara Arbeitsrecht in Cologne with the then associate Roja Erdmann and three further associates. The practice is registered as Towara Erdmann Partnerschaft von Rechtsanwälten mbB, active in the partnership register of the Amtsgericht Essen under PR 4991, at Erftstraße 19a. The firm states that it advises works councils, including general, group and European works councils, trade unions and individual employees, and that its lawyers practise labour law on the employee side, including restructurings, the works constitution, data protection and enterprise co-determination. It lists Dieren as an associate and Rechtsanwalt. He describes the work, without naming the firm, as practice in chambers that in labour law act for the rights of employees and works councils.

The Members of the Bundestag Act makes the mandate the centre of a member’s activity but leaves other professional work generally permissible, while barring paid representation of outside interests before the Bundestag or the federal government and paid advice tied directly to the mandate. Members must notify the last occupation before they take their seats and any paid activity during membership, including continuation of an earlier profession. Income above 1,000 euros a month or 3,000 euros a calendar year must be stated—as a gross amount, or as pre-tax profit where it is turnover—and notifiable details are published on the Bundestag website.

For the 20th electoral term the parliament published the side activity as lawyer at TowaRA:Arbeitsrecht, Cologne, at 600.00 euros gross a month, and from 1 September 2022 at 520.00 euros gross a month. For the 21st term the same activity is shown for 2025 as a single gross sum of 3,570.00 euros, not a monthly rate. The Bundestag notes that such figures are gross amounts under the rules of conduct, that the member’s own expenses are not deducted, and that the published sum is not taxable income. Against the pre-mandate entry for the same firm, those amounts are what parliament recorded once the Cologne practice continued beside the seat.

Party career and the SPD left

Jusos

Jan Dieren joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 2008. The Bundestag biography, based on his own account, adds only that he has held various party offices since. In a July 2015 Rheinische Post profile he said he had delayed joining because he did not want to be seen from the outset as the son of the SPD group leader on the Moers council, and that he therefore entered at 16. The same article reported that this work took him in 2013 to the chair of the subdistrict association of the Young Socialists in the SPD (Jusos) in Kreis Wesel, a post he had then held for about two years. At a district conference in Dinslaken the Kreis Wesel Jusos elected Benedikt Lechtenberg to succeed him; the Rheinische Post reported the change on 1 February 2017.

By autumn 2019 he was on the Jusos' federal executive. A Radio K.W. interview first broadcast on 18 October 2019 presented him as a deputy federal chair, with briefs that included labour and social affairs, economic policy and antifascism. That was during the federal chairmanship of Kevin Kühnert, whom the Schwerin congress re-elected on 22 November 2019 with 88.5 percent for a further two years. A conversation published on 19 December 2019 in the journal Luxemburg still identified Dieren as deputy federal chair. There he described a project the 2017 federal congress had given the executive, in which delegates and invited experts were to say what the Jusos meant by socialism, including employees' democratic control of production. When the Westdeutsche Zeitung reported his Bundestag nomination in March 2021, it treated the Kreis Wesel chairmanship and the later deputy federal role as Juso experience he had already acquired.

Forum Demokratische Linke 21 and the Parliamentary Left

The Forum Demokratische Linke 21 (DL21) is a registered association, separate from the SPD's own organs, through which part of the party left has been organized since its founding in 2000. In December 2007 Der Spiegel described the forum as the organization of the SPD left and reported that Andrea Nahles was leaving its chair after becoming deputy party leader. The association says SPD membership is not required to join, and that every two years a members' assembly elects one chair, a duo or a trio. Vorwärts reported that a single chair had been the pattern until October 2021, when Ülker Radziwill, Lino Leudesdorff and Sebastian Roloff were elected as three chairs of equal rank.

On 29 October 2023 the members' assembly in Berlin elected Dieren, Alma Kleen and Erik von Malottki to that trio; the previous chairs did not stand again but remained on the board. Kleen had chaired the Socialist Youth of Germany – The Falcons from 2017 to 2022; von Malottki, like Dieren, was a Bundestag member. Dieren said afterwards that the Klattens, the Quandts or Dieter Schwarz did not need social democracy, and that the chairs wanted an SPD aligned with people who worked at firms such as BMW or Lidl. In the disclosure for the 20th electoral term the Bundestag recorded him as a member of the DL21 board until 3 December 2024 and as chair from 4 December 2024. The disclosure for the 21st term lists him as chair of the board. A report on the November 2025 autumn meeting in Berlin said the members' assembly had again elected Kleen, Dieren and von Malottki as chairs.

The Parlamentarische Linke (Parliamentary Left) is a separate grouping of left-wing deputies inside the SPD Bundestag group. On 15 February 2022 its members elected speakers and a 16-member extended executive that included Dieren, then listed for Krefeld II – Wesel II; the grouping said it had grown to 95 deputies and was still the largest current in the SPD group. On 20 February 2024 about 90 members chose a new leadership after challenger candidacies were withdrawn. Der Spiegel reported that Matthias Miersch was confirmed with 75 of 77 votes, with Wiebke Esdar and Tim Klüssendorf as the other speakers, and that the Parliamentary Left had shrunk while the Seeheimer Kreis was advertising its strength. The grouping's list of the extended executive elected that day again named Dieren.

Institut Solidarische Moderne

The Institut Solidarische Moderne (ISM) is a cross-party association founded in Berlin at the end of January 2010 and presented the next day by the SPD politician Andrea Ypsilanti with Katja Kipping of Die Linke and Sven Giegold, then a Member of the European Parliament for Alliance 90/The Greens. Der Spiegel described it as a left-wing think tank aimed at what the founders called the hegemony of neoliberalism. Kipping said they had not come together to draft a coalition agreement, and SPD general secretary Nahles commented that thinking was never wrong.

Dieren's disclosures for the 20th and 21st electoral terms list him as a member of the board of Institut Solidarische Moderne e.V. in Berlin. On 3 June 2026 a members' assembly elected him, Caren Lay of Die Linke and Karoline Otte of the Greens, all sitting Bundestag members, as the board's spokespersons. The taz reported that Otte called the red-red-green trio a political signal, and that Dieren pointed to polling majorities for more distributive justice and said the aim was to turn those into political majorities. The institute's board page records the same election and lists him as a spokesperson of the board.

Local politics in Moers

City council

Moers, in the district of Wesel in North Rhine-Westphalia, is governed by a council (Rat). Under the municipal code, as restated in the city's main statute, the council is responsible for municipal affairs except where a committee or the mayor decides. For a city of more than 100,000 inhabitants the municipal election law allows 58 councillors; Moers has used 54 since 1999, half filled in wards and half from reserve lists. One vote is cast for a ward candidate and, if a party or voters' group nominates that candidate, also for its citywide list.

The town hall of Moers, seat of the city council.

Meerbeck includes the Meerbeck-Hochstraß settlement, built from 1904 as a garden-city colony for the Rheinpreußen colliery. After a citizens' initiative blocked a large privatisation in 1978–80, the city bought much of the estate and renovated it up to 1995. At the council election of 13 September 2020, Jan Ulrich Dieren of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) was directly elected in ward 308, Meerbeck. Of 1,224 valid votes the SPD received 359 (29.33 percent) and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) 354 (28.92 percent); turnout was 38.70 percent of 3,204 eligible voters. Citywide turnout was 49.92 percent. The SPD took 11,593 votes and 16 of 54 seats, 12 of them direct, behind the CDU with 12,431 votes and 17 seats.

Disclosures published by the Bundestag record him as chair of the social committee until May 2022 and, until 5 November 2025, as a member of the youth-welfare committee and of the committee for urban development, planning and the environment. Under the city's rules of competence, the social committee handles social assistance and asylum-related tasks, the youth-welfare committee child and youth welfare under Book VIII of the Social Code, and the planning committee development plans, building plans, urban renewal and monuments. The same filings list gross monthly council payments of 870 euros, 664.52 euros from 1 May 2022, 380 euros from 1 June 2022 to 31 December 2023, 387.60 euros in 2024 and 395.40 euros from 1 January 2025, plus irregular gross sums of 675 euros in 2022, 713 euros in 2024 and 273.90 euros in 2025. Council membership is recorded as ending on 5 November 2025.

On 14 September 2025 he stood again for the SPD, as its candidate in ward 309, Meerbeck-Ost, and in eleventh place on the reserve list. Julia Zupancic of the CDU took that direct seat; in ward 308 the SPD candidate Anja Reutlinger was elected. Dieren was not among the councillors declared elected from the wards or the lists. The SPD's citywide share was 26.0 percent (10,824 votes) and 14 seats, and turnout was 52.8 percent.

Municipal companies

Until 5 November 2025 the disclosures list Dieren, by virtue of the council office, as a member of the shareholders' meeting of Grundstücksgesellschaft Königlicher Hof mbH and as a deputy member of the supervisory boards of Schlosstheater Moers GmbH, Stadtbau Moers GmbH and Wohnungsbau Stadt Moers GmbH. Wohnungsbau Stadt Moers GmbH, founded in 1953 and wholly city-owned, manages its own housing stock and is charged with a socially responsible supply, including for lower-income households. Stadtbau Moers GmbH, its wholly owned subsidiary from 1996, handles development and property services. Königlicher Hof mbH, wholly city-owned since 2020, lets the town-centre complex of that name. Schlosstheater Moers GmbH, founded in 2008 and 96 percent city-owned, runs a theatre and a children's and youth theatre. Wholly owned Moers Kultur GmbH organises the Moers Festival and related events.

On 12 November 2025 the council appointed the city's representatives for the new term. Its minutes state that the mayor sits on the supervisory board of Moers Kultur GmbH under the municipal code, and they name "RM Dieren, Jan" — the minutes' abbreviation for a council member — as the seventh of twelve further members sent to that board. The Bundestag disclosure records the seat from 12 November 2025 and does not describe it as held by virtue of office, unlike the four posts that ended with the council mandate on 5 November 2025.

Bundestag candidacies and elections

The constituency

Jan Dieren's candidacies for the federal parliament have been in Krefeld II – Wesel II, a constituency on the Lower Rhine in North Rhine-Westphalia. For the 2025 election the Federal Returning Officer assigns it four districts of the independent city of Krefeld—2 Nord, 3 Hüls, 4 Mitte and 8 Ost—while the city's other districts belong to Krefeld I – Neuss II. From the district of Wesel the seat comprises the municipalities of Moers and Neukirchen-Vluyn in full; the district's remaining municipalities are divided between Wesel I and Oberhausen – Wesel III.

At the 2021 federal election that constituency was number 114. Under the 27th Act amending the Federal Elections Act of 7 March 2024, one constituency moved from Saxony-Anhalt to Bavaria because of population change, and the numbers of former constituencies 72 to 255 each fell by one. Sixteen constituencies were newly delimited on the territorial status of 30 September 2023; Krefeld II – Wesel II is not among those redrawn, renamed or redescribed, and it appears for 2025 as number 113. North Rhine-Westphalia kept 64 constituencies, numbered 86 to 149.

2021 direct mandate

The election was held on 26 September 2021. In constituency 114, 175,852 people were eligible and 131,664 voted, a turnout of 74.9 percent, 0.2 percentage points above 2017. First votes declared invalid numbered 1,378 (1.0 percent), leaving 130,286 valid.

Dieren, the candidate of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, received 45,852 first votes, 35.2 percent, up 3.2 points on 2017. The state returning officer recorded him as elected. Second was Kerstin Christiane Radomski of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany, a sitting member of the Bundestag, with 37,033 votes, 28.4 percent, down 8.5 points and 8,819 behind Dieren. In 2017 she had been declared elected in constituency 114 with 37.0 percent; Der Spiegel reported that the 2021 result cost her that direct mandate.

The other principal constituency candidates, and their first-vote totals, were Ursula Schauws of Alliance 90/The Greens, 17,398 (13.4 percent); Michael Terwiesche of the Free Democratic Party, 10,954 (8.4 percent); Hauke Finger of the Alternative for Germany, 9,077 (7.0 percent); and Sebastian Schubert of Die Linke, 4,100 (3.1 percent). Of 130,616 valid second votes, the SPD received 41,476 (31.8 percent, up 4.1 points) and the CDU 32,316 (24.7 percent, down 6.2). The Greens took 19,539 (15.0 percent), the FDP 14,899 (11.4 percent), the AfD 9,189 (7.0 percent) and Die Linke 4,703 (3.6 percent).

Dieren was also placed 49th on the SPD state list for North Rhine-Westphalia; the mandate he obtained was the constituency seat. The newly elected Bundestag was called to its constitutive sitting on 26 October 2021, and the archive biography for the 20th electoral term lists him as directly elected in constituency 114, Krefeld II – Wesel II.

2025 election and the state list

The next election was held on 23 February 2025, with Dieren again the SPD candidate, now in constituency 113, where the state returning officer recorded his state-list place as 17. Eligibility was 173,314, and 140,222 people voted, a turnout of 80.9 percent, 6.0 points higher than in 2021. Invalid first votes numbered 1,253 (0.9 percent); valid first votes numbered 138,969.

Radomski was elected with 44,412 first votes, 32.0 percent, up 3.5 points. Dieren, recorded as the leading unsuccessful candidate, received 41,999, 30.2 percent, down 5.0 points, which was 2,413 votes fewer than Radomski. The Federal Returning Officer's result names Kerstin Christiane Radomski (CDU) as elected in the constituency and Jan Ulrich Dieren (SPD) as Erstunterlegener.

First votes for the other larger parties were 23,421 for the AfD (16.9 percent, up 9.9 points), 12,133 for the Greens (8.7 percent, down 4.6), 8,552 for Die Linke (6.2 percent, up 3.0) and 4,841 for the FDP (3.5 percent, down 4.9). Beside Radomski, at CDU list place 15, the constituency ballot carried Ursula Schauws (Greens, list place 5), Florian Philipp Ott (FDP, place 31), Hauke Finger (AfD, place 18) and Edith Bartelmus-Scholich (Die Linke, with no state-list place), together with Stephan Töpfer of the Free Voters and Benjamin Klappan of Volt.

Of 139,391 valid second votes, the CDU received 40,194 (28.8 percent, up 4.1 points) and the SPD 31,212 (22.4 percent, down 9.4). The AfD took 23,203 (16.6 percent, up 9.6), the Greens 15,368 (11.0 percent, down 3.9), Die Linke 11,210 (8.0 percent, up 4.4) and the FDP 6,629 (4.8 percent, down 6.7). The Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht, which had no constituency candidate, received 6,128 second votes, 4.4 percent.

Dieren did not take the constituency seat. In the state returning officer's final results file of Landeslistenplätze he is entered as Jan Ulrich Dieren, a lawyer living in Moers, at SPD place 17. The Bundestag biography for the current term states that he was elected on the North Rhine-Westphalia state list, with his constituency candidacy in Wahlkreis 113, Krefeld II – Wesel II.

Work in the Bundestag

Twentieth electoral term

In the twentieth electoral term Dieren sat for the Social Democratic Party of Germany in the Bundestag. When the Committee on Labour and Social Affairs was constituted on 15 December 2021, he was one of its 49 ordinary members and one of 14 from the SPD. The archived biography for 2021–2025 also lists him as an ordinary member of the Committee on the Scrutiny of Elections, Immunity and the Rules of Procedure, and as a deputy member of the Committee on Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid and of the Committee on Legal Affairs. His Berlin office was at Platz der Republik 1.

Plenary speeches clustered on the Works Constitution Act and works councils. On 27 April 2023, in the 100th sitting, he spoke for the SPD on motions from the then group Die Linke titled "Zukunft, mitbestimmt" (printed paper 20/5405 and related prints). He tied co-determination to 1 May and argued, citing closures at Continental and Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof and the sale of Viessmann, that such decisions should not be taken over employees' heads.

On 19 December 2024, in the 207th sitting, he spoke on Left motions covering workplace democracy, co-determination in economic change, works-council founding, collective bargaining and the statutory minimum wage. Taking ThyssenKrupp steel—about €2 billion in public support for lower-emission steel, then news that 11,000 of 27,000 employees would lose their jobs—he asked whether individuals such as chief executive Miguel López should decide the fate of about 100,000 employees, and said the SPD wanted "more democracy in the world of work". The House referred four Left motions on workplace co-determination, among them printed papers 20/11026, 20/11027 and 20/11028, back to the labour committee. A further motion, "Europarecht ernst nehmen – Gesetzlichen Mindestlohn armutsfest machen und Tarifbindung stärken" (printed paper 20/13741), was sent to committee; only the AfD supported an immediate vote.

Dieren was rapporteur for the committee recommendation and report of 6 November 2024 on those three motions (printed paper 20/13689), which recommended rejection. The report records the SPD as supporting stronger participation while voting with the CDU/CSU, Greens, FDP and AfD for rejection; the Left voted against and the BSW group was absent.

Twenty-first electoral term

From 2025 the biography lists him as an ordinary member of the Committee on Labour and Social Affairs and of the Petitions Committee, and as a deputy member of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Consumer Protection, returned on the North Rhine-Westphalia state list. Both committees were constituted on 21 May 2025. The labour committee has 42 ordinary members, eight of them SPD, including Dieren; the Petitions Committee has 26, with Dieren, Daniela Rump, Stefan Schwartze, Ruppert Stüwe and Serdar Yüksel for the SPD. The SPD parliamentary group lists the matching working-group seats from that date. Constituency offices are at Ostring 3, 47441 Moers, and Südwall 38, 47798 Krefeld.

On 26 June 2025, in the 14th sitting, he spoke on a Left motion for an action plan on collective-bargaining coverage (printed paper 21/585), citing more than 1.2 billion overtime hours in the previous year, more than half unpaid, and warning that falling coverage left employees to bargain alone. On 10 October 2025, in the 32nd sitting, he spoke in the first reading of the government bill on collective-bargaining compliance in federal public contracts, the Tariftreuegesetz (printed paper 21/1941), arguing that infrastructure spending should not reward the cheapest bidder and that contractors should apply agreed wages where collective agreements exist.

On 16 October 2025, in the 34th sitting, he spoke in the second and third reading of a government bill on machinery rules and the Parcel Delivery Worker Protection Act (printed papers 21/1507 and 21/2256), taken with a Green motion on parcel work (printed paper 21/1756), and described subcontracted drivers under time pressure. As rapporteur he had signed, on 15 October, a recommendation to adopt the government bill unchanged and to reject the Green motion. He was also rapporteur for the report of 17 December 2025 on the bill amending the Product Safety Act (printed paper 21/3325). The committee recommended adoption with a CDU/CSU–SPD amendment raising the ceiling on the federal funding share in section 31(1) of the Posted Workers Act (Arbeitnehmer-Entsendegesetz), replacing the figure 3.996 with 4.2 so that advice on labour and social rights could continue as costs rose. The report records the SPD as calling the change a matter of "fair mobility" for foreign workers.

On 8 May 2026, in the 78th sitting, he spoke on Left motions to extend works councils' enforceable rights, ease their work, encourage new councils and widen co-determination, including at multinational level (printed papers 21/5719, 21/5720, 21/5722 and 21/5723). He said a petition had reached him the day before from a citizen who wanted co-determination cut as bureaucracy, that he opposed cutting it, and that the people who "keep the place running" should help decide its direction.

Legislative focus

Rapporteur texts and plenary speeches run through works-council rights, collective bargaining, public-contract wages, parcel delivery and product safety. The 2024 text he signed on a broad co-determination reform recommended rejection while recording SPD support for the wider aim; the later government bills were recommended for adoption, unchanged for machinery and parcels and amended for product safety.

The May 2026 speech is one plenary trace of the petitions seat, using a citizen's petition against co-determination as a foil. The Rheinische Post reported on 3 March 2026 that he had urged employees to vote in works-council elections running until the end of May. In the press release quoted there he called workplace co-determination "a democratic basic right of working people" and said no eligible establishment should remain without a works council. He restated an SPD line that obstruction of council elections and work should be sanctioned more heavily, and that decisions such as site closures should not be taken over employees' heads.

Political positions

Labour and co-determination

As a labour lawyer on the Bundestag Committee on Labour and Social Affairs, Dieren has treated works councils as a standing demand. Before the 2026 elections he called co-determination “a democratic basic right of working people” and said no eligible plant should lack a council. The Rheinische Post reported his view that joint representation improves conditions and trust in democracy, that the Social Democratic Party should see obstruction of elections and council work punished more heavily, and that closures should not be decided over employees’ heads. At an SPD works-council conference in December 2024 he said artificial intelligence raises work intensity and surveillance, and helps staff “only if employees have a say.”

He has opposed changes that would lengthen working time. On 4 June 2025, on a motion by Die Linke, he said, “My time is my life,” and that control of working time was control of life. Only 3 percent of employees, and 1.5 percent of parents, he said, wanted to work after 18:00; nine in ten did not want more hours. On 17 October 2025 he said more than half already felt they worked too much, and that a Working Time Act reform making people work more “cannot, must not and will not happen with us,” though a weekly maximum in the coalition agreement had not been an SPD priority. He required electronic time records, paid overtime, agreed weekly ceilings and works-council rights over staffing. In August 2025 he told Abgeordnetenwatch he wanted a €15 statutory minimum wage, collective agreements on public contracts, and a pension level of at least 48 percent until 2031. A speech reported by the Rheinische Post called for a system “into which everyone pays, including those who earn particularly well,” and treated an Alternative for Germany motion limited to members of parliament as too narrow and as a use of anger.

Fiscal and social policy

After the Federal Constitutional Court’s November 2023 ruling on the Climate and Transformation Fund, he told the Rheinische Post that an economic emergency still justified suspending the debt brake in the Basic Law for 2023 and 2024 so the state could invest. Borrowing little might suit good times, he said, but the rule “ties our hands” when investment is urgent; social or pension cuts were irresponsible. He wanted the brake abolished, and noted that the CDU and CSU would not provide the majority.

On 18 March 2025 he was the only SPD member to vote against the amendment exempting defence and some security spending above 1 percent of GDP from that rule and creating a €500 billion credit-financed fund for infrastructure and climate neutrality. The vote was 512 to 206; from the parties behind the deal, only Mario Czaja (CDU) and Canan Bayram of Alliance 90/The Greens also voted no. In 2022 he voted against the €100 billion armed-forces fund and its constitutional change, citing too little debate. In July 2026 he told the Frankfurter Rundschau, “The money is there; it is merely at the disposal of a few extremely rich people,” and named rent caps, taxes on wealth and inheritances, health insurance paid by all, an adequate pension, and investment in buses, railways and schools.

Foreign policy and public controversy

The Münchner Merkur reported that he alone in the Friedrich Merz coalition voted against the military-service law passed in early December 2025. He called it wrong: more than a million active NATO troops in Europe would face a Russian attack, and 80,000 extra German soldiers would not, in his view, decide it. He preferred voluntary service to compulsory muster, said further armament can raise the chance of war, and rejected Boris Pistorius’s word “kriegstüchtig” (“fit for war”).

On Saturday 10 January 2026 he joined a panel, “Butter statt Kanonen,” at the 31st International Rosa Luxemburg Conference in Berlin, run by the daily junge Welt. The Rheinische Post called that paper a Marxist daily; Die Welt reported that the 2023 report of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution ranks it the leading left-extremist medium, and quoted him, from junge Welt’s account, on money going to rearmament while the welfare state was cut. The row concerned a greeting by Burkhard Garweg, a fugitive linked to the third generation of the Red Army Faction and sought over suspected attempted murder and serious robberies. Extracts, the Rheinische Post reported via junge Welt, were read on 11 January; Die Welt said the text greeted readers “from illegality,” rejected the terrorism label and demanded freedom for Daniela Klette. Dieren’s office told Die Welt he had attended only the panel, had neither heard nor known of the greeting, and held debate with opponents to be compatible with SPD values; LokalKlick reported that legal steps against other accounts were under consideration.

On 22 January Dieter Nuhr, on ARD, criticized members for attending an event with that greeting and asked how a neo-Nazi greeting before Union politicians would have been treated. CDU deputy leader Günter Krings told Die Welt that romanticizing left-wing terrorism was “completely inappropriate” after the attack on Berlin’s power supply. AfD manager Bernd Baumann spoke of a “massively disturbed relationship” to terrorism and democracy; Green manager Irene Mihalic called reported Gaza–Holocaust comparisons unbearable and said members should not dignify the event. Die Welt reported no distancing statement from the SPD or Left groups. SPD Krefeld chair Stella Rütten condemned political violence, distanced the party from such greetings, and said Dieren had not been present and had not known; CDU Krefeld chair Christopher Schiffer said attending the “Marxist daily” sent a signal that required a clear break.

Publications

Hegel and the European Union

In 2024 Verlag Königshausen & Neumann, in Würzburg, published Jan Dieren’s Hegels Rechtsphilosophie und die Europäische Union as volume 613 of Epistemata, Reihe Philosophie. The paperback of 17 July 2024 has 174 pages (ISBN 978-3-8260-6941-3; 15.5 by 23.5 centimetres), and the German National Library records an online edition of the same length under ISBN 978-3-8260-8904-6. It catalogues the book as a university publication (Hochschulschrift): a master’s thesis (Masterarbeit) from 2021 at Ruhr University Bochum. The publisher’s note says only that Dieren, born in 1991, had studied philosophy, Romance studies and law, among other subjects.

Cover of Jan Dieren, Hegels Rechtsphilosophie und die Europäische Union (Königshausen & Neumann, 2024).

The deposited contents move from an introduction through Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s system and the place of the Elements of the Philosophy of Right, with an excursus on Immanuel Kant’s political philosophy (a world republic or a federation of peoples), to supranational relations in that system. Those chapters use analogies with abstract right, with the state arising from civil society and with the state of nature; they discuss interstate relations, a gap in ethical life (Sittlichkeit), the Holy Alliance, war, and the individuality and genus of states. A fourth part treats the European Union as a supranational connection—whether a “European spirit” grounds it, how it might be conceived with Hegel, and contemporary states going beyond themselves—before conclusions and a bibliography.

The publisher’s description gives the argument. It says that debate still leaves open whether the Union is a state, while Hegel holds that no real connection standing above individual states can exist. Dieren is presented as finding considerable contradictions in that account and as treating the insistence on the single state as contrary to Hegel’s own conception, because the system’s dynamic drives beyond the individual state. Present conditions, the same text continues, also show states going beyond themselves, so that the Union could be grasped “with Hegel against Hegel” (Mit Hegel gegen Hegel).

Essays and commentary

Earlier published writing is political commentary. In LuXemburg 3/2019, issued as “Socialism for Future” (ISSN 1869-0424) by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Dieren and Rhonda Koch appear in “Wie heute mit Sozialismus Politik machen?”, a conversation conducted by Barbara Fried and Hannah Schurian and printed on pages 46–51. The journal identifies him as deputy federal chair of the Young Socialists in the SPD. He calls socialism self-determination over work, production and life, argues for a socialist current inside the Social Democratic Party of Germany because social democracy is socially rooted, and describes a Jusos project, commissioned in 2017, on a democratic organization of production.

On 9 June 2020 he joined the foundation’s livestream “Belegschaftseigentum: Alles nur Mini-Kapitalist*innen?”, the third event in the series “Was, wenn es uns gehört?” on expropriation, socialization and economic democratization, with Tom Strohschneider, Jenny Simon and moderator Aaron Bruckmiller. The foundation archives a recording of 1 hour 26 minutes. The announced subject was Kevin Kühnert’s proposal to “collectivize” BMW so that employees would decide how profit was distributed, set beside conservative schemes of employee share ownership.

Memberships, disclosures and personal life

Associations and honorary offices

The Bundestag biography, which rests on Dieren's own statements, records that he was born on 29 July 1991 in Moers and is unmarried. On his website he lists, besides the Social Democratic Party of Germany, membership of the services union ver.di and of the Sozialistische Jugend Deutschlands – Die Falken.

The parliamentary disclosure names the association offices. He is chair of the board of Forum Demokratische Linke 21 e.V. in Berlin. The association states that he, Erik von Malottki and Alma Kleen have been its chairs since 30 October 2023, after an election on 29 October 2023; the archived disclosure for the 20th electoral term still listed him as a board member until 3 December 2024 and as chair only from 4 December 2024. He is a board member of Institut Solidarische Moderne e.V., also in Berlin. On 3 June 2026 its general meeting elected him one of three board spokespersons, with Caren Lay and Karoline Otte, and the association's imprint names him first spokesperson. From 28 April 2026 the Bundestag lists him as an honorary member of the advisory board of Deutsches Medikamenten-Hilfswerk action medeor e.V. in Tönisvorst-Vorst, and the organisation's advisory-board page includes him. He was a board member of Partnerschaftsverein La Trinidad-Moers e.V. until 5 November 2025.

Disclosed outside income

The Code of Conduct for members (Verhaltensregeln), set out in the Members of the Bundestag Act, requires notification to the President of the last occupation before the mandate, paid work carried on alongside it, functions in companies, public-law corporations and associations, shareholdings, and agreements on future activities or advantages. Such outside work is in principle allowed, but the mandate is meant to remain the centre of a member's activity, and certain payments and benefits are prohibited. Notices are due within three months of taking the seat and within three months of any change, and are published after the administration checks that publication is required. Income above €1,000 in a month, or €3,000 in a calendar year, is published to the cent. The figure is a gross amount, including compensation, equalisation payments and benefits in kind; the member's own expenses are not deducted, and the sum is not taxable income.

Before the mandate Dieren practised as a lawyer with TowaRA:Arbeitsrecht in Cologne. In the 20th electoral term that practice was disclosed at €600 gross a month and, from 1 September 2022, at €520 gross a month. For 2025 the published figure is a single gross amount of €3,570. Council pay in Moers is given as €870 gross a month, then €664.52 from 1 May 2022, €380 from 1 June 2022 until the end of 2023, €387.60 through 2024, and €395.40 from 1 January 2025 until the seat ended on 5 November 2025, plus irregular gross sums of €675 in 2022, €713 in 2024 and €273.90 in 2025. He had chaired the council's social committee until May 2022. The youth-welfare and urban-development committee seats, and several ex officio posts in Moers municipal companies, ended on 5 November 2025; a supervisory-board seat at Moers Kultur GmbH is listed from 12 November 2025, with no remuneration shown. No separate pay is published for the association offices, and the action medeor seat is marked honorary.