# Jeanne Dillschneider

# Jeanne Dillschneider

Jeanne Dillschneider (born 27 December 1995 in Saarlouis) is a German lawyer and a politician of Alliance 90/[The Greens](/organizations/the-greens) from Saarland. She has sat in the Bundestag since the 21st Bundestag constituted itself on 25 March 2025, returned on the Saarland state list after standing in constituency 296, Saarbrücken. Since 7 May 2023 she has been a state co-chair of the Saarland Greens, elected at a party congress in Homburg together with Volker Morbe.

The Bundestag biography, which the parliament states is based on the member’s own information, records an Abitur at the Gymnasium Saarburg (2006–2014), law studies at Saarland University from 2015 to 2021, and the legal traineeship at the Higher Regional Court of Saarbrücken from 2021 to 2023. Since 2023 she has practised as a Rechtsanwältin specialising in data-protection law and cybersecurity. The same register of members’ interests lists continued work for Reusch Rechtsanwaltsgesellschaft mbH in Saarbrücken at 556 euros gross a month. The biography describes her as Roman Catholic and married.

Dillschneider joined the Greens in 2016, was a spokesperson of the Saarland Green Youth in 2017–2019 and again in 2020–2023, and was deputy state chair of the Saarland party from 2018 to 2021. From 2019 she sat on the Saarbrücken city council and, according to the biography, chaired its Green group from 2022; the interest register records the council seat and membership of the Mitte district council as having ended on 24 March 2026. Before the 2021 federal election the Federal Electoral Committee refused to admit the Saarland Green state list, upholding state returning officer Monika Zöllner’s finding that the exclusion of 49 delegates from the Saarlouis branch was a serious electoral error and a breach of the democratic principle. Dillschneider, then spokesperson of the state Green Youth, had been chosen as lead candidate on a second list drawn up in mid-July 2021, and the rejected list could not be voted for on 26 September 2021. At the May 2023 congress she defeated the incumbent co-chair Uta Sullenberger by 60 votes to 39.

In the snap 2025 German federal election of 23 February 2025, the Greens received 43,371 second votes in Saarland, 7.2 percent of valid second votes, with the official table recording a change of 7.2 percentage points, on a turnout of 82.4 percent. In Saarbrücken she took 10,931 first votes (7.4 percent); the constituency seat went to Josephine Ortleb of the [Social Democratic Party of Germany](/organizations/social-democratic-party-of-germany) with 32.4 percent. In the 21st Bundestag she is the Green parliamentary group’s spokesperson (Obfrau), and a full member, of the Committee on Digital Affairs and State Modernisation and of the subcommittee on arms control, non-proliferation and international disarmament, a full member of the Defence Committee, and a deputy member of the Committee on European Union Affairs. She also sits on the board of the Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly, is a deputy member of the German delegation to the Interparliamentary Conference on the Common Foreign and Security Policy and the Common Security and Defence Policy, and is deputy chair of the German–Korean parliamentary group.

## Early life and education

### Family and childhood in Orscholz

Jeanne Dillschneider was born on 27 December 1995 in Saarlouis. The Bundestag biography, which states that its personal details rest on members' own information, lists her as Roman Catholic. A profile in the regional daily *[Ouest-France](/organizations/ouest-france)* in September 2015 described her as coming from Orscholz, a village in the Saar, in Germany, forming part of the municipality of Mettlach. The municipality presents Orscholz as one of its districts in Saarland: a state-recognised *Luftkurort* (climatic air resort) since 1997 and a *heilklimatischer Kurort* (climatic health resort) since March 2004, with the Cloef viewpoint over the Saarschleife. Its published local history says the place belonged to France until the Peace of Vienna and was ceded to Prussia after the collapse of the Napoleonic empire.

The *Ouest-France* article, headlined "Jeanne Dillschneider, petite fille du jumelage avec Orscholz" ("child of the twinning with Orscholz"), tied her family to that partnership. It reported that her parents, Georg and Delphine, met through the twinning between Orscholz and the communes of the canton of Varades; that Georg had for a time chaired the committee on the German side, while Marie-Anne Benoist chaired it on the Varades side; and that Delphine's mother was already active in the partnership and remained so. Dillschneider had herself returned to Varades, as princess of Orscholz, for the wine fair there. In Orscholz, the municipal park connecting the rehabilitation clinic with the viewpoints is named Varadeser Park after the partner town.

At a Saarland Greens state convention in Mettlach-Orscholz in November 2024, she called herself a *Halbfranzösin* (half-French woman) who had grown up in Orscholz, in the *Dreiländereck*, and said that this upbringing had strongly shaped an identity built around the European idea and around freedom, democracy and the rule of law. That wording is her own, as published by the party; the 2015 newspaper report does not use it, though it does place her parents' meeting, and her later stay with family on the Varades side, inside the twinning.

### Schooling

From 2006 to 2014 Dillschneider attended the Gymnasium Saarburg and left with the Abitur. The school, at Graf-Siegfried-Straße 72 in Saarburg, Rhineland-Palatinate, describes itself as lying in the border region of Germany, France and Luxembourg. It reports about 1,100 pupils and about 90 teachers, and states that it is one of only eight schools in Rhineland-Palatinate offering French bilingual teaching that can lead to the Abibac, the German Abitur combined with the French *baccalauréat*. The Bundestag biography does not record whether she followed that bilingual track.

*Ouest-France* wrote that at 18, with her secondary-school diploma already in hand, she took a gap year in Spain in order to widen her horizon. When that year ended she looked for a placement in one of the communes of the Varades canton, so that she could spend time with her family and improve her French, especially her writing. In the summer of 2015 the town hall of Belligné took her on: she worked at reception, revised the schedule for hiring out rooms, and on her own initiative translated the commune's website into German and English. The paper described her course as preparation for a degree in European law, and suggested that immersion from childhood in cross-border contacts and languages may have contributed to that choice.

The Bundestag biography dates her study of law (*Rechtswissenschaften*) at Saarland University from 2015 to 2021, again from her own information, and does not mention the year in Spain or the placement in Belligné.

## Legal training and practice

### University and Referendariat

The biography published by the Bundestag, based on the member’s own information, records that Jeanne Dillschneider studied law at Saarland University from 2015 to 2021 and completed the Rechtsreferendariat, the practical preparatory service, at the Oberlandesgericht Saarbrücken from 2021 to 2023. Under the German Judiciary Act, the qualification for judicial office requires a university law degree closed by the first examination—a university focus-area examination together with a state examination in the compulsory subjects—followed by that preparatory service and the second state examination. The law faculty at Saarland University states that the erste juristische Prüfung is passed only when both parts have been passed, and that the Landesprüfungsamt für Juristen conducts the state compulsory-subject examination.

*The higher court building in Saarbrücken associated with the Saarländisches Oberlandesgericht.*

The profile published by her later employer, Reusch Rechtsanwaltsgesellschaft mbH, states that she also completed the certificate programme “IT-Recht und Rechtsinformatik”, and that the Referendariat included stages at a French law firm working in finance and mergers-and-acquisitions law and at the École de formation professionnelle des barreaux (EFB) in Paris. The EFB is the vocational school of the bars in the district of the Paris court of appeal. The university’s Institute for Legal Informatics has offered the certificate since the winter semester 2016/17. It is an interdisciplinary course, with no technical prerequisite, in contract and tort law relevant to information technology, data-protection law, copyright, electronic justice and electronic government, and the technical foundations of the internet and IT security. The institute’s study plan sets it at four modules and 24 credit points, normally over two semesters.

### Practice in data protection and cybersecurity

Since 2023 the Bundestag has listed Dillschneider’s occupation as Rechtsanwältin, with data-protection law and cybersecurity as her fields of practice. Under the Federal Lawyers’ Act, use of that title requires admission to the bar, which in turn requires the qualification for judicial office or a qualification provided for European lawyers.

On 29 September 2023 the *Saarbrücker Zeitung* reported that Dillschneider, then 27 and chair of the Greens in the Saarland, would start the following Monday, 2 October 2023, as an associate at Reusch Rechtsanwaltsgesellschaft mbH, which uses the name reuschlaw, in its Digital Business unit under Stefan Hessel. The newspaper described the firm, with offices in Saarbrücken and Berlin, as specialised in product-liability law and as advising companies on product-safety law, recalls, cybersecurity and data protection. In the Bundestag register of members’ interests, that Saarbrücken firm is named as her occupation before she entered parliament and as paid work continued alongside the mandate, at 556.00 euros gross per month. Those entries are filings under the rules of conduct in sections 45 and following of the Members of the Bundestag Act.

In 2025 she was a co-author, with Stefan Hessel and Christina Kiefer, of “Datenschutz und Cybersicherheit von medizinischen Produkten” in *Datenschutz und Datensicherheit*, volume 49, pages 181–185. In the same journal she was lead author, with Ann-Katrin Dreher, Elena Kouremenou, Florian Schiegg and Aline Vugrincic, of “Datenschutz bei autonomen Shuttles im Smart-City-Verkehr”, volume 49, pages 312–316. The firm profile also lists three 2023 pieces written with Hessel: on data-protection supervision of artificial intelligence in *Recht digital* (issue 10/2023, p. 458), on the competition-law relevance of data-protection violations at Facebook in *iX* (issue 8/2023, pp. 80–81), and on artificial intelligence and data protection in the workplace in *Zeitschrift für Arbeitsrecht im Unternehmen* (issue 7/2023, p. 428).

## Green Youth and early party roles

### Grüne Jugend Saar

Jeanne Dillschneider joined Alliance 90/The Greens in 2016. In the biography she filed with the Bundestag — the parliament notes that such biographies rest on members' own disclosures — she is spokesperson (*Sprecherin*) of the Grüne Jugend Saar from 2017 to 2019 and again from 2020 to 2023. The Saarland youth association says it was founded in Saarlouis in August 1993, renamed from Grüne Alternative Jugend in 2001, and cooperates critically with the state party without requiring party membership.

A members' assembly in February 2017 elected her and Saskia Kiefer as the two spokespersons. The *Saarbrücker Zeitung* named Nico Wettmann and Lisa Wätzold as managers and Deborah Hirth, re-elected, as treasurer, and reported debate on nuclear energy, right-wing extremism and the universities. The youth association's account, carried by Scharf Links, placed Dillschneider in Saarbrücken and Kiefer in Saarlouis.

On 25 March 2018 she was re-elected with Nick Lohmann of Beckingen. She called for a voting age of 16 and for youth councils, arguing that too many decisions were taken over the heads of those affected, and criticised the federal coalition's handling of Section 219a of the German Criminal Code. With co-chair Tina Schöpfer, the spokespersons cast the Greens as an extra-parliamentary opposition in Saarland. On 12 March 2019 the *Saarbrücker Zeitung* still called her *Landessprecherin* when the Green Youth objected that a new SaarVV mobile ticket was sold only to adults; she asked for a prepaid option. By 30 July 2019 Lohmann was the spokesperson quoted, with the Junge Liberale Saar, against the state's rejection of a nationwide central *Abitur*.

She returned on 26 September 2020. The *Saarbrücker Zeitung* reported that she and Marlene Schädler had been elected the association's *Landesvorsitzende*, with Tim Gilzendegen as press officer, Carolin De Marino and Santino Klos in the management, and Florian Lippert as treasurer. She remained spokesperson through the state party's conflict of 2021. A members' assembly in Homburg on 18 September 2021 confirmed her and Klos as the leading pair. In March 2023 the *Saarbrücker Zeitung* still described her as spokesperson of the Grüne Jugend im Saarland as she prepared to seek the state chair that May.

### Deputy state chair

The deputy chairmanship was an office in a state party then outside the Landtag of Saarland. At a *Landesparteitag* in the Stadthalle in Dillingen, reported by the *Saarbrücker Zeitung* on 2 September 2018, delegates re-elected Markus Tressel and Tina Schöpfer as co-chairs for two years, with 92.2 and 92.8 percent. Membership had risen by about 50 that year, to 1,400, and Tressel, party leader since Hubert Ulrich stepped back in 2017, said the Saarland Greens were missing from the Landtag. A dpa report recorded more than 1,400 members and the 4.0 percent with which the party had missed the Landtag in March 2017.

The paper wrote that the wider executive presented the party as younger and more female. Its four deputies included the then 22-year-old Dillschneider of the Green Youth, the lawyer Claudia Beck (44), [the economist](/organizations/the-economist) Marc Piazolo and Klaus Borger (59), a former environment state secretary. The same congress's draft for the 2019 local elections called for voting at 16, the demand she had made as youth spokesperson that March.

The Bundestag disclosure dates the deputy role from 2018 to 2021, so that it overlapped both spells as Green Youth spokesperson and, from 2019, a seat as *Stadtverordnete* in Saarbrücken. It ended in June 2021. On 5 July the *Saarbrücker Zeitung* called her deputy state chair until June, after the *Landesparteitag* of 20 June at which the Bundestag state list was contested. On 15 July, Saarländischer Rundfunk still identified her as spokesperson of the Grüne Jugend im Saarland.

## Municipal politics in Saarbrücken

### Council and district roles

Jeanne Dillschneider sat as a Stadtverordnete on the council of Saarbrücken, capital of Saarland, from 2019. That date is in the biography she supplied to the Bundestag, which states that such details rest on members' own information; Saarländischer Rundfunk repeated it in December 2025. The council has 63 seats. At the municipal election on 9 June 2024, Bündnis 90/Die Grünen received 9,744 votes in the city, 13.7 percent — 6.2 points fewer than at the previous election — and nine seats, four fewer than before. The official final result of 3 July 2024 recorded 131,375 eligible voters and turnout of 56.5 percent.

The biography calls her chair of the Green faction from 2022 and a member of the Bezirksrat of Saarbrücken-Mitte from 2021. The faction has treated the chair as a dual office. After its meeting on 17 June 2024 it said the board last elected in February 2022 had been confirmed, with Claudia Schmelzer and Dillschneider continuing as co-chairs and Heiner Engelhardt and Thomas Brass as deputies, for the term beginning in July.

In a dispute over Saarland's draft state development plan, the Saarbrücker Zeitung on 4 December 2023 quoted Dillschneider alongside the CDU against the SPD. She argued that the city still needed scope, after weighing ecological concerns, for projects and denser development, and that flood protection could be handled locally through Vorbehaltsgebiete rather than Vorranggebiete. She accused the SPD of shielding the state government. Christine Jung, the SPD's building-policy spokesperson, replied that the city could no longer build as before and that projects would not be blocked if properly justified.

The Bundestag disclosure lists the company posts attached to the municipal mandate and prints pay only where stated. She was on the supervisory board of Sparkasse Saarbrücken until 10 February 2026, at 3,000 euros gross half-yearly. At GIU Gesellschaft für Innovation und Unternehmensförderung mbH & Co. Flächenmanagement Saarbrücken KG she was a board member until 9 February 2026 and a deputy from 10 February 2026; she sat on the board of Gesellschaft für Innovation und Unternehmensförderung mbH until 22 April 2026. Until that date she is listed as a substitute at City-Marketing Saarbrücken GmbH, at Filmfestival Max-Ophüls-Preis gemeinnützige GmbH, the company of the Max Ophüls Prize festival, and at Gesellschaft für Kommunalanlagen und Beratung Saarbrücken mbH. The disclosure enters 6,990.46 euros gross from the city for 2025 with the offices of Stadtverordnete and member of Bezirksrat Mitte, both ended on 24 March 2026.

### Leaving local office after the Bundestag election

After Dillschneider entered the Bundestag in 2025, her attendance in Saarbrücken fell. The Saarbrücker Zeitung reported on 23 December 2025 that, on its count, she had attended three of nine council meetings that year and missed six: September, both November sittings, one of them special, and both December sittings, when the budget was debated. It put her last appearance at the beginning of July. Oberbürgermeister Uwe Conradt (CDU) read out absences at the opening of meetings, and the paper noted that Die PARTEI had written in the municipal newsletter of a "Jeanne D." who was by then usually physically absent as well.

She told the paper she had resigned the faction chair on Monday, 22 December 2025, because her political tasks had widened, and that a new election was expected in January. For the time being she meant to keep the council seat. The same day she confirmed the step to Saarländischer Rundfunk, which added that she had already given up the Bezirksrat Mitte mandate in September 2025.

She did not keep the seat. In a report first published on 19 March 2026 and updated on 24 March, Rundfunk wrote that she had resigned it entirely, contrary to the December announcement, and that Martin Altehage had succeeded her. Faction chairs Karin Burkart and José Ignacio Rodriguez Maicas thanked her for shaping the group. The Bundestag disclosure ends both the council office and Bezirksrat Mitte membership on 24 March 2026, later than the September 2025 district-council resignation the broadcaster reported.

## The 2021 Saarland list dispute

### First list, statute and arbitration

On 20 June 2021 a delegate assembly of Alliance 90/The Greens in Saarland adopted a state list for the Bundestag election of 26 September. Former state chair Hubert Ulrich, of the Saarlouis branch, took first place against Jeanne Dillschneider, then spokesperson of the Green Youth in the Saarland. Odd-numbered places, including that place, are reserved for women. Chancellor candidate [Annalena Baerbock](/people/annalena-baerbock) said, "Wir haben uns das anders gewünscht." Federal executive director [Michael Kellner](/people/michael-kellner) wrote to the new state executive of a "Debakel" and asked whether the list was formally correct and, if the doubts held, whether Ulrich would give up first place. Ulrich called the letter a "massiven Eingriff in die Autonomie des Landesverbands".

The Saarland party arbitration court declared itself biased, and the state arbitration court of Rhineland-Palatinate heard the case. By 13 July it had ruled that Ulrich's list could not be submitted for the [2021 German federal election](/facts/2021-german-federal-election). *[Der Spiegel](/organizations/der-spiegel)*, citing the *Saarbrücker Zeitung*, reported the grounds as disregard of the women's statute and votes by members of the Green Youth and the Green seniors who were not entitled to vote. Tagesschau, and a later Spiegel report, instead described the formal ground as those ineligible votes, with the statute as the prior objection; *[Die Welt](/organizations/die-welt)* spoke of formal defects.

Ulrich's injunction against a new congress failed at the Landgericht Saarbrücken, which held the invitation not manifestly unlawful; *Der Spiegel* also reported that he had tried to force the authorities to accept his list. He then stood down, telling the *Saarbrücker Zeitung* he would not have run had he known "welche Verwerfungen es gibt". State chair Barbara Meyer-Gluche had already called a congress for 17 July, warning of "ein immenser politischer Schaden" if the party had no list. Several senior members resigned at the end of June, including newly elected chair Ralph Rouget after five days. The executive election set for 17 July was cancelled on the state arbitration court's advice, because of possible challenges, and Meyer-Gluche resigned; the Saarländischer Rundfunk reported that the day before the congress.

### Second convention and the electoral committees

On 15 July the federal party arbitration court held that the Saarlouis delegates elected on 16 May were invalid. The Federal Electoral Committee's minutes record the reasons: three members from outside the branch, who had no vote, were excluded, partly by reference to coronavirus limits, while other non-local members attended and one was proposed as chair. The court treated that partial denial of party publicity, and the unequal treatment, as a serious defect. The branch could not repeat the election in time, so 49 registered representatives, about a third of the delegates, did not attend on 17 July.

In the Saarlandhalle in Saarbrücken the congress set aside the list of 20 June and elected Dillschneider, then 25, to first place with 56 votes, 27 against and three abstentions. On 30 July the Saarland electoral committee, under Land returning officer Monika Zöllner, rejected the list after about three and a half hours and admitted the other parties' lists. Several Saarlouis delegates had asked her to examine the assembly.

The committee found a serious electoral error that could be neither justified nor cured. Unequal treatment of non-voting members might breach the statute, it held, but not electoral law, because only voting members must be invited to choose representatives. Deliberately excluding the Saarlouis delegates therefore missed section 21(1), third sentence, of the Federal Elections Act. Zöllner called it an "eklatanten Verstoß gegen das Demokratieprinzip" and a "schweren Wahlfehler"; *Der Spiegel* reported that she believed the delegates had been left out on purpose.

On 5 August the Federal Electoral Committee, under federal returning officer Georg Thiel, rejected the complaint by six votes to two, with two abstentions, after one member withdrew citing possible bias. The majority held that shutting out every Saarlouis delegate breached "den Kernbestand von Verfahrensgrundsätzen", without which, under the Federal [Constitutional Court](/organizations/constitutional-court) (BVerfGE 89, 243, 252 f.), a nomination "schlechterdings nicht Grundlage einer demokratischen Wahl sein kann". The award itself breached that core, the majority found: electoral law does not require every member to be admitted, more than a third of the representatives had been excluded, and the list might have differed had they voted. A minority would have reviewed only the final assembly, not an award that bound the party's organs.

The complaint answered that the party had followed the award rather than acted intentionally or with gross negligence, that a party court may annul an assembly for reasons an electoral body would not, and that rejection was disproportionate because about two thirds of the representatives had taken part. Thiel said the exclusion was undemocratic and that with those delegates the list would probably have looked different. He added that electoral law gave no complaint to the Federal Constitutional Court before polling day.

No Green state list was on the ballot on 26 September. The official result records 31,091 Green first votes in the Saarland, 5.4 percent, and no second votes; in 2017 the party had received 35,117 second votes there. Dillschneider called the decision a severe loss for voters, who could no longer vote "für mehr Klimaschutz und soziale Gerechtigkeit", blamed Ulrich's "absoluten Machtanspruch", and with the Green Youth in the Saarland called on him to leave the party.

## State chairmanship of the Saarland Greens

### Taking the chair in 2023

On 7 May 2023 a state convention of Alliance 90/The Greens in Homburg elected Jeanne Dillschneider and Volker Morbe as co-chairs of the Saarland party. Dillschneider, then 27 and spokesperson of the Grüne Jugend Saar, defeated Uta Sullenberger, 52 and co-chair since 2021, for the place reserved for a woman. The *Saarbrücker Zeitung* reported the ballot as 60 votes to 39, with six votes against and three abstentions. Morbe, 54, previously deputy chair and the party's education spokesperson, had no opponent and received 98 of 104 delegate votes. They replaced Sullenberger and Ralph Nonninger, who had said in January that he would not stand again because of the time the office required.

*Jeanne Dillschneider and Volker Morbe at the Saarland Greens' state convention in Homburg on 7 May 2023.*

Two days earlier the same newspaper reported that *Bild*, citing unnamed people, had alleged that at the Christopher Street Day in June 2022 Sullenberger slapped several members of the Grüne Jugend on the buttocks without being asked. She called the claims baseless and outrageous and said she assumed someone wanted to damage her just before the vote. The convention did not discuss the reports. Sullenberger asked rhetorically whether she had to justify herself and said Saarland needed "green, but the original"; delegates still gave her and Nonninger standing ovations. Dillschneider told them the party had to come through its crisis together, and named climate protection, childcare places, child poverty and rural areas as first tasks.

The new chairs inherited a party already outside the Landtag of Saarland. At the [2022 state election](/facts/2022-saarland-state-election) on 27 March 2022, more than a year before Homburg, the Greens received 22,598 votes, 4.99502 percent of 452,411 valid votes, short of five percent. *Die Welt* reported that the state electoral committee confirmed the result on 6 April 2022 and that the margin was 23 votes. The Social Democratic Party under [Anke Rehlinger](/people/anke-rehlinger) took 43.5 percent; the official list of those elected names 29 [Social Democrats](/organizations/social-democrats), 19 members of the [Christian Democratic Union](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany) (28.5 percent) and three members of [Alternative for Germany](/organizations/alternative-for-germany) (5.7 percent). The Free Democratic Party also missed the threshold, on 4.8 percent. The *Saarbrücker Zeitung* put membership at just under 1,700, with the decline halted.

### Elections and the party outside the Landtag

The state party stayed out of the Landtag, and its 2024 shares fell. At the [2024 European Parliament election](/facts/2024-european-parliament-election) on 9 June the federal returning officer recorded 33,082 votes for the Greens in Saarland, 6.6 percent, against 65,758 votes and 13.2 percent in 2019. Municipal elections the same day left them, in the final statewide count for town and municipal councils after a repeat ballot in Schmelz, at 31,952 votes and 6.5 percent, 4.6 points below 2019. In the district councils and the Regionalverband Saarbrücken assembly, the result certified on 3 July 2024 was 35,975 votes and 7.3 percent, 5.3 points below 2019.

At the 2025 German federal election on 23 February the Greens' second-vote share in Saarland was 7.2 percent (43,371 votes). The federal table shows no comparison with 2021, when the state party had no Land list after an internal dispute; the *Saarbrücker Zeitung* later described that dispute as the reason the federal leadership had long kept its distance.

On 17 May 2025, at a two-day convention in Illingen, both were re-elected. The Saarländischer Rundfunk reported 85 votes in favour for Dillschneider, who had no opponent, and 96 percent for Morbe; the *Saarbrücker Zeitung* gave the shares as 85 and 96 percent. Federal co-chair [Franziska Brantner](/people/franziska-brantner) spoke, and the newspaper described the meeting as closing a structural reform that gave members more say and strengthened the local tier. Dillschneider, by then a member of the Bundestag, said the party had to become visible again and return to parliaments. The Rundfunk reported about 290 new members and a stated aim of re-entering the Landtag in spring 2027.

## The 2025 Bundestag election

### Candidacy

The election of the 21st Bundestag was brought forward to 23 February 2025. After the Social Democratic Party–Alliance 90/The Greens–Free Democratic Party traffic-light coalition broke up, Chancellor [Olaf Scholz](/people/mig-olaf-scholz) lost a vote of confidence he had put in order to force an early election. Federal President [Frank-Walter Steinmeier](/people/frank-walter-steinmeier) dissolved the 20th Bundestag on 27 December 2024 under Article 68 of the Basic Law and set polling day for 23 February, instead of 28 September 2025.

The Saarland Greens had already chosen their list. On 23 November 2024, at a state party conference in Mettlach-Orscholz, which the German Press Agency described as a members' assembly, delegates placed state chair Jeanne Dillschneider first for the 2025 German federal election. A party spokesperson told the agency that she received 89 votes in favour and five against, and that there was no opposing candidate; Saarländischer Rundfunk reported the share as just under 95 percent. Co-chair Volker Morbe was placed second, ahead of Barbara Klein-Braun, Hanko Zachow and Carolin De Marino. Dillschneider told the conference that economic policy and climate protection had to be reconciled, and that the transformation of the Saarland steel industry should be a main theme of the campaign.

The nomination was the party's first valid state list since 2021, when no list was admitted and the Greens were not electable with the second vote. The previous federal election in which Saarland voters could cast a Green second vote was 2017, when the list received 35,117 votes, 6.0 percent. Dillschneider was also the direct candidate in constituency 296, Saarbrücken. By 16 December 2024 the state party had confirmed that choice, with Morbe standing in Saarlouis, De Marino in Homburg and Julian Bonenberger in St. Wendel.

### Result and mandate

In the official final result, which the Saarland returning officer dated 17 March 2025, the Greens received 43,371 second votes, 7.2 percent of 599,723 valid second votes. Turnout was 82.4 percent, with 605,293 voters out of 734,204 eligible. The Christian Democratic Union led with 161,113 second votes (26.9 percent), ahead of the SPD on 131,136 (21.9 percent) and [the Alternative](/organizations/the-alternative) for Germany on 129,294 (21.6 percent). [Die Linke](/organizations/die-linke) took 44,080 (7.4 percent), the Bündnis [Sahra Wagenknecht](/people/sahra-wagenknecht) 37,001 (6.2 percent) and the FDP 25,725 (4.3 percent). The state table lists the Green second-vote change as 7.2 points because the party had no second-vote total in 2021; 7.2 percent was above the 6.0 percent of 2017.

On the evening of 23 February, with only the first figures available, Dillschneider told the German Press Agency that she was satisfied. "Of course it could also have been a bit more," she said, "but we have to bear in mind where we are coming from: the very unpopular traffic-light government." Whether she would have a seat was still unclear, she added, "but in principle we are confident."

She did not win the constituency. In Wahlkreis 296 her 10,931 first votes were 7.4 percent, 0.5 points below the Green share there in 2021, while the party's second votes in the district were 14,721 (9.9 percent). [Josephine Ortleb](/people/josephine-ortleb) (SPD) held the seat with 47,772 first votes (32.4 percent). Dillschneider placed fifth, behind Ortleb, Yvonne Brück of the CDU (24.8 percent), [Boris Gamanov](/people/boris-gamanov) of the AfD (20.6 percent) and Jasmin Pies of Die Linke (8.5 percent).

Saarland returned eight members: the constituency seats of Ortleb in Saarbrücken, [Philip Hoffmann](/people/philip-hoffmann) (CDU) in Saarlouis, [Roland Theis](/people/roland-theis) (CDU) in St. Wendel and [Esra Limbacher](/people/esra-limbacher) (SPD) in Homburg, plus two AfD list seats, one for Die Linke and one for the Greens. The Federal Returning Officer records Dillschneider as elected from place 1 on the Saarland Green list; constituency 296 is noted as the district where she stood but was not directly elected. The 21st Bundestag constituted itself on 25 March 2025, and her membership dates from that sitting.

## Parliamentary activity

### Digital affairs and state modernisation

In the 21st Bundestag, Jeanne Dillschneider sits for Alliance 90/The Greens as an ordinary member and as Obfrau of the Committee on Digital Affairs and State Modernisation. An Obfrau or Obmann is the parliamentary group's lead on a committee, the contact for the group leadership, who helps fix its line and the agenda. Her Saarbrücken constituency office is at Bahnhofstraße 36, 66111 Saarbrücken, and the members' register lists a paid sideline as a lawyer at Reusch Rechtsanwaltsgesellschaft mbH in Saarbrücken at 556.00 euros gross a month.

Her first speech, on 16 May 2025, was in the continued debate on the chancellor's government statement. Addressing Digital Minister Wildberger, she called for a harder cybersecurity policy and for a KRITIS umbrella law and the NIS-2 directive, which she said had been ready under the previous government. On 16 September 2025, on Einzelplan 24, the budget of the Federal Ministry for Digital Affairs and State Modernisation (printed papers 21/1064 and 21/1061), she argued that data protection and data use belonged together and asked for open-data rights, a research-data act and the German law for the European Data Act.

On 8 September 2026, again on Einzelplan 24, she noted a 6 per cent rise in the ministry's funds but said little was for investment, criticised a cut in the line for sovereign data infrastructure and artificial intelligence, and objected that the same title paid for open software such as openDesk and for a Microsoft sovereign-cloud review. She welcomed about 500 million euros newly set aside for federal IT protection and cited an August attack on the Berlin administration in which, on the figures then known, at least 1.4 million files had been taken. On 15 October 2026, before the vote on the bill implementing Regulation (EU) 2024/2847, the [Cyber Resilience](/drivers/cyber-resilience) Act (printed papers 21/6134, 21/6512, 21/8622 and 21/8623), she said the Green parliamentary group would back the law and abstain on the accompanying resolution. She asked that the Federal Office for Information Security become a central authority, with statutory vulnerability management and help for municipalities and non-profits. On 25 June 2026 she was first signatory of a minor interpellation (printed paper 21/6672) on an equivalent standard for products excluded from that regulation because they serve national security, defence or classified information.

### Defence, arms control and interparliamentary bodies

Dillschneider is an ordinary member of the Defence Committee and an ordinary member and Obfrau of the Subcommittee on Arms and Proliferation Control, Non-Proliferation and International Disarmament, and a deputy member of the Committee on the Affairs of the European Union. She is a board member and an ordinary member of the Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly, a deputy member of the German delegation to the Interparliamentary Conference for the Common Foreign and Security Policy and the Common Security and Defence Policy, and deputy chair of the German–Korean parliamentary group.

On 22 May 2026 she spoke on the annual arms-control, disarmament and non-proliferation reports; the order paper listed the 2024 report as printed paper 21/115, and the 2025 report (printed paper 21/5850) had gone to the Bundestag on 6 May 2026. She said Europe had to plan defence without the United States against a threat from Russia, accused Moscow of breaking international law in the war on Ukraine, and argued that this was a reason to strengthen arms control, not drop it. She welcomed continued German mine-clearance funding under the [Ottawa Treaty](/facts/ottawa-treaty) after Poland, the Baltic states and Finland notified withdrawal, noted that ministers no longer mentioned the [Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons](/facts/treaty-on-the-prohibition-of-nuclear-weapons) although the [Non-Proliferation Treaty](/facts/treaty-on-the-non-proliferation-of-nuclear-weapons) still stood, and said weapons using artificial intelligence, space systems and drones needed new limits as well as a capacity to defend.

On 23 December 2025 she was first signatory of a minor interpellation on research and innovation funding at agencies, hubs and laboratories in security and defence (printed paper 21/3434), including the Cyberagentur and SPRIND. The government answered on 20 January 2026 (printed paper 21/3729).

In written questions to the Federal [Ministry of Defence](/organizations/ministry-of-defence) in December 2025, February 2026 and June 2026, she asked about the Future Combat Air System: a fighter without Dassault, which departments were talking to France, and mediation between Airbus and Dassault. Parliamentary State Secretary [Nils Schmid](/people/nils-schmid) replied that talks were continuing and, in June, that the outcome could not be anticipated. In July 2026 a question on intellectual-property rights was only partly public: no such decision was planned for the Franco-German council, and the rest was classified restricted (VS-NfD). Table.Briefings reported in April 2026 that she had called the replies too thin for the project's weight; that is the outlet's account of her criticism. After the joint fighter was discontinued, she told Saarländischer Rundfunk (report of 8 June 2026) that FCAS had been a chance to depend less on the United States and that Chancellor [Friedrich Merz](/people/friedrich-merz) had to carry Franco-German cooperation forward. In a *Saarbrücker Zeitung* interview she blamed governance and signals that, she said, suggested a German "plan B".

## Political positions

### Digital policy and civil liberties

Dillschneider has treated cybersecurity and data protection as civil liberties, in her own speeches and on texts of the Alliance 90/The Greens group in the Bundestag. On 9 October 2025 she said the European Union proposal against child sexual abuse had a shared aim, but that Chatkontrolle was the wrong tool: mass screening of private images, familiar from authoritarian states, would bring false alarms, censorship and security gaps. The Social Democrat [Johannes Schätzl](/people/johannes-schatzl) also rejected the Danish Council text, but said the interior and justice ministries had opposed it from the start. A motion she introduced on 7 October 2025 with [Konstantin von Notz](/people/konstantin-von-notz) (printed paper 21/2045) is a group line, not a personal platform: it asks the government to stop suspicionless scanning of chats and cloud storage and to rule out any bypass of end-to-end encryption. In January 2026 she told Abgeordnetenwatch that even "voluntary" scanning remained legally doubtful, and she backed the [European Parliament](/organizations/european-parliament)'s court-ordered approach.

On the NIS-2 directive, on 11 September 2025, she called the EU rule necessary and overdue because of Russia's war against Ukraine and hybrid attacks on critical infrastructure. She criticised the federal draft for exempting the federal administration — only 10 per cent of its data centres met the minimum standard, she said — and for a loophole where critical work was only part of a firm's business. On the Data Act she said the digital ministry had missed the national law although a draft had sat unused since February. With von Notz, on 20 January 2026, she welcomed an EU Cybersecurity Act revision on supply chains, cloud lock-in and political influence, and a stronger European Union Agency for Cybersecurity, while warning that a weaker Federal Office for Information Security would be an "American deregulation trap." A question she led on 25 June 2026 (printed paper 21/6672) asked how products left outside the Cyber Resilience Act for defence or classified use would still meet an equivalent standard.

### Security, Europe and the Saarland economy

As lead candidate at Orscholz on 23 November 2024 she framed support for Ukraine as the party's position, calling the Greens "the party at Ukraine's side" and that stance "a modern interpretation of a peace party." In April 2026 she answered Rheinmetall chief Armin Papperger, who the *Frankfurter Rundschau* said had called Ukrainian drone-making in *The Atlantic* "like playing with Lego" by "Ukrainian housewives." She called that disrespectful of Ukraine's fighting and of women in the war, and said the remarks, just before about 298 million euros were to be released for Rheinmetall loitering munitions, looked like advertising. She warned of a gap for the brigade planned for Lithuania, because the systems might qualify only by April 2027. The economy ministry, replying in place of the defence ministry, refused to discuss executives and then praised Ukrainian drones; she said she had missed a judgment from the defence minister.

On the Future Combat Air System, Table.Briefings reported in April 2026 that she found the defence ministry too closed with parliament. After the fighter was dropped, she told the *Saarbrücker Zeitung* on 15 June 2026 that governance, clashing national views and weak political will were to blame, and that Chancellor Friedrich Merz had promised Franco-German progress and then cast doubt on the project, leaving France with the impression of a German "plan B." She called the failure bitter because FCAS could have reduced dependence on the United States. Her CDU colleague from the Saarland, Roland Theis, blamed Airbus and Dassault instead and said other Franco-German projects were safe. On 11 September 2025 she called stationary border checks a deliberate breach of law that had cost 80.5 million euros extra by June 2025, and noted that Minister-President Anke Rehlinger already wanted them stopped. In June 2026 she called them unlawful under the Schengen Area Borders Code, and cited a Koblenz administrative-court ruling. In the Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly under the Aachen Treaty she said she had pressed for a better Metz–Saarbrücken railway, and that the Saarland's security role was cooperation between the CISPA centre and Loria in Lorraine. At the November 2024 convention she said economy and climate protection had to go together, and that steel conversion — which she called Germany's largest decarbonisation project and credited chiefly to Robert Habeck — should be a campaign theme. In June 2026, after the Saarstahl works council warned that "green steel" might fail, she said as state chair that the industry had already invested billions in hydrogen-based processes, and that weaker EU climate targets and carbon pricing threatened jobs in Dillingen, Völklingen and the region.

## Personal life and civic affiliations

### Marriage and family background

The biography on the website of the [German Bundestag](/organizations/german-bundestag), which the parliament states rests on the member’s own information, records that Jeanne Dillschneider was born on 27 December 1995 in Saarlouis, is Roman Catholic, and is married. In a report dated 7 September 2018, the *Saarbrücker Zeitung* wrote that her mother was French and came from Varades, Orscholz’s partner municipality in Loire-Atlantique, and that her father was from Orscholz; the two had met through the partnership association. Dillschneider told the paper that three bilingual children had been born of that marriage.

On 12 August 2024 the *Saarbrücker Zeitung* reported that Dillschneider, state chair of the Saarland branch of Alliance 90/The Greens, and Julien François Simons had married. The article said the couple had become engaged in February 2023 and had lived together since November 2018, and that she announced the marriage in an Instagram post on the evening of Saturday, 10 August 2024. She did not explicitly state when or where the celebration took place; from pictures in her Instagram story, the paper reported that the wedding was held at the town hall in Saarbrücken.

Simons had been state chair of the Young Liberals (Junge Liberale, abbreviated Julis) in Saarland. The same report said that he left the Free Democratic Party in August 2023 to join the Christian Democratic Union, and that he worked at Saarbrücken town hall alongside Tobias Raab, head of the city’s economic and social-affairs department, who had left the FDP at about the same time.

### Associations

In the Bundestag register of functions in associations, Dillschneider is listed as unpaid deputy state chair of the Young European Federalists’ Saarland branch, Junge Europäische Föderalisten (JEF) Landesverband Saarland e.V., in Saarbrücken. The regional site Homburg1 reported on 26 March 2024 that, at a members’ assembly the previous Friday, the branch elected Albana Tërstena as state chair and Dillschneider, Matthias Spies and Simon Toscani as deputy chairs.

The narrative biography, again marked as the member’s own information, groups further affiliations in one passage and is not limited to offices that appear in that register. It names membership of Europa-Union Saar, of the Deutsch-Französische Gesellschaft Saarland and of the Union des Français en Sarre; membership of the German Women Lawyers Association (Deutscher Juristinnenbund), of RechtGrün, of LSVD Saar and of Change Network; the title of Senatorin in the carnival society Daarler Dabbese; and alumna status with the [Heinrich Böll Foundation](/organizations/heinrich-boll-foundation), with that foundation’s Grow The Future Network in Washington, D.C., and as a Young Elected Politician. Of those items, only the JEF deputy chairship is entered in the published list of association functions that accompanies the biography.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/jeanne-dillschneider