Jochen Haug

Jochen Haug (born 11 January 1973 in Aulendorf, Baden-Württemberg) is a German lawyer and a politician of the Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland, AfD). He has sat in the Bundestag since the 19th electoral term, which convened on 24 October 2017, and was returned for the 20th term (2021–2025) and the 21st term. Each of his seats has come from the AfD state list in North Rhine-Westphalia, not from a constituency plurality.

He took his Abitur in Bad Waldsee, studied law at the University of Tübingen, and completed his legal traineeship (Rechtsreferendariat) in Ravensburg. He practises as a self-employed lawyer in Cologne and declares that work as paid activity alongside the parliamentary mandate. The Bundestag’s biographical notes on him are the member’s own statements.

In Cologne he helped build the local AfD organisation, serving as deputy chair of the Cologne district association in 2013–2014 and as its chair in 2014–2015, and he sat on the city council from 2014 to 2017. He was deputy state chair of the AfD in North Rhine-Westphalia from 2015 to 2017, chaired the party’s North Rhine-Westphalian group in the Bundestag faction from 2019 to 2021, and was an assessor on the federal executive from 2019 to 2022. Since 2024 he has chaired the AfD’s Cologne regional association (Bezirksverband Köln).

His parliamentary work has concentrated on interior policy and, in the 20th term, on European Union affairs. In the 19th Bundestag he was a full member and deputy chair of the Committee on Internal Affairs and Community, and a deputy member of the legal-affairs committee. In the 20th Bundestag he was a full member and the AfD spokesperson (Obmann) of the Committee on European Union Affairs, with deputy seats on the interior, legal, and electoral-scrutiny committees. In the 21st Bundestag he is a full member of the Interior Committee and a deputy member of the committees on European Union affairs, on legal affairs and consumer protection, and on electoral scrutiny, immunity and the rules of procedure. When that Interior Committee was constituted on 21 May 2025, the AfD, which held the right to propose the chair, nominated Haug; in a secret ballot he received 12 votes in favour, 29 against and one abstention, and the faction initially declined a second round.

He has been the AfD’s constituency candidate in Cologne, standing in Köln II (then constituency 94) in 2017 and in Köln III in 2021 (then constituency 95) and 2025 (constituency 94). At the federal election of 23 February 2025 the Cologne electoral committee admitted him as the AfD direct candidate in constituency 94, Köln III. The AfD ticket there took 19,459 first votes (11.6 percent); Katharina Dröge of Alliance 90/The Greens won the seat with 26.0 percent. Haug nevertheless entered the 21st Bundestag from place 9 on the North Rhine-Westphalian AfD list.

Early life and education

Family and upbringing

Jochen Haug was born on 11 January 1973 in Aulendorf. The municipal administration describes Aulendorf as lying in the heart of Upper Swabia.

His father was Heinrich Haug (19 February 1939 – 21 October 2024). In the 1970s Heinrich Haug was Bürgermeister of Michelwinnaden. Michelwinnaden was then an independent municipality in the district of Ravensburg, Baden-Württemberg. Acting for that municipality, he signed the agreement under which it was incorporated into the town of Bad Waldsee. The text records a hearing of local residents on 20 January 1974 and council decisions in Michelwinnaden on 15 May 1974 and in Bad Waldsee on 21 May 1974; Bad Waldsee was represented by its mayor, Forcher. The agreement took effect on 1 January 1975, shortly before Jochen Haug’s second birthday, and provided that the outgoing mayor would serve as Ortsvorsteher of the new district until his term of office ended. After his death, the city of Bad Waldsee and the Ortschaft Michelwinnaden published an obituary recalling those years as mayor and, following the municipal reform, as Ortsvorsteher. The town’s death register listed him at Reute, a district of Bad Waldsee.

In a February 2026 profile of Carmen Haug, the Schwäbische Zeitung reported that Heinrich Haug later sat on the Bad Waldsee municipal council and spent about 25 years as managing director of the Kreisbauernverband Ravensburg, the district farmers’ association. The article described Carmen as his daughter: a native of Ravensburg who grew up in Bad Waldsee and lives in Reute. It identified Jochen Haug, by then living in North Rhine-Westphalia, as her brother. Carmen Haug said she had grown up in a conservative setting and that her familiarity with agriculture and rural life came through her father. The Bundestag biography of Jochen Haug, which the parliament notes is based on members’ own statements, does not describe his childhood, and neither that notice nor the regional profile names his mother or any further siblings.

Schooling and university

Haug took his Abitur in Bad Waldsee. The Bundestag biography and his own account do not name the school or the year of the examination. He then studied law at the University of Tübingen. Neither source gives dates for enrolment or for the first state examination in law.

The parliamentary biography next records a Rechtsreferendariat, the practical legal traineeship, in Ravensburg. On his own website Haug states that the traineeship concluded with the second state examination in law. The Bundestag entry lists him thereafter as a self-employed lawyer. He has written that he established that practice in Cologne, with labour law as its focus; the published accounts do not date admission to the bar or the move away from Upper Swabia.

Legal career

Practice in Cologne

The Bundestag lists Jochen Haug's occupation as Rechtsanwalt and, in the biography supplied by the member, describes him as a self-employed lawyer. On his own website he states that he settled in Cologne as a self-employed lawyer with a focus on German labour law. That focus is his own description. The parliamentary biography names neither a field of law, a law firm nor a street address, and the Bundestag notes that the biographical text rests on members' own statements.

In September 2017 the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger reported that Haug, then about to sit in the Bundestag, had a law practice near Chlodwigplatz in Cologne. Later official disclosures identify the work only as that of a lawyer in Cologne. The archived biography for the 19th electoral term (2017–2021) lists "Rechtsanwalt, Köln" both as the occupation before membership and as a paid activity carried on beside the mandate.

Side activity during the mandate

Under the code of conduct in sections 45 onwards of the Members of the Bundestag Act (Abgeordnetengesetz), a member must notify the President of the Bundestag of paid activities alongside the mandate, including continuation of a profession practised before election. The notice is due within three months of taking the seat and within three months of any later change. After the administration has processed the data and checked whether publication is required, the particulars appear on the member's biography.

Haug's current biography publishes a single line under "Entgeltliche Tätigkeiten neben dem Mandat": "Rechtsanwalt, Köln". The same wording, and no other paid outside activity, appears on the archived page for the 20th electoral term (2021–2025). Parliamentwatch (abgeordnetenwatch.de), which republishes disclosures from the Bundestag administration, records the item as "Rechtsanwalt – freiberuflich". It was first captured on 26 February 2018, last changed in that dataset on 30 June 2025, and is attached to the mandates for 2017–2021, 2021–2025 and 2025–2029. The income and interval fields for the entry are blank.

The published line gives no euro amount, income bracket, client or industry. Section 45(3) requires the level of income from a notifiable activity to be stated when it exceeds 1,000 euros in a month or, if that is not the case, 3,000 euros in a calendar year; where the income consists of turnover, profit before tax is notified instead of the gross sum. Section 47 requires those notifiable particulars to be published. Bundestag guidance dated 23 June 2026 states that publishable income is shown to the cent, labelled as gross or as profit before tax and, where a statutory duty of confidentiality applies, without the client's name. No such figure is printed beside Haug's entry on the current page or in the archives of the 19th and 20th terms. Section 46, a separate duty to notify paid representation for or against the Federation when the fee exceeds 1,000 euros, likewise has no corresponding line on his biography.

Local politics in Cologne

Founding the local party organisation

Jochen Haug has stated that he co-founded the Cologne organisation of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in 2013. The Bundestag biography, based on members’ own information, lists him as deputy chairman of the AfD Kreisverband Köln from 2013 to 2014 and as chairman from 2014 to 2015; his own account uses the title Sprecher for the second term. He had previously belonged to the Christian Democratic Union.

At a Cologne meeting on 21 November 2013, Deutschlandfunk described the lawyer Roger Beckamp as speaker of a local group of about 220 members, which decided to contest both the 2014 European election and the municipal elections in North Rhine-Westphalia on 25 May 2014. Haug said he wanted a “party of the bourgeois centre” and would leave if the AfD opened itself to right-wing populists. The report said the Cologne organisation had rejected approaches from the right-wing group pro Köln and wanted a strict separation from such currents. The Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger later noted that he stayed in the party.

On 30 March 2015 a meeting in Köln-Brück nominated the soldier Hendrik Rottmann, with one abstention, as the AfD candidate for lord mayor. Haug, named there as Kreisparteivorsitzender, called him the only “bourgeois” candidate against what he described as red-green unity candidates. By March 2016 Der Spiegel described Rottmann, the previous autumn’s mayoral candidate, as chairman of the Cologne district association.

City council

On 25 May 2014, 398,718 of 802,889 eligible voters took part, a turnout of 49.7 percent. The AfD, standing in a Cologne municipal election for the first time, won 14,195 votes (3.6 percent) and three of 90 seats, all from the reserve list: Beckamp in place 1, Haug in place 2 and Rottmann in place 3.

The city’s statistical office estimated that about half of that vote, some 7,000 ballots, came from 2009 non-voters and about a fifth, some 3,000, from the CDU. The AfD ran ahead of its citywide share where residents aged 65 and over, and average incomes, were higher, chiefly in Porz and parts of Mülheim, Kalk, Chorweiler and Rodenkirchen. In the areas defined as its strongholds, average monthly net household income was about €2,800, against about €2,500 citywide.

Three seats conferred group status. pro Köln fell from 5.4 percent in 2009 to 2.6 percent and, with two seats, lost it. In June 2016 Stadtrevue reported that groups from Die Linke to the CDU generally left AfD speeches unanswered, a silence Jörg Detjen, the Left chairman, called a broad consensus. Hans-Peter Killguss, of the local centre against right-wing extremism, said a neo-Nazi past could not be ascribed to the Cologne AfD, while classing it as right-wing populist. Haug, whom the magazine identified as deputy leader of the group, said it stood near the party’s liberal wing; Beckamp set it apart from pro Köln.

Stadtrevue found the group’s questions concentrated on administrative costs and, for about half of them, on refugee housing. In March 2016 it asked about the Bonotel in Marienburg, including whether men from North Africa would be housed there and whether residents would be protected from sexual assaults. After the assaults and robberies at the main station on New Year’s Eve 2015/16, it tabled “Aufnahmestopp — Köln zieht die Notbremse”, asking the city to tell the Arnsberg district government to assign Cologne no further refugees. Beckamp moved the motion; only pro Köln added votes, and lord mayor Henriette Reker referred him to Article 16a of the Basic Law, on the right of asylum. The group also lost a lawsuit against the council over higher funding for council groups.

Haug left the council at the end of 25 September 2017. The gazette of 8 November 2017 named Stephan Boyens as successor, under section 45 of the municipal elections act, for the rest of the 2014–2020 term. The Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger reported the next day that Haug, newly elected to the Bundestag, had gone to Berlin as the AfD group there was being formed.

Party offices

State and parliamentary group roles

Haug’s first office above the Cologne Kreisverband was filled at the 10th state party congress of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in North Rhine-Westphalia, held on 29 and 30 August 2015 in Bottrop. The 350 delegates opted for a dual leadership: incumbent state speaker Marcus Pretzell was returned with 67.7 percent and Martin Renner with 59.9 percent, in two separate ballots. Deputy speakers were chosen in another secret ballot in which each delegate had three votes. Of 276 ballot cards and 783 votes, Haug received 202, Mario Mieruch and Renate Zillessen 170 each, and Christian Blex 117; Haug, Mieruch and Zillessen accepted election as stellvertretende Sprecher.

In its report the day after the 2017 federal election, the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger still described him as deputy speaker of the state association. Ingo Schumacher, then speaker of the Cologne Bezirksverband, said other state associations repeatedly booked Haug to chair meetings because he could quiet a heated hall. A dpa sketch of the new federal executive in December 2019 likewise noted that the lawyer, a former member of the Christian Democratic Union, had already presided over several AfD congresses.

The deputy speakership ended at the next full election of the state executive. At the congress in Kalkar on 9–10 December 2017, delegates chose Thomas Röckemann, with just under 53 percent, and Helmut Seifen, with about 57 percent, as equal speakers, after Renner declined to stand again. The new deputies were Blex, the Cologne Bundestag member Fabian Jacobi, and Jürgen Spenrath. Haug was not among them. The biography he supplied to the Bundestag, which the parliament notes is based on members’ own information, dates the state deputy chairmanship to 2015–2017.

That biography lists a separate parliamentary role for 2019–2021: chairman of the North Rhine-Westphalia Landesgruppe of the AfD group in the Bundestag, the caucus of the state’s AfD members, as distinct from the state party executive. The archived text for the 20th electoral term uses the title Sprecher for the same post. Michael Espendiller’s biography for that term, likewise self-reported, names Espendiller rather than Haug as speaker of the Landesgruppe.

Federal executive and district leadership

On 1 December 2019, at the 10th federal party congress in Braunschweig, delegates elected a new federal executive, with Jörg Meuthen and Tino Chrupalla as the two federal speakers. Coverage of the assessor ballots described a gain for the party’s völkisch “Flügel”: Andreas Kalbitz defeated outgoing deputy speaker Kay Gottschalk, a public critic of that current, in a runoff. In a separate ballot the party recorded Haug, at 12:15, as the third Beisitzer (assessor), with 61.91 percent of the delegate votes. The dpa list of new members identified him as a 46-year-old Bundestag member. His Bundestag biography dates the assessorship from 2019 to 2022.

He did not stand when the executive was renewed at the federal congress in Riesa on 17–19 June 2022. More than 500 delegates used the second day to elect a 14-member board; Chrupalla received 53 percent against Norbert Kleinwächter, and Alice Weidel 67 percent against Nicolaus Fest. The Leipziger Zeitung wrote that almost no one from the camp described as moderate remained. A discussion paper issued the next month by FORENA, the far-right research unit at Hochschule Düsseldorf, placed Haug among six members of the outgoing executive—with Joana Cotar, Joachim Kuhs, Sylvia Limmer, Joachim Paul and Beatrix von Storch—who had formed a majority together with Meuthen and Alexander Wolf and who did not run.

Since 2024 the Bundestag biography lists him as chairman of the AfD Bezirksverband Köln, the district association between the local Kreisverbände and the state party. On 25 March 2024 he wrote on his Facebook page that he had been elected its speaker the previous day.

Bundestag elections

Jochen Haug entered the Bundestag in 2017, 2021 and 2025 on the state list of Alternative for Germany (AfD) in North Rhine-Westphalia, not by winning a constituency in Cologne. Federal elections use mixed-member proportional representation: a first vote chooses a constituency candidate and a second vote a party's closed state list, whose order voters cannot change. Second votes fix how many seats the party receives in the Land. In 2017 and 2021 the leading first-vote candidate took the constituency seat and further seats were filled down the list; from 2025 a plurality produced a seat only if the party's second-vote allocation covered it. A low share in Cologne could therefore still yield a mandate once the AfD's statewide second votes reached Haug's list place.

2017 election

At the 2017 German federal election on 24 September 2017, Haug stood in Wahlkreis 94, Köln II, not in Köln III. The Cologne constituency committee admitted him as the AfD candidate in Köln II; in Wahlkreis 95, Köln III, the AfD candidate was Stephan Boyens. The AfD state association reported that its nominating assembly in Essen on 25–26 February 2017 elected Haug to second place on the North Rhine-Westphalia list, by 243 votes to 63, behind Martin E. Renner. The state electoral committee later admitted that list.

He received 9,057 first votes, 4.6 percent, in a constituency of 240,985 eligible voters. The direct mandate went to Heribert Hirte of the Christian Democratic Union, with 68,657 votes (34.9 percent). AfD second votes in Köln II were 9,964 (5.1 percent). Across the state the AfD polled 928,425 second votes, 9.4 percent. The Bundestag archive for the 19th term records him as elected on the state list, with Köln II as his constituency. The new Bundestag met for its constituent sitting on 24 October 2017. Under section 45 of the Federal Elections Act, a candidate acquires membership when that sitting opens, once the federal result has been finally determined, unless membership was declined in writing beforehand.

2021 election

At the 2021 German federal election on 26 September 2021, Haug was the AfD candidate in Wahlkreis 95, Köln III, a different seat from his 2017 constituency. The city's constituency committee admitted the nominations on 30 July 2021, including Haug for the AfD, Rolf Mützenich for the Social Democratic Party and Katharina Dröge for Alliance 90/The Greens. The AfD received 8,015 first votes, 5.2 percent, sixth among 204,539 eligible voters, with turnout at 75.9 percent. Mützenich won the direct mandate with 46,149 votes (29.9 percent); the Greens, whose admitted candidate was Dröge, were second with 43,600 votes (28.3 percent). AfD second votes in the constituency were 7,876 (5.1 percent).

Statewide the AfD received 717,510 second votes, 7.3 percent. The state returning officer's final list of candidates elected from the North Rhine-Westphalia lists places Haug, a member of the Bundestag and a lawyer in Cologne, at AfD position 11. The AfD names on that return run without a break from place 1 through place 12. Candidates already elected in a constituency are left off this compilation, and no AfD place ahead of Haug was omitted, so the second-vote allocation covered his seat.

2025 election

The 2025 German federal election was held on 23 February 2025. Haug again contested Köln III, renumbered Wahlkreis 94, and the state results page names him as the AfD candidate and as number 9 on the North Rhine-Westphalia list.

He received 19,459 first votes, 11.6 percent, 6.4 points above the AfD first-vote share recorded for the constituency in 2021, when the comparison figure was the same 8,015 votes. Turnout was 81.8 percent among 206,670 eligible voters, and he finished fourth. The direct mandate went to Katharina Dröge of the Greens, with 43,697 votes (26.0 percent); Rolf Mützenich of the SPD was second with 43,307 votes (25.8 percent). AfD second votes in Köln III were 18,861 (11.2 percent). In the state as a whole the AfD polled 1,770,379 second votes, 16.8 percent.

The compilation of those elected from the state lists again includes Haug, at place 9, and the AfD entries run unbroken from place 1 through place 26. Under the 2025 rules, a party candidate wins a constituency only with both a first-vote plurality and coverage by the party's second-vote seats; other seats are filled in order from the closed list. Haug's 11.6 percent was well short of Dröge's plurality, so the mandate he took was the list seat. The current Bundestag biography lists him as elected via the North Rhine-Westphalia state list, with Wahlkreis 094 Köln III as his constituency candidacy.

Committee work

Jochen Haug’s committee posts in the Bundestag changed with each electoral term: deputy chair of internal affairs in the 19th Bundestag, a deputy seat only in the 20th, and an ordinary seat on the Interior Committee, without the chair, in the 21st.

Interior Committee

The 19th-term biography records Haug, of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), as both an ordinary member and deputy chair. The committee constituted itself on 31 January 2018 under Vice President Thomas Oppermann, with Andrea Lindholz (CDU/CSU) as chair, and on 21 February 2018 elected Haug deputy chair by secret ballot, 24 votes in favour, six against and 15 abstentions.

The rank did not carry over. For the 20th Bundestag the archived biography lists him only as a deputy member of the same committee, from 26 October 2021 to 25 March 2025. In the 21st Bundestag his ordinary seat is on the Interior Committee. At its constitutive meeting on 21 May 2025 that committee had 42 ordinary members: 14 from the CDU/CSU, 10 from the AfD, eight from the Social Democratic Party, six from Alliance 90/The Greens and four from Die Linke. Haug was one of the ten AfD members.

Other committees

Beyond internal affairs, the 19th-term biography lists Haug as a deputy member of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Consumer Protection and of the Election Scrutiny Committee (Wahlprüfungsausschuss). It also lists deputy seats on the commission reforming federal electoral law and on the board of trustees of the Federal Agency for Civic Education.

In the 20th Bundestag his full seat was on European Union affairs: an ordinary member of that committee and its AfD Obmann, the group’s lead member, as distinct from the chair elected by the committee. He was also a deputy on the legal-affairs committee (then titled Rechtsausschuss), on the Committee on Scrutiny of Elections, Immunity and the Rules of Procedure, and on the separate Election Scrutiny Committee. Abgeordnetenwatch lists the same posts. In the 21st Bundestag he is instead a deputy on EU affairs, on legal affairs and consumer protection, and on scrutiny of elections, immunity and the rules of procedure, with no separate Election Scrutiny Committee seat.

Chairmanship votes in 2025

On 21 May 2025 the Interior Committee constituted itself under Vice President Andrea Lindholz and elected no chair. The AfD, which held the proposal right for that chair, nominated Haug. In a secret ballot he received 12 votes in favour, 29 against and one abstention, short of a majority of the 42 members voting. The group initially waived a second ballot. Thomas Silberhorn (CDU/CSU), the longest-serving member, then took interim charge of the sitting.

A chair is not an automatic entitlement of the largest opposition group. As the Federal Constitutional Court described the rules then in force, section 12 distributes committee places and the arrangement of chairs in proportion to group strength. The Council of Elders seeks agreement on which group proposes which chair; failing that, groups pick remaining chairs by strength, and section 58 provided that committees “determine” chairs and deputies accordingly, by vote if a nomination is contested. In its judgment of 18 September 2024 (2 BvE 1/20, 2 BvE 10/21) the Second Senate rejected, so far as admissible, the AfD group’s challenges to 20th-term votes in which its nominees for several chairs, including internal affairs, were not elected. It held that Article 38 of the Basic Law does not itself give a right of access to such offices, and that the elections lay within the Bundestag’s autonomy over its rules of procedure, reviewable only for arbitrariness.

AfD nominees failed the same day in other committees for which the group had proposal rights. ZDF reported lost chair votes, each without a second ballot, in the budget, legal-affairs, labour and social affairs, finance and petitions committees as well as the Interior Committee. The SPD’s first parliamentary secretary, Dirk Wiese, said the SPD would not elect AfD members as chairs that day, and Tagesschau reported that the CDU/CSU leadership had urged its members not to support the AfD candidates. Tagesschau reported that the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution had at the start of May 2025 classified the AfD as a “confirmed right-wing extremist endeavour” (gesichert rechtsextremistische Bestrebung), then suspended that step on procedural grounds after the party challenged it. ZDF reported that, after the reclassification, representatives of other groups had largely refused AfD members the chairs. Haug’s 12 yes votes exceeded the AfD’s 10 ordinary seats.

A further attempt failed in June. On 25 June 2025 the AfD again nominated Haug. The Bundestag’s parliamentary news service reported that a secret ballot again gave him no majority, without publishing the figures. The committee then elected Josef Oster (CDU) deputy chair by 38 votes to three; the CDU/CSU held the proposal right for the deputy post. The chair itself remained unfilled.

Legislative activity and political positions

On his website Haug describes the pillars of his political outlook as “Freiheit, (direkte) Demokratie und Rechtsstaat.” In the Bundestag the initiatives he has signed and the speeches he has given have concentrated on entry controls, asylum and citizenship, on binding federal referendums, and, during the COVID-19 pandemic, on how parties nominate candidates.

Migration, asylum and internal security

On 12 August 2019 Haug was the lead signatory of an Alternative for Germany minor interpellation on what the group called toleration of asylum seekers entering from safe third countries (Drucksache 19/12268). The questioners argued that, after internal border checks returned on 13 September 2015, section 18 of the Asylum Act required every arrival from a neighbouring state to be refused entry or removed. The Federal Ministry of the Interior answered on 28 August 2019 (Drucksache 19/12776) that it would not take a position on abstract questions of interpretation. It reported that in 2015 entry had been refused to ten people under section 18(2) and 97 had been removed under section 18(3), and referred to earlier statements that refusals of protection seekers were not then applied, a decision taken with those temporary checks.

On 8 October 2025, on the government’s sixth amendment to the Nationality Act, Haug called repeal of naturalisation after three years cosmetic. A claim after five years rather than eight, multiple nationality, and the dropping of “Einordnung in die deutschen Lebensverhältnisse” remained, he said, and “Die Staatsbürgerschaft darf kein Rechtsanspruch sein.” He wanted discretion instead of entitlement, dual nationality only as an exception (“keine doppelten Loyalitäten”), and proven German. Sonja Eichwede of the Social Democratic Party answered that multiple nationality recognised long contributions and that the five-year rule, not the rarely used three-year shortcut, was the 2024 reform’s point. The House passed the amended bill by 450 votes to 134, with two abstentions; the AfD cast 135 votes in favour, Haug among them, while Alliance 90/The Greens and Die Linke voted against.

On 26 February 2026 he spoke on a group motion for border controls and refusals (Drucksache 21/4274), which he had co-signed. He said the AfD stood for “einen umfassenden Schutz der Staatsgrenzen mit der Zurückweisung aller illegal Einreisenden,” and that European Union law read as a bar to refusal would be inapplicable as a breach of constitutional identity. The motion asked the government to keep applying Article 16a(2) of the Basic Law and section 18(2) of the Asylum Act, to press for EU asylum law to be suspended until the external borders were protected, and to state that the Federal Constitutional Court, not the Commission or the Court of Justice of the European Union, decides last on sovereign statehood. It cited the Berlin administrative court, which on 2 June 2025 held in unappealable interim orders (VG 6 L 191/25 and others) that three Somali applicants who asked for asylum at Frankfurt (Oder) on 9 May 2025 could not be returned to Poland without a Dublin Regulation procedure; Article 72 TFEU did not apply because no sufficient danger to public order had been shown. In the debate the SPD’s Ingo Vogel said Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt had extended temporary checks beyond 15 March 2026 for six months.

Direct democracy

Haug was the first signatory of the motion of 17 April 2018 for an enquiry commission, “Direkte Demokratie auf Bundesebene” (Drucksache 19/1699). It treated Article 20(2) — “Wahlen und Abstimmungen” — as allowing plebiscites, and asked nine members and nine experts for a compatible bill, drawing on the Länder, Switzerland and the United States, before the 2019 summer recess. In his first speech, on 19 April 2018, he said direct democracy should “sinnvoll ergänzen,” not replace, representative democracy: no constitutional change and no transfer of sovereignty to the EU without popular consent; a Swiss-style veto against statutes; and citizen bills. He objected that a promised expert commission had not figured in the government statements of the chancellor or of Interior Minister Horst Seehofer.

The other groups favoured more participation and opposed the motion. Andrea Lindholz (CDU/CSU) said complex questions were often not yes-or-no matters; Manuel Höferlin (Free Democratic Party) offered a “Bürger-Plenarverfahren” instead of a commission; Lars Castellucci (SPD) wanted a wider franchise than Switzerland’s exclusion of non-citizens; Britta Haßelmann (Greens) said the text omitted minority protection. The Interior Committee on 7 November 2018 recommended rejection against the AfD alone; Haug was rapporteur, and the CDU/CSU called the model divisive. On 4 April 2019 the Bundestag adopted that recommendation by a large majority, only the AfD voting no. Haug rejected Brexit as an argument against referendums. Volker Ullrich (CDU/CSU) answered that a yes-or-no vote blocks compromise and that Länder rights under Article 79 had to be weighed.

A constitutional bill of 24 February 2021 (Drucksache 19/26906), signed by Haug behind Roman Johannes Reusch, would have made the expressed will of the people the highest law, subject to Article 79(3), with obligatory referendums on constitutional amendments, on undoing popular laws, on joining collective-security or supranational bodies, and on treaties transferring powers, plus an optional referendum or initiative at one million signatures. Near-repeats followed on 31 March 2023 (Drucksache 20/6274) and 22 July 2026 (Drucksache 21/7252), both again listing Haug. The 2026 explanatory note records that the 2021 and 2023 bills were rejected by every group except the AfD.

Other initiatives

On 29 September 2020 Haug was the first signatory of “Versammlungen zur Aufstellung von Kandidaten für die Bundestagswahl trotz Corona ermöglichen” (Drucksache 19/22925). It opposed a CDU/CSU and SPD bill (Drucksache 19/20596) that would have let the Interior Ministry, by ordinance and without the Bundesrat, allow nomination of candidates and Land lists without assemblies during a natural disaster or similar force majeure. The motion called that delegation unconstitutional, treated in-person argument as waivable only as a last resort, described COVID-19 as manageable by distance and ventilation, and asked instead for large halls, if necessary by a duty to contract. On 9 October 2020 the Bundestag rejected the motion with every other group’s votes and passed the coalition bill, as amended (Drucksache 19/23197), by 353 votes to 268, with one abstention.

Reception and public controversy

Student corporation and the Catholic debate

Haug is an Alter Herr, an alumni member, of the Catholic student corporation K.D.St.V. Rheno-Baltia zu Köln, in the Cartellverband der katholischen deutschen Studentenverbindungen (CV). On 5 February 2026 the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger reported that the corporation had not parted with him over his role in the Alternative for Germany (AfD), had not answered the paper, and that Haug, a Bundestag member, had declined to comment. The article described the CV as the only larger Catholic umbrella that had not set itself apart from the AfD, reported that moves for a CV-wide incompatibility declaration had failed, and contrasted Rheno-Baltia with Bonn’s KDStV Staufia, which it said had barred joint AfD membership as contrary to Christian basic values and the principle religio.

On 19 February the paper quoted Claus-Michael Lommer, chair of the CV council and a Rheno-Baltia member, from the CV journal Academia. He called the AfD a “besonderes Problem”, found membership or sympathy personally unsuitable, and said the umbrella could not act because each corporation regulates membership and that expulsion was legally unsafe where the party was not classified as a Nazi or right-wing extremist party. The paper noted a 1969 CV rule against the NPD that bound member corporations, and wrote that the intelligence service had paused applying a classification pending a court decision rather than withdrawn it.

In a Domradio interview of 4 February 2026 the CV chaplain, moral theologian Peter Schallenberg, said the combination did not fit, while corporations remain legally independent and the CV cannot instruct them. He held that a member cannot be publicly active for the AfD—as distinct from private opinion or voting—in line with a German Bishops’ Conference paper on public Catholic office and public AfD activity, called the missing demarcation a “Leerstelle”, and wished Rheno-Baltia would comment. Told that the corporation thought Haug had not misconducted himself toward it, he replied that advancing positions he regarded as incompatible with the Church’s was itself a breach of religio.

In their statement of 22 February 2024 the bishops say völkisch nationalism is incompatible with the Christian image of God and of the human person, and that right-wing extremist parties and those “rampant on the fringes of this ideology” cannot be a place of political activity for Christians and cannot be voted for. It states that a racial-nationalist attitude now dominates the AfD, which it describes as oscillating between right-wing extremism—attested by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution for some state associations and the youth organisation—and right-wing populism.

Transparency and media profile

On abgeordnetenwatch.de Haug’s profile records that he has not given the site’s Transparenz-Versprechen, and that none of nine questions counted for the 2025–2029 mandate had been answered, each marked “Antwort ausstehend”. Under paid activities beside the mandate the Bundestag biography publishes only “Rechtsanwalt, Köln”, with no euro amount, and states that code-of-conduct notices appear only where a duty to publish has been found. abgeordnetenwatch records the same freelance practice, entered on 26 February 2018 and last amended on 30 June 2025, with the income field blank.

On 21 May 2025 the Interior Committee, where the AfD group held the nomination for the chair, did not elect Haug: a secret ballot gave 12 votes in favour, 29 against and one abstention, and Thomas Silberhorn (CDU/CSU) chaired on an acting basis. On 2 May 2025 the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution announced an upgrade of the federal AfD from a Verdachtsfall to a “gesichert rechtsextremistische Bestrebung”, citing an ethnic, descent-based concept of the people. On 26 February 2026 the Administrative Court of Cologne, in interim case 13 L 1109/25, barred the office, until the main action ends at first instance, from classifying, treating or publicly describing the party that way. The court found sufficient certainty of anti-constitutional efforts inside the party, and a strong suspicion tied in part to 2025 programme demands on minarets, the muezzin call and headscarves, but held that these did not yet dominate the party as a whole. tagesschau reported that the Interior Ministry would not appeal, so the main case continued and the court-upheld Verdachtsfall status remained. The corporation reports, the Bundestag biography and the abgeordnetenwatch profile have not documented a personal criminal proceeding against Haug.

Personal life

Family

Haug lives in North Rhine-Westphalia and practises there as a self-employed lawyer in Cologne. The Bundestag biography for the 20th electoral period, which the parliament stated was drawn from members’ own information, listed him as unmarried; the biography for the 21st period does not give a marital status. A September 2017 profile in the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger also described him as unmarried. No published account names a spouse or children.

His sister Carmen Haug was born in 1976 in Ravensburg, grew up in Bad Waldsee, and lives in the district of Reute. In February 2026 she told the Schwäbische Zeitung that she was in a relationship and worked as an employee, without identifying the employer. She joined the Alternative for Germany in 2016, after her brother had joined in 2013; since 2018 she has chaired the party’s Ravensburg district association, and since 2017 she has attended federal party congresses as a delegate. In 2021 she was the substitute candidate in the Ravensburg and Wangen constituencies. At the Baden-Württemberg state election on 8 March 2026 she was the AfD candidate in constituency 68 (Wangen) and eighth on the state list. The state statistical office lists her among those elected on the AfD state list, and the directory of the Landtag of Baden-Württemberg for the 18th period records her as a member for that constituency; the Landtag’s preliminary handbook gives her occupation as employee.

His father was Heinrich Haug. The Schwäbische Zeitung reported that Haug had been mayor of Michelwinnaden, another district of Bad Waldsee, had later sat on the municipal council, and had spent about 25 years as managing director of the Ravensburg district farmers’ association. Bad Waldsee’s official gazette recorded the death on 21 October 2024 of Heinrich Haug of Reute and recalled him as mayor of Michelwinnaden in the 1970s and, after the municipal reform, as its Ortsvorsteher.

Religious and associational ties

The 20th-period Bundestag biography listed Haug as Roman Catholic; the biography for the 21st period does not state a denomination. He is a member of the K.D.St.V. Rheno-Baltia zu Köln, a Catholic student corporation in Cologne that belongs to the Cartellverband der katholischen deutschen Studentenverbindungen, and is counted among its Alte Herren (alumni). The Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger reported in February 2026 that neither he nor the corporation had answered questions about that membership, and no independent source states when he joined. Whether the corporation should exclude him because of his AfD activity was debated in the same reporting and is treated under reception. In September 2017 the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger described him as a former member of the Christian Democratic Union; the article gave no dates for that membership.