Johannes Fechner

Johannes Fechner (born 25 November 1972 in Freiburg im Breisgau) is a German lawyer and a politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in Baden-Württemberg. He has been a member of the Bundestag since 22 October 2013, sitting by way of the SPD state list of Baden-Württemberg and standing as the party's candidate in constituency 283, Emmendingen–Lahr. In the 21st electoral term he is an ordinary member of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Consumer Protection, of the Council of Elders and of the committee for the election of judges of the highest federal courts, and the SPD spokesperson (Obmann) on the Committee on the Scrutiny of Elections, Immunity and the Rules of Procedure. He is also a deputy member of the Interior Committee and of the parliamentary body that proposes justices of the Federal Constitutional Court, a deputy member of the Joint Committee under the Basic Law, and deputy chair of the ASEAN parliamentary group.

The Bundestag biography, drawn from the member's own declarations, records an Abitur in 1992 at the Goethe-Gymnasium in Emmendingen, then civilian service in 1992–93 with the rescue service of the German Red Cross. He studied law at the University of Freiburg from 1993 to 1997, completed the legal clerkship in Offenburg from 1998 to 2000, and took a doctorate in 2000–01. He has worked as a lawyer in Emmendingen since 2001 and has kept that practice during the mandate, with clients listed for parliament in anonymised form. He joined the SPD in 1990, was a city councillor in Emmendingen from 1994 to 2013, and has sat on the council of Emmendingen district since 2009. The same biography describes him as married, Protestant, and the father of two children.

In the constituency he has finished behind the Christian Democratic Union of Germany. At the 2013 federal election the SPD received 39,772 first votes there (26.4 percent), against 78,797 (52.3 percent) for the CDU, on a turnout of 71.4 percent. In 2017 the SPD total was 39,472 (23.7 percent) and the CDU total 62,476 (37.6 percent). In 2021 the SPD's 46,316 first votes (27.8 percent) trailed the CDU's 46,406 (also rounded to 27.8 percent) by 90 votes, on a turnout of 76.8 percent. In 2025 the federal returning officer recorded 40,204 first votes (22.2 percent) for Fechner and 66,984 (37.0 percent) for Yannick Bury of the CDU, with turnout at 83.3 percent; the SPD's second-vote share in the district was 15.5 percent.

On 7 October 2014 the Badische Zeitung reported that Fechner, then in his first year in parliament, was to be elected the SPD parliamentary group's spokesperson on legal policy, with no other candidate. In December 2021 the group elected him a parliamentary managing director (Parlamentarischer Geschäftsführer) and its legal counsel (Justiziar). He was elected to both posts again in May 2025, at the meeting that made Matthias Miersch group chair in succession to Lars Klingbeil and Dirk Wiese first parliamentary managing director; Fechner's office stated that he received 96 percent of the vote. Legal Tribune Online reported in 2022 that he and the CDU deputy Nina Warken had been chosen unanimously to chair the Bundestag commission on electoral-law reform and the modernisation of parliamentary work. During sitting weeks he has used a one-person tent on a Berlin campsite in place of a second flat, a routine Südwestrundfunk described in June 2025.

Early life and education

Childhood and schooling

Johannes Fechner was born on 25 November 1972. He gives his birthplace as Freiburg im Breisgau. The Bundestag biography, drawn from members’ own disclosures, states that he is married, Protestant and the father of two children. In an August 2025 interview he named his wife as Yvonne, a general practitioner in Emmendingen, Baden-Württemberg, and said that they had been a couple since the ninth grade and that their children were university students. He said his father had been a physician and his mother a nurse, and that, unlike an uncle, his parents were in no party, although politics was a regular subject at home.

A biography on the site of the Emmendingen Social Democratic Party of Germany lists the Fritz-Boehle primary school in Emmendingen from 1979 to 1983, and then the Goethe-Gymnasium. He took the Abitur there in 1992. On his own site he dates his term as Schülersprecher, the elected student representative, to 1989–1991; the local party biography places it in 1988–1990. He has said that the school office was where he found he liked organising things with other people.

University, clerkship and doctorate

From 1992 to 1993 he did Zivildienst, alternative civilian service, in the emergency medical service of the German Red Cross. He then studied law at the University of Freiburg from 1993 to 1997. His chambers’ profile records the first juridical state examination in Freiburg in 1997 and the second in 2000. The Bundestag places the Referendariat, the practical legal traineeship between those examinations, in Offenburg from 1998 to 2000; Fechner has also described a station in Lahr. The Emmendingen SPD biography gives slightly later dates, law studies in 1993–1998 and the traineeship in 1999/2000, and adds part-time work at the university and in a Freiburg law firm while he was writing the doctorate.

The Bundestag dates the doctorate to 2000–2001, and the chambers profile dates its completion to 2001. The book Die Aufsicht über den Privatrundfunk in Deutschland states that the Freiburg law faculty accepted the dissertation in 2001/2002. The German National Library catalogues it as a Freiburg dissertation of 2002, published in Berlin in 2003 by Duncker & Humblot as volume 83 of the Schriftenreihe zur Rechtssoziologie und Rechtstatsachenforschung (ISBN 3-428-10911-2; 149 pages). Neither that catalogue entry nor the title pages in the publisher’s sample name a doctoral supervisor.

The dissertation asks whether supervision of private broadcasting by the state media authorities, the Landesmedienanstalten, was still fit for the future. Fechner argued that competition among the authorities to attract media companies, party influence and insufficient transparency steered oversight toward the firms rather than diversity of opinion; a summary of the book records his recommendation that the authorities be merged into one central regulator for broadcasting and telecommunications. He has practised as a lawyer in Emmendingen since 2001.

Legal practice

Admission and chambers

Johannes Fechner has practised as a lawyer (Rechtsanwalt) in Emmendingen since 2001, according to the biography the Bundestag publishes from members’ own statements. The Badische Zeitung described him in February 2005 as an Emmendingen lawyer seeking the nomination of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, and in December 2012 as a 40-year-old Emmendingen lawyer when the district party nominated him. The Rechtsanwaltskammer Freiburg lists him at Kanzlei am Rathaus, practice name Buerkle – Dr. Fechner – Moessner – Luong, Landvogtei 5, and places that office in the districts of the Amtsgericht Emmendingen and the Landgericht Freiburg im Breisgau. The firm states that the practice, founded in 1976 and at Landvogtei 5 since 1991, was taken over by Johannes Bürkle on 31 July 2012 and that Fechner joined the next day. The Bundestag biography lists membership of the German Bar Association (Deutscher Anwaltverein).

Fields of practice

The chamber entry does not state fields of law. The firm’s own profile lists employment law for employees and employers—contracts, references, warnings and dismissals—and tenancy and lease law, which it calls a focus, including service charges, decorative repairs, notices, arrears and rent reductions, for tenants, landlords and property managers, plus condominium, traffic and construction-damage work, none of it a bar certification. Client categories in the parliamentary disclosures—commercial landlords, a property-management company, construction, installation and craft businesses, a test-drilling firm, electronics and software companies, a registered association, a public-law special-purpose association, and many private clients—fit a general civil practice of that sort.

Practice during the mandate

He kept the practice after entering the Bundestag in 2013. The current biography records “Rechtsanwalt, Emmendingen” both before membership and as paid work beside the mandate, and gives the constituency office at the same Landvogtei 5 address; the archives for the 18th to 20th terms call the side activity self-employed. On the page the Bundestag links for his own explanation, Fechner writes that he now takes only a few instructions a month, that they are ordinary matters rather than opinions for lobbyists, and that he still appears in court.

Where a duty of confidentiality applies, the publication notes replace the other party’s name with a sector, or with “Mandant” if the sector would identify the client. Until the amendment of 8 October 2021, in force from 19 October 2021, reportable side income was published in ten bands: band 1 was more than 1,000 euro up to 3,500 euro, and band 4 was income up to 30,000 euro. The 18th-term archive lists dozens of client-year entries, mostly band 1, with band 4 the highest (one client in 2014 and two in 2016). The 19th-term archive has 64 client-year entries: 51 in band 1, eight in band 2, four in band 3 and one in band 4 (client 23 in 2020).

From that amendment, amounts above 1,000 euro in a month or 3,000 euro in a year are published to the cent, and profit on turnover is published as profit before tax (“Gewinn vor Steuern”). For 2022 the 20th-term archive states a total profit before tax of 21,639.49 euro, plus 5,286.49 euro from client 23, a property-management company, and 2,629.24 euro from client 122, described as private; other clients have no separate sum. The 21st-term biography, dated 29 October 2026 on the site, again lists the practice and clients by number and sector—construction, test drilling, an electronics firm, commercial landlords, an association and private individuals—without euro amounts. Parliamentwatch (abgeordnetenwatch.de) republishes the same disclosures.

Local and party offices

Jusos and the Emmendingen SPD

Fechner has been a member of the SPD since 1990. The Emmendingen district association's published biography pairs that entry with the chairmanship of the Jusos in Emmendingen, and dates a spell as deputy district chair from 2000.

In April 2002 the Badische Zeitung identified him as deputy to district chair Elfriede Behnke; the two said they hoped SPD candidate Peter Dreßen would win a direct Bundestag mandate. In January 2003 the district party elected Eva Maier-Kimmig of Sexau as the new deputy after Fechner asked, for professional and private reasons, to pause work as a party functionary. Behnke, from Denzlingen, continued as unchallenged chair.

At the district conference reported on 20 November 2004, delegates elected the 31-year-old Emmendingen lawyer district chair by a large majority. Behnke did not stand again after four years; the paper reported Ute Vogt as deputy, and four members were newly chosen for the district executive.

A report published on 9 December 2006 said a well-attended district conference in Emmendingen had confirmed him with only two votes against. Reviewing the year, he told delegates that the SPD Bundestag group's approach in the grand coalition—merely preventing worse outcomes—was not enough. The same report ran under a headline that the district SPD was pressing for more noise protection.

On 6 February 2023, at a conference in Teningen, the district SPD confirmed him unanimously. Mobility, especially local public transport, was the meeting's central theme.

City council and deputy mayor

The Bundestag biography, which the parliament says rests on the member's own statements, lists him as a city councillor (Stadtrat) in Emmendingen from 1994 to 2013; the district SPD gives the same years.

At the public council meeting on 15 September 2009, the only contested ballot was the election of the mayor's honorary deputies, as it had been five years earlier. Oberbürgermeister Stefan Schlatterer thanked the honorary deputies Joachim Saar, Johannes Fechner and Franz Ruetz, and Saar, the long-serving CDU faction speaker, was returned. A note on Fechner's own website later dates the deputy mayoralty from 2009 until his election to the Bundestag; the contemporary account instead places him among the deputies thanked while the council chose its deputies.

He remained a city councillor after that term began. On 24 September 2013, after he had won a Bundestag seat, the Badische Zeitung reported that he was leaving the council and that Horst Lapschansky was expected to succeed him. On the evening of 22 October 2013 the council accepted Fechner's wish to leave, and Lapschansky was sworn in as the new SPD councillor.

District council and state party bodies

Fechner has sat on the district council (Kreistag) of the Emmendingen district since 2009, and he kept that seat after giving up the city mandate. At the district election of 7 June 2009, in Wahlkreis I (Emmendingen), Landratsamt returns transcribed by the Mitwelt Stiftung Oberrhein list him as elected with 3,825 votes. The same compilation, citing Landratsamt figures, lists him as elected again with 5,133 votes in the preliminary result for 2014 and with 6,545 votes in 2019.

A new Kreistag was elected on 9 June 2024. The county's list of members for 2024–2029 includes Dr. Johannes Fechner (SPD) for Wahlkreis I – Emmendingen; new members are marked in bold, and his name is not among them. In the Bundestag's register of outside posts the Kreistag membership is recorded as unpaid.

Since 2010 he has been on the state executive of the Working Group of Social Democratic Lawyers (Arbeitsgemeinschaft sozialdemokratischer Juristinnen und Juristen) in Baden-Württemberg. After the association's state conference of 9 May 2026 its published board still listed him as a Beisitzer for the Emmendingen district association. In that entry he describes himself as a long-standing board member, as SPD district chair, and as a member of the Emmendingen Kreistag.

Bundestag candidacies and election results

Johannes Fechner stood for the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in Bundestag constituency 283, Emmendingen–Lahr, at the federal elections of 2013, 2017, 2021 and 2025. He did not take the direct mandate in any of the four contests. The Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) held the seat, through Peter Weiß in 2013 and 2017 and through Yannick Bury in 2021 and 2025, while Fechner entered the Bundestag each time from the SPD state list in Baden-Württemberg. His place on that list was 19th in 2013, 10th in 2017 and 6th in both 2021 and 2025.

Each voter has two votes. The first is cast for a constituency candidate, and the candidate with the most first votes wins the constituency; the second is cast for a party's state list and decides how many seats the party receives. From 2025, a constituency plurality produces a seat only if the party's second votes cover it (Zweitstimmendeckung). Constituency 283 covers the whole Emmendingen district and, from the Ortenaukreis, Lahr/Schwarzwald together with Ettenheim, Haslach im Kinzigtal, Friesenheim, Rust, Schwanau, Seelbach and the other municipalities assigned to the seat. The remaining Ortenau municipalities fall into constituencies 284 and 286.

The 2013 and 2017 elections

The SPD Baden-Württemberg congress in Heilbronn placed Fechner 19th on the state list for Emmendingen–Lahr. On 22 September 2013, turnout in the constituency was 71.4 percent (153,869 of 215,623 eligible voters). Peter Weiß (CDU) won with 78,797 first votes (52.3 percent). Fechner, the runner-up, received 39,772 (26.4 percent). Alliance 90/The Greens took 17,368 (11.5 percent) and Die Linke 7,002 (4.6 percent). The SPD's second-vote share was 21.2 percent (32,131), against 45.8 percent for the CDU. The CDU won all 38 Baden-Württemberg constituencies, so the SPD's 20 seats from the state were list seats. The federal electoral committee recorded Fechner as elected from place 19.

He stood again on 24 September 2017, on list place 10 and again as the SPD candidate in constituency 283, against Peter Siegfried Weiß. Turnout was 77.2 percent (168,468 of 218,287 eligible voters). Weiß held the seat with 62,476 first votes (37.6 percent), 14.8 percentage points below 2013. Fechner received 39,472 (23.7 percent). The Greens had 18,537 (11.1 percent) and the Alternative for Germany (AfD) 18,027 (10.8 percent). The SPD's second-vote share fell to 17.9 percent (29,738); the CDU took 35.9 percent. The CDU again won every constituency in the state. The SPD received 16 list seats, and Fechner was elected from place 10. In both years his first-vote share ran ahead of the SPD list, by 5.2 points in 2013 and 5.8 points in 2017.

The 2021 contest with Yannick Bury

Weiß did not stand in 2021. Südwestrundfunk reported that he had held the direct mandate since 1998, and that Fechner was again the SPD candidate. The CDU candidate was Yannick Bury. On 26 September 2021 turnout was 76.8 percent (168,004 of 218,872 eligible voters). The final count gave Bury 46,406 first votes and Fechner 46,316, both 27.8 percent, a margin of 90 votes. On election night the Badische Zeitung reported a lead of 92 votes for Bury. A follow-up on 1 October 2021, headlined that the lead had shrunk by two votes, treated the result as official.

The Greens received 23,345 first votes (14.0 percent), the Free Democratic Party 16,620 (10.0 percent) and the AfD 14,396 (8.6 percent). Second votes were also close: the CDU 41,323 (24.8 percent) and the SPD 39,727 (23.8 percent). Statewide the SPD won one constituency, Mannheim, and 21 list seats. Fechner, who had not won Emmendingen–Lahr, was elected from list place 6.

The 2025 election and list place 6

Fechner and Bury met again on 23 February 2025, with Fechner still in sixth place on the SPD state list. Turnout rose to 83.3 percent (182,311 of 218,790 eligible voters). Bury won with 66,984 first votes (37.0 percent), 9.2 percentage points above 2021. Fechner received 40,204 (22.2 percent), down 5.6 points. The AfD placed third with 34,282 (19.0 percent), ahead of the Greens on 18,328 (10.1 percent) and Die Linke on 8,504 (4.7 percent).

On the second vote the CDU led with 58,425 (32.2 percent), the AfD had 35,309 (19.5 percent) and the SPD 28,150 (15.5 percent). Fechner's first-vote share was again above the SPD list, by 6.7 points. Some candidates who led Baden-Württemberg constituencies on first votes did not receive a seat because of Zweitstimmendeckung. Bury's plurality was covered, and the state statistical office recorded him as the elected member for Emmendingen–Lahr. The SPD won no constituency in the state and received 13 list seats; Fechner was elected from place 6.

Roles in the SPD Bundestag group

Legal-policy spokesperson, 2014–2021

On 7 October 2014, in the 18th electoral term, the parliamentary group of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in the Bundestag made Fechner spokesperson of its working group on legal affairs and consumer protection. For that term the Bundestag listed him as an ordinary member, and as Obmann, of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Consumer Protection, and as an ordinary member of the Committee on Scrutiny of Elections, Immunity and the Rules of Procedure. The group’s term “spokesperson” of the working group is the post the biography records as Obmann, the group’s lead member in the committee.

After the 2017 election the group again named him spokesperson of that working group from 30 January 2018, and from 27 February 2018 he sat on the group executive (Fraktionsvorstand). The spokesperson entry runs through the 19th electoral term. In the 20th term the group no longer records it: his list there opens, on 9 December 2021, with parliamentary managing director and Justiziar.

Parliamentary managing director and legal counsel

On 9 December 2021 the SPD group elected its managing board for the 20th electoral term. Fechner received 173 yes votes, with 180 votes cast, and became one of four parliamentary managing directors (Parlamentarische Geschäftsführer). The group dates the parallel office of Justiziar, the legal counsel on that board, from the same day. Katja Mast was elected first parliamentary managing director the same day, with 156 yes votes out of 190 valid votes, succeeding Carsten Schneider. The chair was Rolf Mützenich, who had led the group since 2019.

Parliamentary managing directors conduct a group’s everyday parliamentary and internal business with the chair. They prepare plenary sittings, settle agendas with the other groups and in the Council of Elders, hold members together for important votes, help fill committee seats, and deal with the federal government, the Bundesrat, the party and associations.

Mützenich did not stand again after the election of 23 February 2025. On 26 February the new group elected Lars Klingbeil chair with 85.6 percent: 95 votes yes, 13 no and three abstentions. He then left the chair to become federal finance minister and vice-chancellor. On 7 May 2025 the group elected Matthias Miersch chair with 83.2 percent. The same day it elected six deputy chairs and four managing directors and reported 117 votes cast. Dirk Wiese became first managing director; the release gives him no separate yes-vote total. Derya Türk-Nachbaur received 104 yes votes, Marja-Liisa Völlers 102, and Fechner, again also Justiziar, 112. Against the 117 votes reported as cast, that is about 96 percent, and the highest yes-vote figure the announcement published.

Council of Elders and group organisation

In the 21st Bundestag the biography lists Fechner as an ordinary member of the Council of Elders, of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Consumer Protection and of the Committee on Scrutiny of Elections, Immunity and the Rules of Procedure, and as Obmann of the last. It also lists deputy membership of the Interior Committee, the Wahlausschuss and the Joint Committee. From 21 May 2025 the SPD group lists him as spokesperson of the working group that matches the Obmann post, and as an ordinary member of the legal-affairs committee.

Section 6 of the rules of procedure composes the Council of the President of the Bundestag, the Vice-Presidents and 23 further members named by the groups. It assists the President, and it seeks agreement on committee chairs and the work plan without deciding those points. It does decide internal affairs not reserved to the President or the Presidium, allocates the Bundestag’s rooms and draws up the estimate for the Bundestag’s budget chapter, which the Budget Committee may change only in agreement with the Council. It may appoint standing commissions, including non-members of the Council, and its sittings are confidential. The Bundestag adds that the Council fixes sitting weeks, agrees the agenda as the term proceeds and discusses disputes, and uses commissions because of that workload. The group lists Fechner from 7 May 2025 on the Council’s commission for information technology and digitalisation, from 4 June 2025 on its commission on the legal status of members, and from 25 June 2025 as a deputy of the Joint Committee under Article 53a of the Basic Law.

On 21 May 2025 the Bundestag elected its voting members of the Richterwahlausschuss, which with the competent federal ministers chooses judges of the highest federal courts. From the SPD list it elected Sonja Eichwede, Fechner and Carmen Wegge as full members, with Esther Dilcher, Daniel Rinkert and Nina Scheer as substitutes. The same sitting elected the Wahlausschuss that proposes the judges of the Federal Constitutional Court appointed by the Bundestag. The SPD’s two full seats went to Eichwede and Wiese. Fechner was fourth on the SPD proposal, after those two and Dilcher, and the biography lists him as a deputy member.

Criminal law and digital surveillance

Sexual offences and trafficking

As legal-policy spokesperson of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), and later an SPD rapporteur on the Bundestag legal-affairs committee, Johannes Fechner on 14 March 2024 defended the 2021 Act to Combat Sexualised Violence against Children, including a ten-year maximum under section 184b of the Criminal Code. He called the one-year minimum a mistake the SPD had wanted to set at six months: distribution, acquisition and possession had become felonies, which prosecutors could not discontinue. A mother who forwarded a nude photograph from her son's class to warn other parents, a teacher or the police would, he said, be committing such an offence.

The bill for which he was rapporteur, introduced by Justice Minister Marco Buschmann, cut those minima to six and three months, leaving the maxima unchanged, so the offences were again misdemeanours that could be discontinued or dealt with by penal order. In committee the SPD, Alliance 90/The Greens, the Free Democratic Party and the Left group voted for the text, the CDU/CSU against and the Alternative for Germany abstained; the plenary passed it on 16 May 2024 against the CDU/CSU and the AfD. The CDU/CSU, voting no, preferred to keep the ranges and to privilege warning cases, adolescent offences and low-level possession inside the offence.

In May 2026, as the SPD group's parliamentary managing director, Fechner welcomed a cabinet bill implementing a revised EU directive on human trafficking. He told Deutschlandfunk that "slave-like conditions" were visible and that tens of thousands of people were exploited in prostitution or the meat industry. The draft would also cover surrogacy, adoption and forced marriage.

Data retention and encrypted communications

On 16 October 2015 the Bundestag passed, by 404 votes to 148, a coalition law on data retention by telecommunications providers; 43 SPD members voted no and seven abstained, while Die Linke and the Greens voted against. Fechner voted yes. He described a compromise: IP-address assignments and call data for ten weeks, location data for four, no content or emails, access only for listed serious offences on a judicial order, and exceptions for privileged communications. In July 2018, told that a Court of Justice ruling allowed retention only of suspects, he wrote that use limited to serious crime was already "in the sense" of that judgment, hoped the Federal Constitutional Court would diverge from the European Court of Justice, and cited a murder in his constituency which he said had been solved only with retained data. On 20 September 2022 the Court of Justice held Germany's suspicionless storage of telephone and internet traffic data incompatible with EU law.

On 5 December 2024 SPD interior specialist Sebastian Fiedler urged a minimum retention of IP addresses, citing 38,000 suspected cases since 2022 in which investigators had lacked them; Green and FDP speakers called general retention a serious interference and preferred freezing data already held. Fechner drew a separate line against scanning the content of messages. In October 2025 he wrote that a Danish Council-presidency draft, which would allow suspicionless scans of private communications and break effective end-to-end encryption, was unacceptable: "Suspicionless surveillance of communications must be taboo in a state under the rule of law." He associated that line with Justice Minister Stefanie Hubig and said Germany would not force messengers to read messages en masse before sending. A voluntary reporting rule extended to April 2028, he wrote in July 2026, did not cover encrypted services such as WhatsApp and Signal.

Cannabis, hate speech and related reforms

Shortly after the Bundestag passed the Network Enforcement Act in 2017, Fechner told the tageszeitung that users should have a court-enforceable claim to restoration of lawful posts that platforms deleted. The coalition had wanted that in the Act, he said, but a new corporate duty would have needed a fresh notification in Brussels and missed the legislative period; he regarded the widespread fear of over-blocking as unfounded.

On 18 June 2020 the grand coalition required large platforms to report specified criminal content, with IP addresses, to the Federal Criminal Police Office. Fechner called that an "enormous improvement"; Justice Minister Christine Lambrecht presented it as protection against racist threats. Bitkom warned of mass transfers the platforms could not classify as criminal; the Greens and the Left criticised data kept by the federal police, and the FDP criticised password disclosure. The AfD and the Left voted against; the FDP and the Greens abstained.

In November 2024 Fechner wrote that the SPD group, which had pressed for decriminalisation, would not make even small amounts criminal again, "if only to relieve the courts and the police," though he questioned whether the legal quantities were too high. Since 1 April 2024 adults may possess and grow cannabis under the Cannabis Act. In February 2026 a CDU congress called on the coalition to repeal that law and again prohibit possession, cultivation and distribution; the coalition agreement had provided only for an evaluation "open as to the result."

After a May 2025 attack by a 13-year-old at a Berlin school, he opposed the Union proposal to lower the age of criminal responsibility from 14 to 12 as a "pseudo-solution": prison would give children criminal contacts, youth-welfare offices should intervene earlier, and arrest or closed placement of under-14s was already possible.

In 2024 the legal-affairs committee backed a new section 108f, punishing paid use of a parliamentary mandate to influence ministries—the gap left when mask-procurement commissions fell outside member-bribery law—with up to three years or a fine. Fechner, the SPD rapporteur, said members must not again go unpunished for using the mandate for private business, "as happened with the mask deals."

Civil justice, tenancy and consumer protection

Rent regulation

As legal-policy spokesperson of the SPD Bundestag group, Fechner defended the rent brake in the Mietrechtsnovellierungsgesetz of 21 April 2015. Under § 556d of the Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch, the starting rent in an area a Land designates as a tight housing market may not exceed the local comparative rent by more than 10 percent. Ordinances last at most five years, and housing first used after 1 October 2014 is exempt.

On 18 July 2019 the Third Chamber of the First Senate of the Federal Constitutional Court held that the rules do not violate property, freedom of contract or equality. It refused to admit a Berlin landlord’s complaint and rejected two referrals from the Berlin Regional Court as inadequately reasoned (1 BvL 1/18, 1 BvL 4/18, 1 BvR 1595/18). When the Bundesrat approved the brake in March 2015, Haus & Grund president Rolf Kornemann called it “unsozial und verfassungswidrig” and argued that it would worsen shortages.

Opening the 29 November 2018 debate on the Mietrechtsanpassungsgesetz, Fechner credited Justice Minister Katarina Barley. He said the SPD had secured nationwide rules cutting the annual modernization pass-through from 11 to 8 percent and capping modernization increases at €3 per square metre within six years, or €2 below a rent of €7. AfD speaker Jens Maier called the package a “Mogelpackung.”

On 14 February 2020 the Bundestag debated letting Länder redesignate tight markets through 31 December 2025 and letting tenants reclaim an unlawful starting rent for 30 months. Fechner said rises had slowed where the brake applied and that the state had to intervene. He accused Alliance 90/The Greens of demanding more in Berlin while Schleswig-Holstein dropped the brake, and he backed Interior Minister Horst Seehofer’s plan to tighten the criminal ban on usurious rents, which he said the Union had blocked. The FDP said the draft built no homes; the CDU/CSU called regulation a pause until more building; Die Linke called the changes half-measures. A statute in force on 23 July 2025 extended the brake to the end of 2029, still excluding newer buildings.

On 29 April 2026 the cabinet adopted “Miete II,” proposed by Justice Minister Stefanie Hubig. In tight markets only half of a consumer-price rise above 3 percent a year could be passed on under an index lease. Rules on furnished lets and short contracts were to limit circumvention of the brake; a tenant could avert one termination for arrears by paying, and the threshold for a simplified small modernization would rise.

Whistleblowers, copyright and collective actions

On 15 March 2019 Fechner attacked Economics Minister Peter Altmaier for insisting in the Committee of Permanent Representatives that Germany withhold consent from the European Union whistleblower directive. He called that a scandal and a “krasse Fehlentscheidung,” and credited Barley with EU-level progress despite it. A Bundestag bill of December 2022 was blocked by the Bundesrat in February 2023. After mediation, the Bundestag on 11 May 2023 passed the Hinweisgeberschutzgesetz with the governing parties and the CDU/CSU; the Bundesrat agreed the next day. Anonymous channels were no longer mandatory, and the top fine fell from €100,000 to €50,000. The EU deadline had been the end of 2021.

On copyright, he said on 17 May 2021 that artists should be paid for digital use and strengthen information claims against platforms and streaming services. An association action against unreasonably low pay had failed because of the Union. On 20 May the Bundestag passed the Urheberrechts-Diensteanbieter-Gesetz, implementing Article 17. Heise reported that platform liability implied upload filters, with a harbour for short uses—15 seconds of video or audio, 160 characters, or 125 kilobytes of an image. The AfD, FDP and the Left voted no; the Greens abstained.

He opened the 14 June 2018 reading of the Musterfeststellungsklage. Qualified associations could sue on issues common to many claims; free registration suspended limitation. He said the act, in force on 1 November 2018, would let buyers in the Volkswagen emissions scandal register before claims expired. The AfD called the timetable a rush tied to one firm and said the judgment still gave no payment claim.

Family law and insolvency

Fechner did not lead the family-law bills. On 25 August 2023 Justice Minister Marco Buschmann published proposals on child support and care-related maintenance where both parents provide substantial care after separation, and for unmarried primary carers. Asked on 13 October 2023 whether fathers’ contact and custody rights would be strengthened, he pointed to that paper: care time was to count more, the SPD was waiting for the bill, and slow courts and youth offices were, he wrote, chiefly a staffing problem.

On 17 December 2020 the Bundestag cut residual-debt discharge under the Insolvenzordnung from six years to three for a first proceeding, for applications from 1 October 2020, without a minimum dividend. The change implemented the EU restructuring directive. The same sitting eased restructuring outside full insolvency and kept the filing duty suspended at least through January 2021 for overindebted firms that were not cash-flow insolvent. Fechner said they had run into trouble “unverschuldet” and should not be driven into insolvency.

Constitutional appointments, electoral reform and procedure

Judicial selection and the 2025 Constitutional Court dispute

On 27 January 2022 the Bundestag elected Fechner to the twelve-member Wahlausschuss, which proposes the judges the chamber elects to the Federal Constitutional Court, and to the Richterwahlausschuss, which with the federal government fills posts at the supreme federal courts. Half the judges of each senate in Karlsruhe are chosen by the Bundestag and half by the Bundesrat. On 21 May 2025 he was again elected a full member of the Richterwahlausschuss, with Sonja Eichwede and Carmen Wegge for the SPD. The SPD’s two full Wahlausschuss seats went to Eichwede and Dirk Wiese; the Bundestag lists Fechner as a deputy there.

In July 2025 three vacancies were due to be filled. Dirk Wiese said the nominating committee had on the previous Monday produced a majority, including from the Union, for all three candidates. The secret plenary ballot set for 11 July was removed after the CDU/CSU withdrew support for the SPD nominee Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf. Union speakers cited doubts about her doctoral thesis, which they said put in question the expertise that was the case for electing her, and asked the SPD to withdraw her. She had already been criticised for a liberal view of decriminalising abortion. The plagiarism claims concerned overlaps with her husband’s later habilitation. Hamburg University said the website post was not a notification under its rules; one researcher treated the earlier text as the original. Wiese called the reversal a “Hetzjagd”, and Matthias Miersch said the slate had been agreed with the Union leadership. Only the AfD voted against a postponement. President Julia Klöckner pointed to the sitting week after the summer break.

Fechner, the SPD group’s parliamentary business manager, told Deutschlandfunk on 14 July that he still expected Brosius-Gersdorf to be elected by September. On 21 July he told rbb Inforadio that the plagiarism allegations the Union had treated as decisive were, in his view, disposed of, and that the partner should now agree. On 7 August she withdrew, writing that parts of the CDU/CSU had ruled her election out and that she wanted to protect the other candidates. On 25 September the Bundestag elected Sigrid Emmenegger with 446 yes votes, Ann-Katrin Kaufhold with 440 and Günter Spinner with 424, out of 613 votes cast, each with the required two-thirds of votes cast. Appointment by the federal president was planned for early October, and Kaufhold was proposed as vice-president for the Bundesrat.

Electoral-law reform

From April 2022 Fechner co-chaired, with Nina Warken (CDU), the Commission on the Reform of Electoral Law and the Modernisation of Parliamentary Work. The Bundestag created it on 16 March 2022, on a motion of the SPD, Alliance 90/The Greens and the FDP, with 13 members and 13 experts, to propose a reduction toward the statutory size of 598 seats and to consider, among other points, women’s representation and a voting age of 16. It gave its final report, Drucksache 20/6400, to Bundestag president Bärbel Bas on 12 May 2023. Fechner called the work “very matter-of-fact, very fair”.

The statute was a separate coalition bill. On 17 March 2023 the Bundestag amended the Federal Elections Act by 399 votes to 261, with 23 abstentions. It fixes the house at 630 seats by second votes: a constituency winner sits only if the seat is covered by the party’s second-vote contingent, and the five-percent hurdle no longer had the alternative of three constituency wins. On 30 July 2024 the Second Senate held that coverage procedure compatible with the Basic Law, unanimously. By seven votes to one it held the five-percent clause, as then framed, incompatible with Articles 21(1) and 38(1), but ordered that until a new rule a party under five percent be excluded only if its candidates won fewer than three constituencies. Applicants included the Bavarian government, 195 CDU/CSU members, the CSU and Die Linke.

Immunity, election scrutiny and the Joint Committee

In the 21st Bundestag Fechner is an ordinary member, and the SPD’s Obmann, of the Committee for Election Scrutiny, Immunity and Rules of Procedure, and a member of the Council of Elders. He is also a deputy of the Joint Committee under Article 53a of the Basic Law, a 48-member emergency parliament — two-thirds Bundestag, one-third Bundesrat — for a state of defence if the Bundestag cannot meet in time. He held the same substitute seat in the 20th Bundestag.

On 18 September 2024 the Second Senate unanimously rejected, so far as they were admissible, AfD complaints against the 2019 removal of Stephan Brandner as chair of the legal-affairs committee and against the failure of AfD nominees in December 2021 to win the chairs of the interior, health and development committees. It held that those chairs are posts created by the rules of procedure, tested only for arbitrariness, and that the practice stayed within Article 40(1). Fechner, then the SPD’s legal-policy spokesman, said the governing groups would still propose explicit rules for removing committee chairs and presidium secretaries. In a July 2026 interview he said the SPD would stop what he described as a massive cutback of the Freedom of Information Act associated with Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt, because journalists and citizens had used the Act to uncover scandals.

Public profile

Associations and local life

The Bundestag biography, based on Fechner’s own statements, records that he is married, Protestant and the father of two children. He lives with his wife and children in Emmendingen, where he also practises law, and has been an unpaid member of the district council since 2009. The biography lists the Handball-Club Emmendingen, the German Red Cross, the Deutscher Anwaltsverein, the Schwarzwaldverein, FC Bundestag and other local clubs. Europa-Union Deutschland includes him among the SPD deputies from Baden-Württemberg in its Bundestag group for the 21st electoral term.

In May 2026 the Bundestag press office named him in the FC Bundestag squad that won the 53rd parliamentary European championship in Lübeck. Germany finished unbeaten and without conceding; the office called it the side’s first title since 2022, not an individual one.

Camping in Berlin

During sitting weeks since 2019, Fechner has slept in a one-person pop-up tent on a campsite in western Berlin, by the water and about ten kilometres from Mitte, rather than in a second home. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung published a long report on 11 October 2026 after a reporter spent a sitting day with him, and did not name the site.

He told the paper he is in Berlin for about 85 nights a year and needs only a toilet, a shower and Wi-Fi, keeping suits in his Jakob-Kaiser-Haus office. Hotels, he said, had raised prices at short notice or filled up during trade fairs; the pitch was quieter, took him out of what he called the “Berlin bubble”, and meant he was not holding a flat on a tight rental market for nights he barely used. The saving, he added, left more of the tax-free expense allowance for political work. Outside March to October he has used a hostel room with a shared shower. SWR, visiting in June 2025, put the warmer months at April to October and about twenty weeks a year, and quoted him as donating part of an allowance of about €5,500. Die Welt reported the arrangement on 28 April 2026.

The FAZ account asked whether the tent was meant to signal humility. It noted that a photograph in front of the tent drew more Instagram likes than his political posts, but treated the tent as his real lodging in those months, not a marketing device. SWR found a split under a video of him leaving the tent in a suit for a car with a driver: some comments praised the routine, others said it sat badly with a chauffeur.

Side activities and transparency

He has kept up the self-employed law practice in Emmendingen that preceded the mandate. Clients appear by number and category. For the 21st term the biography lists, among others, a construction firm, a company in test and exploratory drilling, an electronics firm, commercial landlords, a registered association and private individuals, without euro amounts on those lines. For 2022 the archived 20th-term biography gives a total pre-tax profit of €21,639.49, and itemises €5,286.49 from a property-management company and €2,629.24 from a private client. Abgeordnetenwatch carries the same figures.

Until the 2021 reform, reportable outside income was published in ten bands. Returns archived for the 18th and 19th terms list dozens of lawyer-client entries, most in band 1 (€1,000 to €3,500) and some higher, including band 4 (up to €30,000).

Unpaid offices now disclosed include the advisory board of the University of Freiburg from 27 November 2025, the board of trustees of the Stiftung Forum Recht in Karlsruhe, and, from 3 June 2025, an assessor’s seat at Trägerverein Netzwerk Berlin e.V. The FAZ described Netzwerk Berlin as the pragmatic current in the SPD group, between the Seeheimer Kreis and the Parliamentary Left. He is also an unpaid trustee of the Deutsch-Brasilianische Gesellschaft. In 2024 the Friedrich Ebert Foundation met travel costs of €3,083.60, published as support for political activity.