Josef Oster

Josef Oster (born 4 January 1971 in Zell (Mosel)) is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and a member of the Bundestag for Koblenz, a constituency in Rhineland-Palatinate. The parliament's biography lists him as a Diplom-Verwaltungswirt (FH), a graduate qualification in public administration from a university of applied sciences, and as Roman Catholic. He has been a directly elected member since October 2017, when the 19th Bundestag held its constituent sitting on 24 October, and he kept the Koblenz seat in the 20th and 21st electoral terms. The Bundestag notes that the biographical details it publishes are the member's own statements.

His career before parliament was in municipal administration along the Moselle and the Lahn. From 1987 to 1990 he trained in the intermediate non-technical administrative service, took the Fachhochschulreife in 1992, and from 1993 to 1996 studied at the Hochschule für öffentliche Verwaltung Rheinland-Pfalz, graduating as a Diplom-Verwaltungswirt (FH). A part-time course at the Verwaltungs- und Wirtschaftsakademie Rheinland-Pfalz brought a further qualification as Verwaltungs- und Betriebswirt (VWA) in 2000. He worked from 1990 to 1999 as an official of the Cochem-Zell district administration, then from 1999 to 2001 in Berlin as adviser and office manager to a member of the Bundestag. From 2002 until 2017 he was full-time mayor and head of administration of the Verbandsgemeinde Bad Ems. He joined the CDU in 1988.

At the federal election of 24 September 2017 Oster won constituency 199, Koblenz, with 61,594 first votes, 41.3 percent, and succeeded Michael Fuchs. Turnout in the constituency was 76.7 percent. On 26 September 2021 he held the seat with 46,073 first votes, 31.7 percent, against 43,416 votes and 29.9 percent for Thorsten Rudolph of the Social Democratic Party. The CDU's second-vote share in the same constituency that year was 26.0 percent, and the SPD's was 29.3 percent. At the election of 23 February 2025 the constituency, renumbered 198, again returned him: the federal returning officer records 55,097 CDU first votes, 35.7 percent, ahead of the SPD on 24.4 percent, with turnout at 82.2 percent of 189,667 eligible voters. The CDU's second-vote share there was 31.5 percent.

In the 21st Bundestag Oster is a full member of the Interior Committee. On 25 June 2025 the committee elected him deputy chair by secret ballot, 38 votes to 3; the Alternative for Germany, which holds the right to nominate the chair, again failed to secure a majority for its nominee, Jochen Haug, and the chair has remained vacant. The Bundestag lists Oster as the committee's acting chair. He is a deputy member of the Defence Committee and of the Committee on Housing, Urban Development, Building and Municipalities, and he chairs the Parliamentary Friendship Group for West Africa. From 2022 to 2025 he was the CDU/CSU group's spokesman (Obmann) on the Interior Committee.

The Interior Committee's brief runs from migration and asylum policy to civil and disaster protection, and it scrutinises the Federal Ministry of the Interior and the federal authorities under that ministry. Alongside that parliamentary work, Oster sits on the federal board of the Kommunalpolitische Vereinigung of the CDU and the Christian Social Union, as deputy federal chair since 2022, and since 2024 he has been the Rhineland-Palatinate CDU's dialogue commissioner for Jewish life. He has been a member of the Koblenz city council since 2019. He chaired the CDU district association in Koblenz from 2020 until June 2026, when he did not stand again and Philip Rünz was elected to succeed him.

Early life and education

Upbringing on the Moselle

Josef Oster was born on 4 January 1971 in Zell (Mosel), in Rhineland-Palatinate's district of Cochem-Zell, and is a Roman Catholic. Episode notes for a Linus Wittich Mediengruppe podcast, whose publisher produces local official gazettes, describe Tellig on the Moselle as his hometown and say that as a youth he earned his first money delivering the Amtsblatt there. Tellig is an Ortsgemeinde of the Verbandsgemeinde Zell (Mosel). The collective municipality's page for the village places it with the smaller Hunsrück communities in the Verbandsgemeinde, which it describes as formerly largely agricultural.

He joined the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in 1988. From 1989 to 2001 he sat on the council of the Ortsgemeinde Tellig, and from 1994 to 1999 on the council of the Verbandsgemeinde Zell (Mosel). The Bundestag's archived biography for the 19th electoral term carries an editorial note that members' biographical details rest on their own statements. That text records that from 1981 to 1987 he attended the Staatliche Realschule Zell (Mosel) and left with the Mittlere Reife. The current biography no longer names the school.

Administrative training and first posts

From 1987 to 1990 he trained for the middle non-technical administrative service (mittlerer nichttechnischer Verwaltungsdienst). From 1990 to 1999 he was an administrative official in various functions at the Kreisverwaltung Cochem-Zell. In a self-description on Abgeordnetenwatch he states that he completed his training at that district administration and later qualified as a Diplom-Verwaltungswirt (FH) and a Verwaltungs- und Betriebswirt (VWA).

The archived biography says that from 1990 to 1992 he obtained the Fachhochschulreife at the Fachoberschule Wirtschaft und Verwaltung in Cochem. The current text gives only 1992 for that qualification. From 1993 to 1996 he studied at the Hochschule für öffentliche Verwaltung Rheinland-Pfalz and graduated as Diplom-Verwaltungswirt (FH). The institution, then the Fachhochschule für öffentliche Verwaltung Rheinland-Pfalz, began teaching in Mayen on 9 June 1981 and prepares students for public administration; it has since replaced the Diplom with bachelor's degrees.

From 1998 to 2000, alongside employment, he studied at the Verwaltungs- und Wirtschaftsakademie Rheinland-Pfalz and finished as Verwaltungs- und Betriebswirt (VWA). The academy describes itself as a non-profit, independent provider of adult vocational education, with classes mainly at weekends and sometimes on weekday evenings; the state, chambers of commerce and crafts, and municipal associations are among its members.

From 1999 to 2001 the current biography lists him as Referent and Büroleiter of a Bundestag member in Berlin; the archived text calls him head of a member's office. Neither names the member. In the Abgeordnetenwatch text he says that in 2001 he was elected, in a direct vote and on the first ballot against three other candidates, full-time mayor of the Verbandsgemeinde Bad Ems. The Bundestag dates that office from 2002 to 2017.

Municipal career

Councils in Cochem-Zell and Rhein-Lahn

Oster's first elected offices were in the district of Cochem-Zell. The biography he submitted to the Bundestag — which prints members' own disclosures — lists him on the council of the Ortsgemeinde Tellig, part of the Verbandsgemeinde Zell (Mosel), from 1989 to 2001, and on that Verbandsgemeinde's council from 1994 to 1999. In Rhineland-Palatinate an Ortsgemeinde keeps its own council and honorary mayor, while a Verbandsgemeinde of neighbouring municipalities in the same district carries shared tasks and much of the administration.

The same biography records posts held while he was later mayor on the Lahn: membership of the Rhein-Lahn-Kreis council from 2004 to 2016, the chair of its CDU group from 2005 to 2009, a seat from 2004 to 2017 on the administrative committee of the employment agency in Montabaur, membership from 2005 to 2017 of the Mittelrhein-Westerwald planning assembly, and the chair of the tourism association Lahn-Taunus-Touristik from 2011 to 2017.

Mayor of Bad Ems

On 10 June 2001 the state returning officer recorded Josef Oster, the CDU candidate, as elected mayor of the Verbandsgemeinde Bad Ems with 52.3 percent of the vote. He held the full-time post from 2002 to 2017. In Rhineland-Palatinate that mayor is a salaried official, elected for eight years, who heads the administration, represents the Verbandsgemeinde and prepares and carries out council decisions. The Verbandsgemeinde, not its Ortsgemeinden, is responsible for fire protection, water and sewage, assigned schools, and central sports and leisure facilities.

The Rathaus in Bad Ems, seat of the Verbandsgemeinde administration.

The Verbandsgemeinde was centred on the spa town of Bad Ems. At a farewell in the marble hall of the state spa, reported on 28 November 2017, Oster described the early years as shaped by a bypass and named the Rhineland-Palatinate Day held in Bad Ems in 2005 as a moment that had moved the town forward. He also said a scheme to heat the Rathaus with warm mine water had been realised at the end of his tenure. Work ran from January 2016 to February 2018: a heat exchanger in the old adit and a water-source heat pump supplied the building, of about 2,962 square metres, so that more than 95 percent of its heat came from mine water, with gas kept for peak load. In 2024 the successor administration still credited Oster with having pressed the project for years.

The elections of 7 June 2009 in the town became a fraud case during his mayoralty, separate from his own full-time office. Der Spiegel reported that the Koblenz prosecutor was examining uniformly marked ballot papers and suspicions against local Freie Wähler figures, including the newly chosen honorary mayor of the town. In November 2010 prosecutors charged a married couple with collecting postal-vote applications, especially from voters of Russian origin, having ballots marked for the husband and other Freie Wähler candidates, and falsifying at least 81 postal votes for the town council, the Verbandsgemeinde council, the honorary town mayor and the district council. The district administration, the notice said, had on 6 August 2009 declared the town-council and town-mayor elections invalid, including a runoff on 21 June 2009. Oster later called that repetition of the election an unusual experience for a mayor.

The statutory term is eight years, so the appointment then running was a second one; the Landtag memorandum on the merger law records that it was due to end on 31 December 2017. On 28 September 2017 the Bad Ems council approved unanimously, by 30 votes, a merger with the Verbandsgemeinde Nassau into Bad Ems-Nassau from 1 January 2019; Nassau agreed the same day by 22 votes to one, with one abstention, and the mayors signed on 11 October 2017. The state law placed the new administration in Bad Ems. Oster was elected to the Bundestag on 24 September 2017. The memorandum records that the federal election committee confirmed that result on 12 October 2017, that his rights and duties as a salaried official were then suspended until 31 December 2017, and that the district administration had on 6 October 2017 named a commissioner to perform the mayor's tasks. The Rhein-Zeitung reported his last working day in mid-October and wrote that office manager Rainer Lindner was taking charge.

Koblenz city council

Since 2019 Oster has sat on the city council of Koblenz, an honorary seat alongside the Bundestag mandate. Before the vote of 26 May 2019 the Rhein-Zeitung reported that he was standing. On the official final result, turnout was 57.7 percent and the CDU took 26.0 percent, a loss of more than 10 points and its weakest postwar share in the city, worth 14 of 56 seats — the same number as Alliance 90/The Greens on 24.4 percent, with the SPD on 19.8 percent and 11 seats.

On 9 June 2024 turnout was above 60 percent for the first time since 1994, and the CDU won 27.7 percent and 15 seats, again the largest of nine groups. Oster, the CDU lead candidate, received 21,771 votes, the most of any candidate. Blick aktuell reported a margin of more than 4,000 votes and a second council term; he called the result an assignment rather than a gift. The Bundestag's register lists the seat at 338 euros a month gross, plus smaller irregular payments, and records membership of the council committee on higher education and of the joint regional board of the University of Koblenz and the Koblenz University of Applied Sciences.

Party offices in the CDU

Local and district offices

Josef Oster joined the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in 1988. The Bundestag biography, based on his own information, records that from 2005 to 2009 he chaired the CDU group on the Rhein-Lahn-Kreis council, during his time as full-time mayor of the Verbandsgemeinde Bad Ems.

In late August 2020 a Koblenz CDU members' meeting in the Rhein-Mosel-Halle, held under pandemic rules, elected him district chair in succession to Mark Scherhag, who had nominated him. Of 110 ballots, 105 were in his favour, three against, one an abstention and one invalid; the deputies were Andreas Biebricher, Julia Kübler and Rudolf Kalenberg. He said the Bundestag seat would not prevent him taking the chair. The association reported a further two-year term at a district congress after his nomination as Bundestag candidate in late October 2024. In June 2026 he did not stand. Its statement, published by Blick aktuell, said six years were ending because Bundestag duties, especially the Interior Committee chair, had become heavier, and members elected Philip Rünz, 28 and newly in the Landtag, by a large majority.

Kommunalpolitische Vereinigung

The Kommunalpolitische Vereinigung (KPV) of the CDU and the Christian Social Union is the umbrella of 16 state associations. Since 1948, it says, it has represented CDU and CSU municipal councillors and local office-holders — about 75,000 people — and its statutes charge it with the parties' aims in municipal politics, local self-government and municipal financial autonomy. Delegates elect its federal board every two years, normally from people who hold a municipal mandate or function.

Oster was elected to the board on 11 November 2017 in Braunschweig, the month after he entered the Bundestag. On 19 November 2022 in Bochum he became a deputy federal chair. The KPV listed him beside chair Christian Haase and as head of its digital-policy working group; Blick aktuell reported 94.9 percent of the vote. The assembly of 16 November 2024 in Bielefeld renewed the board; his office said he was again chosen deputy chair, and the KPV still lists him on it.

The CDU/CSU Bundestag group's Arbeitsgemeinschaft Kommunalpolitik, a members' group organised by background rather than a policy committee, lists him as chair. His office said the group, then of 169 members, elected him on 22 September 2026, that the chair also sits on the group's executive, and that he had been a member since 2017.

Dialogue commissioner for Jewish life

In September 2024 the CDU in Rhineland-Palatinate, under state chair Gordon Schnieder, created a third unpaid dialogue commissioner, for Jewish life, beside Sertaç Bilgin (integration and migration) and Tobias Meyer (expellees and late resettlers). The party put Jewish communities in the state at about 3,000 members and named Oster, then the CDU/CSU Obmann on the Interior Committee, as the first holder. It quoted him that those communities were part of society and of German history, that antisemitism had no place in Germany, and that he already had contact with the community in Koblenz.

A state CDU release of 29 July 2025 described a visit, with Landtag member Helmut Martin, to the community in Bad Kreuznach, which it called the state's smallest. They met chair Valeryan Ryvlin at the synagogue on the site of a former United States chapel. The party said that after the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023 the community had drafted a security concept, then before the interior ministry and subject to funding, and that synagogue and community centre needed about one million euros in repairs; Oster was quoted that security must not depend on money, and he pointed to a similar scheme in Hesse. On 25 September 2025 Blick aktuell published his office's account of an online discussion with Felix Klein, the federal commissioner for antisemitism. In that account Klein described a rise in antisemitic offences since 7 October 2023 and Jews concealing their names; Oster said people living peacefully in Germany had nothing to do with the Middle East war, and that antisemitism at universities, including challenges from parts of the left to Israel's right to exist, was a serious problem.

Elections to the Bundestag

The Koblenz constituency

The Koblenz seat is a Bundestag constituency in northern Rhineland-Palatinate. In the federal returning officer's tables it was constituency 200 in 2013, constituency 199 in 2017 and 2021, and constituency 198 in 2025. The municipalities assigned to it were the same in the 2017, 2021 and 2025 descriptions: the city of Koblenz; from Mayen-Koblenz, Bendorf and the Verbandsgemeinden Rhein-Mosel, Vallendar and Weißenthurm; and, from the Rhein-Lahn-Kreis, Lahnstein, the Verbandsgemeinde Loreley, and the Bad Ems municipalities of Arzbach, Bad Ems, Becheln, Dausenau, Fachbach, Frücht, Kemmenau, Miellen and Nievern. In 2017 those nine places were still listed under the Verbandsgemeinde Bad Ems; from 2021 they appeared as part of the Verbandsgemeinde Bad Ems-Nassau.

At the end of 2023 the constituency had 63 municipalities, 635.7 square kilometres and about 260,900 inhabitants, a density of 410.4 people per square kilometre. Before the 2021 election, SWR described a mix of city and rural Verbandsgemeinden in which the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) had regularly led. In 2013 the CDU took 48.0 percent of first votes (67,046) and 45.0 percent of second votes, with turnout at 72.1 percent. Michael Fuchs, a Koblenz CDU member of the Bundestag and deputy chair of the CDU/CSU group, told the Rhein-Zeitung in May 2016 that he would not stand again and was leaving politics.

The 2017 election

The election to the 19th Bundestag was held on 24 September 2017. On 24 October 2016 delegates of the CDU associations in Koblenz, Mayen-Koblenz and Rhein-Lahn nominated Josef Oster with 95.7 percent of the vote. He won the direct mandate with 61,594 first votes, 41.3 percent, 6.7 points below the CDU share in 2013. Detlev Pilger of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) was second with 42,777 votes, 28.7 percent, a margin of 18,817 votes; he later entered the Bundestag on the state list and did not contest the seat in 2021. Of the other first votes, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), which had no constituency candidate there in 2013, took 8.2 percent, the Free Democratic Party (FDP) 6.5 percent, Alliance 90/The Greens 6.2 percent and Die Linke 5.2 percent. Turnout was 76.7 percent, 151,153 voters out of 196,999 eligible.

Second votes went to the CDU on 37.8 percent, the SPD on 23.8 percent, the FDP on 10.8 percent, the AfD on 9.2 percent, the Greens on 7.9 percent and Die Linke on 6.9 percent. Statewide, turnout was 77.7 percent and the CDU led the second vote with 35.9 percent to the SPD's 24.1 percent, so Koblenz was somewhat stronger for the CDU than Rhineland-Palatinate as a whole.

The 2021 and 2025 elections

The election to the 20th Bundestag was held on 26 September 2021. Oster held the seat by 2,657 votes. He received 46,073 first votes, 31.7 percent, down 9.6 points, and Thorsten Rudolph of the SPD received 43,416, or 29.9 percent. The Greens took 12.4 percent of the first votes, the FDP 7.7 percent and the AfD 6.7 percent. Turnout was 76.2 percent, 147,127 of 193,035 eligible voters. On second votes the SPD passed the CDU in the constituency, 29.3 percent to 26.0 percent, with the Greens on 14.4 percent and the FDP on 11.2 percent. The state result had the same order: the SPD led with 29.4 percent to the CDU's 24.7 percent, and turnout was 77.2 percent. SWR had described Oster beforehand as a familiar regional figure, Rudolph as Pilger's successor and third on the SPD state list, and Markus Wieseler of Bad Ems as the FDP candidate.

The election to the 21st Bundestag was held on 23 February 2025. A 2023 amendment ended the automatic direct mandate used through 2021. From 2025 a party candidate with a first-vote plurality is seated only if the party's second votes in that Land cover the seat. Plurality winners are ranked by first-vote share, and the weakest constituencies stay vacant if the party has won more of them than it has seats. Second votes determine how the Bundestag's fixed 630 seats are divided.

Oster's plurality was covered. The final result lists him as elected, with 55,097 first votes, 35.7 percent, up 4.0 points from 2021. Rudolph was second with 37,659 votes, 24.4 percent, and Joachim Paul of the AfD third with 24,836 votes, 16.1 percent. The Greens had 9.7 percent of the first votes, Die Linke 5.9 percent, the Free Voters 3.8 percent and the FDP 3.0 percent. Turnout rose to 82.2 percent, 155,931 of 189,667 eligible voters. Second votes went to the CDU on 31.5 percent, the SPD on 19.5 percent, the AfD on 16.4 percent, the Greens on 11.6 percent, Die Linke on 7.7 percent, the FDP on 4.8 percent and the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht on 4.0 percent.

Statewide, turnout was 83.0 percent. The CDU led second votes with 30.6 percent, the AfD had 20.1 percent and the SPD 18.6 percent, so the AfD share in Koblenz was below the Land figure and the CDU share slightly above it. Three other CDU pluralities in the state did not produce a seat: constituency 202 Trier (30.8 percent), 204 Mainz (27.3 percent) and 206 Ludwigshafen/Frankenthal (27.1 percent) were left vacant for lack of second-vote cover.

Parliamentary offices

Josef Oster has been a member of the Bundestag since October 2017, in the 19th, 20th and 21st electoral terms, for the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which forms a joint group with the Christian Social Union (CSU).

Committee seats follow the strength of the parliamentary groups. For the 21st term the Bundestag confirmed the Sainte-Laguë/Schepers method for that allocation. The groups name full members and substitutes, and group leaders decide who sits where, with the aim that a member be a full member of only one committee. The Council of Elders assigns the right to nominate each chair and deputy chair by group strength, or by a sequential claiming procedure if the groups do not agree; the committee then elects the nominee. One group is not supposed to nominate both the chair and the deputy chair of the same committee. Each group also names an Obmann or Obfrau, its coordinator on that committee and the leadership’s main contact there. A substitute may attend but votes only when replacing an absent full member of the same group.

Interior Committee

In the 19th and 20th terms Oster was a full member of the Committee on Internal Affairs and Homeland (Ausschuss für Inneres und Heimat). From 2022 to 2025 he was the CDU/CSU Obmann on that committee, a group office recorded separately from the committee chair.

The 21st Bundestag set up an Interior Committee (Innenausschuss) of 42 full members: 14 CDU/CSU, 10 Alternative for Germany (AfD), eight Social Democratic Party, six Alliance 90/The Greens and four Die Linke. It constituted on 21 May 2025 under Vice-President Andrea Lindholz (CSU). The AfD, which held the nomination right for the chair, proposed Jochen Haug. In a secret ballot he received 12 votes in favour, 29 against and one abstention. The AfD did not ask for a second ballot, and Thomas Silberhorn (CSU), the longest-serving member of the committee, took interim charge of the sitting. Oster was among the CDU/CSU full members.

On 25 June 2025 the committee elected Oster deputy chair by secret ballot, 38 in favour and three against. The CDU/CSU held the nomination right for the deputy chair. The same day the AfD again proposed Haug for the chair; he again failed to win a majority, and the chair stayed vacant. The Bundestag biography lists Oster from 2025 as acting chair (amtierender Vorsitzender) and as a full member. It dates the Obmann role to 2022–2025 and does not list it for the 21st term.

Defence and other committees

Biographies for all three terms list him as a substitute member of the Defence Committee. In the 19th term he was also a substitute on that committee’s first committee of inquiry under Article 45a (2) of the Basic Law, the “Beraterverträge” inquiry into external consultancy contracts. The Defence Committee and the Petitions Committee are among the committees the Basic Law requires.

The 19th-term biography also records him as a full member of the Petitions Committee and as a Schriftführer. Schriftführer assist the President, notably by keeping the speakers’ list, calling names, and collecting and counting ballots. A Petitions Committee directory of September 2021 still included him, and he was named again as a CDU/CSU full member when the committee of the 20th term constituted on 11 November 2021. The directory of April 2023 no longer listed him, and the biography for the 20th term does not record the Petitions Committee among his offices.

In the 21st term he is a substitute member of the Committee on Housing, Urban Development, Building and Municipalities.

Parliamentary Friendship Group for West Africa

Since 2025 Oster has chaired the Parliamentary Friendship Group for West Africa. The Bundestag’s account of the group names 16 countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Togo and Chad. The group ordinarily makes two delegation trips in an electoral term.

Friendship groups are cross-party bodies, reconstituted each term by the Bundestag Presidium. The Council of Elders sets their number and geographical scope, and chairs are distributed with regard to group strength. In the 21st term there are 47 groups, covering contacts with about 180 countries; by established practice a member may belong to at most three. The groups do not pass laws or conclude treaties. They keep up parliamentary dialogue through meetings and visits, as a rule once a term to one country or twice to a region.

From 1 to 7 February 2026 Oster led a delegation to Senegal and Cabo Verde, with Detlef Seif (CDU/CSU), Sven Wendorf (AfD), Gabriela Heinrich (SPD) and Lena Gumnior (Alliance 90/The Greens).

Interior, migration and policing

Oster’s recorded positions on asylum, federal police powers and related interior questions have followed the CDU/CSU line in the Bundestag, not a separate programme. The Bundestag biography of Alexander Throm lists him as the group’s interior-policy spokesman since December 2021. Throm spoke in the same migration debates; Oster argued the motions as one of the group’s interior politicians and, later, as acting chair of the Interior Committee.

Migration and asylum

In his first Bundestag speech, on 16 March 2018, Oster answered an AfD motion for immediate comprehensive border controls and for turning people back at unauthorised crossings. He rejected fences and walls: checks were sometimes necessary yet had to stay an exception in open-border Europe, and helping people in acute need belonged to the country’s self-understanding. He called talk of chaos at the border false and thanked the Federal Police. In the July 2018 CDU–CSU asylum dispute, the Rhein-Zeitung quoted him as very angry about how the conflict had been conducted.

On 13 October 2022, on the CDU/CSU motion “End the special path in migration policy in Europe immediately” (printed paper 20/3933), after Andrea Lindholz and Throm, Oster called the reception of about 1.2 million people in eight months, at roughly 5,000 a day, an achievement carried by municipalities and volunteers rather than by the federal government. Local authorities were at their limit, he said; about 4,000 extra places from an interior-ministry summit equalled one average day’s need. Acceptance of help for people genuinely in need was at risk, so illegal migration had to be fought more consistently and the German special path replaced by a common European policy. Katrin Göring-Eckardt, for the Greens, answered that the Union was sowing panic on the backs of helpers and refugees.

On 15 June 2023, on the group motion to “set the right accents” in reforming the Common European Asylum System (20/7191), he called a preceding Green speech close to a plea for more irregular migration and accused Interior Minister Nancy Faeser of accepting a compromise and then saying she would fight it. He still hoped for an ordered European system, but said it would not relieve municipalities soon, and that “1,000 additional people every day” was more than Germany could integrate. He called for return agreements, more safe countries of origin, a stronger Frontex, and checks on the Polish, Czech and Swiss borders. On 16 November 2023, on designating Georgia and Moldova as safe countries of origin, he called the bill a “mini-compromise” after seven years of Green blockage and asked that Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia be added, under the formula “humanity and order”. Fewer hopeless cases would, he argued, leave capacity for people actually in need and undercut smugglers; he also asked the FDP not to pass what he called turbo-naturalisations. Green speakers treated the device as the wrong tool and said the Maghreb states persecuted people, including queer people; Oster interjected that an individual application would remain possible.

Police powers and internal security

On 21 May 2025, in an AfD hour on rising knife attacks, Oster said the security situation was tense and that neither the far right nor the far left would be part of the solution. He cited a knife attack on an officer in Berlin-Neukölln, said those who protect the public deserved unconditional backing, and called it shabby for the AfD to seek capital from each attack. Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt had already shifted priorities, he said; the FDP and especially the Greens had been the “real brakes” and the source of a “culture of mistrust”, though absolute security was impossible in an open society.

On 18 December 2025 he spoke in the first reading of the bill to modernise the Federal Police Act (21/3051). He thanked roughly 55,000 officers and said the omission of control receipts and a general identification duty was a “fundamental change in German interior policy”: “We trust our police officers, and we do not mistrust them.” He backed source telecommunications surveillance against smugglers, suspicion-independent checks in weapon-ban zones, more video surveillance, counter-drone powers and faster action on detention pending deportation, and left artificial intelligence and automatic facial recognition to a later revision of a statute largely dating from 1994. The Bundestag’s account records Irene Mihalic, for the Greens, objecting that those civil-liberties elements had been struck out, and Clara Bünger, for the Left, calling the bill a step toward an authoritarian surveillance state. At second and third reading on 10 July 2026 he said an AfD speech had ignored the substance and that the coalition had improved the draft, including real-time detection for “the age of AI”. The House adopted the committee text with the CDU/CSU and SPD, against the Greens and the Left, the AfD abstaining. Tagesschau reported that the text added real-time facial recognition in defined danger situations, checks in weapon- and knife-ban zones, source surveillance and drone defence, and that Mihalic raised legal doubts about biometric real-time surveillance. On 26 September 2026 Deutschlandfunk reported that the Bundestag and the Bundesrat had approved the Act.

Cannabis, extremism and the AfD

Oster voted against the Cannabis Act on 23 February 2024. It passed by 404 votes to 226, with four abstentions; the CDU/CSU column shows 167 no votes, no yes votes and 30 members not voting, Oster among the noes. On abgeordnetenwatch, on 6 February 2025, he wrote that the coalition’s cannabis law had failed: it neither limited use nor pushed back the black market, exposed children and young people to drugs, and was followed by what he called gang wars. The CDU programme, he said, required reversal; he rejected a higher road-traffic limit and argued for a general driving ban for cannabis consumers.

On 20 December 2024 he gave the last speech before the Christmas recess, in an AfD hour on “possible influence by the presidents of the offices for the protection of the constitution” and events in Thuringia. He recast the nativity story: “Josef from Rhineland-Palatinate, from the city of Koblenz” listened in the Interior Committee while the AfD “gave birth to one malice after another”; an AfD member, he said, had stated a goal of abolishing democracy and had compared committee democrats to mafiosi. He accused the party of tribute to “the lord in the Kremlin”, then had voters on 23 February choose “the parties of the centre, especially those with a C in the name”, closing with “Glory to the Basic Law”. AfD members called it blasphemy; the CDU/CSU, the SPD and parts of the Greens and the FDP applauded. The speech assumed scrutiny by the domestic intelligence offices and answered the party with electoral satire, not a proposal on the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

Civil protection and municipal policy

Civil and disaster protection

Bevölkerungsschutz covers two separate tasks. Under Article 73(1) No. 1 of the Basic Law, the Federation alone legislates for civil protection—the protection of civilians against dangers arising from war—and executes it itself or through the states. Disaster protection belongs to the Länder. Federal authorities assist only on request, and equipment which the Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance provides under section 13 of the Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance Act may also be used in peacetime. The federal government has said that this “double benefit” creates no federal competence over disaster protection, and that equipping and training the units remains with the states and the municipalities.

The July 2021 flood in the Ahr Valley killed 135 people. A committee of inquiry of the Rhineland-Palatinate Landtag examined the disaster, and the Koblenz public prosecutor’s office investigated the former Ahrweiler district administrator Jürgen Pföhler. In April 2024 prosecutors brought no charge, finding that those responsible locally could not have foreseen or prevented the flood’s scale. The flood, the pandemic and Russia’s war against Ukraine were the crises named in a CDU/CSU motion of 5 July 2022, tabled by Friedrich Merz, Alexander Dobrindt and the group. It asked for a “Pakt für den Bevölkerungsschutz” guaranteeing €10 billion over ten years for federal civil protection and disaster assistance, with matching state spending, plus sirens, cell broadcast, warning apps, recognition of volunteers in the fire services, aid organizations and the Technisches Hilfswerk (THW), and a stronger BBK.

On 9 September 2022, as CDU/CSU whip on the Interior Committee of the Bundestag, Oster called the 2023 draft budget “the completely wrong signal.” He said the cut, after an increase under the previous Union-led government, would unsettle volunteers in the THW and the fire services, citing the war, the Ahr flood and the pandemic. He put the draft BBK line at a fall of a good €112 million, to just under €174 million, and the THW line at a fall of about €158 million, to a little over €386 million—the same THW figures as in a Bundestag notice quoted by the THW state association in Bavaria.

On 20 May 2026 the cabinet adopted key points for a pact investing €10 billion by 2029 in equipment, warning systems, THW sites and emergency water and power, and creating a steering staff, the Kommando Zivile Verteidigung, in the Interior Ministry. Speaking for the CDU/CSU the next day, Oster called the pact, with migration measures, infrastructure protection and cyber defence, “what political capacity to act looks like,” and said his side no longer separated internal from external security. He welcomed joint presentation by the interior and defence ministers, more resources for the THW and support for volunteers, but said many citizens would rather “duck away,” and he urged wider use of the NINA app. Marcel Emmerich of the Greens replied that the CDU/CSU had in 2022 reserved the special fund for the Bundeswehr alone; Oster said the previous coalition had delivered “nothing at all” on civil protection.

From 1 to 5 June 2026 he led an Interior Committee delegation of all groups represented to Austria and Switzerland, beginning at the INTERSCHUTZ fair in Hanover, to compare civil and disaster protection—including non-NATO concepts—and migration in light of the pact.

Municipal interests in federal politics

In that debate Oster, formerly full-time mayor of the Verbandsgemeinde Bad Ems, said municipalities had to turn federal plans into practice. He backed a “guide for municipalities” in the pact, but told Christian Pegel, interior minister of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, that giving them financial room was above all a task for the states.

On 27 January 2023 he spoke for the CDU/CSU on secure digital identities, calling them the key to digitizing public services and to the Online Access Act, and accusing the government of a stop to broadband subsidies, no digital budget and cuts to administrative digitalization. Speakers for the governing parties and the Left answered that the previous government’s ID Wallet had failed after warnings from the Federal Office for Information Security.

On 15 October 2026, as chair of the CDU/CSU group’s working party on municipal policy, he responded to the Federal Statistical Office: gross municipal trade tax in 2025 was about €76.4 billion, up €1.1 billion or 1.5 percent, a fifth consecutive rise. He called that welcome, but said receipts were being consumed by “galloping expenditure,” and argued that a Zukunftspakt of Federation, states and municipalities had to review tasks and spending, especially social benefits, or municipalities would have to raise trade-tax and property-tax rates sharply.

Reception and personal life

The 2017 dispute in Bad Ems

In August 2017, while Josef Oster was the Christian Democratic Union direct candidate in Koblenz and still full-time mayor of the Verbandsgemeinde Bad Ems, Berny Abt, the non-party town mayor of Bad Ems, filed supervisory complaints against him with the district administration and with the state supervisory directorate (Aufsichts- und Dienstleistungsdirektion) in Trier. Abt alleged that Oster had neglected official duties for the Bundestag campaign.

The Rhein-Zeitung reported that Abt had logged, from 1 January to 11 August 2017, when Oster was in the town hall and when he was away, calling the file a mix of internet research and his own observations. Abt inferred 64 days of absence and accused Oster of campaigning in working hours, which he treated as a breach of political neutrality. Supervision in Bad Ems and Trier agreed there was no culpable breach of official duties and that Oster had acted within the law; Abt said he would keep the complaint. The paper headlined the clash a "politische Schlammschlacht" in the town hall.

On 1 September the Rhein-Zeitung reported an open letter from local mayors and council-group chairs across parties. They accused Abt of a months-long "Schmutzkampagne" online and through the complaint, and wrote that candidacy for a democratic office was a citizen's right and an honour, "keinesfalls anrüchig". A commentary on 7 September said Abt had written again to the district on the same point, and that supervision, like the directorate in Trier, still found no culpable breach. At a council meeting that week, CDU member Oliver Krügel said the episode had damaged the council's standing; Abt declined further comment on what he called legal grounds, while denying misuse of office. The public record of personal controversy about Oster is limited to this 2017 complaint. It stayed a Rhein-Lahn-Kreis story: later Südwestrundfunk constituency profiles treat him as the sitting CDU candidate and record no further personal case.

Personal life and public profile

The Bundestag biography, which the parliament says rests on members' own statements, records that Oster was born on 4 January 1971 in Zell (Mosel) and is Roman Catholic. It gives neither marital status nor a private address. A report of his November 2017 farewell described him, as he left the mayoralty, as living in Koblenz.

The farewell, in the Marmorsaal of the Bad Ems spa, was covered as a send-off. The Rhein-Zeitung wrote that "Sachlichkeit und Vertrauen" — matter-of-factness and trust — ran through almost every speech from local government, the fire service, the police and associations. Blick aktuell reported the laudation by Franz Lehmler, CDU group chair on the Verbandsgemeinde council, who listed friendliness, matter-of-factness, tolerance and diplomacy among traits of Oster's mayoral style, with similar words from district administrator Frank Puchtler and others. Those were tributes from partners at his departure, not an outside judgment of his later work in Berlin.

In a 2021 constituency portrait, SWR called him a familiar face in the region after the 2017 direct mandate. On abgeordnetenwatch.de, the count for the 2025–2029 Bundestag — questions during the current candidacy and mandate only — stood at 67 of 67 answered. In July 2026 the Rhein-Zeitung, on response rates of members from Rhineland-Palatinate, said that of Oster and CDU colleague Marlon Bröhr, both with Middle Rhine constituencies, one led the state figures and one was last; the published lead does not say which.

The same Bundestag page, status 28 October 2026, lists his reportable outside interests: an honorary seat (ehrenamtlich) on the university council of Vinzenz Pallotti University gGmbH in Vallendar from 12 October 2026, and membership of the advisory board of Zukunftsforum Öffentliche Sicherheit e.V. in Berlin from 31 March 2026. Under public-law bodies it lists the Koblenz city council at 338 euros gross a month, plus irregular gross sums of 60 euros in 2025 and 240 euros in 2026; membership, entered under the city, of the committee for higher-education questions; and membership of the joint regional board (Regionales Kuratorium) of the University of Koblenz and the Hochschule Koblenz. The forum's own site also names him on that board.