Jürgen Coße

Jürgen Coße (born 16 August 1969 in Neuenkirchen) is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and a member of the Bundestag from North Rhine-Westphalia. The Bundestag lists his occupation as Arbeitsvermittler, a job-placement officer. He is Roman Catholic and married, completed a Realschule and commercial schools in Rheine with the Fachoberschulreife, trained as an office clerk (Bürokaufmann), and has been an SPD member since 1986.

He worked as a placement officer for benefits and labour-market tasks under Book II of the Social Code at the Jobcenter of Kreis Steinfurt in Rheine from 2002 to 2016 and again from 2017 to 2021, after commercial posts with Chivasso B.V. in Hessisch Oldendorf, Berendsohn AG in Hamburg and Flexarbeit GmbH in Duisburg. From 2009 to 2017 he was deputy Landrat (district administrator) of Kreis Steinfurt, and he chairs the district SPD.

Coße first entered the Bundestag on 1 September 2016 as the successor to Petra Hinz. Hinz, an SPD member from Essen, resigned after admitting that she had invented parts of her curriculum vitae, including the Abitur and law examinations; the resignation took effect at the end of 31 August 2016. The Westdeutsche Zeitung described the 47-year-old successor as deputy Landrat and a placement officer at the Steinfurt job centre, and quoted him telling Deutsche Presse-Agentur that he respected the task and would be doing politics as a profession for the first time. The Bundestag records his membership as running from 2016 to 2017 and again from October 2021.

At the federal election of 23 February 2025 he stood in constituency 127, Steinfurt III. Anja Karliczek of the Christian Democratic Union won the direct seat with 37.9 percent of the first votes (62,253); Coße was runner-up with 25.2 percent (41,397). Turnout was 85.3 percent. He nevertheless took a seat in the 21st Bundestag on place 15 of the SPD list in North Rhine-Westphalia, with constituency 127 also recorded against his name.

In that term he is a full member of the Committee on Sport and Volunteering, the Committee on Housing, Urban Development, Building and Municipalities, and the Subcommittee on Foreign Cultural and Education Policy, and a deputy member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Committee on European Union Affairs. He sits as a full member of the German delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, as a deputy member of the Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly, and as chair of the Bundestag’s Central Africa parliamentary group. Since June 2024 he has been a member of the Deutschlandradio broadcasting council as a representative of the federal government. His constituency office is in Ibbenbüren.

Early life and education

Family and upbringing

Jürgen Coße was born on 16 August 1969 in Neuenkirchen, a municipality in the Steinfurt district in the northern Münsterland of North Rhine-Westphalia. The Westfälische Nachrichten described him as a native of the town who has continued to live there. At the end of 2024 the municipal population register listed 14,375 residents, 8,725 of them recorded as Roman Catholic. His Bundestag biography, which the parliament notes is drawn from members' own statements, lists him as Roman Catholic and married.

Introducing a 2023 interview, the Münsterische Zeitung described his adherence to the Social Democratic Party of Germany as a family matter reaching back to his great-grandfather in 1918. In an August 2021 profile the Westfälische Nachrichten called him the "Schlossersohn aus Neuenkirchen", the son of a Schlosser, a skilled metalworker. On his own website he writes that his father had been a secretary of the metalworkers' union IG Metall, and that from his father and mother he learned what it meant to hold his own in politics without an academic background. The same account says that he lives in a multi-generational house in Neuenkirchen with his wife and his parents, and that his brother and his brother's family live next door. The Westfälische Nachrichten reported separately that he married Manuela Teupe of Greven, who had worked as a clerk in his constituency office in Ibbenbüren during his first months in parliament; the paper placed the wedding a few months before September 2021.

Schooling and vocational training

The Bundestag biography records a Realschule, commercial schools in Rheine, and the Fachoberschulreife, and gives his trained occupation as Bürokaufmann, a commercial office clerk. A September 2017 profile in the Westfälische Nachrichten set out the same order: the Realschule and the commercial schools, then the office-clerk qualification. In that interview he said he did not come from a wealthy household and did not belong to the educational elite. The paper likened the remark to the stance of then party chairman Martin Schulz, summing it up as having neither an Abitur nor a university degree and nonetheless having made one's way. No university course appears in the parliamentary biography.

Military service

He performed his compulsory service as a staff soldier (Stabsdienstsoldat) in the German-Dutch corps in Münster. His website dates that posting from April 1996 to January 1997 with the 1 German-Netherlands Corps. Basic service in the Bundeswehr had been shortened to ten months in 1996. The Bundestag later suspended compulsory call-up from 1 July 2011, while leaving the underlying duty in law.

The corps had only recently been formed. In 1991 the defence ministers of Germany and the Netherlands decided on a binational headquarters to replace one German and one Dutch corps headquarters; a treaty in 1993 led to the merger. The corps was declared ready for action on 30 August 1995, at a ceremony in Münster attended by Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Dutch prime minister Wim Kok. Münster was chosen because it already housed the German I Corps and because of the city's place in the Peace of Westphalia. In 1997 the two countries recorded that they would share command of the corps framework on equal terms. Its original tasks included the defence of NATO members' territory as well as peacekeeping, humanitarian missions and disaster relief.

Employment before parliament

Commercial employment

Before the public-service post that the Bundestag lists as his occupation, Jürgen Coße held three commercial jobs, each recorded only as that of an employee. A timeline on his website gives August 1997 to July 1999 at Chivasso B.V. in Hessisch Oldendorf, Lower Saxony; July 1999 to September 2000 at Berendsohn AG in Hamburg; and September 2000 to June 2002 at Flexarbeit GmbH in Duisburg. The biography published by the Bundestag, which the parliament states is drawn from members' own information, lists the same employers in whole years—1997 to 1998, 1999 to 2000 and 2000 to 2002—and gives no job titles.

The firms were in different trades. A German branch of Chivasso B.V. in Hessisch Oldendorf was entered at Amtsgericht Hannover on 19 January 1998 (HRB 1954) and has since been deleted from the register. Berendsohn AG, of Hamburg, describes itself as a direct-sales supplier of promotional goods and related marketing services to business customers. Flexarbeit GmbH of Duisburg was registered for commercial temporary work under the Arbeitnehmerüberlassungsgesetz, for contract work, and for job placement. A court appointed a provisional insolvency administrator on 25 April 2002, and insolvency proceedings opened on 1 July 2002, the month after the end date Coße gives for his employment there.

Job centre and staff representation

From 2002 the same biographies name him as an Arbeitsvermittler (job-placement officer) at the Jobcenter Kreis Steinfurt, an Anstalt des öffentlichen Rechts, with the workplace given as Rheine. Basic support for people who can work but cannot meet their living costs is Book II of the Social Code (Sozialgesetzbuch II). In force from 1 January 2005, it brought support for people able to work into one benefit, Arbeitslosengeld II (Hartz IV), renamed Bürgergeld from 1 January 2023. Job centres administer it. Usually a joint body of the Federal Employment Agency and the municipality does so; in about a quarter of municipalities an approved municipal provider (zugelassener kommunaler Träger), often called an option commune, runs the whole task without the agency. Kreis Steinfurt is on the federal list of those providers. Its job centre, seated in the town of Steinfurt, is the district's institution for subsistence benefits and for placement into work, and claimants are assigned a placement officer as their contact. The biographies call the post SGB II placement work, without a caseload, and date it from 2002, although that statute took effect only in 2005.

In August 2016 the Westdeutsche Zeitung, citing the Deutsche Presse-Agentur, described the 47-year-old deputy district administrator as a placement officer at the district job centre in Rheine and a trained commercial clerk. Taking the Bundestag seat vacated by Petra Hinz, he said he was about to practise politics as a profession for the first time. A 2017 Westfälische Nachrichten portrait likewise said that after commercial school he had last worked as a placement officer at the Rheine job centre.

On 20 August 2013, replying on Abgeordnetenwatch as an SPD Bundestag candidate, he wrote that he was chair of a staff council (Personalrat) for 150 colleagues, and called for fewer temporary-agency contracts and stronger co-determination over stress at work. The reply does not name the employer; his stated employment then was the Kreis Steinfurt job centre. A Personalrat is the elected staff body in the public service. The job centre has since reported more than 450 employees, a later headcount rather than the figure he used in 2013.

His website dates the first spell from July 2002 to August 2016, the mandate from September 2016 to October 2017, and a return as placement officer from December 2017 to October 2021. The Bundestag biography gives 2002 to 2016 and 2017 to 2021, lists a right of return (Rückkehrrecht) to the Arbeitsvermittler post at Jobcenter Kreis Steinfurt (AöR) in Steinfurt, and records membership again from October 2021.

Local politics in Kreis Steinfurt

Council and district assembly

In North Rhine-Westphalia the Kreistag is the elected assembly of a rural district. Under the state's Kreisordnung it consists of members chosen by voters in the district's municipalities and the Landrat, who sits ex officio, chairs the assembly and represents the district. The Landrat, elected directly for five years alongside the Kreistag, heads the administration. The assembly also elects at least two honorary deputies, who stand in for the Landrat in the chair and in representative duties, not in day-to-day administration.

Coße has dated his start in elected office to a 1994 candidacy for the council of Neuenkirchen, in Kreis Steinfurt. In an interview republished on his website he said he then spent about ten years on that council, latterly as deputy chair of the local Social Democratic Party (SPD) group, and that in 2004 he stood for the Kreistag although he had wanted to stay in Neuenkirchen. The district's list of those elected in 2009 names him, of Neuenkirchen, among the SPD candidates returned from the reserve list. He was still in the SPD group after the Kreistag election of 13 September 2020, when the SPD took 16 of 66 seats with 24.3 percent of the vote. The district's accounts for 2022 record his membership as ending on 27 March 2022. He did not return as a voting member for 2025–2030. The committee directory for that term, dated 28 September 2026, lists him as a sachkundiger Bürger — an expert citizen co-opted onto a committee — and as substitute for the SPD chair of the personnel and equality committee.

Deputy district administrator

From 2009 to 2017 Coße was an honorary deputy Landrat. On 27 June 2014 the new Kreistag, in a secret ballot and without debate, confirmed the three deputies who had served Landrat Thomas Kubendorff for the previous five years: Bernhard Hembrock of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), from Hörstel, as first deputy; Coße, from Neuenkirchen, as second deputy Landrat; and Gisela Köster (CDU), from Ibbenbüren, as third. The Westfälische Nachrichten reported that the groups had agreed the list in advance and that it drew four votes against and two abstentions.

The office overlapped his first months in the Bundestag: the archived biography for the 18th electoral term, when he took his seat on 1 September 2016, still listed it. The local-government magazine DEMO later wrote that the deputy Landrat post ran from 2009 to 2017 and that he then chaired the SPD group on the Kreistag until 2022. The Westfälische Nachrichten was already calling him SPD Fraktionschef in July 2018. A district press notice of 8 July 2025 states that Peter Middendorf, deputy chair of that group since October 2009, has been its chair since February 2022.

Cross-border Euregio work

The EUREGIO is a German–Dutch public-law association founded in 1958. On its own account it covers 128 municipalities and water boards in parts of North Rhine-Westphalia, Lower Saxony, Gelderland, Overijssel and Drenthe. Its council has 84 voting members, 42 from each country, in cross-border groups, one of them joining the SPD with the Dutch Labour Party (Partij van de Arbeid, PvdA). It meets at least three times a year, and each group sends an advisory member to the executive board.

In September 2008 the Westfälische Nachrichten described Coße as vice-president of the Euregio, which it called the joint body of about 130 border municipalities, when he told SPD members in Lotte about cooperation on civil protection and on controlling viruses in hospitals. The 2016 Bundestag archive likewise listed him as vice-president of EUREGIO e.V. The association's 2018 annual report names him as one of two deputy chairs, with the Dutch mayor Joost van Oostrum under chair Rob Welten, and as chair of the SPD/PvdA group, and therefore an advisory board member. The district's 2022 declarations, covering the period before he left the Kreistag, record him as a member of both the EUREGIO council and the association assembly.

The 2025 EUREGIO report still lists him among the Kreis Steinfurt representatives, as a Kreistag member and Bundestag member and as group chair, and pairs him with Nicolien Boekhoudt of Hengelo as the SPD/PvdA advisory members of the board. A later membership list on the EUREGIO website does not include him, and identifies Boekhoudt as group chair. His own site describes him as a member of the PvdA/SPD in the EUREGIO, while the Bundestag biography, drawn from members' own information, still calls him chair of that group.

Roles in the SPD

Kreisverband and Münsterland

Dates given for Jürgen Coße's entry into the Social Democratic Party of Germany differ by a year. The biography he filed with the Bundestag says 1986; a Westfälische Nachrichten profile of September 2017 called him a member since 1985 and noted earlier activity in the Young Socialists.

On 5 September 2011 the paper already described him, at an SPD meeting in Reckenfeld, as chairman of the SPD in Kreis Steinfurt and as deputy chairman of the SPD party council (Parteirat). The 2017 profile said nine years on that council, latterly as its second chairman, had opened doors for him in Berlin. State statutes let a sub-district (Unterbezirk) call itself a Kreisverband. At the district congress in Ibbenbüren on 18 April 2015, 74 of 90 delegates returned him for two years — 82 percent, with 13 against, three abstentions and no opponent. Elisabeth Schrameyer and Stefan Streit stayed deputies, and Björn Schilling stayed treasurer.

In November 2025 a congress in Emsdetten, with about 70 delegates, unanimously created equal co-chairs for two years. Coße and Sarah Lahrkamp, a former Bundestag member and a deputy Landrätin, each received more than 90 percent. Deputies were Sarah Böhme, of the state executive, and Stefan Streit, mayor of Tecklenburg; Schilling, mayor of Lengerich, remained treasurer, on a voting board of 19.

On 18 June 2025 the SPD Münsterland committee elected him chairman without opposition, succeeding Bernhard Daldrup, whom his office said had served 25 years; the same statement called the committee the forum of the associations of Steinfurt, Coesfeld, Warendorf and Borken and of Münster, together with SPD parliamentarians from the Münsterland and members of the regional council and the Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe, and named as deputies Nadine Heselhaus and the chairs Fabian Schulz, Dennis Kocker and Johannes Waldmann. The statutes allow the state executive to form regional groupings of sub-districts for municipal policy, cooperation between municipalities and regional planning.

North Rhine-Westphalia state party council

In the SPD statutes for North Rhine-Westphalia of 10 May 2025, the Landesparteirat is the highest body between state congresses. It advises the executive and, through its own initiatives, promotes the formation of will inside the party; the executive must hear it before decisions on fundamental questions, basic organisation and the preparation of elections. It decides motions a congress refers to it alone and recommends on those referred jointly to it and the executive. It adopts, taking regional proposals into account, the association's proposals for the European Parliament list and for reserve lists for the Landschaftsverbände and the Regionalverband Ruhr, and it debates European, federal, state and municipal policy. One hundred delegates from the sub-districts sit on it, one base seat each and the rest by membership; it normally meets quarterly and elects a chair and three deputies to conduct sittings. The state association has its seat in Düsseldorf.

On 3 December 2021 the council elected Coße after Bärbel Bas, the new Bundestag president, did not stand again after eleven years. A digital vote confirmed by post gave him 45 votes and one abstention; deputies Aylin Doğan and Ellen Stock had 44 each, and Josephine Gauselmann 43. His Bundestag biography still names him chair.

Separately, within the SPD Bundestag group, the group announced on 3 June 2025 that he was one of 25 members of the extended executive for the 21st term. With the managing board, that body runs the group's business, plans its work, prepares meetings and reports back. His office said the vote came in the first round and that the same week he joined the board of the North Rhine-Westphalia Landesgruppe for Westliches Westfalen — Steinfurt, Borken, Coesfeld and parts of the western Ruhr — beside speakers Wiebke Esdar and Oliver Kaczmarek. He also lists a place on the steering circle (Lenkungskreis) of the Parlamentarische Linke in the group.

Bundestag elections and mandates

The 2013 candidacy and the 2016 succession

Jürgen Coße was the direct candidate of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in the Bundestag constituency Steinfurt III, in North Rhine-Westphalia, at each federal election from 2013 onward. The district was numbered 128 in 2013, 2017 and 2021 and 127 in 2025. Throughout, it comprised the same fourteen municipalities of Kreis Steinfurt, including Ibbenbüren, Emsdetten, Greven, Hörstel, Lengerich, Mettingen, Tecklenburg and Westerkappeln.

On 22 September 2013 the SPD, with Coße as its constituency candidate, received 52,786 first votes, 36.5 percent, against 69,385 (47.9 percent) for Anja Karliczek of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), who won the seat. Turnout was 75.3 percent of 193,909 eligible voters, and second votes split 43.3 percent CDU to 33.4 percent SPD. Coße was 35th on the SPD state list and was not elected when the new Bundestag met.

He took the seat on 1 September 2016 after Petra Hinz, an SPD member from Essen, resigned over a fabricated biography. Hinz had claimed an Abitur and legal studies; her lawyers said she had only the Fachhochschulreife, obtained in 1983, and that the account of a legal education was untrue. On 20 July 2016 they told Bundestag President Norbert Lammert that she would give up the mandate. The resignation required a notarised original. On 30 August a Bundestag spokesman said that document had arrived and would take effect at the end of 31 August 2016. The Westdeutsche Zeitung identified Coße, not Bettina Bähr-Losse, as the next person on the North Rhine-Westphalia SPD list; Bähr-Losse was discussed only as a possible later successor to Peer Steinbrück. Coße, then 47, a deputy district administrator and employment adviser at the Kreis Steinfurt job centre in Rheine, told the Deutsche Presse-Agentur, "Ich habe Respekt vor der Aufgabe. Ich mache dann zum ersten Mal beruflich Politik." He served for the rest of the 18th electoral term.

Results in 2017, 2021 and 2025

On 24 September 2017 Coße stood again in the constituency and at place 29 on the state list. Karliczek won with 67,678 first votes (44.8 percent) to his 45,797 (30.3 percent); turnout was 78.0 percent of 195,571 eligible voters. Alliance 90/The Greens took 6.5 percent of first votes, the Alternative for Germany 6.3 percent, and Die Linke and the Free Democratic Party 5.6 percent each. Second votes went 37.8 percent to the CDU and 27.6 percent to the SPD. He was not returned: the Bundestag biography limits that membership to 2016–2017 and records him back at the job centre until 2021.

On 26 September 2021, still in constituency 128 and again at list place 29, Coße received 48,068 first votes (31.1 percent) to Karliczek's 52,445 (34.0 percent). Turnout was 79.6 percent of 195,513 eligible voters. The Greens took 15.5 percent of first votes, the FDP 7.4 percent, the AfD 5.7 percent and Die Linke 3.0 percent, while second votes in the constituency favoured the SPD over the CDU, 50,555 (32.7 percent) to 42,528 (27.5 percent). The final roll of candidates elected from state lists includes him at SPD place 29, and he re-entered the Bundestag in October 2021.

The election of 23 February 2025 used the new number 127 for the same fourteen municipalities. Karliczek won with 62,253 first votes (37.9 percent) to Coße's 41,397 (25.2 percent); 165,562 of 194,178 eligible voters took part, a turnout of 85.3 percent. First votes also gave the AfD 25,484 (15.5 percent), the Greens 19,383 (11.8 percent), Die Linke 9,868 (6.0 percent) and the FDP 4,874 (3.0 percent). Second votes were 33.1 percent CDU, 22.1 percent SPD and 15.2 percent AfD. The Federal Returning Officer records Karliczek as elected in the constituency and Coße as the runner-up.

List seats and constituency representation

Voters cast a first vote for a constituency candidate and a second vote for a party's closed state list (Landesliste), whose order the party fixes. Until the 2021 election, the leading first-vote candidate won the constituency seat. From 2025 that candidate is seated only if the seat is also covered by the party's second-vote entitlement in the Land (Zweitstimmendeckung); remaining seats go down the Landesliste, skipping anyone already elected in a constituency. If a list member later leaves, the Land returning officer calls the next eligible candidate on that list.

Coße entered in 2016 by that route: he was 35th on the 2013 list, and contemporary reporting described him as the next person still available on it. Place 29 was not enough in 2017, but in 2021 the SPD's North Rhine-Westphalian allocation reached that place and included him. In 2025 he was 15th on the state list. The interior ministry's compilation of members elected from state lists, issued on the preliminary result, names him at place 15, and the Bundestag records the seat as a North Rhine-Westphalia Landesliste mandate, with constituency 127 given as his candidacy rather than as a direct seat. Karliczek held the direct mandate at all four elections. The Bundestag lists his constituency office at Breite Straße 5, 49477 Ibbenbüren.

Parliamentary committees and policy work

Foreign affairs in the 18th and 20th terms

Jürgen Coße entered the Bundestag on 1 September 2016 in the seat given up by Petra Hinz of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). For the rest of the 18th term he was a full member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and of its Subcommittee on the United Nations, International Organisations and Globalisation, and a deputy member of the Committee on European Union Affairs.

The Ibbenbüren weekly Wir in reported that October that he was taking a full Foreign Affairs seat in place of Peer Steinbrück, and quoted him calling that unusual for a new arrival. Steinbrück had telephoned on 12 July 2016 to say he would resign; Hinz left first, so the mandate Coße filled was hers. He later said that his 2016–17 work on the committee had already been East Africa.

On his return he was again a full member: the committee’s constitutive sitting in December 2021 listed him among 13 SPD members. The SPD group dates that seat, and deputy membership of the European Union Affairs and Defence committees, from 13 December 2021; membership of the Subcommittee on Global Health from 5 April 2022; and membership of the Subcommittee on the United Nations, International Organisations and Civilian Crisis Prevention from 21 June 2022. The archived 20th-term biography records the same five assignments. The group also lists him as deputy chair of the Eastern Africa parliamentary group from 21 March 2022 and, from 29 November 2022, as chair of the Central Africa group.

His office described the 20th-term rapporteur briefs as East Africa, Western Europe, the Pacific, the United Nations, international labour and social policy, and global health policy. In May 2022 the group named him, with global-health spokesperson Tina Rudolph, as rapporteur for a motion—tabled by the governing parties with the CDU/CSU—asking that Taiwan again attend the World Health Organization assembly as an observer, while accepting the one-China policy and arguing that the right to health applied worldwide. In October 2023, six months after fighting began in Sudan on 15 April, he said the war was among the largest humanitarian catastrophes, citing more than 10,000 deaths and more than five million people displaced, and warned of an ethnic turn and of crimes of the kind seen in Darfur.

In the 21st term he was a deputy on Foreign Affairs from 21 May 2025 and, from 16 October 2025, a full member of the Subcommittee on Foreign Cultural and Education Policy, beside Nancy Faeser. He has chaired the group’s Africa discussion circle since 7 July 2025.

Housing, municipalities and the local-government brief

From the start of the 21st Bundestag he was a full member of the Committee on Housing, Urban Development, Building and Local Government. Its constitutive sitting on 21 May 2025 listed him among six SPD members, with Hendrik Bollmann as the group’s lead. The group dates the seat from that day and his role as spokesperson of its municipal-policy working group from 15 September 2025. On 3 June 2025 it elected him to the 25-member extended executive, and its list adds, from 4 June 2025, the Council of Elders commission on members’ staff, which the Bundestag biography does not display. He also said that day that he had joined the board of the group’s North Rhine-Westphalia Land group.

On 7 November 2025 he opened the SPD side of the debate on the committee’s recommendation on a Green motion, “Living well on the spot—strengthening towns and municipalities” (printed papers 21/1310 and 21/2604). He thanked what he put at more than 200,000 honorary municipal politicians and 10,780 mayors, said the Basic Law bars direct federation–municipality cooperation, and still claimed the coalition was offering unmatched sums—a “sports billion”, 100 billion euros for municipalities and a “construction turbo”. He opposed the motion for lack of a financing proposal, argued that North Rhine-Westphalia was not passing federal money through to municipalities, and said he and Bollmann had asked KfW to simplify applications for smaller authorities. On 22 June 2026, during a municipal-associations day of action, he called for structural relief binding the federation, the Länder and local government to what municipalities could actually carry.

Sport, volunteering and European Union affairs

He was a full member of the Committee on European Union Affairs from 21 May to 12 November 2025 and a deputy from 13 November. The Committee on Sport and Volunteering welcomed him on 12 November 2025: chair Aydan Özoğuz said he was succeeding Jasmina Hostert, and the minutes list him as an ordinary SPD member. The group dates the seat from 13 November and names him, from 2 December 2025, deputy spokesperson of its sport-and-volunteering working group. He wrote that he would keep following European policy as a deputy and wanted the new committee above all for grassroots sport and volunteers, citing about 86,000 sports clubs with nearly 28.8 million members and about 29 million people in voluntary work. The 18th-term biography had already listed him as a vice-president of the Steinfurt district sports federation; he said he stayed deputy chair until 2023. As of 29 October 2026 the Bundestag biography still shows those sport, housing and cultural-policy seats, with European Union Affairs and Foreign Affairs as deputy memberships.

International parliamentary bodies

Besides the standing committees of the Bundestag, Jürgen Coße's biography lists him as chair of the Central Africa parliamentary group (Parlamentariergruppe Zentralafrika), an ordinary member of Germany's delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, and a substitute member of the Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly.

Central Africa parliamentary group

The Bundestag's parliamentary groups are cross-party bodies for relations with foreign parliaments. In the 21st term the Council of Elders set up 47 bilateral and multilateral groups covering about 180 countries. The Bundestag treats them as parliamentary diplomacy rather than law-making bodies: a delegation generally travels once a term to one country, or twice to a region.

The Central Africa group covers Equatorial Guinea, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Cameroon, the Republic of the Congo, São Tomé and Príncipe and the Central African Republic. Coße led its visit to the two Congos from 5 to 10 March 2023, with Olav Gutting (CDU/CSU), Kathrin Henneberger (Alliance 90/The Greens), Christoph Hoffmann (FDP), Dietmar Friedhoff (AfD) and André Hahn (The Left), and the biography still lists him as chair. The announced themes were parliamentary exchange, projects of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit and KfW, human rights, civil society and tropical forests, and a meeting with the head of the United Nations mission MONUSCO.

From 24 to 29 March 2024 the board went to Cameroon under Coße, with Hoffmann, Friedhoff and Hahn, accompanied by ambassador Corinna Fricke. Coße said the visit was to show continued German development engagement and to contribute to stability in the Sahel. In Douala and Yaoundé they met officials, parliamentarians, businesses and civil-society groups; the report also notes the anglophone conflict and German colonial rule from 1884 to 1916. Separately, in the Social Democratic Party of Germany group, he has chaired the Africa discussion circle (Gesprächskreis Afrika) since 7 July 2025 and has been a deputy member of the Foreign Affairs Committee since 21 May 2025.

Council of Europe

The Assembly is the parliamentary organ of the Council of Europe, which the Bundestag describes as having 46 members. It has 306 representatives and 306 substitutes, allocated by population; Germany sends 18 of each, with Knut Abraham (CDU/CSU) heading the delegation. A one-week public plenary is held four times a year at the Palais de l'Europe in Strasbourg, a Standing Committee acts between sessions, and much of the work is done in committees. Its tasks include following the Committee of Ministers, adopting recommendations and resolutions, and monitoring standards, and a committee handles elections of judges to the European Court of Human Rights. The Court states that judges are chosen by the Assembly from national lists of three, for one non-renewable term of nine years, and sit as individuals rather than for their state.

On 5 June 2025 the Bundestag elected the delegation on a joint proposal of the CDU/CSU, AfD, SPD, Alliance 90/The Greens and The Left; the SPD full members were Coße, Nancy Faeser, Gabriela Heinrich and Frank Schwabe. The Assembly lists him from 23 June 2025 as a representative in the Socialists, Democrats and Greens Group (SOC), one of five groups, as a full member of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, and from 26 June 2025 as an alternate on the Sub-Committee on Human Rights. In a statement of 3 October 2025 he said that week was his first part-session, including the legal-affairs committee to which he said he belonged, with plenary debate on Russia, Gaza, and the rule of law in Georgia.

Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly

The assembly was created by an agreement between the Bundestag and the French National Assembly, adopted by the National Assembly on 11 March 2019 and by the Bundestag on 20 March 2019. The constitutive sitting was on 25 March 2019 in Paris under Bundestag President Wolfgang Schäuble and National Assembly President Richard Ferrand, after the joint resolution of 22 January 2018 marking the 55th anniversary of the Élysée Treaty. Fifty members from each parliament, named each term according to party strength, meet under the two presidents at least twice a year, generally alternating between Germany and France.

Article 6 charges it with overseeing the Élysée Treaty of 22 January 1963 and the 22 January 2019 treaty on cooperation and integration—the Aachen Treaty—and with following the ministerial and defence councils, common foreign and security policy, and convergence of the two legal systems. It proposes joint resolutions; it does not legislate. The Bundestag lists ordinary and substitute members separately, and Coße is a substitute rather than one of the 50 ordinary German members, a status the SPD group dates from 21 May 2025.

Other public offices and memberships

Broadcasting council and savings bank

Since June 2024 Jürgen Coße has sat on the Hörfunkrat of Deutschlandradio as a representative of the federal government. The 45-member council, composed under the Deutschlandradio State Treaty of representatives of the Länder, the Bund and socially relevant organisations, supervises the national public-service programmes Deutschlandfunk, Deutschlandfunk Kultur and Deutschlandfunk Nova. It sets programming guidelines, advises the Intendant and monitors the treaty rules on content, reporting, youth protection and complaints; committees prepare programme and finance questions. Ordinary members receive a monthly expense allowance of €300 and €50 for each meeting attended. The Bundestag register records Coße's post as €300 gross a month, plus irregular payments of €200 gross in 2025 and €50 gross in 2026.

He had earlier held a short seat on the broadcasting council of Westdeutscher Rundfunk. On 16 December 2020 the Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia adopted, with no votes against, an SPD proposal electing him to succeed Veith Lemmen, who had become mayor of Werther. The WDR's report on its 12th Rundfunkrat lists him as a Landtag appointee from 5 January 2021 until that term ended on 1 December 2021, and from 23 February 2021 on the committee for broadcasting development and digitalisation. The Rundfunkrat represents the public and deliberates on the broadcaster's programmes, structure and finances. On 8 September 2021 the Landtag adopted a further SPD slate again naming him as a full member, but he is absent from the attendance list for the 13th council's constitutive meeting on 1 December 2021 and from the membership roll published for the term to December 2026.

Kreissparkasse Steinfurt is a public-law savings bank for Kreis Steinfurt and most of its municipalities; its organs are the executive board and the Verwaltungsrat, and the sponsoring Zweckverband sits in Ibbenbüren. The 2024 and 2025 annual reports name Coße as second deputy to the chair, Landrat Martin Sommer, with Wilfried Grunendahl as first deputy. Members of the Verwaltungsrat, the main committee and the risk committee were paid €990 per meeting, twice that for the chair, with no performance-related element; both reports record €2,970 for Coße. His Bundestag disclosure gives the same €2,970 gross for 2025 and dates the Verwaltungsrat seat to 16 December 2025 and the risk-committee seat to 12 January 2026. The 2025 report still heads the board that includes him "until 12 January 2026".

Unions and civic associations

The Bundestag biography, based on members' own statements, lists membership of ver.di, the Arbeiterwohlfahrt (AWO), IG BCE, the Europa-Union Deutschland, the Turn- und Sportverein St. Arnold and the EUREGIO. ver.di, the united services union, describes itself as organising about 1.8 million people in roughly 1,000 occupations. IG BCE reports about 570,000 members in chemicals, energy, mining and industries such as glass, rubber, ceramics, plastics, leather and paper. The AWO, founded in 1919 and a member of the Federal Association of Non-statutory Welfare, works from solidarity, tolerance, freedom, equality and justice. The Europa-Union is a non-party association for European unification and a federal Europe, with about 17,000 members. The EUREGIO is the German-Dutch public-law body for cross-border work around Gronau and Enschede, and TuS St. Arnold is a community sports club in Neuenkirchen. On his own website he also names Archemed – Ärzte für Kinder in Not, the Knappenverein Tecklenburger Land, and the advisory board of the hospice Haus Hannah in Emsdetten.

Public positions and reception

Statements on federal politics

On 29 January 2025, after fatal attacks in Magdeburg and Aschaffenburg, the Bundestag adopted a non-binding CDU/CSU resolution (Drucksache 20/14698) by 348 votes to 344, with 10 abstentions. It does not bind the government. It called for permanent controls on all German borders, turning back people without valid documents even if they sought protection, and faster detention and deportation. Der Spiegel counted the yes votes as 187 from the CDU/CSU, 80 from the Free Democratic Party, 75 from the Alternative for Germany and six independents, and none from the SPD, the Greens or the Left.

That day Coße published a constituency statement. He called “going to bed with the AfD” a taboo break that left him stunned and personally affected, wrote that there was no need for “stirrup-holders for inhumane politics”, and said Friedrich Merz was close to opening the door to the AfD of Alice Weidel and Björn Höcke. He asked the local CDU and FDP to distance themselves: “One does not do politics with right-wing extremists. That is indecent.”

On 31 January the Bundestag rejected the Union’s binding Zustrombegrenzungsgesetz, 338 to 349 with five abstentions. The bill would have written “limitation” back into residence law, suspended some family reunion and let the Federal Police seek detention. Coße’s statement concerned the resolution that passed, not this defeat.

For 2025–29, Abgeordnetenwatch recorded answers to all nine questions there. He had not signed its transparency pledge; listed outside roles were public-law posts, including the Deutschlandradio council and, until late 2025, the Kreissparkasse Steinfurt board.

Constituency campaigns and press coverage

When Petra Hinz resigned after a falsified curriculum vitae, the Westdeutsche Zeitung reported on 30 August 2016 that Coße would take the seat. Then 47, he was a deputy district administrator and a placement officer at the Steinfurt job centre in Rheine. He told the Deutsche Presse-Agentur: “I have respect for the task. I will then be doing politics as a job for the first time.”

On 11 November 2016 the Westfälische Nachrichten reported his nomination for Steinfurt III. He said he did not want to be the region’s member “only for a year,” and that “we do not want to come second here” to Anja Karliczek. A September 2017 profile quoted him, “I am one of them; I do not come from a rich house,” and noted he had first been discussed as a successor to Peer Steinbrück. In 2017 first votes there were 44.8 percent CDU and 30.3 percent SPD.

In 2021 the margin narrowed. In constituency 128 Karliczek won 34.0 percent (52,445 votes) and Coße 31.1 percent (48,068); the SPD led second votes with 32.7 percent. The North Rhine-Westphalia returning officer’s preliminary list of members chosen from state lists put him 29th on the SPD list, and he returned that way. On 23 February 2025, in renumbered constituency 127, Karliczek took 37.9 percent (62,253) and Coße 25.2 percent (41,397). Turnout was 85.3 percent, and the SPD’s second-vote share fell to 22.1 percent. He was still elected from the SPD state list, at place 15.

In 2024 the local argument was Amprion’s planned 380 kV overhead line from Westerkappeln to the Gersteinwerk. The Westfälische Nachrichten reported in July that the mayors of Ladbergen, Lengerich, Lienen and Tecklenburg had petitioned the Bundestag to mark project 89 “F” in the federal grid plan, allowing underground cable as a pilot. Coße told the Allgemeine Zeitung: “I advise Amprion to keep its hands off the overhead line. In my view the lines belong underground.” He then sent about 70 questions to economy minister Robert Habeck, the Münster district government and Amprion. On 4 September his office published a municipal account of the mayors handing 18,500 signatures to him and Karliczek. In November the same paper reported Mayor Wilhelm Möhrke telling Lengerich council that 19,000 signatures had reached the district government. Radio RST said in July 2025 that more than 20,000 people had signed and that the petitions committee was still examining cost and feasibility.