Katharina Dröge

Katharina Dröge (born 16 September 1984 in Münster) is a German economist and politician of Alliance 90/The Greens. She has been a member of the Bundestag since 2013 and, since December 2021, a chair of the party's parliamentary group, serving with Britta Haßelmann. In the federal election of 2025 she won a direct mandate in Cologne III, in North Rhine-Westphalia.

She grew up in Ladbergen, in the Tecklenburger Land. Her parents, Manfred and Irmlind Dröge, were active in the local Greens, and her father sat on the municipal council. After the Abitur at the Graf-Adolf-Gymnasium in Tecklenburg in 2004, she studied economics at the University of Cologne and graduated in 2010 as a Diplom-Volkswirtin. From 2010 to 2013 she was a policy adviser in the North Rhine-Westphalia ministry for climate protection, the environment, agriculture, nature conservation and consumer protection in Düsseldorf.

Dröge joined the Greens in 2000. From 2002 to 2006 she was spokesperson of the Green Youth in North Rhine-Westphalia, from 2009 to 2014 she chaired the party's Cologne district association, and since 2015 she has been a spokesperson of the Mittelrhein district association. In parliament she was the group's spokesperson for trade and competition policy from 2013 to 2019, lead member of the Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy from 2013 to 2018, and a deputy member of the Finance Committee from 2013 to 2021. From 2018 to 2021 she served as a parliamentary managing director, and from 2019 to 2021 as economic-policy spokesperson.

The group elected her co-chair in December 2021 with 93 percent of the vote, and Haßelmann with 98 percent, after Katrin Göring-Eckardt and Anton Hofreiter did not stand again. The parliamentary group then had 118 members. Der Spiegel placed Dröge on the party's left and Haßelmann among the Realos, and reported that Dröge had been the Greens' lead negotiator on labour in the talks that formed the traffic-light coalition. On 24 March 2025, with the Greens in opposition, the group re-elected both chairs with 90.4 percent each. In Cologne III she took 43,697 first votes (26.0 percent), 390 ahead of the long-time Social Democratic incumbent Rolf Mützenich.

The Bundestag biography describes her as evangelical Lutheran, married, and the mother of two children. A Focus profile lists Cologne as her place of residence.

Early life and education

Family and upbringing

Katharina Dröge was born on 16 September 1984 in Münster, North Rhine-Westphalia, and grew up in Ladbergen, a small municipality in the Tecklenburger Land in the district of Steinfurt. She lived there with her parents, Manfred and Irmlind Dröge, and a brother until her Abitur in the summer of 2004. The Bundestag biography, compiled from members’ own information, gives her denomination as Evangelical Lutheran.

Both parents were long active in local Green politics. A 2004 taz portrait called Irmlind Dröge and her husband Manfred “green stalwarts.” Manfred Dröge sat for years on the Ladbergen council for Alliance 90/The Greens, where he worked on environmental protection and other Green issues. A 2019 notice from the Ladbergen Greens, reported by the Westfälische Nachrichten, described the couple as the defining local party figures—as council-group speaker and party speaker—and Manfred as a candidate for mayor.

Dröge later told the Westfälische Nachrichten that, as a child, Ladbergen had been “a great place,” where she could ride and be outdoors. Her path into organized politics ran through the family. In 1998, at 14, she wanted to join Greenpeace, whose Hamburg office was seeking contacts only from age 18; her mother pointed her instead to the Green Youth (Grüne Jugend), then newly founded in North Rhine-Westphalia. While still at school she helped start a Green Youth group in Ladbergen, which she later called a sheltered setting in which to practice political argument and from which some friendships lasted. She has said that, for her, no other party took environmental protection as seriously, and she has kept ties to the village through an aunt, an uncle and a grandmother there, and through a yearly meeting of old school friends in Tecklenburg.

Schooling and university

From 1991 to 1995 she attended the primary school (Grundschule) in Ladbergen. In 2004 she took her Abitur at the Graf-Adolf-Gymnasium in Tecklenburg, the school a later local interview referred to as the Tecklenburg Gymnasium. In February 2004, while preparing those exams and serving as one of two speakers of the Green Youth in North Rhine-Westphalia, she told the taz that political work sometimes meant missing school, and that she did not want politics as a life’s occupation, “even if my father does not like to hear that.” She then expected to leave the state for Hamburg or Freiburg and to study economics or psychology, with a view to an international company, an international organization, or journalism.

She remained in North Rhine-Westphalia. From 2004 to 2010 she studied economics (Volkswirtschaftslehre) at the University of Cologne and graduated as a Diplom-Volkswirtin; over the same years she held a scholarship from the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes. She later explained the move to Cologne both as a place to study and as a city where more was happening than in Ladbergen. In a 2018 interview she said she had intended to go into academic research. Instead, on her account, voluntary work as state speaker of the Green Youth and then as chair of the Cologne Greens led to a staff post under Environment Minister Johannes Remmel.

From 2010 until she entered the Bundestag in 2013 she worked in Düsseldorf as a Referentin in the North Rhine-Westphalia Ministry for Climate Protection, Environment, Agriculture, Nature and Consumer Protection. Her Bundestag biography for the 18th legislative period placed that post in the minister’s office for political steering (Ministerbüro für politische Steuerung).

Early political career

Green Youth

Dröge's activity in Alliance 90/The Greens began in its youth wing. In 1998, aged 14, she wanted to volunteer with Greenpeace, whose Hamburg office took contacts only from 18; her mother, Irmlind Dröge, whom the taz described with her father Manfred as a long-standing Green, sent her to the Grüne Jugend, then newly organized in North Rhine-Westphalia. The state office encouraged her to stand as a federal delegate, which required party membership; the Bundestag biography, based on her own disclosure, dates that membership from 2000. She later said that when the federal party, meeting in Rostock, backed a Bundeswehr mission in Afghanistan, she thought of leaving.

From 2002 to 2006 she was a spokesperson of the state Grüne Jugend. In February 2004 the taz found her, at 19, as one of two speakers, already two years on the board and preparing her Abitur. Sven Lehmann, later a Green member of the Bundestag, was a spokesperson of the same body from 2002 to 2005. She called the youth wing the party's "left conscience": it protested cuts to youth welfare and, unlike the adult party then governing in Düsseldorf, still demanded that cannabis be legalized, while saying she did not want politics as a profession.

In 2006 she was the first signatory of a letter to Joschka Fischer charging that fear of losing governing capacity had stifled debate and forced the party onto one line. In 2024 she said she had stayed, criticized Agenda 2010 and argued for a statutory minimum wage.

Cologne and Mittelrhein offices

That biography lists her as district chair of the Greens in Cologne from 2009 to 2014 and, from 2015, as a spokesperson of the Bezirksverband Grüne Mittelrhein. It groups Green branches from Aachen to Oberberg, except Heinsberg, though its 2026 board list names other spokespersons.

The dispute was a plan by Häfen und Güterverkehr Köln (HGK), majority-owned by the city, to add a fourth basin at Godorf harbour on the Rhine, in the Sürther Aue. After planning approval on 30 August 2006, a CDU–SPD majority endorsed it on 30 August 2007; the Greens and the FDP voted no. Chambers, unions, employers and HGK argued for port capacity and fewer lorries. The Greens, the FDP, BUND, the Left and the citizens' group "Contra Erweiterung Godorfer Hafen", active since the 1990s, called the basin unnecessary and destructive of the floodplain.

A petition gathered 31,128 valid signatures, past a quorum of 22,793, but on 29 January 2008 the council declared it inadmissible because the project required planning approval, and the administrative court dismissed the challenge on 18 September 2008. Resident lawsuits later voided the approval on formal grounds, in 2009 and again at the Federal Administrative Court in February 2015.

During Dröge's term as Cologne chair the city held its first residents' poll, on 10 July 2011, under a 10 percent quorum. Turnout was 14.80 percent of 880,937 eligible residents: 73,000 votes (56.11 percent) against expansion and 57,094 (43.89 percent) for it. Neither side reached 87,901 votes, so the 2007 decision stood. Greens, liberals and the Left claimed the majority; the SPD and CDU, who had left the harbour out of their coalition agreement, said they would go on.

The plans ended only later. In 2016 the CDU and the Greens agreed not to proceed. In September 2019 the council closed the procedures with the CDU, the Greens, the Left, the FDP, the Gut group, Mayor Henriette Reker and two non-attached members; the SPD voted no. Bernd Petelkau (CDU) said expected freight growth had not come, Jörg Frank (Greens) credited the citizens' groups, and the SPD said each inland ship replaced about 100 lorries. HGK accepted a decision it still called wrong. Dröge has written that the Cologne Greens wanted the reserve saved, and that this came only in a later alliance with the CDU.

Bundestag elections and constituency

List candidacies, 2013–2021

At the federal elections of 2013, 2017 and 2021, Katharina Dröge was the candidate of Alliance 90/The Greens in Köln III, a Bundestag constituency in northern Cologne numbered 95. In each of those elections the district consisted of the boroughs Ehrenfeld, Nippes and Chorweiler, with the city’s other boroughs assigned to the neighboring Cologne constituencies. She did not finish first in the constituency in any of the three contests and entered the Bundestag through the Green state list in North Rhine-Westphalia.

Delegates at the Greens’ state conference in Hagen in December 2012 elected her to ninth place on that list, by 52 percent to 48 percent against the sitting member Ute Koczy. On 22 September 2013 she placed third in Köln III, with 18,046 first votes (12.9 percent). Rolf Mützenich of the Social Democratic Party of Germany won the seat with 55,021 votes (39.3 percent), and Gisela Manderla of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany took 45,999 (32.9 percent). Turnout was 70.2 percent among 201,922 eligible voters. On the second vote the SPD led the district with 31.5 percent, followed by the CDU on 30.6 percent and the Greens on 14.9 percent, so Dröge’s personal share ran below her party’s.

The 2016 state conference in Oberhausen placed her seventh for the 2017 election; Sven Lehmann of Cologne was fourth. The North Rhine-Westphalia gazette of members elected from state lists records her return in that seventh place, in a Green group of twelve, none of them constituency winners. On 24 September 2017 she was again third in Köln III, with 19,621 first votes (13.2 percent). Mützenich held the seat with 48,148 (32.3 percent) and Manderla followed with 41,106 (27.6 percent). Turnout was 74.0 percent of 203,647 eligible voters. Second votes were almost level among the SPD (24.6 percent), the CDU (24.4 percent) and the Greens (14.0 percent).

For 2021 the state party put Britta Haßelmann first and, in the next block of places, Irene Mihalic, Sven Lehmann and then Dröge, so fifth; the Cologne branch reported 89.2 percent support for her. The constituency result on 26 September 2021 was much closer than before. The state returning officer declared Mützenich elected with 29.9 percent. The Green first-vote total was 43,600 (28.3 percent), 2,549 votes and 1.6 points behind, a gain of 15.1 points on 2017, while the CDU fell to 28,674 (18.6 percent). Turnout was 75.9 percent of 204,539 eligible voters. Second votes in the district put the Greens ahead of the SPD, 28.8 percent to 25.8 percent. The City of Cologne’s final certification named Mützenich as the member elected in constituency 95.

The 2025 direct mandate

For the election of 23 February 2025 the same three boroughs were numbered constituency 94 rather than 95, while the other Cologne boroughs were assigned to constituencies 92, 93 and 100.

In December 2024 the state party elected Haßelmann and Dröge as its two lead candidates, Haßelmann with 99.27 percent for first place on the list and Dröge with 97.09 percent for second. The Cologne constituency committee then admitted, for constituency 94, Mützenich for the SPD, Manderla for the CDU, Dröge for the Greens, Maria Westphal for the Free Democratic Party, Jochen Haug for the Alternative for Germany and Nadine Mai for Die Linke, together with candidates of the Free Voters, Volt and the Party of Progress.

The final first-vote count was the narrowest of her four campaigns. Dröge received 43,697 votes (26.0 percent) and Mützenich 43,307 (25.8 percent), a margin of 390. Manderla took 32,639 (19.4 percent), Haug 19,459 (11.6 percent) and Mai 18,806 (11.2 percent); Westphal received 4,773 (2.8 percent). Of 206,670 people eligible to vote, 169,136 did so, a turnout of 81.8 percent, and 167,822 first votes were valid. On the second vote the Greens led the district with 36,769 votes (21.8 percent), ahead of the SPD on 19.9 percent, the CDU on 19.3 percent, Die Linke on 16.3 percent and the AfD on 11.2 percent. Dröge’s personal share therefore stood above her party’s second-vote share, unlike 2013, 2017 and 2021.

The Federal Returning Officer lists her as elected in constituency 94 with that 26.0 percent, and also records second place on the North Rhine-Westphalia list. Mützenich, a member of the Bundestag since 2002 who had previously won this Cologne constituency at each federal election, was returned in first place on the SPD state list rather than as the constituency member.

Parliamentary work before the chair

Committees and spokesperson roles

Dröge entered the Bundestag in 2013, in the 18th electoral term, while the Alliance 90/The Greens group was in opposition to a CDU/CSU–SPD grand coalition. The archived biography for that term lists her as a full member, and as Obfrau, of the Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy, and as a deputy member of the Finance Committee. An Obfrau or Obmann is a group’s principal contact inside a committee: that member shapes the group’s line in deliberations, helps set the agenda and reports the detailed work back to the group leadership. With 46 members, the economic-affairs committee was the largest of the 18th Bundestag. Its remit tracked the economics and energy ministry: the Energiewende, including revision of the Renewable Energy Sources Act, grid expansion and energy efficiency, plus technology, industrial and Mittelstand policy, the EU internal market, foreign trade and global competition.

Inside the Green group those files were divided. Her current Bundestag biography, which the parliament notes rests on members’ own statements, dates a spokesperson role for trade and competition policy from 2013 to 2019, separate from the broader economic brief. She was the first signatory of the group motion of 21 May 2014, “Für fairen Handel ohne Klageprivilegien für Konzerne,” which argued that the Bundestag should not consent to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership or the EU–Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement if either gave companies a special right to sue states. On 12 February 2014 the groups jointly nominated her, with Oliver Krischer, as a full member of the advisory board of the Federal Network Agency; the disclosure on her 19th-term biography later listed her as a deputy member of that board.

She kept the full seat on the Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy and the deputy seat on the Finance Committee in the 19th term (2017–2021), again opposite a grand coalition. The current biography dates the Obfrau function only through 2018, ordinary membership of the economic committee from 2018 to 2021, and the Finance Committee deputy seat across 2013–2021. Competition work continued after she joined the group executive. She was lead signatory of the motion of 25 April 2018, “Faire digitale Märkte – Wettbewerb und Datenschutz sicherstellen,” and on 31 May 2018 tabled a minor interpellation on the timetable for a further amendment of the Act against Restraints of Competition after the ninth amendment. On 29 October 2020 she spoke for the Greens in the first reading of the government’s GWB-Digitalisierungsgesetz (Drucksache 19/23492) and was lead signatory of a parallel motion, “Internetgiganten zähmen.”

The economic-policy spokesperson’s post changed in autumn 2019. Kerstin Andreae, who held it, was appointed chief executive of the Bundesverband der Energie- und Wasserwirtschaft from 1 November 2019 and said she would resign her Bundestag seat. On 14 October the dts news agency, citing Handelsblatt, reported that Dröge was to succeed her, with industrial policy additionally assigned to Dieter Janecek. The Bundestag biography dates Dröge’s spokesperson role for economic policy to 2019–2021. On 6 November 2019 she and Janecek headed the motion “Wirtschaft zukunftsfähig aufstellen.”

Parliamentary managing director

From 2018 until the group chose new chairs in December 2021, Dröge was a parliamentary managing director (parlamentarische Geschäftsführerin) and therefore a member of the group executive. The group’s March 2018 magazine listed chairs Katrin Göring-Eckardt and Anton Hofreiter, first managing director Britta Haßelmann, further managing directors Dröge, Franziska Brantner and Steffi Lemke, and the political coordinators of the working groups. At a Berlin retreat on 12 January 2018 the group re-elected Göring-Eckardt with 67.7 percent and Hofreiter with 66.1 percent and confirmed Haßelmann with 85.2 percent.

Parliamentary managing directors, in the Bundestag’s definition, run a group’s day-to-day parliamentary and internal business with the chair. They prepare plenary sittings, arrange business with the other groups and in the Council of Elders, assemble members for important votes, coordinate internal bodies, and help staff committees. Dröge kept the specialist briefs while holding that office. When the group tabled its April 2018 digital-markets motion, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung identified her as parliamentary managing director in reporting her call to separate Facebook and WhatsApp.

Leadership of the Green parliamentary group

Election in 2021

On 7 December 2021 the Bundestag group of Alliance 90/The Greens elected a new leadership as the Social Democratic Party, the Greens and the Free Democratic Party concluded the agreement for their traffic-light coalition. Britta Haßelmann, until then first parliamentary managing director, received 98 percent of the votes cast—115 of 117, the Neue Westfälische reported—and Katharina Dröge, an economist and the group's economic-policy spokesperson, 93 percent, or 109 votes. Irene Mihalic was elected first parliamentary managing director with 99 percent. With 118 members, the group was the largest the party had sent to the Bundestag. Katrin Göring-Eckardt and Anton Hofreiter did not stand again; the group nominated Göring-Eckardt for a Bundestag vice-presidency, and Hofreiter was discussed for the chair of the European affairs committee.

Der Spiegel, the Süddeutsche Zeitung and the Neue Westfälische described the pairing as a balance of wings: Haßelmann, from Bielefeld, with the Realos, and Dröge, from Cologne, with the left. Spiegel added that Dröge had led the Greens in the labour group of the coalition talks. Internal rules required at least one chair to be a woman, so an all-female leadership was allowed; with Mihalic, the three leading posts were held by women from North Rhine-Westphalia. The Tagesspiegel later wrote that North Rhine-Westphalia had received no federal ministerial posts in 2021, opening the leadership to the social worker from Bielefeld and the economist from Cologne. Haßelmann called the vote a large advance of trust. Dröge said they would lead the group as a team so the coalition agreement could be carried out. Both said ministers could expect proposals and, at times, limits.

Through the traffic-light years the chairs' public task was to hold that governing group together as disputes with the partners grew. In early 2023 they had declared a "year of climate protection"; at a retreat in Weimar the group pressed for a faster coal exit and for money for the planned child basic income, and criticised the FDP over rail planning, while Dröge called impatience a motor of progress. Tagesschau also reported impatience from younger members and from Hofreiter, and unease over message control after a heating draft from the Green-led economy ministry leaked. Party leadership changed around them. Ricarda Lang and Omid Nouripour, co-chairs since late January 2022, announced on 25 September 2024 that the whole federal executive would resign after a run of election losses, staying on until a November congress. On 16 November in Wiesbaden, Franziska Brantner, described as a Realo close to Robert Habeck, was elected with 78.15 percent and Felix Banaszak, from the left, with 92.88 percent. The faction chairs remained through that change and the coalition's collapse the same autumn.

Re-election and opposition after 2025

At the election of 23 February 2025 the Greens took 11.6 percent of second votes and 85 seats, twelve of them constituencies, down from 118 seats and 14.7 percent, in a Bundestag of 630. In the new Bundestag the group sat in opposition. On 26 February the 85 members kept the old executive as a caretaker board. On 24 March, the day before the new Bundestag met, faction sources reported that Dröge and Haßelmann were each re-elected with 90.4 percent and Mihalic confirmed with 93.9 percent. Tagesschau and Der Spiegel linked the result to internal praise for the pair's talks with the CDU/CSU and the SPD on a financial package for defence and infrastructure. The Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote that, after that success against Friedrich Merz, the group wanted to be bolder and more combative and had chosen its personnel accordingly; Dröge said a new period in opposition was beginning.

Annalena Baerbock, still foreign minister, had been discussed for the group leadership but, Spiegel reported, declined for private reasons and was soon nominated for a senior United Nations post in New York. The same meeting nominated Nouripour for the Bundestag presidium; in a secret ballot he beat Göring-Eckardt and Claudia Roth, and the sitting on 25 March elected him a vice president.

In opposition the chairs mixed attack with offers of cooperation. At a retreat in Leipzig in April 2026, the Tagesspiegel reported Dröge calling the government's record something to wean oneself off and to be ashamed of, while Haßelmann said the Union had sounded decisive in opposition and nearly incapable in office; both renewed an offer to cooperate on large reforms. The paper called them the last relic of the traffic-light years—once responsible for majorities behind government bills, now for pushing a government—and quoted Sven Lehmann calling them the Greens' power-political centre. Criticism audible in 2025 had eased, the paper reported, but not everyone was satisfied: initiatives often barely registered outside the party. Building spokesperson Mayra Vriesema objected that a joint Dröge–Brantner proposal to waive property-transfer tax once for an owner-occupied home assumed a conventional family, and called for tighter rent rules instead. The group's website continued to list Dröge and Haßelmann as the chairs elected on 24 March 2025.

Economic, competition and industrial policy

Competition policy

As competition-policy spokesperson for Alliance 90/The Greens in the Bundestag, Dröge argued that network effects entrenched a few digital platforms while abuse stayed hard to prove. A March 2017 motion she signed first, on the ninth amendment of the Act against Restraints of Competition, asked for interoperability, data portability, and app-store neutrality so operators did not favour their own software. It also sought more resources for the Federal Cartel Office and the skimming of cartel gains without proof of intent or negligence. As an ultima ratio it called for a power, in German law and at European Union level, to break firms up without a prior finding of abuse, on the ground that changing algorithms can make foreclosure impossible to show. The text cited Facebook's tie-up with WhatsApp as a case in which market power had been used to weaken data protection. An April 2018 motion she again signed first repeated the unbundling demand. She told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that the Facebook–WhatsApp merger "must be reversed."

The eleventh amendment, in force on 7 November 2023, put part of that agenda into statute while Robert Habeck was economy minister. After a sector inquiry the Cartel Office may tackle a substantial, continuing distortion of competition even without a proven infringement, and may order the sale of business units as a last resort. President Andreas Mundt said the hurdles were high, especially for unbundling. Skimming was eased by a rebuttable presumption of an advantage worth at least 1 percent of the related domestic turnover. Habeck aimed the bill at energy markets: the draft said that, even with no proven fuel cartel, lawful conduct could still leave buyers facing high prices and less choice.

Business groups called the shift a change of system. In December 2022 the Federation of German Industries (BDI), the German chambers of industry and commerce (DIHK), Bitkom, the retail body HDE and others said an authority could redesign markets—"market by design"—without a legal breach, up to break-up. They said unbundling would hit only firms in Germany and clash with EU and constitutional law. After a narrowed cabinet text in April 2023, the BDI said the changes still left the office free to unbundle firms that had broken no rule, a "national legislative solo effort" that would deter investment rather than reward lawful growth.

Industrial policy and public investment

In April 2021, as the group's economic-policy spokesperson, Dröge wrote that industry accounted for 23 percent of Germany's greenhouse-gas emissions from steel, chemicals and cement, and that climate-neutral production was often unprofitable at the carbon price then in force. Her "climate pact" would have firms commit to that shift while the state refunded costs above the carbon price and clawed the money back if the price later rose—the two-sided logic of carbon contracts for difference (Klimaschutzverträge). Quotas, such as a set share of climate-neutral steel in a car, would create lead markets, and a carbon border adjustment would limit undercutting by dirtier imports. On 15 October 2024 Habeck awarded the first contracts to 15 companies, up to €2.8 billion over 15 years, paid only after verified cuts and put at up to 17 million tonnes avoided. Firms said later profitability still depended on power and carbon prices.

She also backed a bridge electricity price. In May 2023 Habeck's ministry proposed six cents per kilowatt-hour on 80 percent of consumption until 2030 for defined energy-intensive firms, costing a stated €25 billion to €30 billion, in return for a site guarantee and, where the constitution allowed, collective agreements. Finance Minister Christian Lindner of the Free Democratic Party called such aid "economically unwise" and contrary to the social market economy. In September she still expected a deal. The arguments were "so strong, and the alliance for it so large," she told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung: policy should "build them a bridge for a few years, until we have enough cheap energy from wind and sun." Firms faced post-invasion prices and subsidised rivals in China and the United States, and the jobs were "not old, climate-damaging jobs, but the jobs of the future."

She treated the debt brake as a block on public investment because it does not separate investment from current spending. After the Federal Constitutional Court in November 2023 voided a €60 billion shift of pandemic credit, she called the rule a "badly made statute" that worked "economically wrongly" and invited the Christian Democratic Union to negotiate. The FDP refused even a 2024 suspension; Lindner wanted savings, including in social benefits. In July 2025 she told Die Welt the brake "was wrongly constructed and has become an investment brake." The €500 billion special fund was necessary, she said, but borrowing for investment should be placed in the Basic Law for good, not opened once. The Greens would join reform talks; the Union still had reservations.

In a September 2026 essay with IG Metall chair Christiane Benner, she called for longer climate contracts, green lead markets for steel and basic materials, and an industrial power price lasting "well into the 2030s." Renewables, not oil and gas, were the protection against price shocks, she wrote, accusing economy minister Katherina Reiche of undermining their expansion.

Climate, trade and social policy

Trade and globalization

As trade-policy spokesperson for Alliance 90/The Greens in the Bundestag, Dröge opposed the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. In March 2022, after Finance Minister Christian Lindner of the Free Democratic Party called for a new transatlantic agreement, she told Handelsblatt there would be no new TTIP and that neither side was seriously negotiating one. She said the Greens had not dropped their objections to the EU–Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement: a coalition promise to decide after a Federal Constitutional Court ruling fixed only the date.

On 1 December 2022 she opened the ratification debate by saying the coalition was putting climate protection and sustainability at the center of trade policy. She linked the vote to the decision, taken the day before, to leave the Energy Charter Treaty, which she called the European Union's most climate-damaging trade treaty. Future investment agreements, she said, should cover only direct expropriation and discrimination against foreign firms, and an interpretative statement with the Commission, the member states and Canada should block abusive climate claims. A new TTIP, she added, was unrealistic: the original talks had failed over economic interests, and she preferred smaller steps to what she called monster treaties. The Bundestag approved ratification by 559 votes to 110, with no abstentions.

CDU speaker Julia Klöckner called that statement a soothing pill and recalled the Greens' pre-election pledge not to ratify CETA. FDP deputy Carl-Julius Cronenberg said his party had wanted ratification since 2017 and that the Union had not delivered it. The Federation of German Industries called the vote overdue; the German chambers of industry and commerce said such agreements helped medium-sized firms and should be followed by deals with Mercosur, India and Indonesia. Greenpeace's Lis Cunha said CETA protected fossil-fuel companies rather than the climate. Economy minister Robert Habeck set a narrower condition: investment protection must not be played off against climate protection.

In June 2019 Dröge called the EU–Mercosur agreement in principle a fatal decision for climate protection and human rights. Access for European cars, she argued, was being traded for beef, poultry and sugar and would mean further clearing in the Amazon rainforest. She said deforestation under President Jair Bolsonaro had already risen by more than 50 percent, and accused Chancellor Angela Merkel of opposing enforceable climate clauses and stronger human-rights rules. In January 2026, after most German Green members of the European Parliament voted to refer the agreement to the Court of Justice, she called the signal a bad one and sided with a leadership paper that wanted provisional application. Before Chancellor Olaf Scholz's November 2022 visit to Beijing she said China did not compete fairly: subsidized steel had flooded markets, and Germany should back EU anti-dumping action. She argued that human rights and trade could not be separated, supported a European supply-chain law and a ban on goods made with forced labor, and called Cosco's stake in a Hamburg terminal a mistake. A June 2021 motion she introduced sought a joint transatlantic carbon border adjustment, the Paris Agreement inside World Trade Organization rules, and enforceable climate and labor standards in trade deals.

Climate, energy and labor

Dröge treated climate policy as economic policy; the economics and climate ministry in the Scholz cabinet was Habeck's. In March 2024 she said the two belonged together, listing tax cuts for medium-sized firms, a lower electricity tax, climate contracts, faster renewable energy expansion and a hydrogen network, and crediting Habeck's ministry with unlocking investment. At the end of 2024 she called renewables a success story—60 percent of electricity already came from wind and sun—and said a power-plant strategy should secure that path, while transport still needed cheaper electric cars, more public transport and more rail.

In the October 2021 coalition talks she led the Greens in the working group on labor, with Hubertus Heil of the Social Democratic Party and Johannes Vogel of the FDP; basic security was negotiated in a separate group. In the 2023 budget crisis she opposed cuts to the Bürgergeld, saying the planned increase followed living costs, and called CDU chairman Friedrich Merz's proposal to forgo it a campaign against the poorest. She described a per-capita Klimageld, recycling carbon-price revenue to households, as a coalition project. In November 2025 she said the payment system had been ready when the government collapsed, that ending the renewable surcharge on electricity had been a weaker substitute, and urged Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil to introduce the Klimageld.

Coalition politics and the special fund

The traffic-light years

When the Social Democratic Party, Alliance 90/The Greens and the Free Democratic Party opened coalition talks on 27 October 2021, Dröge led the Greens' labour group with Hubertus Heil and Johannes Vogel, not the talks on public finances. The exploratory paper already required investment "within the constitutional debt brake," with no rise in income, corporate or value-added tax and no new wealth tax. Amending the brake in the Basic Law needed a majority the three parties lacked, and the FDP opposed using the pandemic suspension still open for the next year.

On 15 November 2023 the Second Senate of the Federal Constitutional Court, on an application by CDU/CSU members of the Bundestag, voided the Second Supplementary Budget Act 2021. The act had moved €60 billion of unused 2021 pandemic credit into the Energy and Climate Fund, later the Climate and Transformation Fund (KTF). The court found no adequate link between that emergency and the climate measures, and held that the borrowing could not be shifted into later years or authorised after the budget year. The fund was reduced by €60 billion.

On 27 November Dröge called the brake "a badly made statute" that worked "economically wrongly" and invited the Union to a "joint and forward-looking reform," citing CDU minister-presidents in Berlin, Saxony-Anhalt and Saxony. Markus Söder said CDU and CSU leaders opposed a change. Saskia Esken wanted one; Chancellor Olaf Scholz took no position. The FDP refused a 2024 suspension, and Finance Minister Christian Lindner demanded savings, including in social benefits. On 1 December Lindner and Justice Minister Marco Buschmann wrote that the brake should be neither abolished nor reformed.

Early on 13 December, Scholz, Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck and Lindner, after calling in the coalition's group chairs, agreed a 2024 budget for a gap of about €17 billion in the core budget and the missing €60 billion in the KTF. The brake was not suspended for 2024 for the time being. Climate-damaging subsidies were to save €3 billion, support for renewables was cut, and the carbon price was to rise faster than planned.

The 2025 constitutional package

The election of 23 February 2025 left the Greens in opposition. CDU/CSU and the SPD, preparing a government under Friedrich Merz, needed their votes for a constitutional amendment and wanted the outgoing Bundestag to pass it before the Alternative for Germany and Die Linke could block a two-thirds majority. On 5 March Dröge, with co-chair Britta Haßelmann, said consent was "open": the group would not be pressured, and climate policy was missing from the drafts.

On 13 March Merz offered up to €50 billion of a proposed €500 billion fund for the KTF. Dröge said the Greens could not "rely on your word" and that nothing guaranteed the money would be additional rather than room for tax cuts. Lars Klingbeil refused to separate defence from infrastructure.

The agreement of 14 March exempted defence spending above 1 percent of gross domestic product and extended the exemption to civil protection, the intelligence services and aid to states attacked in violation of international law. A twelve-year special fund of up to €500 billion was to finance additional infrastructure, with €100 billion for the Länder and €100 billion, twice the previous offer, for the KTF. The Länder together could borrow up to 0.35 percent of GDP. Dröge said the €100 billion "will make a difference" and that she and Haßelmann had seen to it "that the money is steered in the right direction."

On 18 March the Bundestag passed the package by 512 votes to 206. New Article 143h authorises up to €500 billion outside the debt brake for additional investment in infrastructure and in climate neutrality by 2045—additional, on the official explanation, only if the ordinary budget already invests 10 percent. That neutrality date is a purpose of the fund, not a new state objective. The court had allowed the old Bundestag to vote. The Bundesrat agreed on 21 March by 53 of 69 votes, and President Frank-Walter Steinmeier signed the law on 22 March. As enacted, credit may also finance cybersecurity together with defence, civil protection and the intelligence services above 1 percent of GDP.

On 17 March 2026 the Ifo Institute and the German Economic Institute estimated that 95 percent and 86 percent of the new borrowing had not funded additional infrastructure. Dröge said Merz had "gambled away" the "historic chance" of his chancellorship and called Finance Minister Klingbeil "absolutely dishonest." The Finance Ministry said the studies were wrong, that the 10 percent investment ratio had been met, and that the authors had used an unfunded draft from the collapsed coalition. SPD group chair Matthias Miersch said the money had been available only since autumn 2025; Union group chair Jens Spahn said ready road and rail projects could now be financed.

Public profile and personal life

Reception and controversies

National coverage has presented Katharina Dröge as an economist from the left of Alliance 90/The Greens and, since December 2021, as co-chair of the party's group in the Bundestag with Britta Haßelmann. Der Spiegel, reporting that election, called Dröge the group's economic expert, wrote that she belonged to its left wing, and placed Haßelmann with the Realos. In October 2024 the taz introduced her as a Volkswirtschaftlerin and "die Parteilinke aus Köln." A March 2025 tagesschau portrait said she disliked the spotlight but had filled a gap at the top of the party after a freely delivered speech against Friedrich Merz, while crediting the later talks equally to Haßelmann. It described the co-chairs as divided by a generation and a wing—Haßelmann the more experienced Realo and adviser—and noted that Robert Habeck no longer wanted a leading role and that Annalena Baerbock was bound for the United Nations.

On 11 September 2024, in the general debate on the 2025 federal budget and less than three weeks after the Solingen stabbing, Dröge said violent Islamism was among the greatest dangers to society. The published stenographic report of the 184th sitting records the sentence "denn das Gift des Islamismus erreicht die Köpfe der Menschen nicht nur im Ausland, sondern auch hier," in a passage that also demanded zero tolerance toward people classed as Gefährder, deportation of those planning attacks, closer surveillance including of German suspects, a domestic intelligence service used more strongly as an early-warning system, and prevention against radicalization online. The same day she wrote on X that she had misspoken: "In meiner heutigen Rede gab es einen Versprecher. Natürlich ging es dabei nicht um den Islam, sondern ganz klar um Islamismus. Das ist ein sehr großer Unterschied. Wer sich die Teile der Rede davor und danach anhört, sieht das ganz klar im Zusammenhang."

Accounts of the words spoken in the chamber did not match that authorized text. Junge Freiheit quoted "Das Gift des Islams erreicht die Köpfe der Menschen nicht nur im Ausland, sondern auch hier," headlined that a leading Green politician had warned of the "poison of Islam," and asked whether the line was a Freudian slip. TRT Deutsch quoted "Denn das Gift des Islams, das erreicht die Köpfe der Menschen nicht nur im Ausland, das erreicht die Menschen auch hier," reported that NIUS had headlined "Sogar die Grünen sprechen jetzt vom 'Gift des Islam'," and, in a commentary by Farid Hafez, treated the phrase as part of a discourse of dehumanization and asked whether the clarification was enough. The Föderale Islamische Union called the sentence shocking, wrote that Muslims had experienced it as defamatory and anti-Muslim, and argued that the social-media clarification lacked a clear apology.

Private life and affiliations

The Bundestag biography, drawn from the member's own statements, records that Dröge is evangelical Lutheran, married and the mother of two children. On her website she states that she lives with her family in Cologne and Berlin.

Voluntary affiliations in the official biographies have changed by term. The entry for the 19th electoral period listed Amnesty International, Terre des Femmes and the Cologne carnival society Alte Kölner Karnevalsgesellschaft "Schnüsse Tring" 1901, and the register of reportable offices listed an unpaid seat in the members' assembly of the Heinrich Böll Foundation. The 20th-period biography again named Amnesty International and the carnival society, and recorded the Böll assembly seat as ending on 24 June 2022; Terre des Femmes no longer appeared. Both that biography and the current one list an honorary place on the curatorium of the University of Cologne for the restoration of the historical city and Wallraf library. The Bundestag notes that these biographical details rest on members' self-reporting.