Katrin Staffler

Katrin Staffler (born 4 November 1981 in Dachau) is a German politician of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU) and a biochemist who has been a member of the Bundestag since the constitutive sitting of the 19th electoral term on 24 October 2017. She holds the direct mandate for constituency 214, Fürstenfeldbruck, in Bavaria, and sits with the CDU/CSU group. The Bundestag's biography, based on her own declaration, records that she is Roman Catholic, married and the parent of one child. She lives in Türkenfeld, in the district the constituency covers.

She took her Abitur in 2001 at the Ignaz-Taschner-Gymnasium in Dachau, then studied biochemistry at the Technical University of Munich, completing a Bachelor of Science in 2004 and a Master of Science in 2006. From 2006 to 2010 she worked in scientific research, from 2010 to 2015 in public relations with a focus on health care, and from 2015 to 2017 as a press spokesperson in the financial sector. Before entering parliament she joined the CSU, the Junge Union and the Frauen-Union in 2007, served on the municipal council of Gröbenzell from 2008 to 2014, joined the board of the CSU in Upper Bavaria in 2011, and has been a district councillor in Fürstenfeldbruck since 2014 and chair of the CSU district association there since 2019.

Staffler has won the Fürstenfeldbruck direct mandate three times, in 2017, 2021 and February 2025. The constituency was numbered 215 at the 2017 and 2021 elections and 214 in 2025. The federal returning officer's final results give the CSU 82,602 first votes (43.6 percent) in 2017, ahead of the Social Democratic Party of Germany on 18.7 percent, and 72,721 first votes (38.0 percent) in 2021, ahead of the SPD on 19.3 percent. In 2025 she was returned with 42.6 percent of the first vote, against 15.0 percent for the SPD candidate Michael Schrodi; turnout was 86.4 percent, and the CSU candidate's 84,651 votes were 4.6 percentage points above the party's 2021 share.

From the 19th term she sat on the Committee on Education, Research and Technology Assessment. In the 20th term she was deputy chair of the CSU Landesgruppe in the Bundestag and the group's spokesperson for innovation, education and research. In the 21st term she is a deputy member of the Committee on Health and of the Committee on Education, Family, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, a full member of the Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly, and a deputy member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. On 28 May 2025 the federal cabinet, on a proposal from Federal Health Minister Nina Warken, appointed her Federal Government Commissioner for Long-term care; she received her certificate of appointment on 3 June 2025. The ministry describes the commissioner as the political representative of people who need care and as a contact for everyone involved in care.

Early life and education

Childhood and schooling

Katrin Staffler was born on 4 November 1981 in Dachau and grew up in Günding, a locality of the municipality of Bergkirchen in the district of Dachau, Upper Bavaria. The Bundestag biography, which the parliament says rests on members' own disclosures, records her as Roman Catholic. A Süddeutsche Zeitung profile from 2021, written while she was 39, states that she grew up in that part of Bergkirchen and that, as a student and newly elected municipal councillor, she was still known by the surname Mair.

The Ignaz-Taschner-Gymnasium in Dachau, where Staffler took the Abitur in 2001.

Günding is one of Bergkirchen's larger localities. The municipality's figures list 969 residents there in 1978, three years before her birth, and 1,861 in 2024; over the same span the municipality as a whole grew from 5,161 to 8,199.

In 2001 she passed the Abitur at the Ignaz-Taschner-Gymnasium in Dachau. The school, at Landsberger Straße 1, is a state Gymnasium. For 2025/26 the Bavarian Ministry of Education listed 1,058 pupils and 72 teachers employed full-time or for more than half a timetable, in a science-and-technology stream and an economics stream, each combining English with Latin or French from year 5 to year 13. It is the former Oberrealschule Dachau, in existence since 1952, and the town's first Gymnasium, named for the sculptor and illustrator Ignaz Taschner, who lived his last years in nearby Mitterndorf and died there in 1913.

In the 2021 profile she said that a social-studies teacher, Angelika Neumayer, had stirred her interest in politics through workshops, simulation games and class trips. She told the newspaper that Neumayer called her Bundestag office after the 2017 election, later came to Berlin with pupils, and died in the spring, shortly before she was due to retire. In a Münchner Merkur interview of 12 February 2025 Staffler again traced that interest to a social-studies teacher in the upper school.

Biochemistry at the Technical University of Munich

After the Abitur she studied biochemistry at the Technical University of Munich. A 2023 program document of the university's School of Natural Sciences says the bachelor's course was conceived in 2000, with the support of then-president Herrmann, where chemistry, biology and medicine meet. The document states that the bachelor's and the master's in biochemistry were founded together in the winter semester of 2000, describing them as among the first such programs in Germany, and it names Garching as the main site. It sets out a six-semester full-time bachelor's degree of 180 credits, taught in German, entered through an aptitude assessment, with the thesis in the sixth semester and intended as the basis for a consecutive master's. TUM's course page gives the same duration, credit total, language, location and winter-semester-only admission.

Staffler received a Bachelor of Science in biochemistry in 2004 and a Master of Science in biochemistry in 2006. She describes the degree, and the master's in particular, as concentrated on immunology and clinical chemistry. The TUM document treats those subjects as part of the molecular-medicine material available to biochemistry students, alongside pharmacology, toxicology and oncology; it does not list which options individual students took in the early 2000s. The Bundestag gives her occupation as biochemist, and the biography archived from the 20th legislative period as biochemist (M.Sc.).

The master's was followed by several years of scientific research. She became a member of the Bundestag in 2017.

Professional career

Research at Klinikum rechts der Isar

The Bundestag biography, based on members' own statements, lists Staffler's profession as biochemist and, for 2006 to 2010, records only "wissenschaftliche Forschungsarbeit" (scientific research work), with no laboratory, project, or doctorate. Her website places the work at the Klinikum rechts der Isar in Munich, the university hospital of the Technical University of Munich. A profile under her maiden name, Katrin Mair, dates a research-assistant post at TUM from October 2006 to September 2010 and describes it as research toward a doctorate in internal medicine and gastroenterology, on chronic inflammatory bowel disease, Helicobacter and cancer. Abgeordnetenwatch gives her qualification as "Biochemikerin M.Sc."; neither that profile nor the Bundestag biography records a completed doctorate.

PubMed indexes three papers from 2007 and 2011 with Katrin Mair as a co-author, not the corresponding author. Each record gives one affiliation for the article, not a separate address for every author. A September 2007 article in Cancer Research, on caveolin-1 in gastric-cancer progression, lists the Department of Medicine II at Klinikum rechts der Isar; Mair is the seventh of eleven authors. A June 2011 article in Blood, on CCR9-negative precursors of plasmacytoid dendritic cells, carries the same department; she is the third of ten authors. A September 2011 article in Gastroenterology, on an Enterococcus faecalis metalloprotease and intestinal inflammation, lists a TUM nutrition chair in Freising-Weihenstephan; she is the seventh of fifteen authors. The parliamentary biographies do not cite these papers or a dissertation.

Communications and banking

For 2010 to 2015 the Bundestag biography records public-relations work focused on health care. Abgeordnetenwatch uses the label "Öffentlichkeitsarbeit (Gesundheitswesen)." Neither names an employer. The Mair profile splits the years into agency posts: account management at heller & partner communication GmbH from October 2010 to December 2011; a junior PR role ("PR-Juniorberater") at MW Office PR from January 2012; and, from September 2014, a PR consultancy at MW Office Gesellschaft für Marketing und Werbung mbH. On 8 April 2015 the trade magazine KOM reported that she had most recently been a PR consultant at MW Office.

KOM also reported that on 1 April 2015 Mair, then 33, became a press spokesperson at HypoVereinsbank for southern and eastern Germany, succeeding Markus Block, who had left in February, and reporting to Marion Nagl, then head of the press department. The Bundestag dates a finance-sector spokesperson role to 2015–2017. In the mandatory disclosures, the job before membership is entered as UniCredit Bank AG, Munich, "Pressesprecherin, Rückkehrrecht"—a registered right of return to that post. Abgeordnetenwatch repeats that disclosure and labels it activity before membership in the Bundestag. KOM names that employer HypoVereinsbank; her profile lists it as "HypoVereinsbank – UniCredit Bank AG," the name in the Bundestag disclosure. The CSU group in the Bundestag dates her membership from 24 October 2017, the end point the official timelines give for the bank job.

Local politics and party offices

Municipal and district mandates

From 2008 to 2014 Staffler was a municipal councillor in Gröbenzell, in the district of Fürstenfeldbruck. Since 2014 she has sat on the district council, the Kreistag. That body has 70 seats. At the election of 15 March 2020 the district returning officer recorded 48,115 votes for her, the highest personal total on the list of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria; the CSU won 26 of the 70 seats.

On 8 March 2026 she stood in second place on the CSU list and was elected with 53,984 votes, more than any other candidate. Turnout was 62.9 percent, and the CSU took 37.0 percent of the vote, 0.1 percentage points less than at the previous election. Its group again had 26 councillors.

A biographical note published by the CSU, and reproduced on Abgeordnetenwatch, lists her from 2014 as business manager (Geschäftsführerin) of the CSU group on the Kreistag and as a member of the administrative board of the district enterprise for the Kreisklinik and a nursing home, as well as a councillor. The note gives no end date for the two additional roles. After the 2026 election the Kreisbote reported that the group again chose Emanuel Staffler as its chair and elected Frederik Röder as business manager in place of Thuy Wegmaier; Katrin Staffler was not among the officers named.

Offices in the CSU and its affiliated unions

Staffler joined the CSU, the Junge Union and the Frauen-Union in 2007. Party biographies state that she held a series of posts at local, county and regional level, including eight years as chair of the Frauen-Union in Gröbenzell. When the Gröbenzell CSU marked 50 years of its Frauen-Union in 2022, it described her as a former local chair. Since 2011 she has been a member of the board of the CSU Bezirksverband for Upper Bavaria. The board elected on 5 July 2025 in Altötting, for 2025–2027, names her as one of its two Schriftführer, with Julia Grote.

She was a deputy county chair when, in May 2019, the Kreisvertreterversammlung meeting in Mammendorf elected her to lead the CSU Kreisverband Fürstenfeldbruck. Thomas Karmasin, the Landrat, did not stand again and had proposed her. He said he wanted the party chair separated from the Landrat's office because the public had not always distinguished the two. She received 152 votes, 97.4 percent of the valid votes. Benjamin Miskowitsch succeeded her as a deputy chair. Under the party statute that assembly — the county board, delegates of the local associations, and the county chairs of the party's working groups — elects the Kreisvorstand.

Delegates confirmed her in October 2021 with 96 percent of the vote, and again in May 2023 in Mammendorf with 95.1 percent; seven of 142 delegates voted against her. On 27 May 2025, at the assembly in Eichenau, she was the only candidate and was elected for a further two years with 139 of 144 valid votes, 96.5 percent. The number of deputy chairs rose from four to five: Miskowitsch and Céline Lauer stayed on, and Franz Höfelsauer, Eva Kuchler and Simone Drexl joined them. The Münchner Merkur reported that women made up two-thirds of this group of chair and deputies.

At the CSU congress in Munich in October 2019 she was elected to the Parteivorstand, the party executive, on her first candidacy and on the nomination of the Upper Bavarian organisation. The Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that the congress in Nuremberg in September 2021 re-elected her; she said she had been a member since 2019. The published result of the congress of 23 September 2023 in Munich does not include her among the members chosen that day, whether as an additional member or as the representative of Upper Bavaria, who was Ilse Aigner. The CSU site later places her among the co-opted members of the Parteivorstand. Her own site dates that membership from 2026. The statute allows the executive, on a proposal of the party chair, to add further members, who have a consultative vote. A CSU biography also lists her, from 2023, as co-chair of the party's family commission.

Bundestag elections

The Fürstenfeldbruck constituency

The Bundestag constituency of Fürstenfeldbruck covers the whole of Dachau district and most of Fürstenfeldbruck district. It was numbered 215 at the federal elections of 2017 and 2021 and 214 at the election of 23 February 2025. The Federal Returning Officer records that population change moved one constituency from Saxony-Anhalt to Bavaria, so the numbers of the former constituencies 72 to 255 each fell by one. Bavaria's extra seat, and the boundary changes that accompanied it, were drawn in Swabia. Fürstenfeldbruck was not among the 16 constituencies redrawn for 2025.

Map headed “Neuer Wahlkreis 224”, marking the districts of Landsberg am Lech and Starnberg, and Germering in the district of Fürstenfeldbruck, as the neighbouring constituency.

Annex 2 to the Federal Elections Act, in the form used for 2025, gives constituency 214 every municipality of Dachau district and, from Fürstenfeldbruck district, Alling, Egenhofen, Eichenau, Emmering, the town of Fürstenfeldbruck, Gröbenzell, Maisach, Moorenweis, Olching, Puchheim and Türkenfeld, plus the municipalities in the administrative communities of Grafrath (Grafrath, Kottgeisering and Schöngeising) and Mammendorf (Adelshofen, Althegnenberg, Hattenhofen, Jesenwang, Landsberied, Mammendorf, Mittelstetten and Oberschweinbach). The only municipality of the district left out is Germering, assigned to constituency 223, Starnberg – Landsberg am Lech. That neighbouring seat was numbered 224 in 2017 and 2021.

About 230,000 people could vote: 232,125 in 2017, 231,905 in 2021 and 230,710 in 2025.

The 2017, 2021 and 2025 federal elections

Katrin Staffler, for the Christian Social Union, won a plurality of the first votes in 2017, 2021 and 2025 and entered the Bundestag on that mandate each time.

On 24 September 2017 she received 82,602 first votes, 43.6 percent, 12.3 points below the CSU share in the seat in 2013. Michael Schrodi of the Social Democratic Party was second with 35,454 votes (18.7 percent). The Alternative for Germany took 19,352 (10.2 percent) and Alliance 90/The Greens 17,244 (9.1 percent). Turnout was 82.2 percent (190,769 of 232,125 eligible). Second votes put the CSU on 39.8 percent and the SPD on 13.7; the Free Democratic Party (22,005) and the AfD (21,934) were level on 11.6 percent, and the Greens took 11.0 percent. The Süddeutsche Zeitung reported this as Staffler's first direct mandate, succeeding Gerda Hasselfeldt, who left parliament and did not stand again.

In 2021 Staffler won 72,721 first votes (38.0 percent), down 5.6 points. Schrodi was again second, with 36,831 (19.3 percent). The Greens rose to 25,363 (13.3 percent) and the FDP to 16,029 (8.4 percent); the Free Voters (13,085) and the AfD (13,056) were almost level on 6.8 percent. Turnout was 83.1 percent (192,779 of 231,905). Second votes ranked the CSU on 33.3 percent, the SPD on 16.2, the Greens on 15.9, the FDP on 12.0, the AfD on 6.9 and the Free Voters on 6.4 percent.

On 19 July 2024 a delegates' meeting in Karlsfeld renominated her with 132 of 140 votes: three voted no and five ballots were invalid. Fürstenfeldbruck's Landrat, Thomas Karmasin, proposed her. She criticised the federal government and argued for a corporate-tax ceiling of 25 percent, a reform of basic income support and relief for municipal budgets. For 2025 she was also 16th on the CSU state list. The district returning officer admitted Schrodi (SPD, and 11th on that party's state list), Britta Jacob (Greens), Susanne Seehofer (FDP), Jürgen Friedrich Braun (AfD) and Dagmar Wagner (Free Voters), among others.

On 23 February 2025 Staffler received 84,651 first votes, 42.6 percent, up 4.6 points. Schrodi fell to 29,795 (15.0 percent). Braun took 27,997 (14.1 percent), Jacob 23,886 (12.0), Wagner 8,829 (4.4) and Seehofer 8,748 (4.4). Turnout was 86.4 percent (199,398 of 230,710). Second votes put the CSU on 39.7 percent, the AfD on 15.0, the Greens on 14.0 and the SPD on 11.6, then Die Linke on 5.3, the FDP on 5.0, the Free Voters on 3.5 and the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht on 2.7 percent.

A plurality no longer guaranteed a seat. Under the 2023 reform, applied for the first time in 2025, a constituency winner is elected only if the seat is covered by the seats that party's second votes produce in the Land (Zweitstimmendeckung). Winners are ranked by their share of valid first votes, and those beyond the contingent are left out. On 30 July 2024 the Federal Constitutional Court held the rule compatible with the Basic Law. In Bavaria the CSU won all 47 constituencies but, on a preliminary final result of 37.2 percent of the Bavarian vote, received 44 seats. The three winners with the lowest first-vote shares were not seated: Volker Ullrich in Augsburg, who put his share at 31.1 percent, Claudia Küng in Munich and Sebastian Brehm in Nuremberg. Staffler's 42.6 percent was covered. The Federal Returning Officer lists her as elected in constituency 214, having also stood at list place 16; Schrodi entered on the SPD list at place 11, not from the constituency.

Work in the Bundestag

Committees and the vocational-education inquiry

Katrin Staffler has been a member of the Bundestag since 24 October 2017, through the 19th, 20th and 21st electoral terms. Her membership of the 21st Bundestag is dated from 25 March 2025, when that term began.

In the 19th term she was a full member of the Committee on Education, Research and Technology Assessment, which prepares decisions on research, higher and vocational education and training grants and oversees the parliament's technology assessment, and of the Committee on European Union Affairs. That committee, required by the Basic Law, is the Bundestag's forum for integration, the institutions of the European Union and enlargement, and it includes members of the European Parliament. She was also a deputy member of the Committee on Economic Cooperation and Development and of its subcommittee on civilian crisis prevention, and a Schriftführer, elected to sit with the presiding officer, take requests to speak and record votes.

On 28 June 2018 the Bundestag adopted, with no votes against and with Alliance 90/The Greens abstaining, a motion by the CDU/CSU, the SPD, the FDP and the Left to set up the study commission "Vocational education in the digital world of work" (printed paper 19/2979). It was to have 19 members of parliament and 19 outside experts and to examine how vocational education and training should be adapted to digital work, where the system's strengths could be extended and where barriers to access could be reduced. Staffler was a full member and, from 2018 to 2021, Obfrau of the CDU/CSU group on the commission. She chaired Project Group 1, which from December 2018 to December 2019, with eleven members of parliament and five experts, examined the challenges of digitalisation for vocational education, including changes in work, firms, employees and occupational profiles. She also sat on Project Group 4, on continuing education, dual study programmes and lifelong learning, and on Project Group 7, which from 28 September 2020 dealt with the financing of initial and continuing training.

In the 20th term she remained a full member of the education, research and technology-assessment committee and a deputy member of the EU-affairs committee and of the Committee on Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth. In the 21st term she is a deputy member, from 25 March 2025, of the combined Committee on Education, Family, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth and of the Health Committee. The Health Committee handles health-system legislation, including the financing of statutory health and long-term-care insurance and conditions for medical and nursing staff.

Role in the CSU parliamentary group

Deputies of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria sit in the joint CDU/CSU parliamentary group and, within it, in their own Landesgruppe, a double structure CSU members of the first Bundestag adopted at the end of August 1949. On 28 September 2021 the Landesgruppe confirmed Alexander Dobrindt as chairman, with 39 of 45 votes, and re-elected Stefan Müller as parliamentary managing director by the same margin. On the evening of 27 January 2022 it elected Hansjörg Durz, Susanne Hierl and Staffler as deputy chairpersons and named policy spokespersons for individual fields, with Staffler taking innovation, education and research. Her Bundestag biography records both posts as offices of the 20th electoral term.

Franco-German Assembly and the Council of Europe

The Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly comprises 50 members of the Bundestag and 50 of the French National Assembly and is to meet at least twice a year, alternating between the two countries. Its constitutive sitting was held in Paris on 25 March 2019 under Bundestag President Wolfgang Schäuble and National Assembly President Richard Ferrand. The basis is the Franco-German parliamentary agreement, adopted by the National Assembly on 11 March 2019 and by the Bundestag on 20 March 2019, after a joint working group was set up on 22 January 2018 for the 55th anniversary of the Élysée Treaty.

In the 19th term the Bundestag listed Staffler as a full member of the assembly. The biographical note published with that record, drawn from her own information, also describes her as a voting member of its working group on disruptive innovations and artificial intelligence. The list of her offices in the 20th term does not include the assembly, while the biography for the 21st term again lists her as a full member.

She has also been a substitute in Germany's delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the parliamentary organ of the Council of Europe, which follows the Committee of Ministers and initiates European conventions. A delegation report records her election by the Bundestag on 28 September 2018 in succession to Florian Hahn and her accreditation on 8 October 2018; the catalogue of her Bundestag offices at the close of the 19th term no longer lists the delegation. On 13 January 2022 the Bundestag again elected her, without debate, as a CDU/CSU substitute. She was not among those chosen for the delegation elected on 5 June 2025. On 15 October 2026, on a CDU/CSU proposal and with no objection, the Bundestag elected her for the rest of the term as the personal substitute of Siegfried Walch, succeeding Hülya Düber.

Education, research and innovation policy

Vocational education and fixed-term research contracts

In January 2022 the CSU group in the Bundestag elected Staffler its spokesperson for innovation, education and research. In the 2018–2021 inquiry on vocational education in a digital labour market she was the CDU/CSU Obfrau and, from December 2018, chair of Project Group 1 on digitalization. The final report, printed paper 19/30950, debated on 23 June 2021, defines a “Pakt für berufsbildende Schulen” as an alliance of the Federation, the Länder, municipalities and the social partners to turn vocational schools into open learning centres. It says investment needs already exceeded the DigitalPakt Schule and calls for a lasting follow-on, financing IT staff and teaching concepts, plus a vocational-school pact for digital classrooms, teacher training and learning factories. In debate, chair Antje Lezius called the report a gift to the next government; speakers noted consensus and dissenting votes.

On 6 June 2024 Staffler spoke for the CDU/CSU motion on career guidance and vocational reform (printed paper 20/11428). She said the supply of skilled workers required better guidance, a stronger vocational track and protection of the dual system, and she cited 630,000 people aged 15 to 24 outside school, training and work. The motion records 155,325 training contracts dissolved early in 2022, a rate of 29.5 percent. She asked for a Digitalpakt 2.0 for vocational schools, early guidance in every type of school, and parity with academic education. SPD deputy Carolin Wagner replied that the traffic-light coalition had already passed a training guarantee, and that the share of 20- to 29-year-olds without a vocational qualification had risen from 15.9 percent in 2011 to 18.1 percent in 2021, including under Union-led education ministries.

At the first reading on 16 October 2024 of the bill amending the Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz (printed paper 20/11559), the draft introduced for education minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger set usual minima of three years before the doctorate and two years after it, gave qualification-based fixed terms priority over third-party-funded contracts, and replaced the six-year post-doctoral ceiling with four years, plus at most two more if a target agreement was tied to a permanent post. Thomas Jarzombek (CDU/CSU) said the coalition was still split between three, four-plus-two and six post-doctoral years and that the Bundesrat feared a fragmented tariff landscape, while Oliver Kaczmarek (SPD) wanted a path to permanent contracts and Laura Kraft of the Greens rejected a de facto cut to four years. Staffler called the draft unfinished on exactly those two points—the ceiling and the tariff lock—and said unclear rules were already cutting posts and sending researchers abroad. Her guardrails were stronger rights for researchers, international competitiveness and more professional personnel development; she tabled no substitute clauses, which coalition speakers noted.

On BAföG, at the first reading of the 29th amending bill on 16 May 2024, she said two years of promises of a “large structural reform” had produced an “inadequate little reform.” She said need rates decide whether study is affordable, and that the coalition had raised the minimum wage and the citizen’s benefit while, on her figures, using 62 million of 150 million euros set aside for BAföG. She wanted housing aid raised and varied by region, and said a study-start grant did not fix slow applications. The CDU/CSU motion of 14 May asked for biennial review of the rates by an independent commission, a housing supplement with a local top-up, and digital-only applications, while keeping the benefit means-tested. At the final reading on 13 June 2024 she called the bill “primarily marginal adjustments” and set a one-off 5 percent rise against inflation of 6.9 percent in 2022 and 5.9 percent in 2023.

Research, innovation and technology assessment

The CDU/CSU motion of 19 September 2023, “Künstliche Intelligenz als Schlüsseltechnologie für Deutschlands Zukunft stärken” (printed paper 20/8414), was the group’s main innovation text while Staffler held the CSU brief. It calls artificial intelligence a key technology, notes that the federal AI strategy would turn five that November, and says the draft budget cut AI spending by about a quarter, including IT infrastructure from 24 million to 18 million euros. Within available funds it asks for more Gauss Centre supercomputing with separate access for start-ups and smaller firms, for the state as an anchor customer, and for recruitment of AI specialists. On 28 June 2024, as rejection was debated, Staffler said immigration law was not enough and that domestic training belonged in the text; she also said the coalition could not stop at its AI action plan, citing Bavaria’s Hightech Agenda, which she put at about 360 million euros for AI projects. The House rejected the motion: the governing groups and the Left backed the committee’s recommendation, the CDU/CSU opposed it and the AfD abstained.

From 30 July to 4 August 2023 Staffler travelled with the education, research and technology-assessment committee, led by Stephan Albani, to Svalbard. The Bundestag press office said the visit was to see Arctic warming, described there as about twice the global rate, through the Alfred Wegener Institute’s icebreaker Polarstern and the German-French AWIPEV station at Ny-Ålesund, and to weigh a replacement for Polarstern. On 5 September 2023 the Süddeutsche Zeitung interviewed her under the headline “Es macht einen sprachlos, wie die Gletscher schmelzen.”

Long-term care and health policy

The office of care commissioner

The office of the federal government’s commissioner for long-term care (Bevollmächtigte/r der Bundesregierung für Pflege) was created by cabinet decision in early 2014 inside the Federal Ministry of Health. The holder is appointed by the federal cabinet for one legislative period, is supported by an interprofessional office, and is meant to speak for people who need care inside the government, to follow legislation, and to be consulted by federal ministries and authorities on bills, ordinances and other important measures that affect care. The remit also covers contact with people in need of care, family carers, care workers, self-governing bodies and associations.

On 8 January 2014 the cabinet appointed Karl-Josef Laumann of the Christian Democratic Union both patient commissioner and care commissioner, with the rank of a state secretary. Hermann Gröhe, then federal health minister, formally introduced him on 13 January. Laumann, a long-serving social politician and former minister for labour, health and social affairs in North Rhine-Westphalia, described the health and care system as existing to serve the people affected by it. When he returned to North Rhine-Westphalia as state social-affairs minister, the cabinet on 5 July 2017 named Ingrid Fischbach, a CDU parliamentary state secretary in the health ministry, as his successor in both the patient and the care posts.

The two roles were then split. On Spahn’s proposal the cabinet on 21 March 2018 appointed Andreas Westerfellhaus care commissioner; Jens Spahn handed him the certificate on 16 April 2018, and he held the post as a state secretary. Westerfellhaus was a trained nurse and specialist in intensive care and anaesthesia who had been president of the German Nursing Council (Deutscher Pflegerat) from 2009 to 2017. At his appointment he said he would press for recognition of the profession, better pay and working conditions, and support for family carers. On 12 January 2022, after the cabinet had agreed, health minister Karl Lauterbach of the Social Democratic Party appointed the Bundestag member Claudia Moll. Moll, a qualified geriatric nurse, was the first woman in the post and was presented as bringing practice from the profession rather than the rank of a state secretary. She held the office from 2022 until Staffler’s appointment in 2025.

Appointment in 2025 and policy priorities

On 28 May 2025 the cabinet accepted the proposals of federal health minister Nina Warken (CDU) and appointed Katrin Staffler of the Christian Social Union care commissioner, together with Hendrik Streeck as drugs commissioner and Stefan Schwartze, who remained patient commissioner. All three posts sit in the health ministry’s remit. Warken said health policy depended on exchange with the people affected, and that Staffler would have to keep three groups in view: people who need care, care workers and family carers. Staffler, who had been nominated for the post by CSU leader Markus Söder, called the pressure to act a chance to reset policy and promised self-determined, unbureaucratic and reliable support.

Warken handed over the certificates on 3 June 2025. Staffler then described statutory long-term care insurance as standing at a crossroads: supply had to be stabilised despite a difficult financial position, and “carrying on as before” was not an option. She called the insurance in many respects outdated, too complicated and often inefficient, and said people needing care and their relatives were entitled to support that actually reached them. With the office she also took on patronage of EinSTEP, a project to cut bureaucracy in care documentation, and of GAP, a project on working conditions in care. She argued for a modern occupational profile with less bureaucracy in training and daily work, and for health professions to have more influence in the system.

The appointment did not end her parliamentary mandate. She remained a member of the Bundestag for Fürstenfeldbruck. In the 21st electoral period the Bundestag lists her as a deputy member of the Committee on Health and of the Committee on Education, Family, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth. That health-committee seat is not a continuation of earlier care-policy work in committee: from the 19th electoral period her recorded Bundestag committee membership was the Committee on Education, Research and Technology Assessment, and in the 20th electoral period she was the CSU group’s spokesperson for innovation, education and research and a deputy chair of the CSU Landesgruppe. The Bundestag biography does not record her as a member or rapporteur of the health committee before the 21st term.

In a June 2025 interview with the nursing magazine BibliomedPflege, Staffler named population change and the shortage of skilled staff as the challenges she had in mind, and said her main aim was that people who need care and their relatives receive the support they need. She linked that to a more pragmatic organisation of care, fewer detailed rules, and putting long-term care insurance “back on a solid footing”, including recruitment and retention of nurses. She listed heavy workloads, early exit from the profession, part-time work, weak use of digital tools, and working conditions—including staffing concepts, health protection and prevention, starting in training—as the pressure points in professional care. She also said a nursing-competence bill should go to parliament quickly. Unlike Westerfellhaus and Moll, she did not come from a nursing qualification; she said so directly, cited family experience of home care and her earlier work at the Klinikum rechts der Isar, and described her role as analysis and political follow-through with an interprofessional team rather than as representation of one interest alone.

Nursing organisations treated the post’s survival as a political question, not only a change of person. On 29 April 2025, after Staffler had been lined up for the job, Deutscher Berufsverband für Pflegeberufe president Vera Lux called it an important signal that the office would be kept, but said that meeting the scale of the problem would require the position to sit in the Federal Chancellery as a “chief government nurse”, because lasting answers cut across ministries. The association argued that care needed more than symbolic recognition and called for task-shifting, wider professional powers, better working conditions and new models of provision.

Civic engagement and personal life

Donum Vitae and other voluntary roles

On 25 October 2024 the members of DONUM VITAE in Bayern e.V. elected Katrin Staffler unanimously as chair, succeeding Ilse Aigner, at its 25th-anniversary meeting. The Bundestag register of disclosable interests lists the Munich post. Abgeordnetenwatch recorded it on 4 November 2024, and neither source publishes an income figure.

Donum Vitae ("gift of life") is a lay association founded in 1999, with the Central Committee of German Catholics among its sponsors, after Pope John Paul II required the German bishops to stop issuing the state counselling certificate. Under section 219 of the Strafgesetzbuch, that counselling must serve the protection of unborn life and help the woman decide responsibly, and a recognised centre then issues a certificate. Under section 218a, an abortion the woman requests within twelve weeks of conception is not punishable if she presents a certificate showing counselling at least three days earlier. After Bishop Karl Lehmann announced the papal order in November 1999, diocesan centres stopped issuing certificates. Donum Vitae did not.

The certificate stayed contested. Bishop Johannes Dyba called it a "licence to kill", and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then the Vatican's doctrinal prefect, accused the founders of separating lay Catholics from the hierarchy and from Rome. The founders answered that they were continuing what church agencies had done and shared the bishops' aim of protecting life. In 2006 the bishops treated Donum Vitae as an association outside the Catholic Church and barred church employees from it. In 2018 Cardinal Reinhard Marx wrote that its aim was also the protection of unborn life and allowed former staff into diocesan centres, but withheld recognition because the certificate is issued. In 2024 Archbishop Herwig Gössl of Bamberg praised the Bavarian branch, while the bishops defended the counselling duty Rome had forbidden church centres to meet. The association told the Catholic news agency it had counselled more than 450,000 people in Bavaria since 1999, in about 20 centres with more than 200 staff largely paid by the Free State. The Social Democratic Party, Alliance 90/The Greens and several associations want section 218 removed, which would also end compulsory counselling; the CDU/CSU, the Catholic Church and Donum Vitae oppose that.

In a September 2017 reply on Abgeordnetenwatch, Staffler wrote that the Christian understanding of the person was decisive for her and that the protection of human life had to apply without restriction, including to unborn life. In the association's 2025 newsletter she said the chair should give Donum Vitae a public presence and a reliable political voice, and called the work a "double advocacy" for mother and child.

Other filings, again without a published income, list her on the advisory board of Hospiz Germering gGmbH in Germering and, from 20 November 2025, on the General Council of the Katholische Akademie in Bayern. Up to 50 people are appointed to that council for four years to advise on the encounter of faith and the world; she is on the 2025–2029 list. Since 2022 she has been patron of Malteser grief support for children and young people in Gröbenzell, a service of individual and group help after a death or serious accident. She describes the patronage as covering the districts of Fürstenfeldbruck and Dachau. The filings record a right to return as press spokesperson at UniCredit Bank AG in Munich, entered as her job before the Bundestag rather than as current paid outside work.

Family and residence

Her Bundestag biography, supplied by her, records that she is Roman Catholic, married and has one child. She is married to Emanuel Staffler of the CSU, born in 1985, first mayor of Türkenfeld since 1 May 2020 — honorary until 30 April 2026, and full-time since — and a member of the Fürstenfeldbruck district council since 2014, where he has chaired the CSU group since 2017. The Münchner Merkur reported that their son, Laurentius, was born on 26 January 2022 in Starnberg. She states that she grew up in Günding, part of Bergkirchen in the district of Dachau, and lives with her husband and son in Türkenfeld.