# Klaus-Peter Willsch

# Klaus-Peter Willsch

Klaus-Peter Willsch (born 28 February 1961 in Bad Schwalbach) is a politician of the [Christian Democratic Union](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany) (CDU) in Germany and a member of the Bundestag from Hesse. He has sat for the constituency of Rheingau-Taunus – Limburg (Wahlkreis 177) since 1998. In the 2025 federal election he won that seat for the eighth time in succession, with 36.8 percent of the first votes against 22.1 percent for [Martin Rabanus](/people/martin-rabanus) of the Social Democratic Party. Turnout in the constituency was 84.2 percent, and the CDU also led the party-list vote with 33.4 percent.

The Bundestag lists his profession as Diplom-Volkswirt. He took the Abitur in 1979 at the Leibniz-Gymnasium in Wiesbaden, studied economics and political science at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz from 1980 to 1986, and served in 1987–88 with Flugabwehrregiment 5 in Lorch am Rhein; he is an Oberstleutnant of the reserve. From 1989 to 1994 he worked at Flughafen Frankfurt/Main AG, now Fraport. In November 1993 he was directly elected mayor of the spa town of Schlangenbad and held the office from April 1994 until he entered the Bundestag. He is a Lutheran, is married and has five children.

Willsch was among the first members of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group to oppose the rescue loans for Greece, voting against the first package in 2010 and maintaining that position through later programmes. After the 2013 election his open resistance to Chancellor [Angela Merkel](/people/angela-merkel)'s euro-rescue course cost him the Budget Committee seat he had held since 2002, including as the group's spokesperson (Obmann) from 2009 to 2013, and he was moved to the committee on economic affairs and energy. In the 21st Bundestag the parliament again lists him as a full member of the Budget Committee and of the Vertrauensgremium, and as a deputy member of the committees on education, family, senior citizens, women and youth and on research, technology and space. When the Bundestag adopted a constitutional amendment opening extra borrowing for defence and for infrastructure and climate spending, he voted in favour and then apologised in an open letter to his children, grandchildren and voters who were disappointed, writing that he regarded the decision as wrong except for the financing of the armed forces.

Since 2010 he has chaired the Berlin–Taipei parliamentary circle, the Bundestag's friendship group for Taiwan. In an n-tv interview he said a conflict over the island was underestimated in Germany because of dependence on Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturing, and he argued that German practice of the One China policy had been applied too restrictively. In the Hessian CDU he has chaired the Rheingau-Taunus district association since 2002 and the West Hesse Bezirk since 2013.

## Early life and education

### Family and schooling

Klaus-Peter Willsch was born on 28 February 1961 in Bad Schwalbach. The town is now the district seat of the Rheingau-Taunus-Kreis in Hesse; the district itself was created only in 1977, by the merger of the Rheingaukreis and the Untertaunuskreis. On his own website he calls the Bundestag constituency of Rheingau-Taunus/Limburg his home and writes that he was born and grew up there. The Bundestag biography, which the parliament states is drawn from members' own disclosures, lists him as Evangelical Lutheran, married, and the father of five children. He names his wife as Annette and the children as three sons and two daughters, and states that they have three granddaughters.

In a July 2025 profile in *Das Parlament*, Willsch said he was the son of a farming family and that the parental home had not been politically engaged. Until the social-liberal coalition began, he recalled, his mother and his father voted for the Free Democratic Party. As a young adult he faced the situation of a conventional farm like theirs in the period of the butter mountains and milk lakes: the holding would have to grow or be given up. The same profile says he first attracted notice at school, becoming class representative in the sixth grade and school spokesperson in the tenth.

He passed the Abitur, the school-leaving examination that confers university entrance, in 1979 at the Leibniz-Gymnasium in Wiesbaden. The city administration lists that school as the Leibnizschule, a Gymnasium covering lower and upper secondary education in the Westend district, at Zietenring 9, and names it for the polymath [Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz](/people/gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz).

### University studies

From 1980 to 1986 Willsch studied economics (Volkswirtschaftslehre) and political science at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in Mainz, in Rhineland-Palatinate. He completed the course as a Diplom-Volkswirt, the university diploma in economics, which the Bundestag also gives as his occupation. The official biography includes political science among the subjects studied but records only the economics diploma as the degree awarded. The 2025 *Das Parlament* profile describes the same sequence in brief: study of economics and politics, then two years with the armed forces, and after that work at Frankfurt Airport.

### Military service

Military service came after the degree. The Bundestag biography places it in 1987 and 1988, with Air Defence Regiment 5 (Flugabwehrregiment 5) in Lorch am Rhein, in the Rheingau, and lists him as a lieutenant colonel of the reserve (Oberstleutnant der Reserve). The magazine of the Association of Reservists of the German Armed Forces reported that he first came into contact with the Bundeswehr in the ordinary way, as a conscript under German conscription, in 1987 at that regiment, which has since been disbanded. He then chose the reserve-officer career and from then on performed reserve duty at regular intervals.

The lieutenant-colonel's rank is much later than the Lorch posting. In a report dated 9 June 2022, the reservists' magazine described a ceremony in Koblenz at which Generalstabsarzt Stephan Schoeps, deputy inspector of the Bundeswehr medical service and commissioner for reservist affairs, promoted Willsch. Schoeps, the magazine wrote, acknowledged his services to the Bundeswehr and his long engagement with the medical-service reserve. In the years before that promotion Willsch had worked chiefly in the branch for reservist affairs at the Bundeswehr Medical Service Command.

## Professional career and local government

### Fraport and the mayoralty of Schlangenbad

In November 1993 Klaus-Peter Willsch was directly elected mayor of Schlangenbad, a spa municipality (Staatsbad) in the Rheingau-Taunus-Kreis, in the Taunus. He took office in April 1994 and remained Bürgermeister until his election to the Bundestag. The Hessian Statistical Office recorded 6,004 inhabitants there on 31 December 2025, across 36.5 square kilometres.

The vote was part of the first cycle of direct mayoral elections in Hesse. A referendum on 20 January 1991 amended Article 138 of the state constitution: 82 percent of those voting favoured choosing mayors and Landräte by the citizens rather than by local councils, and direct elections have been held since 1993. In its list of his occupation before he entered parliament, the Bundestag names the Schlangenbad mayoralty together with freelance work as a consulting economist (beratender Volkswirt) in Hohenstein, including advisory and lecturing activity.

Immediately before the mayoralty he spent five years with the company that operates Frankfurt Airport. From 1989 to 1994 he worked at Flughafen Frankfurt/Main AG, renamed Fraport AG in 2000. An archived Bundestag biography from the 14th electoral term states that he began in a staff unit and from 1992 headed the office for rental, leasing and internal occupancy ("Vermietung, Verpachtung, interne Belegung") in the department for rents and concessions.

### Municipal and district offices

His council career in Hohenstein, also in the Rheingau-Taunus-Kreis, began earlier and has run alongside the Bundestag mandate. He sat on the Gemeindevertretung from 1981 to 1993 and again from 2016. The Bundestag biography states that he has chaired the group of the Christian Democratic Union there since 1983, and his published disclosures list unpaid membership of the Hohenstein council. Hohenstein had 5,872 inhabitants on 31 December 2025.

On the district council he served from 1985 to 2011 and from 2016, and from 1991 to 1997 he chaired the Kreistag's main and finance committee. At the constitutive meeting of the tenth electoral term, on 3 May 2016, he was elected Kreistagsvorsitzender in a secret ballot with no opposing candidate, after the CDU and the [Social Democratic Party of Germany](/organizations/social-democratic-party-of-germany) had agreed on him in advance. He received 41 votes in favour, with 14 against, two abstentions and four invalid ballots.

He did not remain chairman after the 2021 local elections. At the constitutive session on 11 May 2021 he withdrew his candidacy. André Stolz of the CDU, nominated after that withdrawal, was then elected with 49 of 57 valid votes; the SPD's Georg Mahr had also withdrawn, and Klaus Gagel of [the Alternative](/organizations/the-alternative) for Germany received seven votes. In the same sitting Willsch was elected honorary Erster Kreisbeigeordneter — first deputy to the district administrator, then the non-party Frank Kilian — succeeding the CDU's Herbert Koch. Contemporary reporting described the choice as a surprise to his political opponents. The Bundestag biography dates the honorary office from 2021, and the district administration lists him as Erster Kreisbeigeordneter, charged with representing the Landrat and thereby sitting on the Kreisausschuss.

After the municipal elections of 15 March 2026 the district stated that he remained Erster Kreisbeigeordneter for the new term. He had again been elected to the Kreistag, in second place on the CDU list, but renounced that seat on 12 May 2026. Under the Hessian municipal election law, Andrea Elisabeth Kremer of Eltville am Rhein succeeded him.

Disclosures to the Bundestag that attach to the district include an unpaid seat on the supervisory board of RTK Holding GmbH, the district holding company in Bad Schwalbach, and of Rheingau-Taunus Kultur und Tourismus GmbH; a deputy supervisory-board seat at Gigabitregion FrankfurtRheinMain GmbH, held ex officio as the Landrat's representative; a deputy seat on the board of Sparkassenzweckverband Nassau; and an unpaid place in the shareholders' meeting of edz Energie-Dienstleistungs-Zentrum Rheingau-Taunus GmbH. Separately, he chaired Rheingau-Taunus Marketing e.V. from 2013, after the death of Rainer Eierdanz, until the members' meeting of 1 September 2020, when the Rüdesheim hotelier Peter Häfner succeeded him. The Bundestag disclosure still lists an unpaid place on that association's board.

## Bundestag career and elections

### Entry and committee assignments

Klaus-Peter Willsch has been a member of the Bundestag without a break since the 14th legislative period. That Bundestag was constituted on 26 October 1998, one day before the deadline in the Basic Law after the federal election of 27 September 1998, and the 21st Bundestag—his eighth term—was constituted on 25 March 2025 after the election of 23 February 2025. His mandate has been a direct constituency seat in Hesse for the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), not a place on the state list. The constituency, Rheingau-Taunus – Limburg, consists of the whole Rheingau-Taunus-Kreis and ten municipalities of the Limburg-Weilburg district, among them Limburg an der Lahn, Hadamar and Bad Camberg. Redistributions have changed its number: it was constituency 135 in 1998, 179 in 2002 and 2005, 178 from 2009 through 2021, and 177 in 2025.

The Bundestag biography, which the parliament says rests on members' own statements, records Willsch as an ordinary member of the Finance Committee from 1998 to 2002 and of the Budget Committee from 2002 to 2013, and as the CDU/CSU group's ranking member (*Obmann*) on the Budget Committee from 2009 to 2013. The same text states that from 2014 he sat on the Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy, which it says was styled the Economic Affairs Committee from 2021. The move off the Budget Committee after the 2013 election is recorded there as a change of assignment; the dispute that accompanied it is part of his record on euro-area fiscal policy. The biography also lists him as an assessor (*Beisitzer*) on the CDU/CSU Bundestag group's executive from 2006 to 2009, and as an assessor, since 2002, on the board of that group's Parliamentary Circle on Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (*Parlamentskreis Mittelstand*).

The parliament's current list of his offices in the 21st Bundestag, as published on 28 October 2026, again names him as an ordinary member of the Budget Committee and of the *Vertrauensgremium*. He is a deputy member of the Committee on Education, Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth and of the Committee on Research, Technology, Space and Technology Assessment, and deputy chair of the parliamentary group for Eastern Africa. He is also an ordinary member of the Kuratorium of the Federal Agency for Civic Education (Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung), the 22-member parliamentary board that oversees that agency's work.

### Electoral record

Willsch won constituency 135 at his first federal contest, on 27 September 1998, and the *Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung* described the result of 23 February 2025 as his eighth consecutive direct mandate in the seat.

Final figures from the Federal Returning Officer give the size of those majorities. In 1998 he received 83,128 first votes, 46.8 percent of the valid votes, against 41.1 percent for the Social Democratic Party (SPD); turnout was 84.5 percent. In constituency 179 he received 81,711 first votes (47.4 percent) on 22 September 2002, and 81,513 (47.5 percent) on 18 September 2005, when the Tagesschau archive, citing the Federal Statistical Office, names him as the Union candidate. On 27 September 2009, in renumbered constituency 178, he took 46.1 percent (75,224 votes); the SPD candidate received 27.7 percent (45,127).

His largest share was on 22 September 2013: 52.1 percent (84,489 votes) to 29.1 percent (47,152) for the SPD, with turnout at 75.1 percent. On 24 September 2017 the CDU first-vote share fell to 41.8 percent (71,555), still ahead of the SPD on 25.3 percent (43,427); turnout was 78.8 percent. The closest race was 26 September 2021. Willsch held the seat with 30.2 percent (51,318 votes) against Martin Rabanus of the SPD on 28.5 percent (48,441), a margin of 2,877 votes, on a turnout of 78.1 percent.

At the snap federal election of 23 February 2025, constituency 177 had 217,091 registered voters and turnout of 84.2 percent. Willsch received 66,648 first votes, 36.8 percent, 6.6 percentage points above his 2021 share. Rabanus, the runner-up, took 22.1 percent (40,101). The Alternative for Germany followed with 17.3 percent of first votes (31,379) and Alliance 90/[The Greens](/organizations/the-greens) with 10.8 percent (19,472). On second votes the CDU led with 33.4 percent, ahead of the AfD on 17.6 percent and the SPD on 17.0 percent. The *Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung* reported that Rabanus, [Jan Feser](/people/jan-feser) of the AfD and [Ayse Asar](/people/ayse-asar) of the Greens also entered the Bundestag on Hessian state lists, and quoted Willsch attributing the direct win to having been present in the constituency between elections as well as during the campaign.

## Fiscal policy and the eurozone

### Budget Committee and the debt brake

Klaus-Peter Willsch was a full member of the Bundestag Finance Committee from 1998 to 2002 and of the Budget Committee from 2002 to 2013, serving from 2009 to 2013 as Obmann of the CDU/CSU, the group's lead speaker on the committee that scrutinises the federal budget. *[Der Spiegel](/organizations/der-spiegel)* called it one of the chamber's most influential committees, and the debt brake — the constitutional cap on new federal borrowing — was the rule his later votes would test.

After the 2013 election the group leadership removed him. In December *Der Spiegel* reported that senior Union politicians wanted the euro-sceptic off the committee, and that his offer to give up the Obmann post was not enough. Chair Volker Kauder told the state-group leaders that members were sent by the parliamentary group and were expected to act as such. Willsch replied that without "bourgeois" critics of the rescue policy, naming Peter Gauweiler, Frank Schäffler and himself, the Alternative for Germany would already have entered the Bundestag. The *Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung* called the loss of the seat the receipt for opposing Chancellor Angela Merkel's euro course: he was moved to the new Committee for Economic Affairs and Energy. He later said Volker Bouffier had backed him as Hesse's nominee, that Kauder was evasive in a lift, and that the new assignment arrived, unexplained, on a Friday list.

He returned in the 21st Bundestag. When the Budget Committee was constituted on 21 May 2025 he was one of 14 CDU/CSU members of the 42-seat body. The AfD, which held the right to nominate the chair, failed to elect [Ulrike Schielke-Ziesing](/people/ulrike-schielke-ziesing) (12 in favour, 29 against, one abstention); as the committee's longest-serving member, Willsch chaired the opening sitting on an acting basis.

### Euro rescue packages

On 7 May 2010 the Bundestag passed the first Greek loan law by 390 votes to 72, with 139 abstentions. Germany's share of the euro-area loans was about €22.4 billion, to be extended by the KfW under a federal guarantee, alongside lending by the International Monetary Fund. *Der Spiegel* later recorded that Willsch and four other members of the CDU/CSU–FDP coalition voted no.

On 27 February 2012 he was among 13 Union votes against a second programme for Greece of €130 billion, with Wolfgang Bosbach and Gauweiler. The coalition's 304 votes missed a chancellor's majority of 311; Support from the Social Democratic Party and Alliance 90/The Greens carried it, 496 to 90, with five abstentions.

On 29 June 2012 Willsch spoke against the [European Stability Mechanism](/organizations/european-stability-mechanism), arguing that the temporary European Financial Stability Facility, due to lapse in 2013, made a permanent mutualisation fund unnecessary. The treaty passed by 493 to 106, with five abstentions. The coalition again missed a chancellor's majority: 16 CDU/CSU members voted no, Willsch among them with Bosbach and Gauweiler, as did ten Free Democrats. On the fiscal compact the same day he was one of only three CDU/CSU no votes, with Gauweiler and Manfred Kolbe.

On 19 August 2015 a third programme of up to €86 billion through the ESM, and authority for a first tranche of €26 billion, passed by 453 to 113, with 18 abstentions. Deutschlandfunk counted 63 Union no votes, three more than on the July mandate to negotiate, and reported that Willsch voted no. He called for a "Grexit," the exit of Greece from the euro, and said Wolfgang Schäuble's reading of debt sustainability could turn longer grace periods into a gift. Kauder had threatened the 60 July dissenters with losing committee posts; Willsch said a switch would look, to voters, like buckling.

### The 2025 constitutional debt package

On 18 March 2025 the outgoing Bundestag amended the Basic Law and loosened the debt brake. Borrowing was allowed for defence, civil protection, intelligence and cybersecurity spending above 1 per cent of gross domestic product, about €44 billion in that year's terms. A special fund of up to €500 billion, outside the brake, was created for infrastructure, of which €100 billion was tied to climate protection and a climate-friendly restructuring of the economy, and only if the core budget kept an adequate investment ratio. The Länder borrowing rule was eased as well. Tagesschau reported the corrected roll call as 512 in favour and 206 against, with no abstentions; a two-thirds majority required 489 votes, and President [Bärbel Bas](/people/barbel-bas) had first announced 513 and 207. From the parties that had negotiated the text, only Mario Czaja (CDU), [Jan Dieren](/people/jan-dieren) (SPD) and Canan Bayram (Greens) voted no. [Friedrich Merz](/people/friedrich-merz), then CDU/CSU floor leader, defended the borrowing as a matter of German, European and NATO security, and said the infrastructure fund did not remove the need to consolidate.

Willsch voted yes and apologised the same day. In an open letter, his *Hauptstadtbrief* No. 166, he wrote of days and weeks of inner struggle and said that, apart from financing the Bundeswehr, he considered the substance wrong. He apologised to his five children, two grandchildren and anyone disappointed, writing that too few colleagues would block the change and that local CDU chairs agreed only on restoring defence capacity. He called the €500 billion for infrastructure and climate neutrality by 2045 indeterminate, and said the climate wording did not belong in the constitution. As a Hessian he also objected, in a statement for the record, to overriding stricter Land rules, citing the 27 March 2011 referendum that put a debt brake in the Hessian constitution and which, he wrote, won 70 per cent. He voted yes for a signal to adversaries and to NATO and European partners — "We Germans will do everything necessary to establish our capacity to defend ourselves in a credible way" — noting that the amended Basic Law itself spent nothing. He tied that yes to the coalition talks: ending illegal immigration, abolishing the citizen's benefit, cutting bureaucracy and simplifying permits.

## Security, defence and the war in Ukraine

### Bundeswehr, NATO and defence spending

Willsch did his compulsory service in 1987–88 with Air Defence Regiment 5 (*Flugabwehrregiment 5*) at Lorch am Rhein and then followed the reserve-officer path. In June 2022 Generalstabsarzt Stephan Schoeps, deputy inspector of the Bundeswehr Medical Service and the service’s commissioner for reservist affairs, promoted him to lieutenant colonel of the reserve (*Oberstleutnant der Reserve*) at a ceremony in Koblenz. He had lately worked in that command’s reservist branch, and said that fitting reserve duty around his mandate was difficult but that reservists mattered to the Bundeswehr’s readiness and place in society.

He was a full member of the Bundestag Budget Committee from 2002 to 2013 and, from 2009 to 2013, the CDU/CSU whip (*Obmann*) on it. On 12 September 2012, in the first reading of the 2013 defence budget (*Einzelplan* 14), he spoke for the rapporteur group and said he was proud, as rapporteur and as a reservist, of what allied forces said about German soldiers.

The Bundestag biography, based on members’ own information, states that from 2014 he sat on the economic-affairs committee and was a deputy member of the Defence Committee. In the 21st Bundestag, from 25 March 2025, the membership list records him as a full member of the Budget Committee and the *Vertrauensgremium*, and as a deputy on the education-and-family committee and the committee for research, technology, space and technology assessment; the Defence Committee is not listed. Since 2009 he has chaired the cross-party parliamentary group on aviation and space.

On 13 March 2024 he argued that [Olaf Scholz](/people/mig-olaf-scholz)’s *Zeitenwende* speech required more than the €100 billion special fund, because the regular defence budget still fell short: the defence minister, he said, had asked for €10 billion in the negotiations and come away with €1 billion. He called for a stronger German arms industry, an end to university “civil clauses” barring military research, more money for the Bundeswehr, and more exports so that small domestic orders could be produced economically, subject to security interests.

On 18 March 2025 the outgoing Bundestag amended the Basic Law so that defence and security spending above a threshold would fall outside the debt brake, and created a €500 billion infrastructure fund, by 512 votes to 206. Willsch voted yes. In an open letter he apologised to his children, grandchildren and disappointed supporters. Apart from financing the Bundeswehr, he wrote, he thought the package wrong: a change limited to defence spending would have been acceptable, while €500 billion for infrastructure and climate neutrality by 2045 was too vague. He said too few colleagues would block the amendment, and that a signal was needed to adversaries and to partners in NATO and Europe — “We Germans will do everything necessary to establish our defence capability in a credible way” — while noting that the constitutional change itself released no money.

### Russia and Ukraine

After the [Russian invasion of Ukraine](/facts/2022-russian-invasion-of-ukraine), Willsch argued for heavier German military aid. On 27 January 2023, as Berlin moved to send Leopard 2 tanks, he told CNBC that the [Christian Democrats](/organizations/christian-democrats) had, from April 2022, forced a Bundestag decision to “do whatever it takes to bring heavy material” to Ukraine. He said the Social Democratic Party had been “very skeptic and very very slow”, which “costs life in Ukraine”. He described an initial transfer of 14 tanks plus two recovery vehicles, with European partners expected to make up a battalion, and called Defence Minister [Boris Pistorius](/people/boris-pistorius)’s aim of delivery by the end of March ambitious because crews still had to be trained, including on German soil. Nobody wanted to slip into a third world war, he said, but Putin had to be shown he “cannot act like he wants”, a point he also cast as a signal to [Xi Jinping](/people/env-person-xi-jinping) over Taiwan; preparing for war, he added, was how war was prevented.

On 13 March 2024, on an [Alternative for Germany](/organizations/alternative-for-germany) motion about arms-export controls, he said the text was really about cutting military support for Ukraine and could have been tabled in the Russian Duma. He accused leading AfD figures of a distasteful closeness to the Russian leadership, which he called Germany’s greatest geostrategic rival. Weapons, he said, were supplied so that people could be saved from Russian attacks; ending deliveries would mean occupation, oppression, torture and murder, and “mentioning Bucha should suffice”.

The next day the Bundestag voted on the Foreign Affairs Committee’s recommendation to reject a CDU/CSU motion, “Continue support for Ukraine consistently — decide to deliver the Taurus cruise missile”. The recommendation carried by 494 votes to 188, with five abstentions, so the motion failed. Willsch voted no, with most of the CDU/CSU, against that recommendation — that is, in favour of supplying Taurus KEPD 350 missiles.

## Taiwan, China and parliamentary diplomacy

### The Berlin–Taipei parliamentary circle

The Bundestag keeps a cross-party Parlamentarischer Freundeskreis Berlin-Taipei, founded in 1989, which does the work of its other friendship groups but is not named for the Republic of China (Taiwan). Germany, like the rest of the European Union, the United States and Japan, has no diplomatic relations with Taipei. The People's Republic of China treats the island as a province; the authorities there describe a separate state, and neither side recognises the other.

Klaus-Peter Willsch of the Christian Democratic Union joined the circle in 1998 and, on the Bundestag biography drawn from members' own disclosures, has chaired it since 2010. In a 2015 Bundestag interview he called it "of course the German-Taiwanese parliamentary group, whether it may be called that or not", and the title an outdated slight to a stable democracy and Rechtsstaat. The one-China framework, he said, left a narrow margin members should fill "courageously". The circle then had 44 members.

He led delegations in 2015, 2019 and 2022. From 27 May to 4 June 2015 a CDU/CSU–SPD group met Legislative Yuan vice president Hung Hsiu-chu and President [Ma Ying-jeou](/people/ma-ying-jeou); Willsch called it his third visit. Talks covered cross-strait ties, including the March 2014 occupation of the legislature against a services pact with China, which the visitors called an unacceptable obstruction of an elected parliament, and trade in information technology, cars and machinery. From 24 February to 3 March 2019 he led Hermann Otto Solms (FDP), [Ekin Deligöz](/people/ekin-deligoz) of Alliance 90/The Greens and Jens Koeppen for talks on energy, the environment, digitalisation and the past, including with parliament president Su Jia-chyuan and Premier Su Tseng-chang. On 26 February Fu Jen Catholic University gave him an honorary doctorate in business.

From 1 to 7 October 2022 his delegation—Katrin Budde (SPD), [Till Steffen](/people/till-steffen) (Greens), [Rainer Kraft](/people/rainer-kraft) (AfD) and [Caren Lay](/people/caren-lay) of [Die Linke](/organizations/die-linke)—discussed strait security, trade and energy and digital policy, with a stop in Tainan. *Welt* reported meetings planned with [President Tsai](/people/tsai-ing-wen) Ing-wen, Vice President [Lai Ching-te](/people/lai-ching-te), Foreign Minister Joseph Wu and speaker You Si-kun. A Chinese spokesman told dpa that the visitors should follow the one-China principle and end contacts with what Beijing called separatist forces. Willsch replied that the problem was not a peaceful trip to a democracy but "the complete overreaction of a nervous dictatorship", and that the visit must not excuse incursions into Taiwan's sea and air space after the drills that followed US House speaker [Nancy Pelosi](/people/nancy-pelosi)'s August 2022 trip.

In the 21st Bundestag the list of offices names Steffen as chair. Willsch's narrative biography still says he has chaired the circle since 2010, but that post is absent from his current membership list. From 23 to 31 May 2026 he joined a delegation Steffen led, with [Markus Reichel](/people/markus-reichel) (CDU/CSU), [Mandy Eißing](/people/mandy-eissing) (Die Linke) and Kraft; President Lai received them. The Bundestag reported that China called the visit a crossing of a "red line", while Steffen said the circle handles contacts the one-China policy does not give the federal president, the Bundestag president, the chancellor or the foreign and defence ministers. On 30 December 2025 n-tv still identified Willsch as chair.

### China policy and other parliamentary groups

The interview coincided with a live-fire exercise the [People's Liberation Army](/organizations/people-s-liberation-army) called "Gerechtigkeitsmission 2025" ("Justice Mission 2025"). Willsch said Germany underestimated the economic and technological effects of a conflict. The United States and other industrial states, he said, depended on firms such as TSMC, which he called the world's largest contract chipmaker, and that dependence was a reason to deter an invasion; blockades, hybrid attacks and subversion also had to be prepared for. He dated a sharper line to Xi Jinping's 2019 New Year address, which he said had made violent "reunification" within a generation an explicit option, though Russia's difficulties in Ukraine might lead Beijing to try non-military means first. He cited an extra $40 billion in Taiwanese defence investment over five years and spending above $30 billion from 2026.

Germany's one-China policy, he said, had since the chancellorship of [Gerhard Schröder](/people/gerhard-schroder), and especially under Angela Merkel, been read in a schematic and excessively restrictive way, and was no longer suited to the Indo-Pacific. He called for it to be reviewed, and for Taiwan to be treated as "what it in fact is: a democratic constitutional state and a reliable partner."

From 2002 to 2005 he was the Bundestag's envoy to the parliament of Croatia, and from 2006 to 2010 chair of the German-Croatian parliamentary group. In the 21st Bundestag he is deputy chair of the Parliamentary Group on Eastern Africa, chaired by [Ulle Schauws](/people/ulle-schauws) of the Greens; a notice of its October–November 2026 trip to Tanzania and Rwanda did not list him. Since 2009 he has chaired the cross-party Parliamentary Group on Aviation and Space, an informal forum on civil aviation and the space industry; aerospace research was one theme of the 2015 Taiwan visit.

## Party role and domestic positions

### Offices in the Hessian CDU

Willsch’s Bundestag biography, which the parliament says is based on members’ own statements, records membership of the Junge Union from 1978 to 1996: local chairman in Hohenstein, chairman of the Rheingau-Taunus association, and, from 1986 to 1992, a member of the state executive in Hesse, latterly deputy state chairman. He joined the Christian Democratic Union of Germany in 1979 and has sat on the Rheingau-Taunus district executive ever since, as its chairman since 2002. A district conference in Heidenrod-Laufenselden, reported in March 2024, confirmed him for another two years.

The biography places him on the board of the CDU Bezirk Westhessen from 1993 and as its chairman from 2013. The *Rheingau Echo* reported a later re-election by delegates from Limburg-Weilburg, Rheingau-Taunus and Wiesbaden, with Bernhard Lorenz (Wiesbaden) and Christine Zips (Limburg-Weilburg) as deputies. In the Kommunalpolitische Vereinigung, the CDU’s local-government association, he chaired the Rheingau-Taunus branch from 1993 to 2002 and sat on the Hessian state executive from 1993 to 2006. In the CDU/CSU Bundestag group he was an assessor on the executive from 2006 to 2009, and since 2002 an assessor on the board of the Parlamentskreis Mittelstand, the group’s small-business circle. A CDU/CSU flyer of June 2025 still listed him there, identified with the Budget Committee.

### Social policy, migration and the conservative wing

On 30 June 2017 the Bundestag, in a free vote, adopted a Bundesrat bill opening [marriage to same-sex couples](/facts/same-sex-marriage-in-germany), by 393 votes to 226, with four abstentions. Of the CDU/CSU members listed, 75 voted yes, 225 no and four abstained; Willsch voted no. The same day he wrote on Abgeordnetenwatch that, citing a 2002 ruling of the Federal [Constitutional Court](/organizations/constitutional-court), the marriage protected by the Basic Law was the lasting union of a man and a woman. Other partnerships could be registered and even called marriage, he said, but for him as a Christian marriage was “heilig” and beyond redefinition by statute, which was why he had voted against “Ehe für alle.”

In a Deutschlandfunk interview on 14 December 2015 he said refugee numbers had to fall, that checks on the external border of the Schengen Area—or, failing that, on the German border—required actual refusals of entry, and that he was uneasy leaving the figures to [Recep Tayyip Erdoğan](/people/recep-tayyip-erdogan) and [Alexis Tsipras](/people/alexis-tsipras). Germany could not, he said, absorb “millions and millions” every year; clarifying a remark first published in *Bild am Sonntag*, he added that if the numbers were not cut substantially, citizens would withdraw their trust from Chancellor Angela Merkel. On 29 January 2016 he called Asylum Package II a step in the right direction but said the totals were much too high. The SPD should have moved faster on family reunification, he argued: Germany must not signal that “if you get one through, the rest of the clan follows,” nor let the welfare state be “conquered through the back door.” He wanted smuggler boats stopped before loading and, if necessary, sunk or turned away, with Frontex strengthened. Asked if that meant shelling the Turkish coast, he said no.

Nominated in early November 2024 for an eighth time as the CDU’s direct candidate in constituency 177, he said that since 2015/16 two and a half million people had arrived, “not only skilled workers, but also a lot of Kroppzeug.” Die Linke in Rheingau-Taunus called the word dehumanising. District chairman Simon Jäger, quoted by the *Wiesbadener Kurier*, spoke of an “Entgleisung sondergleichen” and warned against parties of [the centre](/organizations/the-centre) taking up far-right rhetoric; councillor Jasper Klos said the phrase had nothing to do with Christian values.

In August 2021 he told the *Frankfurter Neue Presse* he was “freiheitsliebend, konservativ, wirtschaftskompetent,” and that the only coalition partner he could readily imagine was the Free Democratic Party. He called the Greens in government dangerous, citing curbs on freedom and bans. Of Armin Laschet, the Union’s chancellor candidate, he said he sometimes lacked bite, but that—despite a preference for Friedrich Merz—Laschet could be chancellor, pointing to his term as minister-president of North Rhine-Westphalia with the FDP. He credited Merkel’s manner and negotiating skill, then rejected the scale of admissions after 2015, the nuclear exit and what he called a failed euro rescue, arguing that under her the CDU had moved left. In a closed CDU/CSU group meeting in June 2023 he called the Greens “vaterlandslose Gesellen.” *Bild*, citing several members, reported a murmur and widespread unease at the wording. Merz, then party and group chairman, defended the Greens and, in the paper’s account, rebuked Willsch over the phrase while keeping a polite tone.

## Controversies and criticism

### Advertising, disclosure and side activities

In July 2007 *taz* reported that EADS (later part of Airbus), the missile maker MBDA and the supplier Eurojet regularly bought colour advertisements in the free *Rheingau-Taunus Monatsanzeiger*, about 90,000 copies, published by Willsch, a Christian Democratic Union member of the Bundestag for the Rheingau. Hessian [Social Democrats](/organizations/social-democrats) and Greens valued the series at more than €30,000 and called it “political landscape maintenance” with no real local advertising purpose, aimed at a Budget Committee member and space-policy rapporteur who helped decide defence contracts. SPD general secretary Norbert Schmitt said he should drop the advertisements or leave the committee; Green floor leader [Tarek Al-Wazir](/people/tarek-al-wazir) said the firms would not have advertised otherwise. Willsch said he had solicited the ads himself, put copies in members’ pigeonholes because colleagues read the paper, and would do neither.

On 22 March 2017 the Bundestag presidium, in Drucksache 18/11920 signed by President [Norbert Lammert](/people/norbert-lammert), found that Willsch had again missed the deadline for declaring outside income, after earlier late filings had drawn written demands and a presidential reprimand; the decision recorded the breach and imposed no fine. He told the *Wiesbadener Kurier* that the case was his December 2016 return, that he had always declared his earnings as a consulting economist, publisher of the paper and author, and that he had tightened his reminders.

In March 2021 the *Frankfurter Rundschau* reported that official bodies from Taiwan had advertised in his paper, and in one published by CDU member Hans-Jürgen Irmer, while Willsch chaired the Berlin–Taipei friendship group; a local Green treated the income as a conflict with advocacy opposed by the People’s Republic of China. At his renomination he said Taipei had paid €2,100, €2,100 and €1,680 for advertisements in December 2015, November 2016 and May 2019, sums he had declared. He called the coverage “scandalisation attempts” and denied serving a foreign power; delegates renominated him, unopposed, with 75.7 percent.

### The 2021 birthday gathering

On 28 February 2021, during the [COVID-19 pandemic](/drivers/covid-19-pandemic) in Germany, a video of Willsch’s 60th-birthday gathering reached *Der Spiegel*. It showed at least twelve people, including him, singing, dancing and embracing without masks. Rules in Hesse did not ban meetings of several households, but urgently recommended one’s own household plus one other person, and 1.5 metres between people from different households. Willsch said a befriended family had arrived unannounced, that the evening was not forbidden, and that he regretted failing to set an example. n-tv, citing Hessischer Rundfunk, added that he complained internally of a campaign, and that guests on the recording included former Werteunion state chairman Sebastian Reischmann, two Young Union members and one of his staff. Minister-president Volker Bouffier told the *Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung* that parliamentarians should follow both the regulations and the recommendations. Günter Rudolph, for the SPD in the Hessian Landtag, called the conduct “brazen and lacking in instinct.” No fine or prosecution was reported.

### Positions toward the AfD

After the [2014 European Parliament election in Germany](/facts/2014-european-parliament-election-in-germany), in which Alternative for Germany took 7 percent and the Free Democratic Party 3.4 percent, Willsch—already a CDU critic of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s euro-rescue packages—told *Spiegel Online* that the FDP had “disappeared” and that a future coalition’s greatest overlap was with the AfD, on an independent central bank and the social market economy. The *Tagesspiegel* reported that Bouffier, CDU state chairman and minister-president, answered Willsch, Erika Steinbach and former state minister Christean Wagner by calling the AfD, at a Young Union meeting in Mörfelden-Walldorf, a “wirren Haufen,” fit neither for politics nor for government. In December 2016 Willsch told *Focus* that any coalition would depend on whether moderates or radicals led the AfD, that contacts with moderates should be possible—“AfD people are not lepers”—and that he would stay in the CDU.

On 25 March 2025 AfD candidate [Gerold Otten](/people/gerold-otten) failed three secret ballots for a Bundestag vice-presidency, with 185, 190 and 184 yes votes; the group had 152 seats. Willsch told *Bild* that he had voted for Otten each time, calling him “a respectable fellow without scandals,” and that every faction was entitled to a vice-president. That broke the CDU/CSU line: chairman Friedrich Merz, then the prospective chancellor, had advised members not to back the AfD nominee. Willsch said a coalition was nonetheless “ruled out,” citing Björn Höcke and Maximilian Krah, the party’s questioning of NATO, and what he called a wish to accommodate Russian interests. Otten was not elected.

## Publications, honours and other offices

### Writing and the Rheingau-Taunus Monatsanzeiger

In August 2015 FinanzBuch Verlag, part of the Münchner Verlagsgruppe, published *Von Rettern und Rebellen: Ein Blick hinter die Kulissen unserer Demokratie* (ISBN 978-3-89879-926-3). Willsch wrote it with Christian Raap, whom *[Die Welt](/organizations/die-welt)* identified as co-author and office manager; [Thilo Sarrazin](/people/thilo-sarrazin) wrote the foreword. Wolfgang Denzler, for the Portal für Politikwissenschaft, called Raap Willsch's research assistant and noted that Raap's name was not on the title.

Martin Greive, in *Die Welt* on 7 September 2015, called it a fact-heavy protocol of the eurozone crisis rather than a pamphlet. On that reading Willsch argued that the currency union had become a liability union, charged Angela Merkel with failure, held Wolfgang Schäuble partly responsible for what he called a "Club Med" takeover of the European Union, and concluded that the euro crisis was "a history of the broken word". A *Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung* interview of 11 September 2015, headlined "Nach Strich und Faden betrogen", reported that he considered keeping Greece in the euro wasted effort and that the book described who had speculated, manoeuvred and misinformed. Denzler reported Sarrazin's preface treating the spring 2010 Greek aid as an "egregious breach of treaty and law", and Willsch's account of a "taboo breach", permanent subsidies for Greece, pressure inside the CDU/CSU Bundestag group, and removal from the Budget Committee.

The Bundestag biography, drawn from members' own accounts, lists him as publisher of the *Rheingau-Taunus Monatsanzeiger* in Hohenstein from 2001 to 2021. On Abgeordnetenwatch on 9 September 2005 he said he had published it himself since 2002, at a print run of 90,000, distributed free in the Rheingau-Taunus-Kreis and Bad Camberg; he bore the financial risk, covered costs by selling advertisements, was named as publisher in the imprint, and wrote a column, "Zwischenruf des Herausgebers".

### Scientific posts and honours

That biography records a seat in the Senate of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft from January 2005 to December 2010, election in 2006 to the Kuratorium of the WZB Berlin Social Science Center, and membership since 2012 of the Kuratorium of the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Systems and Design Technology (IPK) in Berlin. The WZB still lists him among the trustees for the CDU/CSU Bundestag group, and the disclosure of outside posts still lists the IPK seat as unpaid. The institute describes the Kuratorium as an advisory body from science, business, politics and administration, chaired by Ansgar Kriwet; its published membership list does not name Willsch.

It places him on the university council of the Vietnamese-German University in Ho Chi Minh City from 2011 to 2022, and states that in February 2019 Fu Jen Catholic University in Taipei awarded him an honorary doctorate.

On 18 September 2025 the Bundestag elected him to the Stiftungsrat of the Stiftung Flucht, Vertreibung, Versöhnung; the CDU/CSU–SPD nomination was adopted unanimously. Carried by the German Historical Museum, the foundation is to keep alive, "in a spirit of reconciliation", the memory of twentieth-century flight and expulsion in the context of the Second World War and Nazi expansion and extermination policy. From 26 January 2026 the disclosure lists the advisory council of the European Space Policy Institute in Vienna, which the institute described as one of its two central bodies, giving medium-term guidance; it identified him as chair of the Bundestag's parliamentary aerospace group. From 17 September 2026 he is also listed, unpaid, among the curators of the Institut für Europäische Politik.

In March 2017 he told the *Wiesbadener Kurier* that his declared outside income included work as a consulting economist (*beratender Volkswirt*), as the paper's publisher and as an author. The current disclosure lists "beratender Volkswirt, Hohenstein" only among jobs before he entered the Bundestag.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/klaus-peter-willsch