# Lukas Benner

# Lukas Benner

Lukas Benner (born 20 February 1996 in Aachen) is a German jurist and a politician of Alliance 90/[The Greens](/organizations/the-greens). He sat in the Bundestag throughout the 20th electoral term (2021–2025) and is a member of the 21st, both times elected from the state list of North Rhine-Westphalia. The Bundestag’s published profile dates his membership of the 21st term from 25 March 2025.

The same biography, drawn from the member’s own disclosures, records that he took the Abitur at the Inda-Gymnasium in Aachen in 2014 and began studying law at the University of Bonn in 2015. He passed the First Juridical State Examination in 2020 and was awarded the degree of Magister iuris that year. In 2020 he also began a doctorate at the University of Greifswald under Michael Rodi on the decarbonisation of shipping; the work has been suspended since September 2021. During 2021 he held a minor post as a research assistant on that project at the Institut für Klimaschutz, Energie und Mobilität (IKEM) in Berlin.

Benner has been a member of the Greens since 2014 and of the assembly of the StädteRegion Aachen since November 2020. For the [2021 German federal election](/facts/2021-german-federal-election), held on 26 September 2021, the North Rhine-Westphalia returning officer listed him 26th on the Greens’ state list, with the occupation “doctoral candidate” and Aachen as his residence, and the Bundestag records him as elected from that list in connection with constituency 088 (Aachen II). For the 2025 German federal election of 23 February 2025 he was placed 14th on the same list and stood in constituency 086 (Aachen I). There he received 39,377 first votes (27.9 percent), behind Armin Laschet of the [Christian Democratic Union](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany), who took the constituency with 45,548 votes (32.3 percent). On the party vote in that constituency the Greens were narrowly ahead of the CDU, with 34,769 votes (24.3 percent) to 34,179 (23.9 percent). Benner again entered the Bundestag through the North Rhine-Westphalia list.

In the 20th Bundestag he was a full member of the Legal Affairs Committee, the Petitions Committee and the second committee of inquiry, and a deputy member of the interior, tourism and transport committees and of the subcommittee on European law. In the 21st Bundestag he is a full member of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Consumer Protection and of the Interior Committee, where he serves as the Greens’ parliamentary spokesperson (Obmann), and a deputy member of the Wahlausschuss and of the German delegation to the Inter-Parliamentary Union.

## Early life and education

### Childhood in the Aachen region

Lukas Benner was born on 20 February 1996 in Aachen, in North Rhine-Westphalia. He has stated that he grew up in Rott, in the Eifel; a leaflet for a candidacy to the Aachen Greens' district executive identified him as "from Rott." Rott is a locality of the municipality of Roetgen, with Roetgen and Mulartshütte, on the windward slope of the High Fens in the south of the district of Aachen.

In 2014 he passed the Abitur at the Inda-Gymnasium in Aachen. The school is a coeducational municipal Gymnasium in Kornelimünster, on the city's southeastern edge. Founded in 1968 for the then Kreis Aachen, it became a city school after the 1972 territorial reform and took its name from Inda, the Latin name of the Inde, which runs through Kornelimünster.

A profile by Jan Rübel, published on 13 February 2023 in *Das Parlament*, placed an early fascination with the sea in Aachen, a city the article described as not crossed by large rivers: as a child he was drawn to whales and dolphins. As a teenager, he said, a documentary on the pilot-whale drive hunt in the Faroe Islands politicized him. "At the time I was shocked; it was a classic trigger," he recalled, adding that he later saw the practice in a more differentiated way because of the culture behind it, while still not supporting it himself. That interest in marine protection, he said, led him toward law, because he wanted to understand environmental law and the Rechtsstaat, "one of the highest goods that we have." He had hoped to become a judge. On his eighteenth birthday he joined Alliance 90/The Greens and, like his grandfather, began local political work, at first on rural bus links, slow internet and building plans he thought unsuited to a village.

### Legal studies and doctoral research

From 2015 Benner studied law at the University of Bonn. A staff note published by the Institute for Climate Protection, Energy and Mobility (IKEM) while he worked there described his emphasis as European and international law of economic relations. The district-executive leaflet, written while the examination was still unfinished, listed "1. Staatsexamen 10.2019" and completion expected in May 2020. The Bundestag biography, which rests on members' own statements, records that he passed the First Juridical State Examination in 2020 and that the degree Magister iuris was conferred. At Bonn that title is not a separate master's programme. Under a faculty ordinance in force since 5 August 2013, Magister iuris or Magistra iuris is awarded on application, as a university degree under section 66(2) of the North Rhine-Westphalia Higher Education Act, once the state-examination course in law has been completed.

In 2020 he began a doctorate at the University of Greifswald under Michael Rodi. Rodi held Greifswald's chair of public law, financial law, and environmental and energy law from 1999 to 2021; he founded IKEM and remains its executive and scientific director. The archived biography for the 20th electoral term gives the subject as the "decarbonisation of shipping" (*Dekarbonisierung der Schifffahrt*). The IKEM page stated a longer working title: the decarbonisation of shipping traffic, and the opportunities and challenges between the nation state, the European Union and the International Maritime Organization.

From September 2020 to April 2021 he worked part-time as an assistant to the management of the Greens' Aachen district association. From January 2021 he was also a *wissenschaftliche Hilfskraft* at IKEM in Berlin, concentrating on energy law; the Bundestag lists that post as minor employment connected with the doctorate. Since November 2009 IKEM, a nonprofit research institute, has been an affiliated institute (*An-Institut*) of the University of Greifswald.

The doctorate has been suspended since September 2021. In the February 2023 profile he said it was resting because, as a member of the Bundestag, he would not have the mind for it, and that the second state examination was still ahead of him. Abgeordnetenwatch has continued to list his occupation as doctoral candidate and his professional qualification as jurist, the description the Bundestag also uses.

## Party membership and local politics

### Greens and the youth wing

Benner joined Alliance 90/The Greens in February 2014, the month of his eighteenth birthday. The Bundestag biography, drawn from members’ own information, records his membership from that year. A candidacy statement for the district executive, published by the Greens’ Baesweiler branch, is the public record of his early posts in the Grüne Jugend, the party’s youth organisation, which calls itself an independent association close to the Greens. The statement lists him as a member of the youth wing’s municipal-policy commission, as chair in 2016–2018 of an animal-protection working group, and in 2016–2017 as an editor of a members’ magazine titled *Krass*; as a delegate to state and federal conferences; as a Green direct candidate in the May 2014 municipal elections; from October 2016 to September 2018 as an appointed committee citizen (*sachkundiger Bürger*) on the environment, tourism and forestry committee of Roetgen; and as an assessor (*Beisitzer*) on the district executive from March 2016 to March 2018.

From September 2020 to April 2021 he was a part-time assistant to the management of the Kreisverband Aachen, the Greens’ organisation for the region. On 8 March 2022 the Kreisverband reported that a postal ballot of the whole membership, held after a district members’ assembly, had elected him district chair (*Kreisvorsitzender*): 106 ballots were cast, three were invalid, 97 were for him, five against and one abstained, a result the association called 94 percent. At the members’ assembly on 11 March 2023 the outgoing leadership, which the Kreisverband described as the duo of Katrin Feldmann and Benner, did not stand again. Laura Postma and Malte Stratenwerth were elected co-chairs.

### StädteRegion Aachen assembly

The StädteRegion Aachen is a municipal association in North Rhine-Westphalia and, since 21 October 2009, the legal successor of the former district of Aachen (*Kreis Aachen*). The Aachen Act (*Aachen-Gesetz*), passed by the state parliament with no votes against, is its basis and, unusually for the state, transferred 37 fields of responsibility from the city of Aachen to the association. The elected assembly, the Städteregionstag, installs the directly elected Städteregionsrat, swears in its members, chooses that official’s three deputies, elects the Städteregionsausschuss and sets up the specialist committees.

*The Haus der StädteRegion in Aachen, administrative seat of the StädteRegion Aachen.*

On 13 September 2020 voters filled 72 seats, with turnout at 53.2 percent; the Greens received 56,398 votes, 24.6 percent, and 18 seats, 11.3 percentage points more than in 2014. Nominations listed Benner, a student born in 1996 and living in Aachen, as the Green candidate in regional constituency 34 and in sixth place on the Green reserve list. Ronald Borning of the CDU won constituency 34; Benner entered from reserve-list place 6, and his Bundestag biography dates the seat from November 2020.

For the 2021–2025 Bundestag term the published gross monthly allowance was €491.80, then €500 from January 2022 to December 2023, €509.70 in 2024 and €519.60 from January 2025. The current return keeps €519.60 a month until 6 November 2025 and adds irregular payments of €100.92 gross in 2025.

He did not stand again: the nominations admitted for the election of 14 September 2025 do not include him. The membership reported to the Bundestag ends on 6 November 2025, the day set for the new assembly’s constitutive sitting, at 18:00 in the Park-Terrassen in Aachen. The administration later named him among members honoured, after they had left, in the media hall of the Haus der StädteRegion. Certificates went to those with up to ten years on the district or regional assembly, and gold pins to those with eleven years or more.

## Bundestag candidacies and election results

Lukas Benner of Alliance 90/The Greens stood for the Bundestag in the Aachen area on 26 September 2021 and again on 23 February 2025. He won neither constituency. He entered the 20th Bundestag from place 26 on the Green state list in North Rhine-Westphalia, and the 21st from place 14 on the same list. The constituency numbers changed between the elections; the areas did not. In 2025 he stood in the city of Aachen rather than in the surrounding municipalities.

### 2021 election in Aachen II

Constituency 88, Aachen II, was the StädteRegion Aachen without the city of Aachen: Alsdorf, Baesweiler, Eschweiler, Herzogenrath, Monschau, Roetgen, Simmerath, Stolberg (Rhld.) and Würselen. Of 226,420 eligible voters, 170,670 voted, a turnout of 75.4 percent, and 168,787 first votes were valid.

[Claudia Moll](/people/claudia-moll) of the Social Democratic Party won with 58,189 first votes (34.5 percent), 3,381 ahead of Catarina Santos Firnhaber of the Christian Democratic Union on 54,808 (32.5 percent). Benner, the Green candidate, was third with 19,976 (11.8 percent), 7.3 percentage points above the Green first-vote share of 4.5 percent in the constituency in 2017. Michael Winterich of [the Alternative](/organizations/the-alternative) for Germany received 12,632 (7.5 percent), Birgit Haveneth of the Free Democratic Party 12,055 (7.1 percent) and Johannes Koch of [Die Linke](/organizations/die-linke) 4,496 (2.7 percent). Die PARTEI, the [Free Voters](/organizations/free-voters) and dieBasis each took 1.7 percent or less.

Second votes went to the SPD with 53,408 (31.6 percent) and the CDU with 49,838 (29.5 percent). The Greens received 19,918 (11.8 percent), the FDP 17,892 (10.6 percent), the AfD 12,409 (7.3 percent) and Die Linke 5,259 (3.1 percent).

Under the 2021 law every voter had a first vote, electing one member by plurality in each of 299 constituencies, and a second vote for a closed state list whose order the party had fixed. Second votes set the parties' shares of a statutory 598 seats. Extra constituency wins became overhang seats. Under a 2020 amendment at most three could stand uncompensated, and the 2021 distribution produced 735 seats, three of them uncompensated overhangs. Apportionment uses the Sainte-Laguë method. Constituency winners count against their party's entitlement, and further seats pass down the list. The North Rhine-Westphalia returning officer's table of candidates elected from state lists names 23 Greens, the lowest place being 27, and includes Benner, described as a doctoral candidate living in Aachen, at place 26. The Bundestag archive for the 20th electoral period (2021–2025) records that list election and associates him with constituency 88.

In the neighbouring city constituency, then numbered 87 and called Aachen I, the direct seat did go to the Greens. The state returning officer recorded Oliver Krischer as elected, with 41,942 first votes (30.2 percent), ahead of the CDU on 35,562 (25.6 percent) and the SPD on 33,087 (23.8 percent). Turnout there was 79.4 percent.

### 2025 contest in Aachen I

The division used on 23 February 2025 was set by the 27th Act amending the Federal Elections Act of 7 March 2024. Population change moved one constituency from Saxony-Anhalt to Bavaria and renumbered former constituencies 72 to 255. Aachen II was redescribed without any change to its boundary and became constituency 87; Aachen I, still only the city of Aachen, became constituency 86. Benner was the Green candidate in the city.

Of 172,442 eligible voters, 143,853 voted, a turnout of 83.4 percent, 4.0 points above 2021 in the city constituency, and 140,952 first votes were valid. Armin Laschet of the CDU won with 45,548 votes (32.3 percent). Benner was second with 39,377 (27.9 percent), 6,171 votes behind. Ye-One Rhie of the SPD received 27,722 (19.7 percent) and [Fabian Fahl](/people/fabian-fahl) of Die Linke 13,162 (9.3 percent). Katharina Willkomm of the FDP took 5,916 (4.2 percent), Nadine Berndt of the Free Voters 3,338 (2.4 percent), Alexandra Radermacher of Volt 3,211 (2.3 percent) and P. Brenkfeld of [Bündnis Deutschland](/organizations/bundnis-deutschland) 2,678 (1.9 percent). The AfD nominated no constituency candidate; its first-vote share in the city in 2021 had been 3.8 percent.

On second votes the Greens led the CDU in the constituency by 34,769 (24.3 percent) to 34,179 (23.9 percent). The SPD followed with 25,206 (17.6 percent), Die Linke with 18,399 (12.9 percent), the AfD with 13,889 (9.7 percent), the FDP with 6,869 (4.8 percent) and Bündnis [Sahra Wagenknecht](/people/sahra-wagenknecht) with 5,058 (3.5 percent). Against 2021 in the same area, the Green second-vote share was 4.7 points lower and the CDU share 1.1 points higher; on first votes the Greens were 2.3 points below Krischer's result and the CDU 6.7 points higher.

From 2025 the Bundestag has a fixed 630 seats, and a first-vote lead no longer creates an overhang. A party candidate who tops a constituency is seated only if second votes cover the seat: in each Land those leaders are ranked by their share of valid first votes, the party's seats in that Land are given to them in that order, and any seats left pass down the closed list, which voters cannot reorder. A Federal [Constitutional Court](/organizations/constitutional-court) judgment of 30 July 2024 kept the five-percent threshold, excluding a party below it only if its candidates lead in fewer than three constituencies. Laschet's lead was covered, and the state returning officer recorded him as elected in constituency 86. Benner, second on first votes, took no district seat. The officer's table of candidates elected from state lists contains 16 Green names, the lowest place being 19, and records Benner, described as a jurist living in Aachen, at place 14. The Bundestag biography for the 21st electoral period records him as elected via the North Rhine-Westphalia list.

## Twentieth Bundestag

Lukas Benner sat in the 20th Bundestag for Alliance 90/The Greens from its constitutive sitting on 26 October 2021 until the 21st Bundestag met on 25 March 2025. He had stood in constituency 88, Aachen II, and entered on the state list of North Rhine-Westphalia, after the election of 26 September 2021. The term ended early: the coalition of the Social Democratic Party, the Greens and the Free Democratic Party broke on 6 November 2024, Chancellor [Olaf Scholz](/people/mig-olaf-scholz) lost a confidence vote on 16 December, and Federal President [Frank-Walter Steinmeier](/people/frank-walter-steinmeier) dissolved the Bundestag on 27 December, ahead of the election on 23 February 2025.

### Committees and the inquiry

The archived biography lists him as a full member of the Legal Affairs Committee and the Petitions Committee, and as a deputy on internal affairs, transport, tourism and the Subcommittee on European Law. It records no chair or Obmann post on those bodies, and full membership of the 2nd committee of inquiry.

The Bundestag established that inquiry on 4 July 2024 by adopting printed paper 20/12142, the rules committee’s recommendation on a CDU/CSU motion (printed paper 20/11731). In committee the recommendation passed with the votes of the CDU/CSU and the Alternative for Germany; the SPD, the Greens, the FDP and the Left group abstained. Under Article 44 of the Basic Law, the remit was federal energy-supply decisions after the [Russian invasion of Ukraine](/facts/2022-russian-invasion-of-ukraine) on 24 February 2022, through to 4 July 2024, especially whether the last nuclear power plants might keep running and whether an “open-ended review” announced by Economics Minister Robert Habeck had taken place.

Eleven full members sat, with eleven substitutes: three each from the SPD and the CDU/CSU, two each from the Greens and the FDP, and one from the AfD. Constituted the same day under President [Bärbel Bas](/people/barbel-bas), the committee elected Stefan Heck (CDU/CSU) chair and Robin Mesarosch (SPD) deputy chair. Benner was one of the two Green full members, beside [Konstantin von Notz](/people/konstantin-von-notz), the group’s Obmann. Other groups named their whips as rapporteurs; the Green parliamentary group named Benner. The committee heard 40 witnesses, among them Scholz, Habeck, Environment Minister [Steffi Lemke](/people/steffi-lemke), Chancellery minister Wolfgang Schmidt and former Finance Minister Christian Lindner.

On 13 February 2025 it adopted its report, printed on 19 February as printed paper 20/14600. The text asks the plenary to take note, sets out separate findings by each group, and names Benner as one of five rapporteurs. In the agreed debate of 30 January 2025 (210th sitting, protocol 20/210, p. 27303) he was one of the speakers. The Bundestag’s account quotes him calling the inquiry a “Farce” and rejecting the claim that files had been withheld, while CDU/CSU, AfD, FDP and SPD speakers gave sharply different assessments.

### Debates and legislative work

The mediathek index linked from the archived biography records 32 plenary contributions between 24 March 2022 and 30 January 2025, mostly short speeches for the Green group. On two government bills he was also one of the rapporteurs named by the Legal Affairs Committee, one from each group.

The recommendation of 8 February 2023 on faster administrative-court proceedings for infrastructure projects (printed paper 20/5570, on government draft 20/5165) lists him as Berichterstatter. He spoke at the first reading on 19 January 2023 and, for the Greens, at the second and third readings on 10 February 2023 (86th sitting, protocol 20/86, p. 10254). He was again one of several rapporteurs on the Fourth Bureaucracy Relief Act (report of 25 September 2024, printed paper 20/13015, on government draft 20/11306) and spoke for the Green group the next day (188th sitting, protocol 20/188, p. 24332). He also spoke, without being named a rapporteur, on planning law, bureaucracy, the justice budget and insurance.

On assisted suicide he was one initiator among many. Printed paper 20/2293 of 17 June 2022, a bill on a self-determined death, names him with [Renate Künast](/people/renate-kunast) and others, following the Federal Constitutional Court judgment of 26 February 2020. He spoke at the first reading on 24 June 2022 and, on 6 July 2023, for the cross-party group “Helling-Plahr, Künast and others”, not for the Green group alone (115th sitting, protocol 20/115, p. 14090). In the roll-calls that day the Castellucci bill was rejected in second reading by 302 votes to 362, with 23 abstentions, and the merged Helling-Plahr/Künast bill by 286 to 375, with 20 abstentions. A motion to strengthen suicide prevention (printed paper 20/7630 of 5 July 2023), which also lists him among many signatories, was adopted by 687 votes to one, with four abstentions.

Other recorded speeches covered penalties for road blockades (10 November 2022 and 27 April 2023), the organisation Last Generation (10 May 2023), an Aktuelle Stunde on Lützerath (20 January 2023), shipping law (9 February 2023) and maritime sovereignty (6 July 2023, for the Green group). On 30 January 2025 he was one of the named initiators, with Künast, [Irene Mihalic](/people/irene-mihalic) and others, of printed paper 20/14105, a motion to find the AfD unconstitutional; he did not speak when it was debated with printed paper 20/13750.

## Twenty-first Bundestag

### Interior Committee spokesperson

The 21st Bundestag held its constitutive sitting on 25 March 2025. Lukas Benner sits in that term for Alliance 90/The Greens, elected on the state list of North Rhine-Westphalia after standing in constituency 086, Aachen I. The final official result gave the Greens 85 seats, from 11.6 percent of second votes. His Bundestag biography lists him as a full member of the Committee on Internal Affairs and as the Greens’ Obmann there. The committee constituted itself on 21 May 2025 in a sitting conducted by Vice President [Andrea Lindholz](/people/andrea-lindholz) (CDU/CSU).

An Obmann or Obfrau is each group’s main contact with its leadership inside a committee. The Bundestag glossary says every group names one per committee; they take a decisive part in setting the group’s line and formulating its interests, agree agendas and plan deliberations, and serve their group as intermediaries because they follow the detailed work. A further Bundestag account calls them a mediating instance when negotiations run into conflict. Substitute members may attend every sitting but vote only when replacing an absent full member of their own group, while full members each have one vote. In the Green parliamentary group, [Marcel Emmerich](/people/marcel-emmerich) leads the interior working group and Benner is deputy leader. The group states that working-group leaders are its policy spokespersons, a role distinct from the Obmann post.

The committee has 42 full members. At the constitutive sitting the seats were 14 CDU/CSU, ten [Alternative for Germany](/organizations/alternative-for-germany) (AfD), eight Social Democratic Party (SPD), six Greens and four Die Linke. Benner was one of the six Green full members named that day. The AfD holds the nomination right for the chair this term. Its candidate, [Jochen Haug](/people/jochen-haug), received 12 yes votes and 29 no votes, with one abstention, and was not elected; the AfD at first declined a second round. [Thomas Silberhorn](/people/thomas-silberhorn) (CDU/CSU), the committee’s longest-serving member, then took the chair on an acting basis. On 25 June 2025 the committee elected [Josef Oster](/people/josef-oster) (CDU/CSU) deputy chair by 38 yes votes to three; the CDU/CSU holds the nomination right for the deputy. Haug was proposed again for the chair and again won no majority. The Bundestag lists Oster as acting chair.

The committee’s published remit runs from immigration and asylum policy to civil defence and disaster protection. It is described as balancing internal security with individual civil rights, overseeing the [Federal Ministry of the Interior](/organizations/federal-ministry-of-the-interior) and its agencies, preparing legislation for the plenary, and holding expert hearings.

### Legal affairs and other bodies

Benner is also a full member of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Consumer Protection. That committee constituted itself on the same day, 21 May 2025, in a sitting conducted by Vice President [Omid Nouripour](/people/omid-nouripour) (Greens). It has 38 full members: at constitution, 13 CDU/CSU, nine AfD, seven SPD, five Greens and four Die Linke. Benner was one of the five Green full members named. The AfD holds the nomination right for the chair. Stefan Möller, its candidate, received ten yes votes and 27 no votes out of 37 cast and was not elected; the group initially declined another round. Carsten Müller (CDU/CSU), the longest-serving member, then chaired on an acting basis. On 25 June 2025 the committee elected Müller deputy chair, the post for which the CDU/CSU holds the nomination right. Möller was proposed again for the chair and again failed to obtain a majority. The Bundestag lists Müller as acting chair.

Its published field covers legal-policy legislation, including family, copyright and criminal law, and consumer protection. The Bundestag says European Union law occupies a growing share of the work, and that the committee considers the Bundestag’s response to cases before the Federal Constitutional Court. In the Green group, [Helge Limburg](/people/helge-limburg) leads the legal-affairs working group and [Lena Gumnior](/people/lena-gumnior) is deputy leader; Benner is a member of the group, not its leader.

The deputy seats on the biography are the Wahlausschuss and, listed under other bodies, the [Inter-Parliamentary Union](/organizations/inter-parliamentary-union). The Wahlausschuss has twelve members, elected at the start of each term in proportion to group strength. It proposes the Federal Constitutional Court judges whom the Bundestag elects. Each of the court’s two senates has eight judges, half chosen by the Bundestag and half by the Bundesrat; election by the Bundestag requires a two-thirds majority. No other Bundestag committee or delegation appears on the biography.

## Interior, migration and security policy

### Asylum and European migration rules

The Council of the European Union adopted the Pact on Migration and Asylum on 14 May 2024, to apply from 12 June 2026. Solidarity toward states under migratory pressure is obligatory, but a state may offer relocation, money or other help and need not take people in. At the Bundestag first reading on 9 October 2025, Lukas Benner, for Alliance 90/The Greens, called the reform one of the largest since the 1990s. The draft, he said, used every margin for further restrictions, including "Dublin centres," and ignored any margin that would help people seeking protection. Citing a 2021 Federal Constitutional Court ruling on coronavirus measures, he treated holding women, children and families there as a deprivation of liberty that required a judge, and said the Greens could not support the bill.

On 27 February 2026 the Bundestag let the Länder open secondary-migration centres for people already registered in another EU state. They may leave for the responsible state but not move freely in Germany; orders may limit exits to daytime, and rejected applicants may be barred from leaving. The package also allows detention during the procedure and brings work access from six months to three, reported as an SPD demand. [Günter Krings](/people/gunter-krings) (CDU/CSU) said Dublin had failed—about 20,600 German take-charge requests in the first half of 2025, and a little over 3,000 transfers—and defended the centres because someone could end a short loss of liberty by travelling on. Interior Minister [Alexander Dobrindt](/people/alexander-dobrindt) spoke of "control, course and a clear edge" continued in Europe. [Sonja Eichwede](/people/sonja-eichwede) (SPD) said the European deal protected asylum; Maximilian Krah (AfD) said it would not stop irregular migration.

Benner called the pact "the greatest tightening of asylum law since 1993" and a European success that had to be implemented. The key, he said, was [European solidarity](/organizations/european-solidarity), not isolation. The coalition had used every discretion "maximally badly." In the centres people would be "de facto locked away," out only for a doctor or an authority, under limits that only judges could order and that officials would now impose—"wrong and constitutionally highly problematic." Children could be held at night, and an exit ban could last 24 months. [Clara Bünger](/people/clara-bunger) (Die Linke) attacked closed centres and detention of children "if it serves their welfare." [Amnesty International](/organizations/amnesty-international) and Pro Asyl said the drafts made detention the rule. The main bill passed 309 to 260, with two abstentions; AfD, Greens and the Left voted no.

Benner said the bill laid a basis for flying claimants from Germany to Rwanda "or somewhere else." British and Italian projects, he said, had failed in court, and Germany would run "camps of misery" in Uganda. On 29 January 2026 he said Dobrindt was negotiating "return hubs" to hold people until removal, without naming the countries. A Green question of 13 March 2026, from Benner, [Filiz Polat](/people/filiz-polat), Konstantin von Notz and others, separated those hubs from a plan to drop any personal link before removal to a "safe third country," and warned of fragile legal systems and weaker remedies. On 7 May 2026 he told phoenix that stationary border controls were "dangerous symbolic politics" and, citing a Koblenz ruling as he described it, contrary to EU law. He traced fewer arrivals chiefly to Syria. Removing serious offenders to Afghanistan was acceptable to him; dealings with Taliban representatives were not. Deportation, he said, was a last resort after a fair hearing, not a show of hardness.

### Domestic security and policing

On 16 October 2025 the Bundestag debated an AfD motion (21/2221) for bans on groups operating as "Antifa," a harder pursuit of violent left-wing networks, and changes to the EU terrorism directive. Martin Hess (AfD) said left-wing extremism had become terrorism and that calling right-wing extremism the greatest threat was merely partisan. Benner interjected "That is true!" at that description of the threat. He called the motion absurd, contrasted the Young Union with the Young Alternative, which he said the AfD had dropped as confirmed right-wing extremist, and said the new name Generation Germany left "old ideas, old heads" from Pegida and the Identitarian movement. Infrastructure worries, he argued, belonged with travel to Russia. [Caroline Bosbach](/people/caroline-bosbach) (CDU/CSU) said Antifa often ended with a Molotov cocktail, but that it could not be banned as such: each group needed its own procedure. On 15 January 2026 every group but the AfD rejected the motion.

At first reading on 29 January 2026 of an interior-ministry bureaucracy bill, Benner backed a faster administration but not weaker safeguards. He opposed ending the Bundestag report on "safe countries of origin"—designation by ordinance was, he said, unconstitutional, and the Greens were suing in Karlsruhe—and narrowing the Federal Criminal Police Office's duty to tell an innocent person they had been surveilled. Without that notice, he said, there was no path to court. On 20 May 2026 the Interior Committee recommended the amended bill; the AfD and Die Linke voted no and the Greens abstained. In May he accepted mobile Federal Police checks but not fixed border posts, which he said burned officers out. Smuggler arrests, he added, did not repair what he called a breach of EU law.

## Legal policy and data protection

### Courts, civil law and procedure

In the Bundestag Committee on Legal Affairs and Consumer Protection, Benner worked on constitutional questions, court procedure and unfair-competition law. He co-sponsored a bill introduced on 17 June 2022 with Renate Künast and others to give effect to the judgment of the Federal Constitutional Court of 26 February 2020, which had voided the criminal ban on commercial assistance in suicide and derived a right to a self-determined death from the general right of personality. It would have opened a regulated route to a lethal narcotic, with a physician deciding in a present medical emergency and a Land authority plus two counselling sessions in other cases, and it rejected a new criminal offence as the core of the reform. Legal Tribune Online noted that the court had barred an outright ban and a limit to serious illness.

On 6 July 2023 Benner told the plenary that assistance was already happening without reliable rules. The committee had merged his group's text with a bill associated with Katrin Helling-Plahr. That draft failed, 286 to 375 with 20 abstentions; Benner voted in favour. A rival bill associated with [Lars Castellucci](/people/lars-castellucci), restoring a criminal ban on commercial assistance subject to exceptions, also failed, 303 to 363 with 23 abstentions. A joint motion he signed, asking the government to strengthen suicide prevention, passed by 687 votes to one, with four abstentions. No new statutory regime was enacted.

He was a rapporteur on the bill to shorten administrative-court cases on major infrastructure. At the hearing on 23 January 2023, judges including Robert Seegmüller of the Federal Administrative Court said shortcuts would not reliably speed cases and that staffing was the constraint; Franziska Heß, nominated by Alliance 90/The Greens, asked that the bill be dropped. The committee still recommended "should" rules rather than duties, an early hearing only in suitable cases, no fixed deadline for the defendant's reply, and smaller benches. On 10 February 2023 Benner said the changes—more flexible benches, searchable digital files, and a limited power to disregard curable defects in interim relief—were meant to speed cases without cutting legal protection. The Social Democratic Party, the Greens and the Free Democratic Party, with [The Left](/organizations/the-left-slovenia), voted for the bill; the CDU/CSU and the Alternative for Germany voted against.

On 10 November 2025 the committee heard experts on a third amendment of the Act against Unfair Competition, transposing European Union rules on environmental claims. Benner asked whether the draft distinguished a sustainability seal from a familiar logo such as the WWF panda, and whether applying the green-transition consumer directive beyond business-to-consumer relations went too far. The lawyer Remo Klinger said the transposition was not excessive.

### Digital rights and lobbying rules

Benner signed the Greens' motion of 7 October 2025, a statement to the government under Article 23(3) of the Basic Law on the [European Commission](/organizations/european-commission)'s 2022 proposal for a regulation on child sexual abuse. It backed that aim and a proposed EU centre, but asked the government to oppose suspicionless scanning of private messages and storage, to exclude client-side scanning and any circumvention of end-to-end encryption even with consent, and to reject upload filters, network blocks and coverage of personal cloud storage. It also sought anonymous internet use and faster deletion of abuse images under the [Digital Services Act](/facts/digital-services-act). On 30 October 2025 he wrote that texts then in the Council of the European Union would force mass searches of private communications and create exploitable flaws, and that child protection and fundamental rights should not be traded off. On 3 December 2025 the Interior Committee recommended rejecting the motion, with the CDU/CSU and the SPD for rejection, the Greens and the Left against, and the AfD abstaining. The Left's stricter call to oppose the regulation itself was also recommended for rejection; the Greens abstained on that text.

With Konstantin von Notz and the Green group he was the first signatory of a motion tabled on 23 September 2026. It asked the government to keep the material standard of the General Data Protection Regulation, not to centralise private-sector supervision at federal level, and to give the conference of German supervisory authorities a statutory basis and binding majority decisions, with simpler rules for clubs and smaller firms and no blanket privileges for training artificial-intelligence systems.

In July 2024 Benner called the executive lobbying footprint adopted by the cabinet that March incomplete, because influence on members and on parliamentary drafting would stay invisible, and said the Greens still wanted the legislative footprint from the previous coalition agreement. On 15 October 2025 the group tabled a motion instructing the rules committee to propose that footprint for third-party influence on bills, including those from within the Bundestag, subject to the free mandate, and a presumption that committee sittings are public. On 16 October the Bundestag rejected it: the Greens, the Left and the AfD in favour, the CDU/CSU and the SPD against.

## Climate, mobility and the constituency

### Energy, shipping and transport

In the 20th Bundestag Benner was a deputy member of the Transport Committee and, from February 2022, the Alliance 90/The Greens speaker in the cross-party Parliamentary Group on Inland Shipping. That followed a later-suspended doctorate at the University of Greifswald on decarbonising shipping and a minor 2021 post at the Institute for Climate Protection, Energy and Mobility in Berlin.

On 9 February 2023, on a bill amending shipping law, he said years of work on decarbonisation had convinced him shipping was the most climate-friendly mode, but that ships had to be adapted to rivers: a climate-neutral, low-water vessel was useless if a lock, weir or bridge had failed. He backed the bill and a shift of more freight onto inland waterways.

On 6 July 2023 he spoke for the Greens on the coalition motion "Maritime sovereignty in the Zeitenwende" (printed paper 20/7571), adopted with the coalition and [Stefan Seidler](/people/stefan-seidler). He tied resilience to a climate-neutral economy and described 18 months on a dissertation about decarbonising shipping, including barriers in the 10th Federal Immission Control Ordinance and the chemicals prohibition ordinance. He called ports future energy hubs for alternative fuels, with inland waterways supplying climate-neutral industry, and pointed to language on renewable propulsion in federal ship orders, where possible, and on a "climate-neutral federal fleet".

At a Transport Committee hearing on 13 May 2024, on a CDU/CSU motion to strengthen inland shipping, he asked what fuel and cargo would replace coal and whether every inland port needed a hydrogen terminal. Citing his own legal research on shore-side ammonia infrastructure, he asked where public investment was expected.

On 10 February 2023, on faster court proceedings for infrastructure, he cited dozens of file folders for one wind turbine, decaying bridges and 30 years for a railway. He backed smaller benches, digitally searchable files and a way to cure some errors without an automatic stop, without weakening legal protection. In July 2024 he wrote that Solar Package I, in force from 15 May 2024, had allowed larger balcony units, registration only in the market master-data register and connection without a modern meter. On 4 July 2024 the Bundestag adopted the Legal Affairs Committee's text on plug-in solar (printed papers 20/9890 and 20/12146)—SPD, CDU/CSU, Greens and FDP for, the AfD against—treating it as a privileged measure in condominium and tenancy law. The day before, Benner said tenants would gain a claim against landlords, which he linked to an April 2023 petition of more than 100,000 signatures.

In November 2021 he wrote that he personally favoured a motorway limit of 130 km/h, to cut deaths, accidents and emissions from combustion engines. In September 2025 he called the Deutschlandticket a success that the Green group wanted returned at least to 49 euros a month. On power prices he argued for a fast build-out of renewables as the cheapest climate-friendly supply, with storage and a hydrogen ramp-up for summer solar surplus, and, in another answer that month, rejected nuclear power as too expensive, too late and unsolved on waste.

### Aachen and the border region

Benner holds a list seat for North Rhine-Westphalia after standing in constituency 086, Aachen I. The Bundestag lists his constituency office at Franzstraße 34, 52064 Aachen. The *Wochenspiegel* called him a native of Rott and a repeat guest of the Roetgen Greens at the Grünes Zentrum Nordeifel; a discussion it advertised for 13 May 2026 was about military service. His 20th-term biography listed Grenzlandjugend Roetgen e.V. Roetgen's own history describes the Eifel municipality as a border town (*Grenzort*) after Eupen and Malmedy passed to Belgium.

The Caritas association for the Diocese of Aachen reported a visit to the SKM care home in Aachen-Rothe Erde, after a state working group of independent welfare organisations invited members of parliament to discuss the special federal fund for infrastructure and climate neutrality. It said the talk covered climate adaptation and an investment backlog: providers could not fund energy renovation from existing service agreements, and heatwaves had made technical protection for residents urgent.

## Memberships, disclosures and public profile

### Organisations and side offices

Offices held alongside the mandate, and any payment for them, are published under the rules of conduct for members of the Bundestag. The only remuneration on Benner's returns is the gross allowance for the assembly of the StädteRegion Aachen. For the 20th electoral term the published monthly sums were €491.80, then €500 from January 2022 to December 2023, €509.70 in 2024 and €519.60 from January 2025. The current return keeps €519.60 a month until 6 November 2025 and adds irregular gross payments of €100.92 in 2025.

Three further posts appear with no remuneration stated. On 13 November 2025 the Bundestag elected him to the advisory board of the Stiftung Datenschutz in Leipzig as the member proposed by Alliance 90/The Greens. The foundation, set up in 2013, describes that board as honorary and as advising its executive board; it lists Benner as named by the Bundestag. He is a trustee of the Stiftung Forum Recht in Karlsruhe, where the foundation lists him among members of parliament. The 20th-term disclosure records a deputy seat from 5 April 2022 to 30 July 2024 and full membership from 30 July 2024. Both the archived and the current biographies name him as a member of the assembly of the Region Aachen Zweckverband in Aachen.

Two offices have closed. He left the advisory board of the Schlichtungsstelle der Rechtsanwaltschaft in Berlin on 4 November 2025. In 2022 the president of the Bundesrechtsanwaltskammer appointed him, then a member of the Bundestag's legal-affairs committee, to the nine-member board, which advises the arbitration service on questions material to its procedure; the term is four years. The parliamentary return dates the post from 27 January 2022 and shows no fee. Until 9 December 2021 he was a deputy member of the supervisory board of WAG Wassergewinnungs- und -aufbereitungsgesellschaft Nordeifel mbH in Roetgen, likewise with no remuneration published.

The Bundestag biography, based on members' own statements, lists membership of the Deutsch-Israelische Gesellschaft and of Ukrainer in Aachen e.V. The biography for the 20th term also named Grenzlandjugend Roetgen e.V. and Bonn Negotiators e.V.; neither association appears on the later text.

### Public appearances

On 14 December 2023 the *Aachener Zeitung* reported that Benner had gone to Israel, met survivors of the Hamas attack and visited sites of the attacks; its headline called the trip a visit "im Krieg".

On 27 February 2026, on the public-affairs channel phoenix, reporter Gerd-Joachim von Fallois interviewed him with [Alexander Throm](/people/alexander-throm), the CDU interior-policy spokesman of the Union group, about European Union asylum law. On 7 May phoenix broadcast a *Tagesgespräch* with him on one year of the "Migrationswende".

The *Aachener Zeitung* held a digital live talk on 3 April 2025, under the title #nofilter, with Benner, the SPD member Daniel Walter and the Die Linke member Fabian Fahl, on young members from the region taking up work in Berlin after the federal election. In May 2026 the *Wochenspiegel* reported a 13 May village discussion in Roetgen on the return of conscription, and quoted his objection that the Union–SPD modernisation law focused on young men without a coherent plan for the armed forces, the reserve and civil protection. A Caritas notice dated 11 March 2026 reported a visit, at SKM Aachen's invitation, to its Rothe Erde care home, tied to a state welfare initiative on the special federal fund for infrastructure and climate neutrality.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/lukas-benner