Marion Kindle-Kühnis

Marion Kindle-Kühnis (née Kindle; born 10 February 1979 in Chur) is a Liechtenstein politician and political scientist, a citizen of Triesen, where she lives. She has been a member of the Landtag of Liechtenstein for the Oberland constituency since the general election of 9 February 2025, sitting for the Democrats for Liechtenstein (Demokraten pro Liechtenstein, DpL). From 2009 to 2013 she was a deputy member of the Landtag for the Patriotic Union (Vaterländische Union).

She is the daughter of the bank clerk Florian Kindle and the dance teacher Barbara Kindle (née Keller) and has one sister. She attended primary school in Triesen from 1986 to 1991 and the Liechtensteinisches Gymnasium in Vaduz from 1991 to 2000. From 2001 to 2006 she studied political science together with constitutional and international law at the University of Zurich, graduating with a licentiate (lic. phil.), and in 2010 she completed a Certificate of Advanced Studies in politics at the University of St. Gallen. On 15 May 2009 she married the university lecturer Jürgen Kühnis (born 1972); they have two children.

Since 2011 she has worked in Vaduz at the Agency for International Education Affairs (Agentur für Internationale Bildungsangelegenheiten, AIBA), the public-law body that runs Liechtenstein’s international education programmes, as project manager for the EEA Grants financing mechanism and the National Qualifications Framework (Nationaler Qualifikationsrahmen, NQFL). The Landtag lists her profession as political scientist, and the qualifications-framework site names her as the officer responsible for the NQFL. After the 2025 election AIBA said she would continue that work alongside the parliamentary mandate.

Oberland fills 15 of the Landtag’s 25 seats. Kindle-Kühnis received 2,959 votes there, the second-highest personal total on the DpL list, and took one of the party’s four Oberland seats. Nationally the DpL won 23.3 percent of the vote and six seats, a gain of four. The Patriotic Union remained the largest party with ten seats, the Progressive Citizens' Party took seven and the Free List two, on a turnout of 76.3 percent.

For the 2025–2029 term she sits on the Foreign Affairs Commission and, from 2026, on the Audit Commission. In October 2025 the Landtag rejected, by 15 votes to 10, a DpL postulate she opened in debate, which would have asked the government to prepare a concept for smartphone-free schools through ninth grade. On 1 April 2026 the Landtag referred, by 22 of 25 votes, a motion she had signed with four DpL colleagues and for which she was the lead speaker, instructing the government to draw up a protection strategy on smartphones and social media for children and young people. She told the chamber that digital participation must not mean handing children over to business models built to maximise time spent online. In September 2026 she joined Thomas Rehak and Martin Seger in presenting a DpL initiative to tighten the temporary-protection status used for people who had fled Ukraine.

Early life and education

Family and childhood

Marion Kindle-Kühnis was born on 10 February 1979 in Chur, the capital of the Swiss canton of Grisons (Graubünden), and is recorded as “von Triesen”. In Liechtenstein that formula denotes municipal citizenship. Under the Municipalities Act every national citizen, other than members of the princely house, must be a citizen of exactly one municipality and cannot hold municipal citizenship without national citizenship. Municipal citizenship confers the Heimatrecht of that municipality, including a claim to a certificate of origin (Heimatschein) and a role in decisions on admitting new citizens.

On 15 May 2009 she married Jürgen Kühnis, a university lecturer born in 1972; the couple have two children. The Landtag lists her residence as Triesen.

Triesen is a political municipality in the southern Oberland, where the Rhine valley narrows at the foot of the Rätikon. The Historisches Lexikon gives it a continuous area of 26.477 square kilometres, with the parish church at 512 metres above sea level; the Grauspitz, at 2,599 metres the highest point in the country, lies inside the municipal boundary. In 2011, with 4,834 inhabitants, it was the third-largest Liechtenstein municipality by both area and population. The village was originally laid out on the debris cone of a post-glacial landslide and has spread, since the twentieth century, into the narrow valley floor. Population growth was slow until the 1940s, then persistent: the lexicon records average annual growth of 4.7 percent in the 1960s and 2.5 percent in the 1990s, the decade in which Kindle-Kühnis moved from primary school to secondary school, and counts 4,712 inhabitants at the end of 2007, 37 percent of them citizens of Triesen itself. Establishing and maintaining kindergartens and primary schools belongs to a municipality’s own sphere of tasks. She attended primary school in Triesen from 1986 to 1991.

Schooling and university studies

From 1991 to 2000 she attended the Liechtensteinisches Gymnasium in Vaduz. Its long form begins after the fifth year of primary school and is meant to give a broad general education and to prepare pupils for university study.

The Gymnasium was founded in 1937 as the Collegium Marianum, a private school of the Marist Brothers, and has been a state school since 1981. Girls were admitted for the first time in 1969. In November 1972, after three years of construction, the school moved into the Schulzentrum Mühleholz, the building that has housed it since. Throughout the years the lexicon gives for Kindle-Kühnis’s attendance, the long course was still an eight-year Gymnasium with two profiles, B and E. A reform of the upper school in the 2001/02 school year shortened that course to seven years and replaced the old profiles with five; the last eight-year cohort finished in 2005. Matura certificates from the school are treated as equivalent to the corresponding certificates in Switzerland and Austria. Under bilateral agreements they give access to all faculties of Swiss universities, and to Swiss universities of applied sciences after an additional practical year.

From 2001 to 2006 she studied political science together with constitutional law and public international law (Staats- und Völkerrecht) at the University of Zurich and graduated with the licentiate lic. phil. That qualification belonged to the degree structure the university was then leaving behind. From the autumn semester of 2006, most of its faculties replaced licentiate and diploma courses with two-cycle bachelor’s and master’s programmes on the model of the Bologna Process.

In 2010 she completed a Certificate of Advanced Studies in politics at the University of St. Gallen. On 20 January 2010 the university’s Executive School announced the second session of its certificate course Weiterbildung für Politik, a part-time programme of fifteen days in six blocks of two and a half days, covering economics, leadership and communication. The course was intended for people active in politics, public administration, associations and non-governmental organisations, and was scheduled to begin in St. Gallen on 25 February 2010; sixteen participants from those fields had taken the first session in 2009. The Landtag records her occupation as Politologin (political scientist).

Professional career

Agency for International Education Affairs

Liechtenstein has no national learner-mobility programmes. Since it joined the European Economic Area in 1995 it has taken part in European Union education programmes, and it also uses Swiss schemes. The European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training records upper-secondary vocational participation of 68.3 per cent, against an EU average of 49.0 per cent, entirely in combined work- and school-based programmes, with the school-based part taught in Switzerland.

The Law of 26 April 2007 on the Agency for International Education Affairs (Agentur für Internationale Bildungsangelegenheiten, AIBA), published on 27 June 2007, created an independent public-law institution with its own legal personality and its seat in Vaduz. It transferred to the new agency the projects then running under Socrates in general education, Leonardo da Vinci in vocational education, and WorldSkills. It is the national agency for European education programmes and is also responsible for mobility schemes, advice, and transparency in the recognition of qualifications. A board chosen by the government directs it, the Financial Control audits it, and the government supervises it.

Eurydice lists AIBA’s responsibilities as Erasmus+ in education and in youth, eTwinning, the national qualifications framework, the EEA Grants, WorldSkills and Europass. The agency’s 2021 report states that the Landtag, by a large majority in December 2020, approved the 2021–2027 generation and for the first time since 1995 placed education, youth and sport, including the European Solidarity Corps, in that one national agency, with a service agreement for youth work with the association aha. Marion Kindle-Kühnis, recorded by the Landtag of Liechtenstein as a political scientist, has been there since 2011, project leader for the EEA Grants and the qualifications framework at her five-year anniversary in 2016 and head of that area by 2021 and on the current staff list.

Qualifications framework and EEA Grants

In 2011, by decree RA 2010/2909-4000, the government provided for a national qualifications framework for lifelong learning that could cover all parts of education and training. The framework that was built has eight levels, is referenced to the European Qualifications Framework, and leaves out general education. Its higher-education part became operative in 2013, after a 2011 higher-education ordinance, and was self-certified that year against the qualifications framework of the European Higher Education Area, the instrument linked to the Bologna Process. The vocational part is an ordinance of 12 December 2017, in force on 1 January 2018.

The ordinance sets eight levels of knowledge, skills and competences, aligned with the 2008 EQF recommendation, for basic and higher vocational qualifications only, so that they can be compared at home and abroad. Levels 6 to 8 also hold higher vocational qualifications awarded outside higher education, beside higher-education degrees: the Y-shape in the diagram above. Descriptors match the Swiss vocational framework, and the government may adopt a classification already made by the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation or, failing that, a recommendation of the Swiss Federal University for Vocational Education and Training. Under the ordinance the level becomes binding when AIBA, as NQFL coordination point, enters the qualification in a public register; that office also publishes the certificate supplements.

Cedefop treats AIBA as the EQF national coordination point, under the Ministry of Education, while the Office of Vocational Training and Career Counselling supervises vocational education. Referencing to the EQF was completed in October 2016, and the report was published in 2017. The 2024 inventory places it at the activation stage. No new qualifications had been classified since 2022; 78 dual-system professions were included, with 169 more expected by 2026; and levels appear on some certificates and on Europass supplements at levels 3 to 5. Coordination-point activity was suspended in 2021–2023 after a budget-submission error meant Liechtenstein could not apply for the funds. The framework’s own site names Kindle-Kühnis, lic. phil., as the person responsible, at Kirchstrasse 10 in Vaduz.

Liechtenstein is a donor in the EEA Grants, the EEA Financial Mechanism, together with Iceland and Norway, and not a beneficiary. The three states fund the grants to narrow social and economic disparities in the EEA and to strengthen bilateral relations with 15 EU member states. For 2021–2028, the fourth period in the grants secretariat’s numbering and the sixth mechanism since the EEA Agreement in the government’s, the EEA Grants come to €1.805 billion, of which €100 million relates to the invasion of Ukraine, inside a combined EEA and Norway Grants total of €3.268 billion. Shares follow relative gross domestic product. On 5 September 2024 the government asked the Landtag for an indexed commitment credit of €26.9 million, the sum implied by the latest figures, because Liechtenstein’s exact share cannot be fixed in advance. The Landtag approved the agreement with the EU, Iceland and Norway, and the credit, on 2 October 2024.

Liechtenstein directs its part of the grants toward education and culture, with AIBA, the Icelandic Centre for Research (Rannis) and the Norwegian Directorate for Higher Education and Skills as donor programme partners. After the Landtag approved financing for 2014–2021, the government again appointed AIBA donor programme partner for the Scholarship area, advising operators in beneficiary states and meeting the other donor partners and the Financial Mechanism Office in Brussels.

Political beginnings

Municipal candidacy and the 2009 election

Marion Kindle, the name under which she was then listed, stood for the Patriotic Union (Vaterländische Union, VU) at the municipal elections in Triesen on 2 February 2003 and was not elected. She received 591 votes for the municipal council. Counted apart from the mayoral contest, the VU took five council seats with 6,828 votes (44.7 percent), the Progressive Citizens' Party (Fortschrittliche Bürgerpartei, FBP) four with 7,089 (46.6 percent), and the Free List (Freie Liste, FL) one with 1,373 (9.0 percent); turnout was 74.0 percent. Xaver Hoch of the FBP won the mayoralty with 59.0 percent, ahead of Wolfgang Kindle of the VU (28.3 percent) and Norman Nigsch of the Free List (12.6 percent).

The Landtag of Liechtenstein has 25 members, 15 from Oberland and 10 from Unterland. Seats are shared, by proportional representation, among parties with at least 8 percent of the valid votes cast in the country, and within a party the candidates with the most personal votes are elected. Voters may leave a ballot unchanged, strike names, or add candidates of other groups (panaschieren). The 2009 and 2013 returns record that split, distinguishing unchanged ballots, altered ballots of a candidate's own party, and altered ballots of other parties.

On 8 February 2009 the VU led nationally, with 47.6 percent and 13 seats, against 43.5 percent and 11 for the FBP and 8.9 percent and one for the Free List; turnout was 84.6 percent. In Oberland it took 48.9 percent (71,469 votes) and eight seats, two more than in 2005, the FBP 41.7 percent (61,033) and six, and the Free List 9.4 percent (13,733) and one, on a turnout of 83.4 percent. Kindle, of Triesen, placed ninth on the VU list with 4,226 votes — 2,423 from unchanged VU ballots, 1,601 from altered VU ballots, and 202 from altered ballots of the other two parties — and was returned as a deputy member (stellvertretende Abgeordnete), the higher placed of the party's two Oberland deputies. The Landtag records that term as 2009–2013.

Deputy mandate and the OSCE delegation

A deputy is not one of the 25 members. Article 46 provides that deputies are elected with them: in each constituency a party receives one deputy for every three seats it wins, and at least one if it wins any seat there. Under Article 49, a deputy sits and votes only when a member of the same electoral group cannot attend a sitting, or several in succession. The Landtag describes the office as a way of preserving the parties' strength in the chamber, and states that deputies may be elected to committees and to delegations abroad, while majorities and chairmanships in those bodies are reserved for full members.

Kindle's place was one of the two deputy mandates that followed from the VU's eight Oberland seats, not a full seat. On 15 December 2010 the Landtag filled a vacancy in Liechtenstein's delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe after Doris Beck's resignation; with 24 members present, the vote was 20 in favour and 4 against. The delegation's report for 2012 identifies the person elected as deputy member Marion Kindle-Kühnis, thereafter an ordinary member of the delegation, and names Hubert Lampert, himself a Landtag deputy, as its head.

She attended the Assembly's eleventh winter meeting in Vienna on 23–24 February 2012 with Lampert. At the 21st annual session, in Monaco from 5 to 9 July 2012, Lampert was absent and she led the delegation, with its secretary. More than 270 parliamentarians from 54 of the 56 participating states of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe were present. Beforehand she submitted a resolution, "Auswirkungen der Kleinstaaten auf die OSZE" ("Effects of the small states on the OSCE"), already backed by more than 30 parliamentarians from 18 states. It welcomed Monaco's hosting of the session and called on participating states to help small states uphold OSCE standards and preserve their identity, security and sovereignty, and to treat them as equal partners. In the First General Committee she stressed the sovereignty of small states and thanked Monaco for organising the session; members from Monaco, Andorra, Russia and Latvia also supported the text, and the Assembly adopted it by a large majority.

The 2013 election

On 3 February 2013 she stood again for the VU in Oberland, now listed as Marion Kindle-Kühnis of Triesen, and was not elected.

The VU lost its place as the largest group. Nationally the FBP won 40.0 percent and 10 seats, the VU 33.5 percent and eight (five fewer than in 2009), Die Unabhängigen (DU) 15.3 percent and four, and the Free List 11.1 percent and three; turnout was 79.8 percent. In Oberland the FBP held six seats on 39.3 percent (55,233 votes), the VU fell from eight seats to five on 34.6 percent (48,586), the DU won two on 14.8 percent (20,748), and the Free List rose to two on 11.4 percent (16,058). Turnout there was 78.3 percent.

Five seats entitled the VU to one Oberland deputy rather than two. Kindle-Kühnis finished eighth, with 2,912 votes, 591 of them cast in Triesen, behind the five full members and behind Manfred Kaufmann, the deputy, who had 2,958. The delegation to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly was chosen again at the new Landtag's opening sitting on 27 March 2013, and the delegation's report for that year does not include her.

The 2025 general election

Change of party

Kindle-Kühnis’s earlier Landtag candidacies were for the Patriotic Union (Vaterländische Union, VU). In 2009 she placed ninth on the VU list in Oberland — the upper-country constituency that includes Triesen — with 4,226 votes, and the official protocol marks her as a substitute rather than a full deputy. The Landtag dates that substitute mandate from 2009 to 2013. In 2013, listed as Marion Kindle-Kühnis, she was eighth on the VU Oberland list with 2,912 votes, outside the five full seats and the one substitute the list returned. She does not appear on the official Oberland candidate tables for 2017 or 2021.

For the election of 9 February 2025 she stood for the Democrats for Liechtenstein (Demokraten pro Liechtenstein, DpL). The party was the last of the four lists to complete its slate: on 30 November 2024, at the Altes Kino in Vaduz, it nominated six men and four women. A Liechtensteiner Vaterland photograph of that evening identifies her with Thomas Rehak, Erich Hasler, Martin Seger, Joachim (Achim) Vogt and the other nominees. The Landtag page for 2025–2029 lists her party as DPL and records a full deputy’s mandate from 2025, separate from the earlier substitute term. Neither the Vaterland report of the nomination nor the Radio Liechtenstein candidate profile records an explanation from her for leaving the VU.

Campaign and Oberland result

Voters in Liechtenstein chose the 25-member Landtag on 9 February 2025. A Radio Liechtenstein profile, headed “Lebensqualität für die nächsten Generationen sichern”, presented Kindle-Kühnis, then 45 and living in Triesen, as a candidate who tied her decision to run to her children and to leaving them a country with at least the present quality of life, which she said would take decisions made with a long view. The same profile names high-quality education, the position of the middle class, and a careful use of natural resources as further concerns of hers. Those were priorities she stated in the campaign, not measures already adopted.

Results graphic for the 9 February 2025 Landtag election: VU 10 seats, FBP 7, DpL 6 and Free List 2.

The party programme, as reported by Radio Liechtenstein, ranged wider than that interview: transport, alpine farming and agriculture, migration, the gap between high and low pay, and more electricity generation inside the country. On temporary protection (Schutzstatus S), the station said the DpL wanted a Norwegian-style rule, so that people who had fled to Liechtenstein from parts of Ukraine treated as safe would no longer receive that status automatically. The four lists — the VU, the Progressive Citizens' Party (Fortschrittliche Bürgerpartei, FBP), the DpL and the Free List (Freie Liste, FL) — ran under open-list rules. A voter takes one party’s ballot and may leave it unchanged, strike names, or write in candidates from another list in the same constituency; struck lines count as Zusatzstimmen for the party on the ballot, and personal votes, not the printed order, decide who fills the seats a party wins.

With all 11 municipalities counted, Oberland turnout was 75.9 percent: 10,263 ballots from 13,527 eligible voters, 9,913 of them postal. Party votes were VU 39.2 percent (58,725 votes; 6 seats, unchanged on 2021), FBP 25.6 percent (38,352; 4 seats, down 2), DpL 23.8 percent (35,695; 4 seats, up 3) and FL 11.3 percent (16,928; 1 seat, down 1). Against 2021 the DpL share in Oberland rose 14.2 percentage points, while the FBP share fell 9.1. Of the DpL’s 35,695 Oberland party votes, 15,889 were for named candidates and 19,806 were Zusatzstimmen. Rehak (Triesen) received 3,225 votes, Kindle-Kühnis (Triesen) 2,959, Vogt (Triesenberg) 2,794 and Seger (Schaan) 2,534, and all four became deputies; Oliver Indra (Vaduz), on 2,274, was the substitute, ahead of Isabella Fischer (Vaduz) on 2,103.

Nationally the same count gave the VU 38.3 percent and 79,478 votes (10 of 25 seats, unchanged), the FBP 27.5 percent and 56,983 (7 seats, down 3), the DpL 23.3 percent and 48,370 (6 seats, up 4) and the FL 10.9 percent and 22,549 (2 seats, down 1), on a turnout of 76.3 percent among 21,183 eligible voters, 96.6 percent of it postal. The Unterland’s 10 seats supplied the DpL’s other two deputies, a gain of one. Her mandate was one of four DpL seats in the 15-member Oberland half of a Landtag in which the party went from two seats to six and no list reached the 13 needed for a majority. The results site published the figures without guarantee; the Landtag, repeating them on 10 February, said they stayed provisional until the government chancellery’s proclamation, and that coalition talks would follow, led by custom by the largest party.

She was one of eight women among the 25 full deputies. In the election office’s gender series from 2001, that was 32 percent, above 28 percent (7 women) in 2021; the success rate was 38.1 percent for women candidates and 35.4 percent for men. Vaterland called the eight seats a first and pictured her alongside Tanja Cissé, Carmen Heeb-Kindle and Dagmar Bühler-Nigsch (VU), Bettina Petzold-Mähr and Franziska Hoop (FBP), and Manuela Haldner-Schierscher and Sandra Fausch (FL). Radio Liechtenstein reported that 15 of the 25 deputies were taking a full mandate for the first time and that, of the DpL members, only Rehak had held one before, Herbert Elkuch having not stood again.

Membership of the Landtag

Mandate and constituency

Marion Kindle-Kühnis sits as an ordinary member of the Landtag of Liechtenstein for the 2025–2029 term, for the Oberland and for the Democrats for Liechtenstein (Demokraten pro Liechtenstein, DPL). The Landtag has 25 deputies, elected for four years by universal, equal, secret and direct suffrage under proportional representation. The constitution gives 15 seats to the Oberland, the Landschaft Vaduz (the municipalities of Vaduz, Balzers, Planken, Schaan, Triesen and Triesenberg), and 10 to the Unterland, and only lists with at least 8 per cent of the valid votes cast nationwide share in the seats. Kindle-Kühnis, a political scientist living in Triesen, was returned on 9 February 2025 as an ordinary deputy (Abgeordnete), second on the DPL list in the Oberland, which took four of that district's 15 seats; the party holds six seats in the Landtag. On 10 April 2025 the new Landtag confirmed the election, and Alois, Hereditary Prince of Liechtenstein swore in the 25 deputies and the nine substitutes.

The full seat differs from the office she held in 2009–2013, when the parliamentary service lists her only as a substitute deputy (stellvertretende Abgeordnete). Substitutes are elected with the 25 deputies: in each district a list receives one substitute for every three seats it wins there, and at least one if it wins any seat in the district. They do not sit as of right. A substitute takes part, with a seat and a vote, only when a deputy of the same electoral group is prevented from attending one sitting or several in succession; the group designates the substitute, and the standing orders allow substitution only for an important reason. A substitute's signature on a parliamentary submission is disregarded, so substitutes do not table initiatives, motions, postulates or interpellations in their own name. That rule does not cover short oral questions (Kleine Anfragen). Ordinary members must attend sittings unless an important reason, such as illness or another unforeseen and unavoidable event, prevents them, and a submission must carry the signature of at least one member of the Landtag.

The Landtag calls itself a working parliament: it exercises its rights in plenary, and the detailed consideration of bills usually takes place there rather than in committee. Commissions, where they exist, mainly prepare business and frame proposals for the full house. Plenary sittings are as a rule public, including debate and votes on laws, financial decisions and treaties. Commission sittings are closed, and what is said there is confidential except for reports to the Landtag and for communications to deputies and members of the government.

Foreign Affairs Commission

Three standing commissions—the Finance Commission, the Audit Commission and the Foreign Affairs Commission (Aussenpolitische Kommission)—are elected at the first sitting of each session year, for that year, not once for the four-year term. They prepare the business assigned to them and place recommendations and motions before the Landtag. They may adopt rules of their own, subject to the Landtag's approval. The Foreign Affairs Commission examines treaties that need the Landtag's consent and, with the government, attends to the country's interests abroad.

The parliamentary service records Kindle-Kühnis as a member of that commission for 2025–2029. The commission was elected at the constitutive sitting of 10 April 2025 and chosen again on 15 January 2026, when she was reappointed. For 2026 its members were Bettina Petzold-Mähr (chair), Franziska Hoop, Kindle-Kühnis, Roger Schädler and Johannes Zimmermann.

Audit Commission

She was not on the Audit Commission (Geschäftsprüfungskommission) in the 2025 session year. At the opening on 15 January 2026 the Landtag elected her to it for the first time in this legislature. The parliamentary service lists the membership as 2026–2029, while the standing orders still require the commission to be renewed each session year. In 2026 it was chaired by Simon Schächle, with Tanja Cissé, Daniel Seger, Kindle-Kühnis and the substitute deputy Patrick Risch. A substitute may sit on a commission, but ordinary deputies must form the majority and only an ordinary deputy may chair.

The commission exercises oversight under the constitution, the law on the Landtag's business with the government and control of the state administration, and the law on the steering and supervision of public enterprises. Its particular tasks are examination of the annual accounts and the accountability report, audits of government offices (Ämterprüfung), and any special assignment the Landtag gives it. It reports to the Landtag and does not replace the plenary, in which the Landtag takes its decisions.

Education and youth policy

Smartphone-free schools

On 1 September 2025 six deputies of the Democrats for Liechtenstein (DpL)—Erich Hasler, Marion Kindle-Kühnis, Thomas Rehak, Simon Schächle, Martin Seger and Achim Vogt—tabled a postulate in the Landtag. It invited the government to draft a concept for a smartphone-free school at every school in Liechtenstein through ninth grade, and class rules blocking channels not required by the curriculum, above all social media. The text said existing phone rules differed between schools, pointed to limits in Finland, Sweden, France, Italy and several Swiss cantons, and, citing a German schools portal, stated that five or more hours a day on a phone at school meant about a two-year learning lag against less than one hour. That lag was the postulants' citation, not a finding the Landtag adopted. Kindle-Kühnis and Rehak handed the postulate in on 2 September.

On 1 October 2025 the Landtag refused to refer it, by 15 votes to 10. Kindle-Kühnis said constant use changes how people think, feel and concentrate, and cited German surveys in which children who switched phones off at school scored 19 points higher on Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests. Rehak quoted a youth-session participant focused on mental health and said one rule would help overwhelmed parents. Carmen Heeb-Kindle of the Patriotic Union (VU) supported the postulate, citing Finland's rule from August 2024 that phones needed a teacher's permission and a Hamburg-Eppendorf study for the figure that more than 25 percent of 10- to 17-year-olds used digital media riskily or pathologically.

Opponents put the problem outside the school. Tanja Cissé (VU), who said she gave media-competence workshops, argued that children spent at most nine of 24 hours there and that imposed rules fail. Bettina Petzold-Mähr of the Progressive Citizens' Party (FBP) asked about searches, lunch and sanctions, and said every school already had rules; Franziska Hoop (FBP) called the postulate out of touch. Johannes Zimmermann (VU), also head of Sekundarschule I, said that among about 170 pupils at most eight phones had been collected in six weeks, and that secondary departments mostly opposed a ban. Education minister Daniel Oehry read the Realschule Eschen house rule—phones banned from 7:35 to 16:50, except lunch—and said a national ban would not cut screen time at home. He wanted smartphone-free lessons, which he said largely existed, not a smartphone-free school. Vaterland reported the same conclusion: no need for a countrywide ban, because schools already regulated phones and parents remained responsible.

On 3 December 2025 the Landtag held its current-affairs hour, which takes no decision, on "The mental health of our children and young people—where does politics see a need to act?", the topic the DpL had chosen. Kindle-Kühnis called digital media the main driver, cited studies for a 19 percent higher depression risk at three hours of daily use, said one playground phone could expose children to pornography or violence, and again demanded a school ban. Sandra Fausch of the Free List said an Australian-style social-media ban was conceivable. Heeb-Kindle pointed to pressure on younger children and to Danish forest schools; Hoop said smartphones were not the only cause and wanted parental competence as well. Nadine Vogelsang (FBP) cited a gymnasium survey in which nearly three quarters of pupils called their health good, girls more often unwell than boys. Rehak cited a Liechtenstein Institute study from the pandemic period for the figures that nine in ten secondary pupils were on social media daily and that, among female non-German-speaking young people, 30 percent were not at all satisfied with life and 55 percent had anxiety. Government councillor Emanuel Schädler listed an early-childhood group, parent training, a psychiatry concept, the SportVibes exercise programme and a campaign for the counselling line 147.ch.

Protection strategy for social media

On 2 March 2026 Hasler, Kindle-Kühnis, Rehak, Schächle and Seger filed a motion, stamped the next morning, instructing the government to draft a protection strategy for children's and young people's smartphone and social-media use and a legal framework for it. The motion spoke of a "global crisis" of young people's mental health and cited studies for the figure that more than 80 percent of young people used social media for about 3.5 hours a day. Three pillars were proposed: prevention, through teaching on algorithms, addictive design, artificial intelligence and false information, and through parents; early intervention, through phone-free periods, media consultation hours and social media blocked on school computers; and regulation, including bans where nothing else would protect children and attention to age limits in the European Union and Switzerland. The health office, social services, the school office and outside experts were to take part. A referred motion requires a corresponding bill within two years.

On 1 April 2026 the Landtag referred the motion, with 22 of the 25 members present voting in favour. Kindle-Kühnis said that after 30 minutes TikTok's algorithm could single a user out and supply more of whatever enthused, angered or shocked them, and that digital participation must not leave children to business models built on time online; bans should be sparing. Vaterland called the result a broad majority for a youth strategy after the failed school ban.

Other parties agreed there was a problem and differed on prohibitions. Cissé supported a strategy and prevention but not blanket bans, referring to a 2024 youth study in which more than half of young people said they struggled to control their use. Dietmar Hasler (VU) cited Aargau, where he said a ban through ninth grade since August 2025 had pupils talking more, and asked that school autonomy remain. Daniel Seger (FBP) said Silke Müller and Daniel Wolf, lecturing in Liechtenstein that autumn, had warned that blanket bans could bring secrecy and reactance. Manuela Haldner-Schierscher (Free List), quoting Müller, said harm lay in class chats, WhatsApp groups and games more than on TikTok, and asked for platform duties under the Digital Services Act. Hoop wanted enablement rather than limitation, so that responsibility did not move from parents to the state. Emanuel Schädler said the government could use the paper to review the law but would not draft a smartphone-ban statute. Thomas Vogt (VU) noted that a motion can require strategies that are neither constitutional laws nor financial decisions. The referral therefore commissioned the cross-office strategy without restoring the October ban.

Economic, social and migration initiatives

Business and public administration

On 2 February 2026 Marion Kindle-Kühnis and five other Democrats for Liechtenstein deputies — Erich Hasler, Thomas Rehak, Simon Schächle, Martin Seger and Achim Vogt — put two interpellations to the Landtag of Liechtenstein. One, with 28 questions, said small and medium-sized firms supply jobs and apprenticeships but face growing administrative and regulatory burdens. The other asked which performance agreements the state holds with non-state bodies, what is bought and what it costs. Both were referred on 4 March 2026 and remained unanswered in October.

On 12 May Hasler, Kindle-Kühnis, Rehak and Schächle questioned the separation of powers where the government hears appeals against its own offices. The same day they asked 43 questions on inclusion, writing that parents found it often only on paper and were left with private schooling, and that an all-party postulate of 4 November 2024 was still unanswered. They asked for numbers, costs, including residential schools in Austria and Switzerland, and how the child's welfare was weighed. Both were referred on 10 June 2026.

In February Kindle-Kühnis joined Patriotic Union and DpL deputies in asking the government not to sell the former customs house at Steg in Triesenberg, and to study public uses instead. Referred on 1 April, it was written off on 1 October by 13 of 24 votes; the government had decided in March not to sell. VU deputies said the reply still did not compare options for the building.

In May ten VU and DpL deputies, including Kindle-Kühnis and Tanja Cissé, sought an external review of the School Office against school autonomy since the 2011 law. The Progressive Citizens' Party opposed referral, Johannes Kaiser citing an interim director and a planned Audit Commission inspection. Free List deputies Sandra Fausch and Manuela Haldner-Schierscher warned against unsettling that leadership, and Minister Oehry said a study could overlap a reform already under way. Referral passed on 10 June by 15 votes to 9.

On 1 September Schächle, Kindle-Kühnis and Rehak asked for a 2026 drought report and for payment supplements, loans and the missing ordinance under Article 66b of the Agriculture Act. Referral failed on 30 September, with 12 of 25 votes. Fausch (FL), Petzold-Mähr and Seger (FBP) said an answer would come too late; Deputy Prime Minister Sabine Monauni said losses were covered by subsidised multi-risk insurance, so Article 66b did not apply.

A DpL postulate the same day, Kindle-Kühnis listed first, sought firmer Liechtenstein civics in the curriculum and teaching of the national anthem. Referral failed on 1 October, with 10 of 25 votes. Cissé, Daniel Salzgeber and Carmen Heeb-Kindle said the curriculum already named the constitution and the dualism of prince and people. Haldner-Schierscher accused the DpL of wanting loyal rather than critical civics, Fausch said an anthem could not teach democracy, and Oehry advised rejection.

Temporary protection and asylum

On 25 September 2026 the DpL group filed an initiative to tighten temporary protection, status S, used mainly for people from Ukraine; Kindle-Kühnis, Rehak and Seger handed in the text.

The government would, after consulting its advisory commission and the UN refugee agency, name areas where return was reasonable; new applicants last resident there would enter the ordinary asylum procedure, while existing grants would stand. Travel home would be limited to 15 days a year, which the text called stricter than the Swiss half-year rule and than Norway, which generally bars such trips, with revocation for breaches and narrow exceptions. A later residence permit would require German at B1, not A1, with a lower level where an impairment blocked learning, also for provisionally admitted persons. The sponsors said this extended "variant 3" of government bill BuA 083/2026, which would end the automatic permit after five years but leave A1 to an ordinance.

From government status reports the initiative cited 385 people with status S on 31 December 2022 and 951 on 2 September 2026, indexed as a 147 percent rise, against Swiss stocks it cited of 62,820 to 73,850 (18 percent) and an Austrian series, on different dates and categories, of about 15 percent. Rehak said the country should not attract what he called Ukrainian economic refugees; Hasler expected no majority and said a popular vote remained open. The government had about six weeks for a constitutional and treaty check, and no VU, FBP or Free List comment on this text was reported during that review. On 31 August FBP deputy Lino Nägele had backed the government's own plan, calling work, German, housing and respect for the law a balance between solidarity and limited capacity.

Local transparency in Triesen

In December 2025 a routine check found about CHF 71,000 missing from the Triesen treasury. The municipality suspended a senior employee and said the presumption of innocence applied; days later he, his parents and his sister were found dead. In June 2026 the Liechtensteiner Vaterland reported a municipal claim of CHF 670,000 against the estate after an internal inquiry; two councillors later questioned the external audit's independence.

On 17 August Kindle-Kühnis, Rehak and DpL councillor Pascal Odinga wrote that months had passed, that Ernst & Young had withdrawn and that silence over about CHF 670,000 was costing trust. They cited Article 48(3) of the Municipalities Act, under which council minutes are public as a rule; the letter is their view, not a court or municipal finding. On 3 October the council adopted, by a majority, Odinga's motion for what he called a fundamentally complete information policy.

Foreign affairs and public profile

Parliamentary diplomacy

In the 2025–2029 Landtag, Kindle-Kühnis sits on the Foreign Affairs Commission, which examines treaties needing parliamentary approval and, with the government, looks after Liechtenstein's interests abroad. From 23 to 25 September 2025 the commission, chaired by Bettina Petzold-Mähr, held working talks in Berlin with Landtag vice-president Franziska Hoop, Roger Schädler, Johannes Zimmermann, Sandra Gerber-Leuenberger of the parliamentary service and Ambassador Isabel Frommelt-Gottschald. They were received by Bundestag President Julia Klöckner and by Cornelia Seibeld, president of the Berlin House of Representatives, and met committee chairs Armin Laschet (foreign affairs), Hansjörg Durz (digital affairs) and Anton Hofreiter (European affairs), and the office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Armed Forces, Henning Otte.

The agenda covered foreign and security policy, geopolitics, European affairs, digitalisation and research. A dinner at the ambassador's residence included Bundestag vice-president Bodo Ramelow, human-rights committee chair Mechthild Heil and former interior minister Nancy Faeser. Petzold-Mähr said direct contact with partners in Germany mattered for bilateral relations.

The visit followed an earlier place on the delegation to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly. The Landtag elected her in December 2010 in place of Doris Beck. In 2012, as an ordinary member under Hubert Lampert, she attended the February winter meeting in Vienna and led the delegation at the annual session in Monaco (5–9 July) when he could not travel. She introduced a resolution on the impact of small states in the OSCE, already supported by more than 30 parliamentarians from 18 countries. It welcomed Monaco as host and asked participating states to help small states uphold OSCE standards and preserve identity, security and sovereignty. She said small states had "a special place in Europe" because of their history, but that globalisation required extra effort to keep their identity and economic and social diversity; the Assembly adopted the text by a large majority. She was not in the delegation chosen on 27 March 2013.

On 7 May 2025 she asked whether press reports of travel by the outgoing foreign minister, Dominique Hasler, from January to March were complete, what the trips had produced, and how much of the travel budget remained. Deputy Prime Minister Sabine Monauni replied on 9 May that there had been no foreign-policy trip to Basel, but visits to London in February and to New York and Washington in March. The government said an active foreign policy was necessary for a small state and that multilateral visibility often opened bilateral and economic contacts. By 8 May, 39,518 Swiss francs—20.8 per cent of the funds for travel and representation—had been spent, and later travel would stay within the remainder.

On 1 October 2025 the commission under Petzold-Mähr met Ukrainian deputy Oleksandr Vasiuk and Ambassador Iryna Wenediktowa. The Landtag reported discussion of the war in Ukraine, condemnation of Russian strikes on civilian targets, and thanks for sheltering nearly 800 refugees, about 180 of them children and young people; it named the chair but not the other members present.

From 9 to 11 September 2026 the commission, again including Kindle-Kühnis, visited Brussels with Ambassador Pascal Schafhauser. Talks at the European Free Trade Association, its Surveillance Authority, the European Commission, the Council of the European Union and the European External Action Service covered European Economic Area decisions, enlargement, migration and the Schengen Area.

Media coverage

Before the 2025 election, Radio Liechtenstein broadcast a short interview with her as an Oberland candidate; the accompanying text listed education, the middle class, natural resources and a wish that children inherit at least today's quality of life. The Liechtensteiner Vaterland reported the Berlin talks under the headline "Ein breites Themenfeld angesprochen" and, on the May 2025 debate marking 30 years in the EEA, wrote that she wanted pragmatic, unbureaucratic approaches for small business. Landesspiegel treated her question on ministerial travel as a matter of cost and purpose. Later Vaterland reports on a social-media strategy and a joint Democrats for Liechtenstein statement on a Triesen cash-register case are treated elsewhere.