Michael Espendiller

Michael Espendiller (born 5 May 1989 in Leonberg) is a German mathematician and a politician of the Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland, AfD). He has been a member of the Bundestag since 2017, holding a seat for North Rhine-Westphalia through the state list rather than as the winner of a constituency. For the 21st Bundestag the federal returning officer lists him third on the North Rhine-Westphalia AfD list, with a candidacy in constituency 125, Borken II. At the 2025 election in that constituency the AfD received 22,179 first votes (12.9 percent) and 22,829 second votes (13.3 percent), while the direct mandate went to Anne König of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) with 47.9 percent.

The biography he filed with the Bundestag states that he attended the Elisabeth-von-Thüringen Realschule in Reken from 2005 and passed the Abitur in 2008 at the Gymnasium Remigianum in Borken. The same account says he completed studies in mathematics and economics at the University of Münster in 2013 and a doctorate at RWTH Aachen University in 2017, and that he worked there as a research associate from 2013 to 2017 after earlier work as a student assistant in Münster. It lists him as deputy federal chairman of the Young Alternative for Germany from 2013 to 2014, a member of the AfD district executive in Aachen from 2013 to 2015, and a member of the party's Cologne regional executive from 2013 to 2017. In a 2019 profile of AfD deputies who had come through that youth organization, Der Spiegel likewise described him as its deputy federal chairman in those years and, early in the parliamentary term, as a member of the Council of Elders and of the committees on education, research and technology assessment and on economic affairs and energy.

The Bundestag's current biography, which the parliament notes is drawn from members' own statements, says he was parliamentary managing director of the AfD group and a member of the Council of Elders until 2019, the group's research-policy spokesperson from 2017 to 2021, and a member of the Digital Agenda Committee from 2019 to 2021. From 2021 to 2025 he sat on the Budget Committee and the Audit Committee and was rapporteur for several departmental chapters, including the Bundesrat, foreign policy, justice, defence and development assistance. In the 21st Bundestag he is an ordinary member and the AfD group coordinator (Obmann) of the Budget Committee and a full member of the Mediation Committee.

On 16 January 2020, in a debate on mobility research, he told the Bundestag that the "Great Transformation" toward a society without fossil fuels was an ideology sold on "the lie of man-made climate change and the apocalypse said to follow from it." The Social Democratic Party (SPD) deputy René Röspel interjected that the claim was embarrassing for a mathematician. In September 2020 Der Spiegel reported that Espendiller had tabled an emergency motion, supported by 33 other AfD members, to end immediately the employment of the group's former press spokesman Christian Lüth, after secret recordings in which Lüth said migrants could later be shot or gassed. On fiscal policy, Deutschlandfunk reported in November 2025 that, speaking as an AfD budget spokesperson at the opening of the 2026 budget debate, he called the draft unconstitutional and accused Chancellor Friedrich Merz of giving up the debt brake in order to remain in office. After the Budget Committee's final reconciliation sitting, Tagesschau quoted him describing the federal budget as an opaque "thicket of subsidies," and reported AfD proposals, which he set out, to cut EU payments, stop weapons aid to Ukraine, abolish the development ministry and reduce spending on the citizens' benefit (Bürgergeld).

Early life and education

Childhood and schooling

Michael Espendiller was born on 5 May 1989 in Leonberg. That is the birthplace given in his Bundestag biographies. His own account of where he grew up is the Münsterland: in the introductory text on his abgeordnetenwatch profile, in which he gave his age as 32, he wrote that he had grown up there and was a Westphalian "by conviction" ("Westfale aus Überzeugung"). A Westfälische Nachrichten profile of 7 September 2017, published while he was a candidate for the Bundestag, placed his origins in Groß Reken, which it described as about half an hour from the Netherlands, and stated that he had been born in the village 28 years earlier. That birthplace does not match the Leonberg entry in the parliamentary biographies. The same article reported that he was the second son of an engineer and a housewife, and it described him as non-denominational.

The schools are named only in the archived biography for the 19th Bundestag (2017–2021), which the parliament compiles from members' own information. It lists the Elisabeth-von-Thüringen-Realschule in Reken for 2005 and the Abitur at the Gymnasium Remigianum in Borken for 2008. The biography published for later electoral periods, including the current one, drops the schools and keeps the birth date, the university course and the doctorate. The 2017 profile did not name the schools, but it said that he had at first been allowed to attend only a Realschule and had then worked his way up ("hochgearbeitet"), to university in Münster and afterwards to RWTH Aachen University. In North Rhine-Westphalia the gymnasiale Oberstufe—the upper secondary stage that ends with the Abitur and the general higher-education entrance qualification—consists of a one-year introductory phase and a two-year qualification phase. The three years between the Realschule date and the Abitur in the 19th-Bundestag entry match that route from an intermediate secondary school into a Gymnasium. The Remigianum gives its address as Josefstraße 6, 46325 Borken.

University studies

The 19th-Bundestag biography dates a course of study in mathematics and economics (Volkswirtschaftslehre) at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster to 2013. On abgeordnetenwatch he described those studies more narrowly, as mathematics with economics as a minor subject (Nebenfach). The same parliamentary biography records two spells of work around the degree: freelance teaching (freiberufliche Lehrkraft) in 2008 and 2009, and a post as a student assistant (studentische Hilfskraft) at the university from 2010 to 2013.

On 22 January 2013 he submitted a master's thesis in financial mathematics at the university's Institut für Mathematische Statistik, in Department 10 (Mathematics and Computer Science). Supervised by Volkert Paulsen, it is titled Importance Sampling für Diffusionsprozesse mit Anwendungen in der Derivatebewertung and treats importance sampling for diffusion processes as a method for pricing derivatives. The institute lists the thesis among the master's theses it supervised in 2013.

The current Bundestag biography, which gives his occupation as mathematician and economist (Mathematiker, Volkswirt), retains the Münster studies without the 2013 date and records a doctorate in statistics at RWTH Aachen's Institute for Statistics and Economic Mathematics. The 19th-period entry supplies the employment in between: research associate (wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter) at RWTH Aachen from 2013 to 2017, the year it gives for that doctorate.

Academic research

Doctorate at RWTH Aachen

From 2013 to 2017 Michael Espendiller was a research assistant (wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter) at RWTH Aachen University. He had finished a degree in mathematics and economics (Volkswirtschaftslehre) at the University of Münster in 2013, and in 2017 he took a doctorate in statistics at the university’s Institute of Statistics and Business Mathematics (Institut für Statistik und Wirtschaftsmathematik). The degree was a Dr. rer. nat.; the German National Library record of the thesis gives 24 February 2017 as the date of the oral examination.

The dissertation is in English, under the title Association in contingency tables: an informationtheoretic approach (Assoziation in Kontingenztabellen: ein informationstheoretischer Ansatz). The Department of Mathematics lists Maria Kateri and Udo Kamps as thesis advisors and files the work as a 2017 RWTH dissertation, record 688951, DOI 10.18154/RWTH-2017-04133.

A contingency table cross-classifies counts by categorical variables. In the 2 × 2 case the standard summary is the odds ratio, the odds of one outcome in one row divided by the odds in the other; independence corresponds to the value one, and inference is usually done on the logarithm. A sampling zero—an observed cell count of zero—can send that logarithm to infinity and can make the usual large-sample variance infinite, so ordinary confidence intervals break down. Under an information-theoretic setup the log-odds ratio is connected to the Kullback–Leibler divergence. A φ-divergence is a wider family of discrepancies between two distributions, of which Kullback–Leibler is one member. The thesis replaces the log scale by a φ-induced scale (a “φ-scaled odds ratio”) so that, for some choices of φ, the measure stays finite when a cell is empty, and so that Wald intervals can have better coverage or shorter average relative length in some designs.

For I × J tables a single scalar is often a poor summary. The dissertation ties generalized odds ratios to association-model parameters and gives closed-form estimators close to the iterative maximum likelihood estimates, then builds generalized φ-scaled odds ratios linked to a generalized φ-linear model. For square tables with matching categories on both margins, as in studies of social mobility, it adds a family of directed asymmetry measures based on φ-scaled symmetry models, and φ-scaled versions of the symmetry tests of McNemar and Bowker.

Statistical publications

With Kateri, Espendiller published “A family of association measures for 2 × 2 contingency tables based on the φ-divergence” in Statistical Methodology, volume 30 (May 2016), pages 45–61. The RWTH bibliography names both as corresponding authors and the publisher as Elsevier; the DOI is 10.1016/j.stamet.2015.12.002.

The article derives the alternative measures from the φ-divergence family, studies their properties, and develops asymptotic inference. Some members remain finite in the presence of a sampling zero, and a subset of those also have finite variance estimators. For the power-divergence subfamily, indexed by λ, the zbMATH review of the paper states that λ = 1/3 was suggested for tables with very strong association, where asymptotic intervals for the classical log-odds ratio perform poorly. Kateri’s 2018 survey in Entropy places these 2 × 2 measures inside a broader class of φ-divergence association models and notes that significance tests and confidence intervals use their asymptotic normality. The journal article is the published account of the 2 × 2 theory; the dissertation carries the same approach over to rectangular and square tables.

Early party activity

Joining the AfD and the Young Alternative

Michael Espendiller has been a member of the Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland, AfD) since 2013, according to the biography he supplied to the Bundestag. The party had been founded on 6 February 2013 in Oberursel, in protest at euro-area rescue policy, by euro critics including the economist Bernd Lucke.

The Young Alternative for Germany (Junge Alternative für Deutschland, JA) was formed the same year as a legally separate association that presented itself as the AfD's youth organization. Its founding congress met in Darmstadt on the weekend before 21 June 2013; about 60 people attended, and Torsten Heinrich was elected the first federal chairman. The AfD federal executive did not at first treat the JA as its official youth wing. In October 2014 Der Spiegel reported that Lucke was said to have tried, without success, to set up a youth organization bypassing the JA, while several state associations, including that of North Rhine-Westphalia, already recognized it. An AfD federal party congress gave the JA that recognition two years after the founding congress.

For the 19th Bundestag (2017–2021), Espendiller stated that he had been deputy federal chairman of the JA from 2013 to 2014. A February 2019 Spiegel profile of AfD parliamentarians with JA backgrounds used the same description. The Bundestag notes that such biographies rest on members' own information. His current biography still dates his AfD membership from 2013 but no longer lists the JA post. The deputy role he reported belonged to the association's first year.

Those later steps were assessments of the JA as an organization, not findings about his 2013–2014 office. On 15 January 2019 the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, then led by Thomas Haldenwang, classified the JA as a Verdachtsfall—a suspected case of right-wing extremism—citing indications, weighty in content and number, that the youth group was extremist. That status allowed only limited intelligence measures. The Administrative Court of Cologne upheld that classification in a judgment of 8 March 2022. In April 2023 the office said the indications had become certain and began treating the JA as a confirmed right-wing extremist endeavor (gesichert rechtsextremistische Bestrebung), a decision made public on 26 April 2023. On 5 February 2024 the Cologne court refused to suspend the upgraded classification in interim proceedings (13 L 1124/23). On a summary review it found that the JA maintained a völkisch, ancestry-based idea of the people—preserving "the German people in its ethnic stock" and, where possible, excluding those described as ethnically foreign—which the court held to violate human dignity; that it continued to denigrate foreigners and Muslims; that it compared the Federal Republic to dictatorships, including Nazi Germany and the GDR; and that it kept ties to groups already classed as hostile to the constitution, notably the Identitarian movement.

The association later ceased to exist in that form. At a congress in Apolda on 1 February 2025 the JA voted to dissolve with effect from 31 March 2025, after an AfD congress in Riesa had amended the party statute so that the youth organization would be a legally dependent part of the party rather than an independent association. On 10 June 2025 the Higher Administrative Court for North Rhine-Westphalia ended the appeal against the February 2024 interim order without a ruling on the merits (5 B 131/24). Once the JA had dissolved, the intelligence office said it was not classifying the association in liquidation as confirmed extremist, because that status requires the group still to exist; observation as a suspected case remained possible. The decision is final.

Local offices

The same 19th-term biography states that Espendiller was a member of the AfD district executive in Aachen (Kreisvorstand Aachen of the AfD in North Rhine-Westphalia) from 2013 to 2015 and of the party's Cologne regional executive (Bezirksvorstand Köln) from 2013 to 2017. The same notice records that he was a research associate at RWTH Aachen University from 2013 to 2017, the period of both posts. The Bundestag presents these entries as the member's own statements. The biography used for later Bundestag terms retains membership of the AfD since 2013 and omits the Aachen and Cologne executive posts.

Elections to the Bundestag

Espendiller has been a member of the Bundestag since the 19th legislative term, whose constituent sitting was held on 24 October 2017 after the federal election of 24 September 2017. In 2017, 2021 and 2025 he stood as a constituency candidate of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in North Rhine-Westphalia and was returned each time on that party's state list, not by winning a constituency.

Bundestag elections use personalized proportional representation, and each voter has two votes. The first vote (Erststimme), on the left of the ballot, is cast for a candidate in a constituency; the second vote (Zweitstimme), on the right, is cast for a party's closed state list and decides how many seats each party receives. The two votes may be split between different parties. Through 2021, the candidate with the most first votes took the constituency seat, and further seats were filled from the state lists in the order the parties had fixed. From the 2025 election, a party candidate who leads on first votes receives the constituency seat only if that seat is also covered by the party's second-vote allocation in the Land, the rule the Federal Returning Officer calls Zweitstimmendeckung.

2017: Steinfurt III

For the election of 24 September 2017 Espendiller was the AfD candidate in constituency 128, Steinfurt III, and tenth on the AfD state list in North Rhine-Westphalia. The Federal Returning Officer defined the constituency as fourteen municipalities in the district of Steinfurt, among them Ibbenbüren, Greven, Emsdetten, Lengerich and Tecklenburg. A report on the constituency nominations ahead of the district election committee's sitting listed him as the AfD candidate from Aachen.

In the final count he received 9,530 first votes, 6.3 percent of valid first votes and 4.5 percentage points above the 2013 figure for the constituency. The AfD state list received 10,342 second votes there, 6.8 percent. Turnout was 78.0 percent among 195,571 people eligible to vote. The direct mandate went to Anja Karliczek of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), with 67,678 first votes (44.8 percent). The Social Democratic Party (SPD), whose candidate was Jürgen Coße, received 45,797 first votes (30.3 percent). The Land's list of members elected from state lists records "Espendiller, Michael", a mathematician with a doctorate living in Aachen, at list place 10 of the AfD. The Bundestag's biography for the 19th term lists him as elected on the North Rhine-Westphalia list, with constituency 128, Steinfurt III.

2021: Borken II

At the federal election of 26 September 2021 he was the AfD candidate in constituency 126, Borken II, a different area from Steinfurt III, and sixth on the AfD state list. The Federal Returning Officer assigned the constituency twelve municipalities in the district of Borken: Bocholt, Borken, Gescher, Heiden, Isselburg, Raesfeld, Reken, Rhede, Stadtlohn, Südlohn, Velen and Vreden.

The district's final results name him with 7,909 first votes (4.9 percent) and leave the 2017 AfD first-vote cell for this constituency empty. The Federal Returning Officer likewise gives no percentage-point change from 2017 for the AfD first vote, while reporting 7,724 AfD second votes (4.8 percent), 1.2 points below 2017. Turnout was 80.6 percent of 201,103 eligible voters. Anne König (CDU) won the constituency with 70,334 first votes (43.7 percent); Nadine Heselhaus (SPD) was second with 40,851 (25.4 percent). A provisional compilation by the North Rhine-Westphalia interior ministry of those elected from state lists places Espendiller at list number 6. For the 20th term the Bundestag again listed him as elected via the state list, associated with constituency 126, Borken II.

2025: Borken II

On 23 February 2025 the same twelve municipalities formed constituency 125, Borken II. The district's results note that constituency 125 corresponded to constituency 126 of 2021, so the change was one of numbering rather than of the municipal area used in that comparison. Espendiller was again the AfD constituency candidate and third on the North Rhine-Westphalia list.

The final result gives him 22,179 first votes (12.9 percent), 8.0 points above the 2021 first-vote share, and gives the AfD 22,829 second votes (13.3 percent), up 8.5 points. Turnout was 85.8 percent of 200,973 eligible voters. The Federal Returning Officer records Anne König (CDU) as elected in the constituency with 82,000 first votes (47.9 percent), and Nadine Heselhaus (SPD) as the runner-up with 33,511 (19.6 percent). In the alphabetical roll of elected members, "Dr. Espendiller, Michael", born in 1989, is listed for the AfD as returned from North Rhine-Westphalia on list place 3, with constituency 125. The biography for the 21st term likewise states that he was elected on the state list and gives his constituency as 125, Borken II.

Parliamentary offices

Michael Espendiller has been a member of the Bundestag since 2017 for Alternative for Germany (AfD), returned on the state list of North Rhine-Westphalia. The Bundestag states that the narrative biography on his member page rests on information supplied by the member; committee lists published by the Bundestag, and membership tables compiled by Abgeordnetenwatch, record the seats themselves.

Nineteenth Bundestag

On 27 September 2017, the day after it had elected Alexander Gauland and Alice Weidel as chairs, the AfD Bundestag group elected Bernd Baumann, Jürgen Braun, Espendiller and Hansjörg Müller as parliamentary managing directors (Parlamentarische Geschäftsführer). Managing directors run a group's parliamentary business with the chairs: they prepare plenary sittings, settle agendas with other groups and in the Council of Elders (Ältestenrat), and help fill committee places. The Council of Elders — the President, the vice-presidents and 23 further members named by the groups in proportion to strength — assists the President, sets sitting weeks and debate times, and draws up the estimate for the Bundestag's own budget chapter. Espendiller's self-reported biography states that he remained a managing director, and a member of the Council of Elders, until 2019.

On 24 September 2019 the group re-elected its executive. Weidel and Gauland remained chairs and Baumann First Parliamentary Managing Director; the other managing directors elected were Roland Hartwig, Götz Frömming and Enrico Komning. Espendiller was not among them.

The biography states that from 2017 to 2021 he was the group's research-policy spokesperson and an ordinary member of the Committee on Education, Research and Technology Assessment, including as its rapporteur for the Bundestag Office of Technology Assessment (TAB). Abgeordnetenwatch records that education-committee seat for the term. The responsible committee appoints one rapporteur from each group to plan technology-assessment studies and supervise the TAB. The biography dates membership of the Committee on the Digital Agenda to 2019–2021; the committee's review of 14 October 2021 lists him as an ordinary member as of 30 June 2021. At the February 2018 constitution of the Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy he was a deputy, not an ordinary, AfD member. Deputies vote only when replacing an absent ordinary member.

Twentieth Bundestag

The Budget Committee (Haushaltsausschuss) of the 20th Bundestag was constituted on 15 December 2021 with Helge Braun (CDU/CSU) as chair. Of its 45 members, five were from the AfD, including Espendiller, Peter Boehringer, Marcus Bühl, Ulrike Schielke-Ziesing and Wolfgang Wiehle. The committee leads work on the annual federal budget. For each chapter (Einzelplan) the groups name rapporteurs, who examine that chapter and steer the committee's discussion.

The biography states that from 2021 to 2025 he was an ordinary member of both the Budget Committee and its Audit Committee (Rechnungsprüfungsausschuss), and rapporteur for Einzelpläne 03 (the Bundesrat), 05 (foreign affairs), 07 (justice), 14 (defence) and 23 (development cooperation). Abgeordnetenwatch likewise lists both committee seats for that term. The Audit Committee reviews how authorised expenditure was carried out and examines federal financial management, including the observations of the Bundesrechnungshof, in preparation for discharging the government. On 27 April 2022 the Bundestag groups jointly nominated him as the AfD's deputy member of the board of trustees of KENFO, the public-law fund for financing nuclear-waste disposal, as alternate to Boehringer.

Abgeordnetenwatch records him for the 20th term as a deputy member of the Economic Affairs Committee (Wirtschaftsausschuss). The self-reported biography describes one continuous deputy seat, under the 19th-term title "Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy", from 2017 to 2025.

Twenty-first Bundestag

Structured data on the member page give 25 March 2025 as the start of the 21st term and list him from that date as an ordinary member and Obmann of the Budget Committee. Each group names one Obmann or Obfrau on a committee: that member is its main contact, helps set its line, agrees agendas with the chair, and reports the state of the work to the group leadership. On 20 May 2025 the AfD group elected its policy spokespersons and named Espendiller budget-policy spokesperson, as head of its budget working group.

Constituted on 21 May 2025 under Bundestag President Julia Klöckner, the committee has 42 ordinary members: 14 CDU/CSU, ten AfD, eight SPD, six Alliance 90/The Greens and four Left. Espendiller was one of the AfD members. The AfD's nominee for chair, Ulrike Schielke-Ziesing, received 12 votes in favour, 29 against and one abstention; the group sought no second ballot, and Klaus-Peter Willsch (CDU/CSU), the longest-serving member, took the chair on an acting basis.

The current office list, as distinct from the narrative biography, names one further ordinary membership: the Mediation Committee (Vermittlungsausschuss) under Article 77(2) of the Basic Law. The joint committee, 16 members from each house, can be called when the Bundesrat objects to a Bundestag bill. Members are not bound by instructions, and the committee proposes a compromise rather than enacting the law. The committee's own list names Espendiller as an ordinary Bundestag member, with Boehringer as his substitute.

That list does not record him as an ordinary member of the Audit Committee or of the Budget Committee's subcommittee on European Union questions. Under both bodies' rules, every ordinary member of the Budget Committee is automatically a deputy member of each, so the deputy status follows from the Budget Committee seat rather than from a separate appointment. The 21st-term profile also does not continue the KENFO trusteeship.

Budget policy

Committee work and rapporteurships

In the 20th Bundestag, from 2021 to 2025, Espendiller sat on the Budget Committee and its audit subcommittee, the Rechnungsprüfungsausschuss. The Bundestag biography, which rests on members' own information, lists him as rapporteur for Einzelplan 03 (the Bundesrat), Einzelplan 05 (foreign policy), Einzelplan 07 (justice), Einzelplan 14 (defence) and Einzelplan 23 (development assistance). The committee's recommendation of 10 November 2023 on the 2024 defence estimates names him as Berichterstatter for Einzelplan 14.

In the first reading of that plan he welcomed higher defence spending, but said €3.5 billion for ammunition in the defence budget and the Bundeswehr special fund was far from enough, and he opposed ending Budget Committee clearance for procurements above €25 million. On 31 January 2024, in the second reading, he criticised arms taken from Bundeswehr stocks for Ukraine, said ending foreign missions he called unnecessary could save €697.5 million in the defence and foreign-office budgets, and asked for more orders from German industry. The Bundestag set Einzelplan 14 at €51.95 billion, against €50.12 billion in 2023; about €20 billion more for equipment was to come from the Bundeswehr special fund, outside that chapter.

He argued for much deeper cuts in development aid than the coalition made. At first reading of a 2024 draft of €11.52 billion for the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, down from €12.16 billion, he said shrinkage was the only good news and that €11.5 billion was still "viel zu viel Geld". He called most of the aid "wirkungsloser Nonsens", apart from hunger, disease and clean water, and said the AfD would seek cuts of at least half. The coalition majority on 31 January 2024 fixed the chapter at €11.22 billion. Espendiller said Minister Svenja Schulze could give away €11.2 billion abroad, citing gender-equality projects and home nursing in Georgia, and said more than 400 AfD amendments had sought to cut funding for non-governmental organisations because "die fetten Jahre einfach vorbei sind". In the 21st Bundestag he remained on the Budget Committee as AfD Obmann for the 2025 estimates.

Positions on debt, the debt brake and spending

On 8 July 2025, opening the AfD case in the first reading of the 2025 budget, Espendiller said that governments can be voted out but debts cannot. The CDU/CSU–SPD draft, he said, planned €143.1 billion of new debt that year, so that every fourth euro spent was borrowed, on outlays of €564.3 billion against revenue of €421.2 billion. He called that course, and new debt he put at €846.9 billion by 2029, a "finanzpolitischer Amoklauf", and said Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil would raise the debt stock by 50 per cent in one term.

The €143.1 billion, €564.3 billion and €421.2 billion are his presentation of the draft. The federal government later stated a core budget of about €502.5 billion, about €460 million below its draft, and net borrowing of just under €82 billion, both excluding special funds (Sondervermögen), with investment of about €115 billion once the infrastructure fund, the Climate and Transformation Fund and the core budget are combined, and a defence chapter of about €62.3 billion. It described the debt brake (Schuldenbremse) as still part of the Basic Law, but amended in March 2025 so that defence, civil-protection and intelligence spending above 1 per cent of gross domestic product, and a €500 billion infrastructure-and-climate fund over 12 years, stand outside the brake. Espendiller called that amendment, passed by the outgoing Bundestag, "staatsstreichartig", and argued for cutting titles, bureaucracy and taxes rather than borrowing. He said Merz would buy €42.3 billion of weapons for Ukraine while a promised electricity-tax cut for citizens would not come; the government described that tax cut as applying to industry, agriculture and forestry, with households relieved through the gas-storage levy and grid charges.

Tagesschau on 5 September 2025, after the Budget Committee's final session, reported the same core figures — €502.5 billion of spending and €81.8 billion of net borrowing — and wrote that opposition speakers put real new debt above €140 billion once special-fund credit was included. The headline was "Finanzpolitischer Irrgarten", the phrase Dietmar Bartsch of Die Linke used for the split between core budget and Sondervermögen; he also called the plan a blank cheque for the arms industry. Schäfer of Alliance 90/The Greens said shifting rail money into the special fund created no new investment, and that Ukraine should get more help. Espendiller spoke of "Wildwuchs" and a "Förderdschungel", and of parliament capitulating before the debt; about 1,000 AfD amendments, he said, had all been rejected. The reductions he named, which Tagesschau reported as his claims and not as checked savings, were €14 billion a year in Bürgergeld, about €8 billion from abolishing the development ministry, €18 billion less for the European Union, and an end to weapons aid for Ukraine. Christian Haase (CDU) called the result a "Haushalt der Superlative", citing €86 billion for external security in 2025 and more than €600 billion by the end of the term, and Thorsten Rudolph (SPD) a "Gamechanger". Klingbeil said the 2025 and 2026 budgets joined more investment with savings. All three opposition groups said they would vote against.

Science, research and digital policy

Education and research committee

In the 19th Bundestag (2017–2021), Espendiller was the research-policy spokesperson (forschungspolitischer Sprecher) of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) group and a member of the Committee on Education, Research and Technology Assessment. On 16 January 2020 it reported a CDU/CSU–SPD motion on sustainable, technology-open mobility research (Drucksache 19/15061).

For the AfD, Espendiller said the government and the research ministry already spent “durchaus beachtliche Summen,” but called the coalition text public relations for official programmes and an attempt to put research in the service of what he termed the “Große Transformation.” Research that was no longer free, he said, was “Planwirtschaft.” He quoted committee remarks in which the SPD had spoken of market failure in the car industry, and answered that emission limits, not the firms, had made saleable products unsaleable. The AfD, he said, wanted a market economy rather than state-directed research and would reject the motion. It passed with the CDU/CSU and the SPD; the AfD, the FDP and Die Linke voted against, and Alliance 90/The Greens abstained. His comments in the same speech on anthropogenic climate change are treated under climate and energy.

On 19 November 2020 the House debated the Bundesbericht Forschung und Innovation 2020 and the report of the Commission of Experts for Research and Innovation (EFI). The Bundestag’s account of the government report put federal research-and-development spending at 19.6 billion euros. Espendiller compared that figure with what he said were larger 2019 research budgets at Alphabet (22 billion euros), Samsung Electronics, Microsoft and Volkswagen, and argued that private outlays had to survive in the market while Berlin spread money “mit der Gießkanne” and failed as an entrepreneur. He cited Gaia-X and the earlier Theseus project, and dismissed the EFI report and its chair, Uwe Cantner, as hostile to the car industry. The research tax credit (Forschungszulage), he said, was the government’s only real achievement; firms needed less bureaucracy and lower taxes.

Digital agenda and technology assessment

From 2019 to 2021 he also sat on the Committee on the Digital Agenda. Its end-of-term balance listed him, as of 30 June 2021, as one of three ordinary AfD members, with Joana Cotar and Uwe Schulz.

In the education and research committee he was the AfD rapporteur for the Office of Technology Assessment at the German Bundestag (Büro für Technikfolgenabschätzung, TAB). The TAB has advised the Bundestag on scientific and technological change since 1990. Under a contract with the Bundestag it is run at the Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, since 2013 with two partner institutes, the IZT and the Institute for Innovation and Technology. Its work is technology assessment: designing studies and analysing the social effects of technical trends. One rapporteur from each group on the responsible committee meets, usually monthly, with the committee chair and TAB staff, prepares decisions from commissioning a study to accepting the report, and acts by consensus.

On 16 April 2021 he spoke on the federal microelectronics research programme for 2021–2024 and the 2020 update of the government’s artificial-intelligence strategy. He called both an expensive failure, criticised the site and timetable of a battery-research factory, and said schools, universities and research institutes still lacked digital equipment. He opposed statutory rules for AI tools in recruitment, treated a secure power supply as the condition for data centres and AI, and said the House had two days earlier rejected an AfD motion he had co-sponsored on Generation IV reactors. Drucksache 19/26898 of 24 February 2021 asked the government to join the Generation IV International Forum, advance a demonstration molten-salt reactor, and fund work on safety, materials, fuel use and waste.

Climate and energy

Statements on anthropogenic climate change

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated in the 2021 Working Group I contribution to its Sixth Assessment Report that “it is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land,” and that the rise in well-mixed greenhouse-gas concentrations since about 1750 was unequivocally caused by human activities. In the Bundestag on 16 January 2020, during debate on sustainable mobility research, Michael Espendiller of Alternative for Germany called the “Große Transformation”—his term for a forced worldwide shift to a society without fossil fuels—“pure ideology” resting on “der Lüge vom menschengemachten Klimawandel und dem daraus resultierenden Weltuntergang.” The record notes shouts from the Social Democratic Party of Germany and an interjection by René Röspel, “Für einen Mathematiker ist das peinlich! Wirklich!”, to which Espendiller replied, “Ich kann das ausrechnen, Herr Röspel,” adding that an error in the analysis produced an error in strategy.

On 14 February 2020, on a Green motion about ecological digitalization, he said other parties were chasing “dem Märchen des menschgemachten Klimawandels” and that their climate calculations were wrong. Citing a 2018 Spiegel interview with Jochem Marotzke, he told the chamber that Marotzke had admitted the models were false and that the allowable carbon-dioxide budget had been miscalculated by 500 gigatonnes because forests and oceans absorb more CO2 than assumed.

At an AfD event, “Deutschland im Klimawahn,” in the Bürgerhaus in Espelkamp on 4 September 2019, the Westfalen-Blatt reported that Espendiller doubted human responsibility for climate change and said some scientists attributed it to natural fluctuations. He showed a graph of IPCC model projections against NASA measurements through 2015 and, the paper wrote, inferred a “Stagnation” that did not match the council’s forecasts, without discussing later years. It reported his figure that German carbon-dioxide emissions were 0.003 percent of the global total, his opposition to a CO2 tax he priced at 300 to 600 euros a person each year, and his criticism of the cost of the Energiewende. In a commentary, reporter Kai Wessel wrote that the graphic was outdated, that 2016 and 2017—which he called the planet’s warmest years—had been left out, and that climate change is not linear.

Wind power and the 2021 flood debate

On 2 September 2021, at a Münsterland Zeitung election forum in Heek, Espendiller, then the AfD candidate in Borken II, questioned anthropogenic climate change. Of the floods of 12–15 July 2021, the paper quoted him as saying “Sowas passiert,” and its headline gave his description of building wind turbines to guard against flood disasters as “Schwachsinn.”

Flood damage in Germany's Ahr valley after the July 2021 rainfall.

A World Weather Attribution analysis of 23 August 2021 concluded, in the authors’ words with high confidence, that human-induced climate change had increased the likelihood and intensity of such one- and two-day summer rainfall over a broad region of western Europe; the small Ahr, Erft and Meuse catchments were treated as too limited for a robust local estimate. For that larger region the study put the intensity increase at about 3 to 19 percent and the rise in likelihood at a factor of 1.2 to 9 relative to a climate 1.2 °C cooler, and it recorded at least 184 deaths in Germany and 38 in Belgium.

In the January 2020 speech he had already blamed the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) for an explosion in power prices, higher food costs, a “Verspargelung der Landschaften durch Windräder,” unstable grids and a greater risk of blackouts. In Espelkamp he said the public was paying for unreliable solar and wind power, and that biogas depended on monocultures “auf gutem deutschen Boden.”

On 21 October 2026 Espendiller co-signed an AfD written question, Drucksache 21/8754, on reported higher rates of arrhythmia and heart failure near wind turbines. It called infrasound effects scientifically disputed, cited a poster at the 2026 congress of the German Society of Internal Medicine comparing 2015–2024 insurance data for Lichtenau and Borchen (stated as 224 turbines and 533 megawatts) with Hövelhof and Delbrück (eight turbines and 14 megawatts), and asked whether the government still held that compliance with rules including TA Lärm left no evidence of health harm from onshore turbines. A Federal Environment Agency laboratory study announced on 8 September 2020 found no statistically significant acute changes in heart rate, blood pressure, cortical activity or balance during 30-minute infrasound exposures around the perception threshold, though the sounds were rated somewhat to moderately annoying; with 44 participants and synthetic signals, the agency said the results could not be extended to long-term effects in homes.

Party disputes and public statements

Justice, policing and the 2017 campaign

In its survey of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) members entering the Bundestag, updated on 24 October 2017, ZEIT ONLINE reported that Michael Espendiller had used an interview with the Westdeutscher Rundfunk to present himself as a hardline interior politician. The mathematician, then 28, called for an end to what he termed "Kuscheljustiz" and for harsher penalties for physical violence against police officers.

Kai Biermann, Astrid Geisler, Christina Holzinger, Paul Middelhoff, Karsten Polke-Majewski and Tilman Steffen wrote that, in the same WDR interview, he complained that "linksradikale Idioten" had not been adequately punished after the protests surrounding the 2017 G20 Hamburg summit. That survey is the main national published account of the remarks.

Höcke, the Lüth motion, and reception

The same ZEIT ONLINE profile reported that Espendiller had recently told a local newspaper—the paper was not named—that Björn Höcke, the AfD state leader in Thuringia, was "eine Belastung" in the campaign. On his entry the newsroom printed the orientation line "gemäßigt". In the introduction the authors wrote that, after Frauke Petry's departure, comparatively moderate members lacked a leading figure, which strengthened a more radical group around the national-conservative chairs Alice Weidel and Alexander Gauland; they counted 16 members who seemed moderate only beside their colleagues. "Gemäßigt" was the newsroom's comparative sorting, not a label Espendiller applied to himself.

On 28 September 2020 Der Spiegel reported that Espendiller had filed an emergency motion, supported by name by 33 other AfD members, for the Bundestag group's meeting that day. Severin Weiland wrote that the two-page text was in the magazine's possession and that it stated: "Das Arbeitsverhältnis mit dem ehemaligen Pressesprecher der Fraktion, Christian Lüth, wird mit sofortiger Wirkung beendet."

The motion followed hidden-camera footage shot by ProSieben at a meeting in a Berlin bar on 23 February 2020, when Lüth was still the group's press spokesman. Spiegel, citing Die Zeit, which said it had identified Lüth as the functionary left unnamed in the documentary, reported that he claimed to have discussed at length with Gauland the view that the worse Germany fared, the better for the AfD. Asked whether he wanted still more migrants to arrive, he answered, in the wording Spiegel published from that reporting: "Ja. Weil dann geht es der AfD besser. Wir können die nachher immer noch alle erschießen. Das ist überhaupt kein Thema. Oder vergasen, oder wie du willst. Mir egal!" Spiegel added that the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and the Berliner Morgenpost had carried a further passage, then still without his name, in which he said that, while the borders remained open, the AfD was "ein bisschen instabil" and "ein paar Idioten antisemitisch rumlaufen", Germany had to be kept doing badly.

Gauland told the Deutsche Presse-Agentur that the remarks attributed to Lüth were "völlig inakzeptabel und in keiner Weise mit den Zielen und der Politik der AfD und der AfD-Fraktion im Deutschen Bundestag vereinbar", and that any claim he had so much as discussed them, or approved them, was "völlig absurd und frei erfunden". Spiegel reported later the same day that the group executive decided to end the employment at once and that the members present then voted unanimously to confirm an extraordinary dismissal without notice, after what sources in the group described as a contentious debate about the leadership's handling of the case. A second emergency motion, from 18 further members and also obtained by Spiegel, made the same demand and called the executive's earlier conduct inadequate "vor den neuerlichen, mit an Sicherheit grenzender Wahrscheinlichkeit nicht zu widerlegenden Informationen". Lüth had already been suspended in the spring after screenshots of messages in which, Spiegel reported, he called himself a "Faschist" and referred to the "arische" descent of a man he described as his grandfather.

Welt, drawing on a group spokesman and the same news agency, reported that day that Gauland had announced the dismissal without notice; the article did not name Espendiller. Beyond the 2017 ZEIT ONLINE survey and Spiegel's report of the motion, coverage that named him in connection with either episode is sparse.