Michael Thews

Michael Eckhardt Thews (born 6 September 1964 in Bremerhaven) is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and a member of the Bundestag for North Rhine-Westphalia. The parliamentary biography lists his occupation as a graduate chemical engineer (Diplom-Chemieingenieur). It describes him as married, with three children, and without a religious affiliation. The SPD Bundestag group gives his places of residence as Lünen and Berlin.

Thews studied at the Universität-Gesamthochschule Paderborn, now Paderborn University, and completed the Diplom in chemical engineering in 1994. From 1993 to 1996 he worked in the Wessling environmental laboratory and as a consulting engineer at Wessling, and in 1997–1998 he trained as a company environmental officer at the Akademie Fresenius. From 1998 until he entered parliament he was environmental officer, authorized signatory and occupational-safety specialist at Innovatherm GmbH in Lünen, and from 2001 to 2013 he also lectured part-time for Concada GmbH on waste management, pollution control and occupational safety. He joined the SPD in 1998 and chaired the party’s Lünen city association from 2009 to 2018.

He has held the direct mandate for Hamm–Unna II since the 2013 federal election. The North Rhine-Westphalia returning officer recorded him as elected with 43.2 percent of the first votes in 2013, 36.4 percent in 2017 and 40.6 percent in 2021, when the constituency was numbered 145. He took his seat at the start of the 18th electoral term; the 18th Bundestag met for its constitutive sitting on 22 October 2013. On 23 February 2025 he was returned in constituency 144, Hamm–Unna II, with 58,097 first votes (32.2 percent), ahead of Arnd Hilwig of the Christian Democratic Union (30.1 percent). The district comprises the independent city of Hamm and, from the Unna district, the towns of Lünen, Selm and Werne.

In the 21st Bundestag he is a full member of the Finance Committee and of the Committee on the Environment, Climate Action, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety. On 25 June 2025 that committee elected him deputy chair in a secret ballot, with 34 of 37 votes cast. The SPD group names him its rapporteur for the circular economy and resource protection. He is a substitute member of the Tourism Committee and a member of the Bundestag body under section 80 of the Customs Investigation Service Act (Zollfahndungsdienstgesetz). The Bundestag’s disclosure record lists honorary membership of the board of the public-law foundation that finances nuclear-waste disposal (KENFO).

Early life and education

Childhood and schooling

Michael Thews was born on 6 September 1964 in Bremerhaven. The biographies published by the Bundestag give that date and place but do not name his parents or any school. In a February 2025 interview with the Westfälischer Anzeiger he said that he would attend his mother's 80th birthday on 25 February 2025. The same profile reported that he had belonged to shooting clubs (Schützenvereine) since childhood and was still a member in Nord-Lünen, in Lünen; the biography for the 19th electoral term also lists membership of the Schützenverein Nordlünen.

Almost everything published about his youth and schooling is his own account. On his website he writes that, as a nature-oriented teenager in the late 1970s, industrial forest dieback (Waldsterben) and the pollution of rivers and seas shocked him, and that a birthday present, the book Mein Spiel- und Experimentierbuch, then led him to build a laboratory in his bedroom and to try experiments he has described as sometimes perhaps dangerous. The Westfälischer Anzeiger retold that episode, placing the improvised laboratory in the parental home and quoting the remark about experiments that were "perhaps also dangerous," without naming the book. No source identifies the school he attended. On his website he writes that he next trained as a chemisch-technischer Assistent (chemical-technical assistant) and that an expansion of education, which he attributes to social democracy, then allowed him to study "as the first in my family" (als Erster in meiner Familie). The 19th-term Bundestag biography records the assistantship and gives neither a training institution nor dates. The 2025 newspaper profile phrases the family point differently, calling him one of the first academics in his family, and reports that he became a father at the age of 22. The suggestion that he was the first, or among the first, in his family to enter higher education is not backed by any independent record of his relatives' schooling.

Chemical training and university

The biography published for the current Bundestag states that he studied at the Universität Gesamthochschule Paderborn and in 1994 completed a diploma in chemical engineering, given there as Diplom Chemie-Ingenieur. The institution, in Paderborn in North Rhine-Westphalia, had carried the name Universität-Gesamthochschule Paderborn since 1 January 1980. The university's own history records that from the beginning of 2003 the former Universität-Gesamthochschule has officially been called Universität Paderborn, so the 1994 graduation falls under the earlier name. The 19th-term parliamentary biography shortens the place of study to "Universität Paderborn" and lists the diploma without the year. The profile on Abgeordnetenwatch gives the same professional qualification, "Diplom Chemie-Ingenieur." None of these notices names a faculty, a dissertation or any intermediate examination.

Two further qualifications appear beside the diploma in the parliamentary record. The 19th-term biography lists him as a Fachkraft für Arbeitssicherheit. Under the Occupational Safety Act (Arbeitssicherheitsgesetz), an employer may appoint someone to that role only if the person is entitled to use the professional title of engineer, or is a technician or master, and has the safety expertise the tasks require; the biography does not say when or where Thews acquired it. The current Bundestag text does not repeat the safety qualification as a separate credential. It states that from 1997 to 1998 he took further training as a company environmental officer (Betrieblicher Umweltbeauftragter) at the Akademie Fresenius. The archived biography for the 18th electoral term is shorter: it identifies him as a Diplom-Chemieingenieur born in Bremerhaven and does not set out the assistantship, the university, the 1994 date, or the later safety and environmental qualifications.

Engineering career

Laboratory and consulting work

Michael Thews finished a diploma in chemical engineering (Diplom-Chemieingenieur) in 1994 at the Universität-Gesamthochschule Paderborn, now Paderborn University. The dates overlap: from 1993 to 1996 he worked at Umweltlabor Wessling and at Wessling beratende Ingenieure. The Social Democratic Party group in the Bundestag describes that job as consulting engineer with the Wessling Group. Wessling, based in Altenberge, was a family-owned consulting, analytics and testing firm. In 2024 the Westfälische Nachrichten reported that it had marked its 40th anniversary the year before and that the owning siblings had agreed to sell it to ALS Limited, a laboratory and testing company headquartered in Australia and the United States; approval was still outstanding when the paper went to press.

From 1997 to 1998 Thews took further training as a company environmental officer (betrieblicher Umweltbeauftragter) at the Akademie Fresenius. Akademie Fresenius GmbH, Alter Hellweg 46 in Dortmund, runs professional courses and conferences in food, chemicals and corporate environmental protection.

Innovatherm and environmental management

From 1998 to 2013 he was environmental officer (Umweltbeauftragter) and authorized signatory (Prokurist), and an occupational-safety specialist (Sicherheitsfachkraft), at Innovatherm GmbH in Lünen. In a 2020 permit the operator is styled Innovatherm – Gesellschaft zur innovativen Nutzung von Brennstoffen mbH, Frydagstraße 47. The Emschergenossenschaft waste-management concept for 2025–2035 lists that company as a wholly owned subsidiary of BETREM Emscherbrennstoffe GmbH, itself wholly owned by the association. While Thews still held the posts, and was standing for the Bundestag, the Westfälischer Anzeiger described Innovatherm as engaged in the use of sewage sludge and as operating, among other things, a power plant for the neighbouring coal-preparation plant, with Betrem Emscherbrennstoffe GmbH as shareholder.

In a 2020 permit the Arnsberg district government described the Frydagstraße works as a sewage-sludge incineration plant for recovering and disposing of solid and liquid wastes by combustion, in the category of 10 tonnes or more of hazardous waste a day, seven days a week. Licensed capacity was 36 tonnes an hour of permitted wastes in the fluidized-bed furnace; a drying-plant permit did not raise it. The decision also keeps authorisations of the Staatliches Umweltamt Lippstadt dated 15 November 1995 and 23 July 1996, so the plant was already permitted when Thews joined. The association’s 2023 waste concept treats Innovatherm as one thermal route for its sewage sludge, beside its own fluidized-bed furnaces in Bottrop. It puts the association’s use at about 20,854 megagrams a year of dry solids (about 83,415 megagrams as delivered) and says unused capacity takes sludge from other customers.

From 2001 to 2013, alongside the Lünen post, Thews was a part-time freelance lecturer for Concada GmbH on waste management, emission control and occupational safety. Concada offers seminars for specialists and managers, including courses for environmental officers and for occupational-safety specialists. The Bundestag’s published list of activity before membership also records a separate line, “Referent für Umwelt und Arbeitsschutz, Dortmund”.

The same disclosure enters the Innovatherm employment as “Dipl. Chemie-Ingenieur, Beauftragter, Rückkehrrecht, Kündigungsschutz”: chemical engineer and officer, with a right to return and protection against dismissal. Abgeordnetenwatch files that entry under professional activity before membership of the Bundestag, for the 2021–2025 and 2025–2029 terms, not as a current paid side job.

He and his party treat that record as the background to later waste legislation. In a January 2024 interview he said he had trained as a chemist and first worked in sewage-sludge utilisation, so the circular economy had been his subject longer than he had sat in parliament. The SPD group lists him as its rapporteur for the circular economy and resource protection. During the 2025 campaign the Ruhr Nachrichten quoted him as saying he had always wanted to be an engineer, because engineers solve problems.

Social Democratic Party activity

Joining the party and local offices

Michael Thews joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 1998. The offices below follow the biography published by the Bundestag, which states that biographical details are the member’s own statements; the SPD in North Rhine-Westphalia carries a closely matching list.

The party’s organisational statute, in the text of 7 July 2025, divides the SPD into local branches (Ortsvereine), sub-districts (Unterbezirke) and regional districts (Bezirke), with political will formed from the bottom upward. Branches may form a municipal or city association (Stadtverband) and assign it municipal-political and organisational tasks; a district statute can make that association compulsory.

From 1998 to 2002 Thews belonged to the SPD branch in Querenburg, an Ortsteil of Bochum-Süd (Stadtbezirk V). The city’s 2025 district compendium lists Querenburg with 21,294 inhabitants on 9.1 square kilometres. In those years he was, among other things, branch treasurer (Kassierer) and a member of the SPD board for the southern borough (Stadtbezirksvorstand Süd); the biography does not say that either post lasted the whole period.

Later branch offices were in Lünen. From 2003 to 2017 he sat on the board of the SPD branch Altlünen, including a spell as deputy chair that is not dated separately. The city describes its northern districts as those that formerly made up the municipality of Altlünen.

From 2017 to 2019 he was a board member of the branch Lünen-Stadt. Since 2019 he has been a board member of the branch for Brambauer, in the southwest of Lünen. The Bundestag page spells that branch “Lünen-Brannbauer”; the state SPD, the branch’s own site and the city use Brambauer. The city calls Brambauer its largest and most populous district, with about 20,000 inhabitants in mid-2023 on about 11.25 square kilometres. The branch site lists Thews as a Beisitzer, an ordinary executive member, and Klaus Lamczick as chair.

Lünen city association and district boards

From 2005 to 2009 Thews was deputy chair of the SPD city association (Stadtverband) in Lünen, and from 2009 to 2018 its chair.

In June 2022 the Ruhr Nachrichten reported that Norbert Janßen, a member since 1986, had led the Lünen SPD since January 2018 and had been confirmed as chair at a delegates’ congress. The paper put the association at eleven branches and a little under 800 members. The Bundestag biography ends Thews’s chairmanship in 2018 but does not describe the handover.

Since 2013 he has been an advisory member (beratendes Mitglied) of the SPD group on Lünen city council. The same biography lists him on the executives of the SPD sub-districts of Unna and Hamm and gives no start date for those posts.

Bundestag elections

Constituency and earlier contests

Hamm–Unna II is a Bundestag constituency in North Rhine-Westphalia. It comprises the independent city of Hamm and, from the Unna district, the towns of Lünen, Selm and Werne; the district’s other municipalities form neighbouring constituency 143. At the federal elections of 2013, 2017 and 2021 the constituency was numbered 145. For 2025 it was renumbered 144, while its name and the municipalities inside it stayed the same. On the 2009 state return the same named constituency was numbered 146.

The district was drawn for the 1980 Bundestag election. The Westfälischer Anzeiger reported that the Social Democratic Party of Germany candidate had taken it at every federal election from then through 2013, and that Dieter Wiefelspütz held it from 1987 to 2009. On 27 September 2009 Wiefelspütz received 72,446 first votes (43.9 percent), against 54,088 (32.8 percent) for the Christian Democratic Union; turnout was 69.8 percent of 239,907 eligible voters. The same table put the SPD’s 2005 first-vote share in the constituency at 55.0 percent (100,141 votes).

Wiefelspütz did not stand in 2013. Michael Thews, an SPD candidate from Lünen placed 54th on the party’s North Rhine-Westphalia list, and Sylvia Jörrißen, 42nd on the CDU list, were the main contenders for the constituency vote on 22 September. The state returning officer recorded Thews as elected with 43.2 percent of valid first votes. That was 71,174 votes, against 64,871 (39.3 percent) for the CDU, a margin of 6,303, on a turnout of 70.3 percent of 238,091 eligible voters and 164,912 valid first votes. The tagesschau archive names Thews as the SPD candidate on those figures, and the local count identified Jörrißen as the CDU candidate on 39.3 percent. Second votes went 38.5 percent to the SPD and 36.9 percent to the CDU. On first votes Die Linke had 5.6 percent, the Greens 5.0 percent and the FDP 2.1 percent; their second-vote shares were 6.3, 6.0 and 3.7 percent.

On 24 September 2017 Thews and Jörrißen again headed the constituency ballot. Thews was returned with 61,717 first votes (36.4 percent) to 59,700 (35.2 percent) for the CDU, a gap of 2,017 votes. Turnout was 72.9 percent of 235,213 eligible voters, and 169,568 first votes were valid. Alternative for Germany took 17,713 first votes (10.4 percent), ahead of the FDP and Die Linke on 5.9 percent each and the Greens on 4.4 percent. Second votes were more divided: SPD 31.5 percent, CDU 30.3 percent, AfD 11.2 percent and FDP 10.4 percent.

The 2021 and 2025 elections

At the election of 26 September 2021 Thews again finished first, with 67,774 first votes (40.6 percent). Arnd Hilwig of the CDU was second with 44,266 votes (26.5 percent). Alliance 90/The Greens rose to 10.2 percent of first votes, ahead of the AfD on 9.3 percent, the Free Democratic Party on 7.2 percent and Die Linke on 3.8 percent. Turnout was 73.0 percent of 231,226 eligible voters. On second votes the SPD still led the constituency, at 35.4 percent, followed by the CDU on 24.2 percent, the Greens on 11.4 percent, the FDP on 10.0 percent and the AfD on 9.3 percent.

The election of 23 February 2025 was the first under the 2023 electoral-law change. A candidate of a party receives the constituency seat only with both a plurality of first votes and Zweitstimmendeckung: the seat must also fall within the seats that the party’s second votes produce in that Land, assigned to constituency winners in order of their first-vote share. A plurality by itself no longer produces a seat. On 30 July 2024 the Federal Constitutional Court held that this coverage rule was compatible with the Basic Law.

In constituency 144 the federal return lists Michael Eckhardt Thews (SPD) as the member elected there, with 58,097 first votes (32.2 percent). Arnd Hilwig (CDU) received 54,186 (30.1 percent) and Georg Paul Schroeter (AfD) 38,828 (21.5 percent). Sefika Lucie Maria Minte (Die Linke) had 12,865 votes (7.1 percent), Nelli Foumba Soumaoro (Greens) 11,476 (6.4 percent) and Lucas Slunjski (FDP) 4,786 (2.7 percent). Turnout rose to 79.9 percent of 227,760 eligible voters, and 180,238 first votes were valid. On second votes the CDU led the constituency with 28.4 percent, ahead of the SPD on 23.1 percent and the AfD on 21.1 percent; the Greens had 8.2 percent, Die Linke 7.5 percent and BSW 4.6 percent. Thews stood 43rd on the SPD state list, Hilwig 26th on the CDU list and Schroeter 25th on the AfD list. Because the official result records Thews as elected in the constituency, his plurality was one of those covered by the SPD’s second-vote seat allocation.

Parliamentary offices

Michael Thews has been a member of the Bundestag for the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) since the start of the 18th electoral term, and again in the 19th, 20th and 21st terms. Each biography records the direct mandate for Hamm–Unna II in North Rhine-Westphalia: constituency 145 through the 20th term and constituency 144 in the 21st. Membership of the environment committee has continued through changes of title; his other committee seats have not.

Environment committee

In the 18th term (2013–2017) the archived biography lists him as a full member of the Committee on the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety. On 31 January 2018 the 19th-term committee, still reported under that title and with 39 full members, was constituted under vice-president Claudia Roth (Alliance 90/The Greens). Sylvia Kotting-Uhl, of the same party, became chair, and Thews was named deputy chair on 21 February 2018. The biography archived for the term records that office under the later title, deputy chair and full member of the Committee on the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety. In the 20th term he was a full member, but not deputy chair, of the Committee on the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection.

The 21st-term Committee on the Environment, Climate Action, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety was constituted on 21 May 2025 under vice-president Bodo Ramelow (Die Linke). It has 38 full members: 13 from the CDU/CSU, nine from the Alternative for Germany, seven from the SPD, five from Alliance 90/The Greens and four from Die Linke. Lorenz Gösta Beutin (Die Linke) was elected chair that day, with 24 votes in favour, three against and ten abstentions; Thews was one of the SPD members. On 25 June 2025 the committee elected him deputy chair by secret ballot, 34 of 37 votes cast, two against and one abstention. The SPD held the nomination right; Beutin remained chair. The current biography lists both the deputy chair and the full seat. The committee’s field, on the Bundestag’s account, is the basis of life: climate change and extreme weather, nature and species, resource use, and nuclear waste. The SPD group calls him its rapporteur for the circular economy and resource protection, and a member since 21 May 2025 of its environment working group.

Finance, economy, tourism and other bodies

The 18th-term biography also lists a substitute seat on the Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy and full membership of the Parliamentary Advisory Council on Sustainable Development. In the 19th term he kept the substitute seat and was both a full member and the SPD coordinator (Obmann) of the council. The glossary tasks the council with following the sustainability strategy, long-term advice, contacts with other parliaments and opinions on bills.

In the 20th term he was a full member of the Budget Committee and of the Audit Subcommittee (Rechnungsprüfungsausschuss), and a substitute on the Committee on Climate Action and Energy. That committee, with 33 members, followed part of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action and led on energy networks, renewables and the main energy and climate statutes. Subcommittee members also belong to the Budget Committee, in full or as substitutes. The Budget Committee appropriates funds; the subcommittee reviews spending and prepares the plenary’s discharge of the government from the Bundesrechnungshof’s remarks.

In the 21st term the biography lists a full seat on the Finance Committee and a substitute seat on the Tourism Committee. The Finance Committee has 42 members, tracks the Federal Ministry of Finance except the budget, and normally leads on financial markets, customs and tax. The Tourism Committee has 14 members and is the forum for tourism policy, including the destination, the trade, travellers’ rights and sustainable tourism. The SPD group dates both seats, its finance working group and a tourism working-group substitute seat from 21 May 2025, and limits the Economic Affairs and Energy substitute seat, with that working group, to 21 May 2025–7 September 2026. The biography dated 30 October 2026 does not list the economic-affairs committee. That committee matches the ministry of the same name, covering the energy transition, industry, the European Union internal market and external trade.

The SPD list also records, from 25 June 2025, the body under section 80 of the Customs Investigation Service Act (Zollfahndungsdienstgesetz); the biography does not. The nine members are informed by the Federal Ministry of Finance about Zollkriminalamt restrictions, after a court order, of postal and telecommunications secrecy under article 10 of the Basic Law, used to prevent foreign-trade and war-weapons offences. The current biography records the Germany–Israel parliamentary friendship group. The 20th-term text also named Germany–Canada and the northern Adriatic (Croatia and Slovenia); the SPD’s 21st-term profile still names Canada. Self-reported associations on the current biography are local politics, inland navigation, rail, civic engagement and the Workers’ Welfare Association.

Circular economy and waste policy

Packaging and recycling rules

Michael Thews is the SPD parliamentary group's rapporteur for the circular economy and resource protection in the Bundestag environment committee. In the second and third reading on 30 March 2017 of the bill that became the Packaging Act (Verpackungsgesetz), he said people in Germany sorted waste carefully but expected it to become new products, and that stricter recycling quotas had long been technically possible and politically blocked. He called the quotas the core of the law, welcomed clearer municipal rights against the dual systems that collect sales packaging, a reusable quota and shelf labels for reusable versus single-use containers, and said non-packaging goods of the same materials should be recycled too, with products designed for recycling under European Union rules.

Alliance 90/The Greens speaker Britta Haßelmann called the bill a failure that cemented parallel dual systems, omitted waste prevention and dropped a nationwide collection of non-packaging valuables. Thews answered that Green environment ministers in the Länder had made a broader Wertstoffgesetz harder to agree. His CDU/CSU co-rapporteur Anja Weisgerber said producers' participation fees would be graded by material, quantity and recyclability. In January 2024 he said that fee still needed developing, and that a recycling label should show a product's recyclate share for shoppers and public buyers. In 2022 the budget committee had added 600,000 euros over later years for such a label, promised in the coalition agreement; the BDE called the money a first step and urged speed.

He was rapporteur again for the Packaging Law Implementation Act, which from 12 August 2026 replaces the Packaging Act for Regulation (EU) 2025/40 on packaging and packaging waste. On 10 June 2026 the environment committee recommended the amended bill with CDU/CSU and SPD votes, against the AfD, the Greens and Die Linke. An amendment the Greens also backed added section 26a, so the environment ministry, with the economics ministry and the Bundesrat, can ordain how dual systems reward recyclable packaging and recyclate. The Bundestag passed the bill on 11 June 2026 on coalition votes alone, raising the plastic recycling quota to 75 percent from 2028 and 80 percent from 2030. A resolution by the Union, SPD and Greens—the Left abstaining, the AfD opposed—asks for those ordinances quickly, recyclate rules from 2027, preference for EU-made recyclate, and tighter checks on illegal imports. Thews said design for recycling and recyclate use would be rewarded, and that 75 percent was a real recycling quota, of which 70 percent—five percentage points more than before—had to be mechanical recycling.

At a hearing on 6 May 2026, Sebastian Lummel of the German Association of Towns and Municipalities said a planned five-euro-per-tonne charge had been weakened, and that municipalities still could not set by notice what dual systems pay for using municipal paper collection, so residents could be charged twice. The BDE called the draft "not the great leap." Greens and the Left said reuse and prevention measures had been dropped, while the Greens called the fee changes overdue; the AfD said new registration would raise prices and hurt fruit and vegetable growers using small plastic packs.

Single-use plastics and enforcement

Thews was SPD rapporteur for the Single-Use Plastic Fund Act of March 2023, the last German piece of the EU Single-Use Plastics Directive. From 2024, makers of specified single-use plastic items—food containers, cups, bags and films, lightweight carrier bags, wet wipes, balloons and filtered tobacco products—pay a fund run by the Federal Environment Agency, which reimburses municipalities for cleaning and disposal. On 28 September 2023 the Bundestag approved the rates and points system with SPD, Green and FDP votes, the CDU/CSU and AfD against and the Left abstaining: 0.18 euro per kilogram of food containers, 1.24 euro for beverage cups and 8.97 euro for filtered tobacco products.

Thews said the rates, drawn from an agency study and due for review every three years, should relieve towns and push producers toward reuse, citing plastic cigarette filters; he linked the fund to the recycling label and rejected a private scheme the Union preferred. CDU/CSU speakers said that scheme would have met the directive more cheaply, and that the state fund meant about 30 new agency posts and 3.3 million euros a year in administration. Andreas Bleck of the AfD said costs would reach shoppers without lower waste charges; Ralph Lenkert of the Left called the sums token payments, about 0.8 cent a takeaway cup and 0.1 cent a filtered cigarette; Judith Skudelny of the FDP agreed charges would be passed on but said firms needed fixed rates before 1 January 2024.

In January 2025 Helmut Dedy, chief executive of the Association of German Cities, told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that the fund was sound in principle but that slow producer registration left it unclear whether meaningful money would reach cities, and that it was unclear which food packaging was "intended for immediate consumption." In October 2026 the environment agency delayed the first payouts, planned for late 2026, to early 2027 after a software error. A point value of 0.274 euro, set on 28 August 2026, implied about 205 million euros; nothing had been paid, and the agency said the total would not change once notices were corrected.

Thews has treated illegal exports as the point at which quotas fail. On Deutschlandfunk on 1 June 2019, after Malaysia and the Philippines moved to return foreign waste, he said higher quotas were undermined by exports, mostly of commercial rather than dual-system household plastic, and that mixed plastic could still leave without a permit. He welcomed the Basel Convention tightening due in 2021, but said the Länder could already demand proof of clean fractions and real plants abroad, withdraw certified-waste-company status, or order waste taken back. In 2024 he said shipments to Malaysia, Poland and the Czech Republic should be traced from company mass balances, and that Länder were also failing to fine retailers over carrier bags he regarded as illegally thin.

Climate, energy and nuclear waste

Building energy and the heating debate

On 8 September 2023 the Bundestag adopted an amendment to the Building Energy Act (Gebäudeenergiegesetz), Drucksachen 20/6875 and 20/7619, by 397 votes to 275, with five abstentions. Michael Thews, of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, voted in favour. A decision set for 7 July had been delayed after the Federal Constitutional Court granted an emergency application by Thomas Heilmann, who argued that members had too little time to examine the bill. Abgeordnetenwatch summarised the draft as requiring that, from January 2024, newly installed heating in new-build areas run at least 65 percent on renewable energy where possible, and as making municipal heat planning obligatory. The 65 percent rule remained in force: in 2026 the Left proposed raising it and limiting compliance to heat pumps and heat networks.

While the text was unfinished, Thews defended that approach at a meeting in Herringen, in a statement issued on 2 June 2023. He said only new installations were to draw 65 percent of their heat from renewables, that working systems need not be replaced and could still be repaired, and that fossil fuels were excluded only from 2045, by which time Germany had to depend less on them. He added that rental housing, subsidies and pensions still needed work, and that he would take those points to Berlin.

Criticism in Lünen outlasted the vote. A commentary on the local portal Lokalkompass, under a headline charging that older properties were suddenly losing value, aimed that complaint at Thews. The piece shows that the charge was published; it is not a measured account of prices.

On 10 July 2026 Thews voted yes for the coalition’s rewrite. The roll call was 323 to 271, with no abstentions and 36 members not voting; of the SPD’s 120 members, 116 voted yes and none against. The Bundestag described the resulting Building Modernisation Act (Gebäudemodernisierungsgesetz) as a substantive change: oil and gas heating may keep running and may still be installed, but fuels must be fully climate-neutral from 2045. From 2029 new gas and oil systems are to use a rising bio share (the Biotreppe), with a green-gas and green-heating-oil quota from 2028, and the main rules are to be reviewed in 2030. The Alternative for Germany, the Greens and the Left voted against.

Industry, coal legacy and nuclear-waste finance

Those votes sit against the hard-coal past of Lünen, on the eastern edge of the Ruhr. Thews is honorary chair of the Lünen-Victoria local group of IG Bergbau, Chemie, Energie, named for the former Zeche Victoria; the Bundestag lists the office as unpaid. The group long met in the mine’s rescue hall. When the city decided to demolish it, he said members had pressed to keep the rescue association’s exhibits and to open a community house on the local hard-coal tradition. At that 2022 meeting he also said the region’s hard-coal power stations now mattered to energy supply, that their staff needed a clearer account of the plants’ prospects, and that those workers should not be left without support.

Zeche Victoria 3/4 in Lünen in October 1981, after coal extraction at the Victoria pits had ended.

In February 2025, in talks with Trianel and Stadtwerke Hamm, he said the Energiewende had to move faster without losing a supply that still worked when sun and wind fell short. He called for quicker permits and for hydrogen as storage and as fuel. Rundblick Unna reported that Trianel’s Hamm-Uentrop plant, 850 megawatts in two gas-and-steam blocks, was to add a block that could later burn hydrogen, and quoted him backing a quota for renewably produced gas. At a later Victoria-group jubilee he said industrial jobs in the region must not be lost.

The same disclosure lists him as an honorary member of the board of trustees (Kuratorium) of the Nuclear Waste Disposal Fund (Fonds zur Finanzierung der kerntechnischen Entsorgung, KENFO) in Berlin. The public-law foundation, set up in 2017 under the Entsorgungsfondsgesetz, received 24.1 billion euros from the operators of Germany’s 25 commercial nuclear stations to pay for interim and final storage of radioactive waste. It reports about 25.6 billion euros in assets at the end of 2025 and 5.3 billion euros reimbursed to the federal environment ministry through that year, with no further outside contributions. The Kuratorium decides fundamental questions, appoints and supervises the board, and meets at least three times a year. Members come from the economic-affairs, finance and environment ministries and from every Bundestag group, for one legislative period. In the 21st Bundestag the SPD places are held by Dunja Kreiser and Thews.

Civic engagement

Welfare and trade-union roles

The Bundestag biography of Michael Thews, a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany from Lünen, states that its biographical data are the member’s own statements. It lists him as chair of the Arbeiterwohlfahrt (AWO) branch Lünen-Nord and as chair of the Victoria local group in Lünen of the Industriegewerkschaft Bergbau, Chemie, Energie (IG BCE). The register of declarable interests publishes both as honorary: chair of the board of AWO Ortsverein Lünen-Nord, and chair of IG BCE Ortsgruppe Victoria Lünen, with the union’s seat in Hanover. Abgeordnetenwatch.de repeats those entries for the 2025–2029 term and, for the IG BCE post, back to 2017, with no income level recorded.

In July 2021 the Ruhr Nachrichten reported that Thews, who told the paper he had no lobby side earnings, had for about a year received 50 euros a month as an expense allowance for chairing an IG BCE local group. The paper said the sum was not disclosable, a duty it put at 1,000 euros a month; later Bundestag and abgeordnetenwatch entries still mark the office honorary and give no figure.

The AWO, founded on 13 December 1919 on the initiative of Marie Juchacz, describes itself as one of Germany’s oldest welfare associations, with the values freedom, equality, justice, solidarity and tolerance. The IG BCE states that it was founded in 1997 as the mining, chemicals and energy union, has about 570,000 members, and works for what it calls good work and fair pay.

Foundations and local associations

The same register lists Thews as honorary deputy chair of the Heinrich-Bußmann-Bildungs-Stiftung in Lünen until 28 May 2026. Recognised by North Rhine-Westphalia on 15 June 2011 for education and training, the foundation says it supports young people in Lünen and the Unna district into vocational training, especially those without a basic secondary-school certificate (Hauptschulabschluss). It is named for Heinrich Bußmann (1896–1942), a miner at the Victoria colliery and Social Democratic local politician who, the foundation states, was killed in the Dachau concentration camp on 18 August 1942. The interior ministry’s current board list names Benjamin Müller, not Thews, as deputy chair.

The biography also names Thews managing director (Geschäftsführer) of the Grubenwehrvereinigung Victoria Lünen e.V.; that body is not in the published register of declarable posts. The title refers to a mine-rescue tradition. When the group won Lünen’s 2025 Heimat-Preis and 2,500 euros, reporting described its project as preserving and exhibiting tools and memorabilia from mining in Lünen, with a display planned for the 2027 International Garden Exhibition.

Further memberships, with no office stated, are the Europa-Union Deutschland, the Sozialverband Deutschland, the Verein zur Förderung des Martin-Luther-Viertels e.V. in Hamm, the Historischer Löschzug Pelkum e.V. in Hamm and the Schützenverein Nordlünen/Alstedde. The Europa-Union calls itself Germany’s largest non-partisan citizens’ initiative for European unification, with about 17,000 members, and the German section of the Union of European Federalists. The Sozialverband Deutschland describes itself as a party-independent association, active since 1917, that seeks changes in social law and speaks for people who are socially disadvantaged or have disabilities. In March 2025 the Westfälischer Anzeiger reported that the Martin-Luther-Viertel association, then with 294 members, had voted to dissolve for lack of board successors; the Bundestag biography, dated 30 October 2026, still listed the membership.

Personal life

Family

The final result of the 2025 federal election names him Michael Eckhardt Thews. The Bundestag biography, based on his own disclosure, states that he was born on 6 September 1964 in Bremerhaven, has no religious affiliation, is married and has three children. That entry does not name a spouse or say from which relationship the children come.

On Saturday, 27 April 2024, he married Michaela Engelmeier at the Schlossmühle in Lippholthausen, a district of Lünen. The Westfälischer Anzeiger, in a report dated 29 April 2024, wrote that they had been partners for ten years, had met on a steamboat trip, and married with parents, siblings, children and grandchildren present. The paper did not say whose children or grandchildren attended. Engelmeier was born on 10 October 1960 in Hagen. A member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, she was a Bundestag member from 2013 to 2017, sitting on the Committee on Economic Cooperation and Development and serving as the SPD group's sports-policy spokesperson, and has chaired the Sozialverband Deutschland since September 2022. Her association biography lists her as married, with three children and three grandchildren.

Residence and private interests

The SPD parliamentary group gives his places of residence as Lünen and Berlin. On his website he writes that work as a chemical engineer brought him to Lünen, in the eastern Ruhr in North Rhine-Westphalia, which he describes as his adopted home. The same page states both that he has lived there for 20 years and for more than 22 years. The Bundestag biography lists his Lünen constituency office at Münsterstraße 46 b, 44534 Lünen. The SPD group's page instead gives a constituency office at Stadttorstraße 5, 44532 Lünen, and a Berlin office at Platz der Republik 1.

The group page names photography and motorcycling as leisure interests and says that, inside the constituency, he travels on an electric scooter he calls the "Roter Roller".

Public reception

Transparency and outside earnings

Published comment on Michael Thews has dealt mainly with how completely he answers questions on Parliamentwatch (abgeordnetenwatch.de) and with what he declares beside the Bundestag mandate. On 7 July 2021 the Ruhr Nachrichten reported that the portal had marked him “sehr gut” and listed him 18th of 142 members from North Rhine-Westphalia. The table itself, released on 2 July 2021, graded only reply rates. For questions from the September 2017 election through 17 June 2021, counted until noon on 1 July 2021, he answered all 38 questions put to him. That 100 percent rate was grade 1. Sixty of the 142 members received the same grade; within it the list was ordered by how many questions each member had received, and the state average was 2.7 (“befriedigend”). The local report discussed that mark together with outside earnings; the grade is not an assessment of legislative work.

In that interview Thews, a Social Democratic Party member for Hamm–Unna II, said of paid side jobs and lobbying, “Ich habe keine,” and that he rejected the practice. The paper added that he had for about a year chaired a local group of IG Bergbau, Chemie, Energie and received 50 euros a month in expenses, under the 1,000-euro monthly level at which, it wrote, members then had to declare income.

On 19 October 2024 Parliamentwatch and Der Spiegel reported at least 51 million euros in reportable side income since autumn 2021, declared by 337 of 733 members on top of their allowances. On 14 November 2024 the Hellweger Anzeiger quoted him under the headline “Einige Abgeordnete gehen zu weit,” with the question “Wessen Interessen vertrete ich?” The Bundestag register, and the Parliamentwatch file drawn from it, attach no income band to him. Honorary entries are a seat on the board of trustees of the Stiftung Fonds zur Finanzierung der kerntechnischen Entsorgung (KENFO); the chair of the Arbeiterwohlfahrt branch Lünen-Nord; deputy chair, honorary until 28 May 2026, of the Heinrich-Bußmann-Bildungs-Stiftung in Lünen; and chair of IG BCE Ortsgruppe Victoria Lünen. Prior work is listed separately: chemical engineer and officer at Innovatherm GmbH in Lünen, with a right to return and protection against dismissal, and a pre-membership lectureship on environmental protection and occupational safety in Dortmund.

Later tables again counted only replies. In the 2024 North Rhine-Westphalia ranking he was level with others at 24 of 24, labelled “hervorragend.” In the 2025 ranking, for questions since the Bundestag convened on 25 March 2025, he stood at 6 of 6, again “hervorragend,” tied at place 26 of 136. Sixty-six members from the state received that label, and the state average reply rate was 58 percent, against 70 percent nationwide. His profile for the 2025–2029 term, including a question dated 20 October 2026, later showed 24 of 27 questions in that term answered (89 percent).

Local political criticism

Local criticism that names him centres on the 2023 heating-law vote. On 8 September 2023 the Bundestag roll-called the government’s bill to amend the Gebäudeenergiegesetz, the heating-cost ordinance and the chimney-sweep ordinance (Drucksachen 20/6875 and 20/7619). The result was 397 yes, 275 no and five abstentions. In the SPD block, Thews is marked in the “Ja” column.

A community article on the Lünen site Lokalkompass took that vote as its subject. Its headline said he had voted for the heating law and that older properties were losing value at a stroke (“Altimmobilien verlieren schlagartig an Wert”). In interviews on money in politics, the same regional press instead quoted his criticism of other members’ side earnings.