# Nina Warken

# Nina Warken

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Nina Ingrid Warken (born 15 May 1979 in Bad Mergentheim) is a German lawyer and politician of the [Christian Democratic Union of Germany](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany) (CDU). She sat in the Bundestag for Baden-Württemberg from 2013 to 2017 and has done so again since 2018, holding the direct mandate for the constituency Odenwald–Tauber. In the cabinet of Chancellor [Friedrich Merz](/people/friedrich-merz) she was Federal Minister of Health from 6 May 2025 to 29 July 2026. She succeeded Karl Lauterbach and was appointed by President [Frank-Walter Steinmeier](/people/frank-walter-steinmeier) on the evening of 6 May 2025, after Merz was elected chancellor on a second ballot, and was sworn in in the Bundestag the same evening. Since 29 July 2026 she has been Federal Minister for Special Affairs and head of the Federal Chancellery, the first woman in that office.

Warken grew up in Tauberbischofsheim, where she took the Abitur in 1998 at the Matthias-Grünewald-Gymnasium. She studied law at Heidelberg University from 1998 to 2002, passed the first state law examination in 2003, completed her legal clerkship at the Mosbach regional court, and passed the second state examination in 2005. She has been admitted as a lawyer since 2006. She was a member of the Young Union from 1999 to 2014, joined the CDU in 2000, and was deputy federal chair of the Young Union from 2006 to 2014. From 2004 to 2024 she sat on the Tauberbischofsheim city council, from 2014 to 2019 on the Main-Tauber district council, and from 2015 to 2023 she was president of the Baden-Württemberg state helpers' association of the Technisches Hilfswerk.

From 2021 to 2025 she was parliamentary business manager of the CDU/CSU Bundestag group and a full member of the Council of Elders, and from 2023 to 2025 secretary-general of the CDU in Baden-Württemberg. In the February 2025 federal election she was returned in Odenwald–Tauber with 42.8 percent of the first votes. At the Frauen Union's federal delegates' congress in Reutlingen in May 2025 she was elected federal chair with 62.1 percent of the vote, defeating [Ina Scharrenbach](/people/ina-scharrenbach) and succeeding [Annette Widmann-Mauz](/people/annette-widmann-mauz).

She left the health ministry in a July 2026 cabinet reshuffle that followed Jens Spahn's resignation as chair of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group. Merz named her to succeed [Thorsten Frei](/people/thorsten-frei) at the Chancellery and named [Carsten Linnemann](/people/carsten-linnemann), until then CDU secretary-general, to succeed her as health minister. She is Roman Catholic, married, and has three children.

## Early life and education

### Childhood in Tauberbischofsheim

Nina Ingrid Warken, née Bender, was born on 15 May 1979 in Bad Mergentheim, in the Main-Tauber-Kreis of northeastern Baden-Württemberg. She grew up in Tauberbischofsheim, the district town in the Franconian northeast of the state. The Bundestag biography, compiled from the member's own statements, and the Munzinger reference entry list her as Roman Catholic; neither they nor the federal cabinet curriculum vitae identify her parents or otherwise describe the household in which she was raised. On her own website she calls herself a Tauberbischofsheimerin for her whole life.

In 1998 she passed the Abitur at the Matthias-Grünewald-Gymnasium in Tauberbischofsheim. The parliamentary biography names the school; the cabinet vita records the same year and town without repeating the school's name. The municipal Gymnasium, given its present name in 1954 after the painter Matthias Grünewald, dates its foundation to 1688, when the Prince-Bishop of Mainz authorized a grammar school for the town under Franciscan direction. It was approved in 1882 as a nine-year classical Gymnasium entitled to set the Abitur, and the first class sat that examination in 1884. By the time she was of school age the Gymnasium taught that classical course alongside a modern-language stream (Latin, English and French), introduced in 1952, and a mathematics-and-science stream, introduced in 1963, and it had adopted the reformed upper school (*Neugestaltete Gymnasiale Oberstufe*) in 1977. A partnership with a school in Vitry-le-François dated from 1971. In 1995 the Gymnasium became a partner school of the Tauberbischofsheim Olympic fencing centre, and in 1998, the year Warken took the Abitur, it was designated an *Eliteschule des Sports* and introduced language, science and sports profiles. The biographies do not say which stream she followed.

### Law studies and the state examinations

From 1998 to 2002 Warken studied law (*Rechtswissenschaft*) at Heidelberg University (Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg) in Heidelberg. She passed the first state examination in law (*Erstes juristisches Staatsexamen*) in 2003. In Germany the statutory route to the qualification for judicial office (*Befähigung zum Richteramt*) is a university law degree closed by a first examination, followed by a preparatory service closed by a second state examination.

That preparatory service, the *Rechtsreferendariat*, ran from 2003 to 2005 at the Landgericht Mosbach, the regional court in Mosbach. The court sits in the buildings of a Franciscan friary founded in 1686 and finally dissolved in 1808, after the complex had passed to Baden during the Napoleonic wars; following demolition and rebuilding early in the nineteenth century, the former monastery became the seat of successive public offices and is the building in which the Landgericht sits, mainly on the first upper floor. In Baden-Württemberg every regional court is also a training court for *Referendare* and an outpost of the state judicial examinations office, where practical training continues after university. The Landgericht Mosbach lies in the district of the Oberlandesgericht Karlsruhe. Its territory, between the Main and the Neckar, takes in the local courts (*Amtsgerichte*) at Adelsheim, Buchen, Mosbach, Tauberbischofsheim and Wertheim. Under the German Judges Act the preparatory service lasts two years and comprises compulsory stages at an ordinary court in civil matters, at a public prosecutor's office or a criminal court, at an administrative authority and with a lawyer, together with one or more elective placements.

In 2005 she passed the second state examination in law (*Zweites juristisches Staatsexamen*), the examination with which the preparatory service ends. Her own chronology enters that year as the point at which she became a *Volljuristin*.

## Legal career

Nina Warken was admitted as a lawyer (*Rechtsanwältin*) in Germany at the beginning of 2006, the year after she passed the second state examination in law. The Bundestag biography, drawn from members' own statements, records that she has been admitted since 2006 and has worked as a lawyer in medium-sized firms. Published descriptions of her fields come from those self-reports rather than from a public list of cases. A Bundestag profile of February 2016 called her an administrative lawyer and gave administrative law and social law as her focuses. The biography then online for the 18th Bundestag added industrial-property protection (*gewerblicher Rechtsschutz*) to administrative and social law. Her own website later listed, among other things, social law, general civil law and administrative law. None of these accounts describes a construction-law practice.

The published disclosures name two firms. Her occupation before she became a member of the Bundestag is given as lawyer with Rechtsanwälte Reinhart, Kober, Großkinsky in Tauberbischofsheim. Paid work alongside the mandate is given as lawyer with Rechtsanwälte Warken und Kollegen in Püttlingen, in the Saarland. That second entry was already in the biography archived in March 2016. The firm's website does not include her among the lawyers it presents as currently in practice. The Bundestag entry does not publish a euro figure for the side activity. Under the rules of conduct in the Members of the Bundestag Act, members must file reportable outside activities, which are then published if a duty to publish applies.

That publication regime is separate from the ban on outside professions that applies once a lawyer joins the federal government. Article 66 of the Basic Law states that the Federal Chancellor and the federal ministers may not hold another salaried office, carry on a trade or practise a profession, and section 5 of the Federal Ministers Act repeats the ban, extending it to paid work as an arbitrator and to expert opinions given for a fee. Warken was appointed to the Federal Ministry of Health and sworn in with the rest of the new cabinet on 6 May 2025. From 13 May 2025 the Bundestag marked the Püttlingen activity "dormant" (*ruht*), while the same biography continued to describe her as admitted since 2006. She left the health ministry on 29 July 2026 and remained in the cabinet as Federal Minister for Special Affairs. The disclosure, as printed on 21 October 2026, still dated the dormancy of the legal practice from 13 May 2025 and did not record a resumption.

## Party and local politics

Warken's party career ran from the youth wing of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) and from municipal office in northeastern Baden-Württemberg to the state party's management and the federal leadership of its women's organization, the Frauen Union. The Bundestag biography, which the parliament states is based on members' own information, and the federal government's curriculum vitae agree on most of those offices. They do not agree on the year she joined the CDU.

### Young Union

The Bundestag biography states that Warken belonged to the Young Union (Junge Union) from 1999 to 2014 and was one of its deputy federal chairs from 2006 to 2014. The government CV records the same deputy chairmanship but does not give a date of entry. Her personal website, like the parliamentary biography, dates her entry to 1999 and the deputy chairmanship to 2006–2014, and neither it nor the official biographies record a local or district chairmanship in the Junge Union. *Welt* later reported that she and [Manuel Hagel](/people/manuel-hagel) knew each other from their time in the organization.

### Municipal and district offices

From 2004 to 2024 Warken sat on the council of Tauberbischofsheim. The Bundestag biography lists that seat as membership of the Stadtrat; the government CV calls the same seat membership of the Gemeinderat. From 2014 to 2019 she was also a member of the district council (Kreistag) of the Main-Tauber-Kreis. Her own website, consulted in 2026, still described the town-council seat as held since 2004 and did not give the 2024 end date recorded in the official biographies.

### CDU Baden-Württemberg and the Frauen Union

The date of her CDU membership is stated differently in the two official biographies. The Bundestag text says she has been a member since 2000. The government CV says she has been a member since 1999.

Beyond membership, the Bundestag biography lists her on the executive of the CDU in the Main-Tauber district and on the executive of the CDU regional association for Nordwürttemberg, without start dates. Her website dates the district-executive seat from 2001. The government CV adds membership of the state executive of the CDU Baden-Württemberg from 2021.

On 18 November 2023 the state party congress in Reutlingen elected her secretary-general of the CDU Baden-Württemberg. *Welt* reported that Hagel, the new state chair, had proposed her; that she received 255 of 280 valid votes, or 91.1 percent, with no opposing candidate; and that six delegates abstained, a choice the CDU traditionally treats as an invalid vote. She succeeded Isabell Huber, who told the congress that she would step down.

Warken left the secretary-generalship in May 2025 after her appointment as federal minister of health. *[Der Spiegel](/organizations/der-spiegel)*, correcting an earlier version of its report on the Frauen Union election, wrote that she had given up the state office the previous weekend. The post stayed open through the summer. On 14 September 2025 the state party announced that Tobias Vogt, until then its Landesgeschäftsführer and a member of the Baden-Württemberg Landtag for Bietigheim-Bissingen, would become secretary-general, take up the work immediately, and be formally elected at the state congress in Heidelberg that December.

The government CV lists Warken as a member of the federal executive of the Frauen Union from 2019. On 24 May 2025 the organization's 36th federal delegates' congress, meeting in the Stadthalle in Reutlingen, elected her federal chair. The official count was 245 votes cast, none invalid and two abstentions, leaving 243 valid votes and a required majority of 122. Warken received 151 votes, 62.14 percent. Ina Scharrenbach, North Rhine-Westphalia's minister for homeland, local government, building and digitization, received 92 votes, 37.86 percent. *Spiegel* and SWR, reporting the contest, gave the shares as 62.1 and 37.4 percent.

She succeeded Annette Widmann-Mauz, who after ten years did not stand again and was elected honorary chair. In her acceptance speech Warken called for more women's perspectives in politics. Before the ballot, Widmann-Mauz and Federal Family Minister Karin Prien had argued that offices connected with the exercise of power in the CDU were still held almost entirely by men. *Spiegel* reported that the Frauen Union had about 95,000 members and that its federal chair sits automatically on the CDU federal executive.

### Technisches Hilfswerk

From 2015 to 2023 Warken was president of the THW-Landesvereinigung Baden-Württemberg, the name used in the Bundestag biography for a state body linked to the Technisches Hilfswerk (THW). The government CV calls it the THW-Landeshelfervereinigung Baden-Württemberg and limits the presidency to the same years. Neither official biography describes the office as a leadership post of the federal agency itself.

## Member of the Bundestag

### Elections and mandates

Nina Warken entered the Bundestag after the 2013 federal election from 14th place on the Baden-Württemberg state list of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). The Federal Returning Officer’s candidate list recorded her as a lawyer born in 1979 and showed no parallel constituency candidacy. In a later Bundestag profile she said that a mandate from 14th place had looked unrealistic in Baden-Württemberg. She dated her certainty to the night of 23 September 2013, after the state CDU had taken 45.7 percent of second votes and colleagues arrived at her door.

*Nina Warken at a lectern marked Deutscher Bundestag.*

She was not returned when the new Bundestag met after the 2017 election. At the CDU state delegate meeting in Sindelfingen in March 2017, delegates placed her fourth on the Baden-Württemberg list with 89.7 percent of the vote, while Alois Gerig remained the direct candidate in Odenwald–Tauber and Wolfgang Schäuble headed the list. Official biographies give her membership as 2013 to 2017 and then again only from 2018.

On 5 December 2018 she took the seat of Stephan Harbarth. Harbarth had resigned his mandate on 30 November 2018 on appointment as vice-president of the Federal [Constitutional Court](/organizations/constitutional-court). The archived biography for the 19th electoral term lists her mandate as a Baden-Württemberg state-list seat rather than a constituency seat.

The biography for the 20th term records her as directly elected in constituency 276, Odenwald–Tauber. The *Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung* reported that she had won that race for the CDU. In the Federal Returning Officer’s final table for the constituency, the CDU received 57,391 first votes, 35.8 percent, ahead of the Social Democratic Party on 20.6 percent. Turnout was 77.4 percent among 209,418 people entitled to vote.

In the 2025 federal election the same table names Nina Ingrid Warken of the CDU, with 72,800 first votes and 42.8 percent. [Johann Martel](/people/johann-martel) of [the Alternative](/organizations/the-alternative) for Germany was second, on 23.0 percent, and turnout was 83.0 percent. She sits in the 21st Bundestag on that constituency mandate. She remained a member while federal minister of health from 6 May 2025 to 29 July 2026 and, from that date, federal minister for special affairs and head of the Federal Chancellery.

### Committees, inquiries and parliamentary management

In the 18th electoral term she asked for the Interior Committee, where she became the CDU rapporteur on asylum law, rather than the family committee. Her first plenary speech, in February 2014, was on a motion by Alliance 90/[The Greens](/organizations/the-greens) about defending democracy in the digital age. On 24 February 2015 the joint parliamentary group of the CDU and the [Christian Social Union](/organizations/christian-social-union-in-bavaria) (CSU) elected her unanimously as its lead member, or Obfrau, on the committee of inquiry into surveillance by foreign intelligence services, including the [National Security Agency](/organizations/national-security-agency). She succeeded [Roderich Kiesewetter](/people/roderich-kiesewetter). The group’s lead members coordinate its work in a committee and are its contact with the group leadership. At a May 2015 hearing on selector lists used with the German foreign-intelligence service, she said the inquiry had to establish whether German law had been broken, not to know every term on the lists.

After her return, the 19th-term biography lists her as a full member of the Committee on Internal Affairs and of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Consumer Protection, and as deputy chair of the second committee of inquiry. That inquiry, into the car toll, was set up by the Bundestag on 28 November 2019 and constituted on 12 December 2019. Udo Schiefner of the SPD was chair and Warken deputy chair. Its brief was to examine the infrastructure charge for cars in contractual, constitutional, budgetary and political terms. The same biography names her as a member, and as the Union Obfrau, of both the commission on reform of the federal electoral law and the parliamentary body accompanying the [Covid-19 pandemic](/drivers/covid-19-pandemic). The biographical note, which the Bundestag states is supplied by the member, also lists her as chair of the CDU’s federal specialist committee on internal security.

From 2021 to 2025 she was a parliamentary business manager of the CDU/CSU group and an ordinary member of the Council of Elders. The group elected her on 13 December 2021, on a nomination from its chairman [Ralph Brinkhaus](/people/ralph-brinkhaus), with 91.3 percent of the vote, as one of four business managers. Their work includes arranging the group’s business with the Bundestag and the other groups, including the subjects and order of plenary debates. In that term the Bundestag listed her only as a deputy member of the interior and legal committees. In January 2022 the house elected her as one of the members who, with the federal government, choose judges of the federal supreme courts. She was one of four CDU/CSU members selected for that committee.

With [Johannes Fechner](/people/johannes-fechner) of the SPD she then co-chaired the commission on electoral-law reform and the modernisation of parliamentary work. The Bundestag had established it on 16 March 2022, with 13 members of parliament and 13 outside experts. On 12 May 2023 Fechner and Warken handed its report to Bundestag president [Bärbel Bas](/people/barbel-bas). After 16 sittings, a majority recommended a five-year parliamentary term and no limit on mandates. On the share of women in the house, the CDU/CSU proposed measures short of a binding quota, while other groups took different positions.

## Federal Minister of Health

### Appointment

On the evening of 6 May 2025, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier appointed Nina Warken, of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), federal minister of health, and she was sworn in the same evening in the Bundestag. She succeeded Karl Lauterbach of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in the cabinet of Chancellor Friedrich Merz. The ministry handover was postponed to the afternoon of 7 May because Merz was elected chancellor only on a second ballot, with 325 votes, after 310 votes on the first ballot fell short of the 316 required. She held the office from 6 May 2025 until 29 July 2026.

### Statutory health and long-term care insurance

Both statutory health insurance and social long-term care insurance faced large projected gaps, and Warken treated holding down contribution rates as the immediate task. In June 2026 she defended a care-insurance draft, including in a *Tagesthemen* interview, as necessary even where it imposed hardship.

On 15 October 2025 the cabinet adopted a package she put at €2 billion for 2026, intended to head off another round of rises in the funds' additional contributions. About €1.8 billion was to come from hospitals, by suspending for 2026 a clause that let remuneration rise by the higher of two benchmarks and limiting the increase to recorded cost growth; €100 million was to come from administrative costs and €100 million from halving payments into a care-research fund. The states called the mediation committee. On 19 December 2025 the Bundestag and Bundesrat accepted a compromise under which state base rates would rise an extra 1.14 percent in 2027 to offset the 2026 suspension. Saarland's health minister, Magnus Jung (SPD), said about 80 percent of hospitals were already in deficit, and the Alternative for Germany (AfD) called the mediation back-room politics.

A larger Contribution Rate Stabilization Act (*GKV-Beitragssatzstabilisierungsgesetz*) followed recommendations an expert commission delivered at the end of March 2026. Benefit spending was about €336 billion in 2025 and, Warken said, rose about 8 percent in the first quarter of 2026. She raised the 2027 savings target to €18.8 billion after a cabinet draft had covered €16.3 billion; SPD negotiator Dagmar Schmidt spoke of a €18.5 billion deficit. On 10 July 2026 the Bundestag passed the bill by 318 votes to 284, with four abstentions, and the Bundesrat agreed the same day. Co-payments for prescribed medicines, unchanged for 22 years at €5 to €10, rose to €7.50 to €15, without a planned annual indexation. Homeopathy left fund reimbursement, and denture subsidies fell from 60 to 50 percent of cost, with hardship rules kept. The contribution-assessment ceiling, then €5,812.50 a month, was to rise by an extra €300 in 2027. Free co-insurance of spouses and partners was limited from 2028: it remained for parents of children under twelve, rather than under seven as first proposed, and for parents of children with disabilities, people with reduced earning capacity, people at statutory pension age, and carers of relatives; others were to pay a 2.5 percent surcharge. Fee rises for doctors and hospitals were capped and manufacturers faced stronger discounts, though a rising rebate was replaced by a higher fixed surcharge. The regular federal grant fell from €14.5 billion to €13.15 billion in 2027, while extra tax funding for basic-income recipients' health costs was set at €1 billion for 2027 rather than €250 million. Warken said spending should rise only with revenue and that, without a brake, the path led to a "system collapse."

In early June 2026 her ministry circulated a care draft against a gap put at about €7.5 billion the next year and €15 billion in 2028, on benefit spending of €70 billion in 2025. The childless contribution would rise from 4.2 to 4.3 percent; care-grade thresholds would be tightened slightly; nursing-home subsidies that reduce residents' own payments would start six months later; and pension contributions for family carers would be cut to 70 percent, about €2 billion a year on the ministry's figure. Warken wrote that this was not a reform a minister would wish for, because parts of it meant unavoidable hardship, but that revenue alone could not close a gap of that size. She called the scheme "a case for repair that had been announced" and said the draft also aimed to prevent dependency and simplify benefits.

### Hospital reform

On 6 March 2026 the Bundestag, on coalition votes, adopted Warken's Hospital Reform Adjustment Act, amending the hospital law passed under Lauterbach at the end of 2024. After talks with the states, the compromise lengthened deadlines, added exceptions especially for smaller rural hospitals, and raised federal restructuring aid to up to €29 billion over ten years, still only for hospitals that actually changed their structures. Warken said the changes gave states and hospitals planning certainty and were a balanced compromise. Alliance 90/The Greens said the bill diluted Lauterbach's reform; [Die Linke](/organizations/die-linke) said underfunding would close necessary hospitals; the AfD called it a "bureaucratic monster" that would speed rural closures. Bundesrat consideration was set for 27 March 2026.

At a hearing on the draft, Medical Association president Klaus Reinhardt said the standby payment added over-regulation instead of funding capacity independently of cases, and Hospital Federation chairman Gerald Gaß called that design "completely unsuitable" and many rules too rigid.

### Primary care, medicines and prevention

In late January 2026 Warken began talks with about 30 representatives of doctors and funds on a primary-care system from the coalition agreement, which she called one of the main structural changes ahead. She described the aims as steering patients, a telephone or digital first assessment and shorter waits, and said it was not an outpatient savings law; a draft was planned for summer 2026, with effects from 2028. Andreas Gassen, chair of the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians, said large savings would not come quickly, while fund official Stefanie Stoff-Ahnis pressed for digital assessment and referral through fund apps or the 116 117 line.

On 22 May 2026 the Bundestag passed the Pharmacy Care Development Act. Warken said it strengthened pharmacies financially and in their competences while cutting bureaucracy, so that vaccination, testing and prevention would be shared more widely. Pharmacies could give non-live vaccines, run specified rapid tests and diagnostic blood draws, offer services on cardiovascular disease, diabetes and smoking cessation, and in urgent cases dispense some prescription medicines without a prescription as a continuation of long-term treatment or for acute uncomplicated illness. Doctors' bodies said diagnosis and vaccination remained medical work; Reinhardt said the law cut against clearer pathways in primary and emergency care. Stoff-Ahnis called the result a "Mogelpackung," with extra costs well above €1 billion in 2027 alone and little improvement in care.

On 8 October 2025 the cabinet adopted a draft changing the Medicinal Cannabis Act so that prescriptions required an in-person visit, with telemedicine allowed only between annual in-person contacts, and mail order would end while pharmacy courier delivery remained. Warken said flower imports had risen more than 400 percent in the first half of 2025, from about 19 to about 80 tonnes, while statutory prescriptions rose only in the single digits, and that supply for patients who medically needed the drug would continue. The German Medical Association backed the limits.

### Reception

Interests divided over the savings bills. In April 2026 the family doctors' association called draft limits on family-doctor contracts "health-policy insanity," about €70 million out of practices in the first year and at odds with the primary-care plan. The specialists' association said €2.7 billion could not come out of practices without cutting services, and Han Steutel of the research-based drug makers said discount rules pushed comparable drugs toward the cheapest rather than the best match. In June, Oliver Blatt of the funds' association asked for deeper cuts than the draft, but not through higher charges on contributors and patients: more federal money for basic-income health costs and more from the drug industry. He put first-quarter spending up 8 percent and the 2027 gap at €18.8 billion, €3.5 billion above a cabinet plan of €16.3 billion; states and hospital operators feared further closures.

In the 10 July debate Warken said delay was no longer possible and that the law stabilized rates. Coalition speakers called it an emergency brake rather than a structural reform: SPD deputy [Lina Seitzl](/people/lina-seitzl) said it was not a law to celebrate. Die Linke called the package a "chainsaw," the Greens said it contradicted the experts' advice, and the AfD called the procedure disrespectful of parliament. At passage the funds' average additional contribution was about 3.1 percent, above the 2.9 percent benchmark, on top of the 14.6 percent general rate.

On 10 January 2026 U.S. health secretary [Robert F. Kennedy Jr.](/people/robert-f-kennedy-jr) said he had written to Warken—first spelling her name "Workin"—claiming that more than 1,000 German doctors and thousands of patients were being prosecuted for mask and COVID-19 vaccine exemptions and that patient autonomy was being set aside. Warken said the claims were factually wrong: physicians had never been obliged to offer COVID-19 vaccination, and prosecutions had been limited to fraud and forgery, such as false vaccination records or inauthentic mask notes.

On 29 July 2026 Steinmeier appointed Carsten Linnemann health minister as Warken left to head the Federal Chancellery. In October 2026 Linnemann, citing the funds' estimators, said the stabilization law was the main reason 2027 spending would rise much more slowly and that the average additional contribution could stay stable, while the finances remained strained and the spending-side relief was up to €15 billion.

## Head of the Federal Chancellery

On 29 July 2026 Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier appointed Nina Warken Federal Minister for Special Affairs and head of the Federal Chancellery (*Bundesministerin für besondere Aufgaben* and *Chefin des Bundeskanzleramtes*). In the Merz cabinet the post has no departmental portfolio. Its holder directs the Chancellery, which keeps the ministries aligned, and is the government's commissioner for the intelligence services: the Federal Intelligence Service answers to the Chancellery, while the Interior Ministry supervises the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. The Chancellery's offices are in Berlin, at [Willy-Brandt](/people/willy-brandt)-Straße 1, and in Bonn. Warken, health minister since 6 May 2025, was the first woman to hold the post.

The move followed the resignation of Jens Spahn as chair of the CDU/CSU group in the Bundestag. On 18 July he wrote that having a child with his husband through surrogacy in the United States was incompatible with what the group expected of its chair. Surrogacy is prohibited in Germany, and the CDU, like Spahn himself in the past, opposes legalising it. He asked that the debate stay "human in tone". Chancellor Friedrich Merz, also CDU chair, called the resignation "right and unavoidable". Family-ministry state secretary [Michael Brand](/people/michael-brand) called the decision a moral breach of the law even if not a formal one.

Merz used the vacancy for a wider reshuffle. On 24 July he confirmed that Warken would succeed Thorsten Frei and that CDU general secretary Carsten Linnemann would become health minister. Warken said she would continue the reform course "with full force, but also with the necessary humility"; Merz had pointed to her handling of recent statutory health-insurance changes, and said further cabinet changes would follow. Transport minister Patrick Schnieder told deputies by text that Merz would dismiss him, but no successor was named that morning; [Steffen Bilger](/people/steffen-bilger) was appointed later. CSU chair Markus Söder said the handling of Schnieder had angered the group, and Merz later said communication among government, group and party had to improve.

Under Article 64 of the Basic Law, Steinmeier acted on the chancellor's proposal at the offices on the Spreebogen. He dismissed Frei and Schnieder, released Warken from the health ministry and appointed her minister for special affairs, and appointed Linnemann and Bilger. That afternoon the group elected Frei chair with 170 of 185 votes, 91.9 percent. The oath due on assuming office was delayed until after the summer recess; Merz cited the cost of recalling parliament. Constitutional lawyers called the gap incompatible with the Basic Law, and Steinmeier noted that the oath gives solemn form to the government's responsibility to parliament. On 8 September Bundestag president [Julia Klöckner](/people/julia-klockner) swore in Bilger and Linnemann only, telling Warken she had already taken the oath as a minister in that electoral term.

The main measure she took forward was a reform of intelligence law. On 12 August the cabinet adopted a draft the government called the most extensive revision of the legal bases of the foreign and domestic services in the history of the Federal Republic. Warken said Germany was a constant target of hybrid attacks and that the services needed greater powers and operational ability, with oversight strengthened as well. It would let the foreign service store telecommunications content for up to six months and metadata for up to twelve, and take limited "active measures" when other authorities could not avert a threat in time. Interior minister [Alexander Dobrindt](/people/alexander-dobrindt) spoke of making them "real intelligence services".

At the first reading on 24 September, Warken called the bill the largest such revision in the country's history. Green deputy [Konstantin von Notz](/people/konstantin-von-notz) accepted stronger powers against Russian espionage and sabotage abroad, but called expanded domestic powers, including covert entry into homes, constitutionally doubtful. [The Left](/organizations/the-left-slovenia) said fundamental rights were being trampled, and the AfD described the domestic changes as a "Stasi 2.0". The coalition wanted the law in force at the start of 2027, which also requires Bundesrat consent.

On 3 October Warken told ZDF that a first step on long-term care was meant to close the following year's financing gap, and that parts of the pension bill should not be dropped without a substitute. Bargaining among ministries, she said, was ordinary procedure under unusual public scrutiny and still had to be done "faster, more expeditious and more quietly": "Not everything that looks like a quarrel, or feels like one, is actually a quarrel."

## Political positions

On migration, Warken voted with the CDU/CSU for tighter entry and removal rules. On 29 January 2025 the Bundestag adopted, by 348 votes to 344, a non-binding Union motion known as the five-point plan. It called for permanent controls on Germany's borders, a de facto entry ban for people without valid documents who fall outside European free movement—including people intending to claim asylum—and custody for those with an enforceable duty to leave. The yes votes came from the Union, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), 80 FDP members and six non-attached deputies; Warken voted yes. Chancellor [Olaf Scholz](/people/mig-olaf-scholz) of the SPD called that majority a "bad sign for parliament and Germany" and said he could no longer trust Friedrich Merz. SPD floor leader [Rolf Mützenich](/people/rolf-mutzenich) said the day would stay in the country's memory, and [Katharina Dröge](/people/katharina-droge) of Alliance 90/The Greens called it a "black day for our democracy." On 31 January 2025 Warken voted for the Union's Influx Limitation Bill, which would have suspended family reunification for people with subsidiary protection and given the federal police removal powers at certain railway stations. It failed, 349 to 338. On 2 December 2022 she voted against the Opportunity Residence Act, which offered foreigners tolerated in Germany for at least five years time to qualify for a longer-term right to stay. It passed against the CDU/CSU and the AfD.

In remarks to Table.Briefings reported on 27 October 2025, she backed Merz's comments on the public "cityscape" and said some places had become "no-go areas" for women. Insecurity in public space was "also a migration issue," she said: young women described harassment "above all" from men with a migration background, and violent offences had risen with "a large share" of foreign suspects. On 1 December 2025 she told the Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland that, from her seat near the AfD, she heard "abysmal comments, especially against female deputies," including about appearance and clothing— "shocking insults" unfit for the dignity of parliament, and a view of women that "does not fit Germany."

In the free vote of 30 June 2017 she voted against opening marriage to same-sex couples. The bill passed 393 to 226; in the CDU/CSU, 225 members voted no and 75 yes. On 5 July 2024 she voted against an amendment to the Pregnancy Conflict Act that would have fined harassment of people seeking abortion-related services within 100 metres of clinics and counselling centres. The amendment passed.

As health minister and Frauen Union chair she argued for criminalising the purchase of sex while leaving sellers unpunished. On 6 November 2025 she told the *Rheinische Post* that Germany needed a punishable ban of the kind already used elsewhere, with exit support for people in prostitution, and that "Germany must no longer be the brothel of Europe." She joined Bundestag president Julia Klöckner in backing the Nordic model, which penalises buyers and organised procuring rather than sellers. Critics say the model does not end prostitution. Diakonie board member Elke Ronneberger said in September 2025 that, where buying sex is banned, the trade is pushed from legal sites into dangerous and precarious ones, raising the risk of violence and disease and making support and medical care harder to reach.

She opposed partial legalisation of cannabis and later sought to narrow it. On 23 February 2024 she voted against the Cannabis Act, which from 1 April 2024 allowed adults to possess limited amounts, grow up to three plants and, from 1 July, join non-commercial cultivation clubs. On 8 October 2025 the cabinet adopted a draft she presented to end mail-order supply of medicinal cannabis and to require an in-person consultation before a prescription. She said medicinal cannabis was a prescription medicine "and not a product for purely recreational purposes," and said "professionalised abuse of prescribing over the internet" would be prohibited; the ministry reported that imports of cannabis flower had risen by more than 400 percent in the first half of 2025. Later that month she told *Bild am Sonntag* that the possession limits were "far too high," had "nothing to do with personal use" and made dealing "easier than ever," and that the law was "a problem and badly made in many places." SPD health spokesman [Christos Pantazis](/people/christos-pantazis) welcomed the prescribing draft but said patients who needed medicinal cannabis should keep a reliable supply close to home.

At the Frauen Union federal delegate conference in Reutlingen in May 2025 she was elected chair with 62.1 percent of the vote, against 37.4 percent for Ina Scharrenbach, succeeding Annette Widmann-Mauz. In her acceptance speech she called for more female perspectives in politics. At the same meeting Family Minister Karin Prien said posts tied to power in the CDU were still "almost exclusively" held by men, and Widmann-Mauz said only four of 20 members of the parliamentary group's executive board were women.

## Personal life

Nina Warken is Roman Catholic. The Bundestag biography, which is based on information supplied by members themselves, records her as married and as the mother of three children. Profiles in *BILD* and the *Berliner Morgenpost* name her husband as the lawyer Sebastian Warken and state that the couple have three sons; neither account names the children. Sebastian Warken has been admitted as a lawyer since 2008. The site of WarkenBruckner Rechtsanwälte, where he is listed, states that he advises on employment law and on commercial law, including company law, compliance, acquisitions and business succession.

On her website she calls herself a hobby tennis player and a lifelong resident of Tauberbischofsheim. The *Berliner Morgenpost* reports that she and her family live in the town, in Baden-Württemberg, and likewise describes her as a hobby tennis player. *BILD* reports that she has remained there with her husband and sons, and that she spends what free time she has on the tennis court, often with the children.

The Bundestag register of members' outside activities records three earlier board roles as ending on 13 May 2025 and 13 June 2025. *BILD* places her term as federal minister of health in 2025–2026, so those departures fall within the period of ministerial office. She was a member of the administrative board of the Johannes-Diakonie Mosbach, in Mosbach, until 13 May 2025. She was an honorary member of the board of trustees of the Stiftung Bundespräsident-Theodor Heuss-Haus in Stuttgart until 13 June 2025, and a deputy member of the board of trustees of the Stiftung Forum Recht in Karlsruhe until the same date.

On 3 September 2026 the Munich Security Conference announced that Warken, by then federal minister for special affairs and head of the Federal Chancellery, had been appointed to the foundation council of the Stiftung Münchner Sicherheitskonferenz as the federal government's representative, succeeding Thorsten Frei. The same announcement describes the council as the foundation's highest steering body, with eleven members. The Bundestag disclosure lists the Munich post as honorary and as having begun on that date. In the conference's statement she said she would take part in that governmental capacity in its discussions of foreign, security and defence policy.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/nina-warken