Olav Gutting

Olav Steffen Gutting (born 14 October 1970 in Karlsruhe) is a German lawyer and a politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in Germany. The Bundestag’s biography, which rests on his own statements, records that he is Roman Catholic, married and has one child. He has been a member of the Bundestag since September 2002 and holds the direct mandate for constituency 278, Bruchsal–Schwetzingen, in Baden-Württemberg.

He began studying law at the University of Mannheim in October 1990, including a period at Stetson University in DeLand, Florida, centred on sociology and international law. He passed the first state law examination at Heidelberg University in 1997 and the second in Leipzig and Dresden in 1999. From January to May 2000 he worked at the firm Rittershaus & Partner in Frankfurt and Mannheim; since 2000 he has been a self-employed lawyer and partner of Gutting Steuerberater und Rechtsanwälte, and since 2019 a certified specialist in inheritance law (Fachanwalt für Erbrecht).

In the 21st Bundestag he is an ordinary member of the Finance Committee and the Budget Committee, a deputy member of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Consumer Protection and of the Committee on Sport and Voluntary Work, and chair of the parliamentary group for the Andean states. When the Finance Committee convened on 21 May 2025, the Alternative for Germany nominee Kay Gottschalk received 11 votes in favour and 31 against in a secret ballot; the group did not request a second round, and Gutting, as the longest-serving Bundestag member on the committee, presided until a chair or deputy chair could be elected. He sat on the executive board of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group from 2013 to 2021. At the federal election of 23 February 2025 he was returned with 58,113 first votes, 36.1 percent of the valid vote in the constituency.

On 3 June 2022 the official minutes of the Bundestag placed him alone under the CDU/CSU heading among the votes against the amendment to Article 87a of the Basic Law that established a special fund for the Bundeswehr; the final result was 684 votes cast, 568 in favour, 96 against and 20 abstentions. The same minutes placed him alone under the CDU/CSU heading among the votes against the act that set up the “Sondervermögen Bundeswehr”, whose final result was 677 votes cast, 590 in favour, 80 against and 7 abstentions.

SWR reported in 2021 that Gutting, together with the CDU members Nikolas Löbel, Eberhard Gienger, Axel E. Fischer and Mark Hauptmann, signed a December 2019 letter to the Foreign Office seeking a “clarification” on Nagorno-Karabakh, and that four of the five had tabled identical parliamentary questions in September 2019 after an approach from the embassy of Azerbaijan. In July 2024 abgeordnetenwatch.de and ZDF reported that, in November 2023, Gutting had received undercover reporters posing as representatives of a fictional firm, Ianua Strategy, in his office in the Paul Löbe House and had emailed them an unpublished CDU/CSU draft motion on disposable e-cigarettes. The Bundestag’s register of members’ interests lists a partnership in his law firm, a seat on the administrative board of KfW, and membership of the board of trustees of the fund for financing nuclear-waste management (KENFO), of which he became deputy chair on 13 October 2025.

Early life and education

Childhood and schooling

Olav Gutting was born on 14 October 1970 in Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, and is a Roman Catholic. The schooling in his own account, repeated by the Christian Democratic Union association in Bad Schönborn, was in the Rhine plain of the Karlsruhe district rather than in the city: primary school in Rheinhausen, then the Abitur in May 1990, aged 19, at the Copernicus-Gymnasium in Philippsburg.

Rheinhausen is one of two districts of Oberhausen-Rheinhausen, the north-westernmost municipality in Landkreis Karlsruhe. Oberhausen and Rheinhausen, until then separate communes, were united in the 1975 territorial reform. The Rhine is the western boundary, and the municipality places the locality about 35 kilometres from Karlsruhe, Mannheim and Heidelberg; bus line 194 runs between Rheinhausen, Oberhausen and Philippsburg. Most residents are Catholic, the municipality belongs to the Diocese of Speyer, and each district has only a Catholic church. Rheinhausen has its own primary school, the Grundschule Rheinhausen at Hauptstraße 10. Gutting's biography names the primary school in Rheinhausen but not a building. The Copernicus-Gymnasium, the Gymnasium at which he took the Abitur, stands at Lessingstraße 27 in Philippsburg.

Legal studies and clerkship

In October 1990 Gutting began studying law at the University of Mannheim. A law department had been added to Mannheim's commercial college in 1965, and the law faculty was founded in 1967, when that college became a university; the dean's office is in the west wing of Mannheim Palace. He also studied abroad at Stetson University in DeLand, Florida, in the United States, emphasising sociology and international law. Neither the Bundestag biography nor his own account dates the stay. Stetson's main campus is in DeLand, while its College of Law is in Gulfport; the published description names DeLand and a sociological and international-law emphasis, not an American law degree.

He passed the first state law examination (erstes juristisches Staatsexamen) in June 1997 at Heidelberg University, a little under seven years after he had started in Mannheim, including the time abroad. Heidelberg, founded in 1386, is the oldest university in Germany. In Baden-Württemberg the judicial examination office of the state justice ministry conducts that state examination and names Heidelberg among the places where it is held.

Under the German Judges Act, qualification for judicial office requires a university law course closed by a first examination and a preparatory service (Vorbereitungsdienst) closed by the second state examination. The Federal Lawyers' Act makes the same qualification the ordinary condition of admission as a Rechtsanwalt. That preparatory service, the Referendariat, is practical training. In Saxony it lasts two years, is offered in Leipzig, Dresden, Chemnitz and Bautzen, and ends in the second state examination conducted by the Landesjustizprüfungsamt in Dresden. Each state must accept a first examination taken in another state, so a candidate examined in Baden-Württemberg may train in Saxony.

Gutting states that his Referendariat was at the Landgericht Leipzig, with several elective stations. From June to October 1999 one station was at the Landtag of Baden-Württemberg, where he worked with the CDU working group on law and the constitution, European policy and the media. He passed the second state examination in November 1999 in Leipzig and Dresden. The two examinations completed the statutory qualification for judicial office and for ordinary admission to the bar.

Legal career

Entry into practice

Gutting passed the second state examination in law in November 1999. From January to May 2000 he worked as a lawyer (Rechtsanwalt) at Rittershaus & Partner in Frankfurt and Mannheim, and in May 2000 he became a self-employed partner (Sozius) of Gutting Steuerberater und Rechtsanwälte. The first employer was the commercial-law firm founded in Mannheim in 1969 by Gerald Rittershaus, which opened a Frankfurt office in 1993 and now practices as RITTERSHAUS. The firm’s own history describes advice to medium-sized and family companies on company law, transactions, restructurings and business succession.

Inheritance law and the family firm

Dieter Gutting, a tax adviser (Steuerberater) and Betriebswirt (VWA), founded the tax practice in Oberhausen-Rheinhausen in 1980; in 2000 it was joined with Olav Gutting’s legal practice in what the firm calls an interprofessional partnership, offering legal and tax advice together. Gutting has written that he grew up in his parents’ tax firm and in his mother’s craft business. Parliamentary disclosures name the partnership Gutting Steuerberater und Rechtsanwälte GbR. The lawyers, whose office is at Händelweg 1, are members of the Rechtsanwaltskammer Karlsruhe, which supervises them; the tax advisers, including Dieter Gutting and the employed advisers Anke Baumann and Daniela Zink, belong to the Steuerberaterkammer Nordbaden. The federal bar’s official register lists Olav Gutting as a Rechtsanwalt of Gutting Steuerberater & Rechtsanwälte at that address.

He describes the work as advice to small and medium-sized firms, commercial law and inheritance law (Erbrecht). The German Lawyers’ Association directory Anwaltauskunft lists employment law, inheritance law and tax law for him, records the title Fachanwalt für Erbrecht, and names Tino Steinle as another lawyer in the office.

The Bundestag biography, based on Gutting’s own statements, dates the specialist title from 2019. Under the Fachanwaltsordnung of the German bars, in the text of 1 October 2026, such titles are conferred pursuant to section 43c of the Federal Lawyers’ Act (Bundesrechtsanwaltsordnung). For inheritance law it requires special theoretical knowledge—substantive succession and its links to other fields, cross-border succession, wills, anticipated succession and care directives, estate administration, tax, and procedure—and 80 personally and independently handled cases in the five years before the application, at least 20 of them formal proceedings. The Bundesrechtsanwaltskammer lists inheritance law among the specialist designations the bars confer.

He has continued the practice since entering the Bundestag in September 2002. Section 44a of the Members of the Bundestag Act (Abgeordnetengesetz) puts the mandate at the center of a member’s activity but leaves other professional work generally permissible; paid representation of others before the Bundestag or the federal government, and paid advice tied directly to the mandate, are not allowed. Section 45 requires notice to the President of the Bundestag of the occupation before the mandate and of paid work during it, including continuation of an earlier profession, and permits a sector label where confidentiality covers a client’s identity. The published notices record his pre-mandate occupation as lawyer at the Oberhausen-Rheinhausen firm and a paid sideline as lawyer in the GbR, with many instructing parties shown only as “Privatbereich”. Abgeordnetenwatch lists the same law-firm activity. His published constituency office is at the firm’s address, Händelweg 1.

Party career

Junge Union and CDU membership

Gutting joined the Junge Union, the youth organisation of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Christian Social Union, in 1986. From 1987 to 1996 he was treasurer (Kassier) and second chairman of its branch in Oberhausen-Rheinhausen, in the north of Karlsruhe district, and early Bundestag biographies already listed him as a member of both the Junge Union and the CDU there. Later official biographies date the CDU membership itself to 2001. In September 2001 the party nominated him for the newly drawn Bruchsal–Schwetzingen constituency, the seat he has contested ever since.

Constituency membership meetings have repeatedly returned him as the direct candidate. On 24 September 2020, in the Lußhardthalle in Hambrücken, members gave him 98.4 percent of the votes cast. On 22 November 2024 a meeting in the Hockenheim town hall, chaired by Moritz Oppelt, chairman of the CDU district of Nordbaden, selected him again for the election of 23 February 2025, with 95 of 97 votes. The CDU town association in Waghäusel, part of the same constituency organisation, recorded its members as present and offered campaign support.

He does not appear among the elected officers of the CDU Kreisverband Karlsruhe-Land. Under section 24(2) of the Baden-Württemberg CDU statute, as reproduced by that association, members of the Bundestag sit on a Kreisvorstand with a consultative vote, together with members of the federal, state and district executives. The local Mittelstands- und Wirtschaftsunion, the CDU’s association for small and medium-sized business, describes him as a member.

Offices in Baden-Württemberg

The CDU members from Baden-Württemberg in the Bundestag form a Landesgruppe, which the group describes as the body that gathers the state’s interests inside the CDU/CSU parliamentary group. On 20 October 2009 Gutting’s office reported that colleagues had placed him on a new six-member Landesgruppe executive with responsibility for finance, at a time when the group had 37 members. A local report in September 2020 still described him as a member of that executive, and also of the CDU/CSU group’s own executive (Fraktionsvorstand). The Bundestag dates the Fraktionsvorstand seat to 2013–2021; his work there belongs with his parliamentary record. The Landesgruppe website lists him as treasurer (Schatzmeister).

The biography issued for the 18th electoral term also named him chairman of the CDU Baden-Württemberg specialist committee (Landesfachausschuss) on the environment and energy. The biography for the 19th term no longer carried that office, recording instead the Junge Union entry in 1986, CDU membership from 2001, and the Fraktionsvorstand seat.

At the CDU’s 31st federal party congress, held on 7–8 December 2018 in the Hamburg exhibition halls, the party renewed its federal executive. On 7 December Gutting was elected one of 26 additional members (Beisitzer), with 656 of 873 valid votes; the required majority was 437. The postal-ballot results of the 33rd congress, held digitally on 15–16 January 2021 and counted on 22 February 2021, name 26 additional members and do not include him. Separately from these party offices, the Europa-Union Deutschland lists him among the members of its parliamentary group in the 21st Bundestag.

Bundestag elections

The Bruchsal–Schwetzingen constituency

Constituency 278 Bruchsal–Schwetzingen elects one member of the Bundestag from northwestern Baden-Württemberg. For 2025 the Federal Returning Officer defined it as eleven municipalities in Landkreis Karlsruhe—Bad Schönborn, Bruchsal, Forst, Hambrücken, Karlsdorf-Neuthard, Kronau, Oberhausen-Rheinhausen, Östringen, Philippsburg, Ubstadt-Weiher and Waghäusel—and nine in the Rhein-Neckar-Kreis: Altlußheim, Brühl, Hockenheim, Ketsch, Neulußheim, Oftersheim, Plankstadt, Reilingen and Schwetzingen. On 31 December 2023 the area covered 506.6 square kilometres and had 278,800 inhabitants, or 550.3 per square kilometre. At the 2025 election, 194,216 people were eligible to vote.

Map of Bundestag constituency 278 Bruchsal–Schwetzingen, with the district shaded across municipalities in Landkreis Karlsruhe and the Rhein-Neckar-Kreis.

The seat was created for the election of 22 September 2002, when the number of Bundestag constituencies was cut from 328 to 299. Baden-Württemberg kept 37 constituencies, numbered 259 to 295, but 13 were redrawn. One new district was Bruchsal–Schwetzingen, number 279, built from municipalities that had belonged to Karlsruhe-Land and to Heidelberg. The federal electoral-district commission chose that outline rather than a Land government proposal to join the southern part of Landkreis Karlsruhe with part of the Enzkreis, and the former constituency Mannheim II was not restored. The Federal Returning Officer’s 2005 description lists the same twenty municipalities, still as constituency 279. By the 2009 election the office numbered the district 278, the number still used in 2025, and a 2017 regional report names the same towns and municipalities.

Reporters call the district the “Spargelwahlkreis” (asparagus constituency). In 2021 the Badische Neueste Nachrichten wrote that Bruchsal and Schwetzingen have little everyday connection apart from asparagus, and that the crop gave the artificially drawn seat its name. SWR described it the same year as a product of the 2002 reduction of the Bundestag and the redraw that went with it: the boundary between Landkreis Karlsruhe and the Rhein-Neckar-Kreis runs through the middle. Before the 2025 election SWR again used the nickname and called the seat largely rural, lying between Karlsruhe to the south and Mannheim and Heidelberg to the north.

Results from 2002 to 2025

Olav Gutting of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has been a member of the Bundestag since September 2002 and has taken the constituency’s direct mandate at every federal election since the seat was drawn. The Federal Returning Officer’s table for the 2002 election in constituency 279 shows 187,678 people eligible and 153,528 voting, a turnout of 81.8 percent. The CDU received 72,087 first votes, 48.1 percent of 149,931 valid first votes. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) was second with 59,416 votes (39.6 percent); the Free Democratic Party (FDP) had 5.9 percent and Alliance 90/The Greens 5.2 percent.

In 2005 the same office declared Gutting elected. Turnout was 79.9 percent (152,375 of 190,693 eligible voters). He received 72,516 first votes, 48.7 percent, 0.6 points above the 2002 CDU share. Stefan Rebmann of the SPD was the runner-up with 51,873 votes (34.9 percent). The FDP took 4.8 percent, the Greens 4.4 percent and Die Linke 3.2 percent.

In 2009, numbered 278, turnout fell to 72.8 percent (141,401 of 194,304 eligible voters). The CDU total was 64,659 first votes (46.9 percent), and the SPD runner-up had 32,525 (23.6 percent). The FDP took 11.4 percent, the Greens 8.8 percent and Die Linke 7.2 percent. In 2013 the CDU rose to 73,944 first votes (51.8 percent), a gain the Federal Returning Officer put at 5.0 points on 2009, with turnout at 74.1 percent (145,107 of 195,953). Daniel Born of the SPD was second with 35,252 votes (24.7 percent).

In 2017, 78.7 percent of 196,426 eligible voters turned out. Gutting received 63,166 first votes (41.5 percent), 10.4 points below 2013, and won the direct mandate for a fifth consecutive time. Nezaket Yildirim of the SPD was second with 29,684 votes (19.5 percent). Dieter Amann of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) received 21,960 (14.4 percent), ahead of Danyal Bayaz of the Greens with 12,641 (8.3 percent).

In 2021 the CDU first-vote share fell to 44,465, or 29.6 percent, 11.9 points below 2017. Turnout was 77.8 percent (152,231 of 195,755 eligible voters). The official summary names the winning party rather than the candidate; SWR had identified Gutting as the CDU nominee, and that party total is the nominee’s vote. Yildirim, again the SPD candidate, was runner-up with 32,836 votes (21.9 percent), ahead of the Greens on 14.7 percent, the FDP on 11.7 percent and the AfD on 11.6 percent.

In the final 2025 count, turnout rose to 83.6 percent (162,421 of 194,216 eligible voters). Olav Steffen Gutting (CDU) won 58,113 first votes, 36.1 percent, 6.5 points above 2021. Tobias Dammert of the AfD was second with 35,749 votes (22.2 percent), 10.7 points above that party’s 2021 first-vote share. The SPD, whose candidate was again Nezaket Yildirim, fell to 26,254 votes (16.3 percent). It was the first of these seven elections in which the SPD was not the runner-up.

Parliamentary work

Finance Committee

The Bundestag Finance Committee's remit follows that of the Federal Ministry of Finance, except for budget policy, which belongs to a separate committee. It considers bills, motions, government reports and European Union items referred by the plenary, and it normally takes the lead on financial-market regulation, customs and tax policy. In the 21st electoral term it has 42 ordinary members.

Gutting's ordinary membership is on record from the 17th electoral term through the 21st. A Finance Committee report of 26 June 2013, near the end of the 17th term, already named him as a rapporteur on income-tax bills referred to the committee. The Bundestag's archived biography for the 18th term (2013–2017) lists him as an ordinary member. He signed further committee reports in that term and in the 19th, and the transparency site Abgeordnetenwatch records ordinary membership for 2017–2021 and 2021–2025. The biography dated 21 October 2026 still lists him as an ordinary member, not as chair.

Rapporteur status in these reports is the formal role of the members who sign the committee's recommendation and report. In that capacity he co-signed, with members of other groups, the report of 3 December 2014 on the bill adapting the Fiscal Code to the Union Customs Code and other tax rules, the report of 21 September 2016 on the tax treatment of electric road vehicles, and the report of 13 November 2019 on the government bill to reduce the solidarity surcharge, alongside an FDP bill and an AfD motion on the same subject.

The committee of the 21st Bundestag constituted itself on the afternoon of Wednesday 21 May 2025 and did not elect a chair. Bundestag Vice-President Andrea Lindholz, who conducted the sitting, said that the right to propose the chair lay with the Alternative for Germany (AfD). The AfD nominated Kay Gottschalk, who was not present. At the request of the CDU/CSU group the ballot was secret. Of 42 votes cast, 11 were in favour of Gottschalk and 31 against. The AfD did not ask for another ballot, so the chair remained vacant. Gutting, a member of the Bundestag since 2002 and the longest-serving member of the Bundestag on the committee, then took the chair until the committee elected a chair or a deputy chair. The 42 seats were divided into 14 for the CDU/CSU, 10 for the AfD, eight for the Social Democratic Party, six for Alliance 90/The Greens and four for Die Linke; Gutting was one of the 14 Union members.

On the morning of 25 June 2025 the committee elected Christian Görke of Die Linke as deputy chair. The vote was secret at the AfD's request. Every group agreed to that procedure except Die Linke, which abstained. Görke received 23 votes in favour and 15 against, with two abstentions. Because Gottschalk had missed a majority in May and no chair had been elected, Görke took over the conduct of the committee; the Bundestag's parliamentary news service reported that Gutting had led it until that day. Görke's biography, as published alongside Gutting's on the Bundestag site, still describes him as acting chair of the Finance Committee rather than as its elected chair.

Budget, legal affairs and other assignments

Budget law is handled by the Budget Committee, not the Finance Committee. As of the biography dated 21 October 2026, Gutting is an ordinary member of the Budget Committee as well as of the Finance Committee, a deputy member of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Consumer Protection, and a deputy member of the Committee on Sport and Voluntary Work. The CDU/CSU group's own list places him in the group's finance working group, its budget working group and the Parliamentary Circle for Small and Medium-Sized Businesses (Parlamentskreis Mittelstand), in addition to the two Bundestag committees.

Deputy assignments outside finance have shifted by term. In the 18th electoral term the archived biography records deputy membership of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Consumer Protection and of the Committee on the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety. Abgeordnetenwatch records, for 2017–2021, a deputy seat only on Legal Affairs and Consumer Protection beside ordinary membership of the Finance Committee, and for 2021–2025 deputy seats on the Legal Affairs Committee and the Sports Committee.

Among other parliamentary bodies, the October 2026 biography lists him as chair of the Parliamentary Group for the Andean States.

Leadership in the CDU/CSU group

The Bundestag biography, whose narrative details are the member's own information, states that Gutting sat on the executive (Fraktionsvorstand) of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group from 2013 to 2021. The archived biography for the 18th term already listed membership of that executive.

On 9 October 2018 he stood for one of the deputy chairs. The post, covering budget and finance, had fallen vacant when Ralph Brinkhaus became chairman of the group after defeating Volker Kauder, against the recommendation of Chancellor Angela Merkel. Andreas Jung, chair of the Baden-Württemberg state group (Landesgruppe) and, like Gutting, from the south-west, was elected. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported the official result as 135 votes for Jung and 41 for Gutting, about 77 percent to 23 percent. Der Spiegel reported the same figures and wrote that Gutting had been supported above all by the Merkel-critical part of the economic wing around Christian von Stetten and by finance politicians, that Brinkhaus had stated no preference before the vote, and that the 46 members of the Christian Social Union traditionally did not vote on posts reserved to the CDU side of the joint group.

Two months later delegates at the 31st federal party congress of the Christian Democratic Union, held in Hamburg, elected the party's federal executive (Bundesvorstand) as well as the chair. The CDU recorded 873 valid votes and a required majority of 437. Gutting received 656 votes and was returned as one of the 26 assessors (Beisitzer), listed by the party in alphabetical order with the other successful candidates.

Political positions

Tax policy and the solidarity surcharge

As a finance voice of the CDU/CSU in the Bundestag, Gutting has argued that the solidarity surcharge (Solidaritätszuschlag), levied since 1995 toward the costs of German reunification, should be abolished entirely rather than left on higher incomes and companies. On 5 June 2024, debating a motion from Alternative for Germany, he said the conditions for the surcharge as a supplementary tax had for years no longer been met, and that the remainder had become “a disguised corporate tax and a special surcharge on certain parts of income tax.” Full abolition was, he said, a matter of tax justice and of honesty in taxation, but it belonged in a broader tax package and a “tax-policy new start,” not in the AfD text; better that the governing parties repeal it than wait to be compelled by the Federal Constitutional Court.

On 26 March 2025 the court’s Second Senate dismissed complaint 2 BvR 1505/20, brought by six former Free Democratic Party deputies, among them Christian Dürr, against the Solidarity Surcharge Act 1995 as amended in 2019. The surcharge remained a supplementary levy under Article 106 of the Basic Law: the extra federal need from reunification had not yet obviously disappeared, so there was no duty to repeal it from the 2020 tax year, though a long-running levy must stay under review. The partial withdrawal from 2021, leaving the charge on only some income-tax payers but on all corporation-tax payers, was upheld. The Frankfurter Rundschau put the yield at nearly €13 billion a year. Gutting, in Karlsruhe for the judgment, said the Christian Democratic Union and the CSU still wanted abolition; Social Democrat Johannes Fechner said the surcharge could now enter a coalition agreement.

Defence, debt and coalition politics

On 3 June 2022 the Bundestag amended Article 87a of the Basic Law to allow a one-off credit of up to €100 billion for a Bundeswehr special fund, outside the debt brake. The president announced 567 yes votes among 683 ballots; the corrected roll call records 568 yes, 96 no and 20 abstentions, and names Gutting as the only CDU/CSU no against 175 yes votes from the group. On the statute creating the fund, voted the same day, the corrected list is 590 yes, 80 no and seven abstentions, and again the only CDU/CSU no is Gutting’s.

On Abgeordnetenwatch on 13 June 2022 he wrote that more security, and more money for the Bundeswehr, were “undisputed,” but that €100 billion of new debt dressed up as a “special fund” was not a serious way to pay: it released the government from a sustainable, generationally fair financing of security. An extra €20 billion a year for five years could and should have come from the ordinary budget. He would not “hold the stirrup for the traffic-light coalition” so that it could borrow past the debt brake, at later generations’ expense, while leaving the normal budget as it was; high tax revenue and the right priorities would have made the €100 billion unnecessary.

He had already criticised a renewed grand coalition under Angela Merkel. After Union and Social Democratic Party negotiators agreed terms in February 2018, he tweeted: “Phew! At least we still have the Chancellery.” He told the Mitteldeutsche Zeitung the next day that he largely shared the members’ view that the outcome “bordered on self-abandonment”: there were gains on family, security and justice, but the portfolios were an SPD government’s, and nobody had expected the SPD to take finance given a much clearer CDU lead than in 2005. Binding the party to a grand coalition from the start, without considering a minority government, had left it “with its back to the wall.” He tied the finance ministry to tax policy and to Europe—conditional aid as under Wolfgang Schäuble, against what he called unconditional help from Martin Schulz—and, while not refusing to support the coalition, called the outcome “another blow to the stomach.”

Social policy and party leadership contests

On 30 June 2017 the Bundestag adopted, by recorded vote, a Bundesrat bill opening marriage to persons of the same sex: 393 in favour, 226 against and four abstentions. The published division gives the CDU/CSU 75 yes votes and 225 no votes, and the minutes list Gutting among the noes. He wrote that day on Abgeordnetenwatch that he would vote no even though, on the Finance Committee, he had worked for equal income-tax treatment of registered life partnerships and marriage—“Whoever has the same duties should also have the same rights”—and that removing that discrimination had mattered. “Marriage for all,” he wrote, conflicted with Article 6(1) of the Basic Law, which specially protects marriage between a man and a woman, a relationship he called distinct because only it produces children and the family so formed is “the germ cell of every society”; same-sex partnerships were “not less, but they are simply something other than marriage between a man and a woman.”

Contemporary reports of the January 2021 CDU leadership election show a call for another candidate, not a published endorsement of Friedrich Merz. On 9 October 2020, with Armin Laschet, Merz and Norbert Röttgen already in the field, Gutting told Der Spiegel: “I, like many others, would be glad if Jens Spahn stood for election.” n-tv, which called him a member of the CDU presidium, read the remark, with similar comments by other deputies, as discontent with those candidates; Spahn was then supporting Laschet and did not run.

Public controversies

Azerbaijan contacts

In 2021 SWR and Vice reported on contacts between members of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Christian Social Union and lobbying aligned with the government of Azerbaijan. Gutting was one of several members named. The same reports discussed Axel E. Fischer, Nikolas Löbel and Eberhard Gienger, CDU members from Baden-Württemberg; Mark Hauptmann, then a CDU member from Thuringia; and Thomas Bareiß. Separate bribery inquiries concerned Karin Strenz and Fischer. Vice described The European Azerbaijan Society (TEAS), wound up in 2018, as a Baku-based organization whose Berlin representative, Shahin Namati, pressed Azerbaijan’s position on Nagorno-Karabakh.

On 27 September 2019 Fischer, Gienger, Gutting and Löbel each filed written questions that the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung called identical, including the same misspelling of Nikol Pashinyan, prime minister of Armenia, whom the text called president. Bundestag paper 19/13638 asked for the government’s view of the Karabakh conflict. SWR reported that an embassy official had emailed Gienger hoping he would pursue the matter and, with Löbel, consider Bundestag reactions to Armenia’s course. In December 2019 those four and Hauptmann sent Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, of the Social Democratic Party, a letter SWR called a “protest letter.” It complained that the answers had been evasive and sought a “clarification” of the conflict and of what the signatories called Armenia’s breach of international law. The members did not say whether the embassy had also prompted the letter. They did not dispute the coordination and told SWR they had received no financial advantage.

Gutting later wrote that the ambassador had feared Germany might drop United Nations resolutions treating Nagorno-Karabakh as Azerbaijani territory, and that the letter followed what he called a vague reply. Of a meeting with President Ilham Aliyev in Berlin in early 2015, he wrote that he had raised human rights and that the photograph he posted said so. He denied “connections” to TEAS, then described a short greeting at a 2012 TEAS jazz evening, which he said he had forgotten. He called published claims of an investigation against him, and of repeated travel to Azerbaijan, false.

Vice reported that he had denied personal contact with TEAS and Namati until a video showed him speaking in summer 2014 at a TEAS event, “Summer and Politics,” beside Namati. A 2012 TEAS publication also named him with the CSU member Florian Hahn. In a 2016 interview on TV Berlin, which Vice said carried items commissioned by TEAS, he said Europe gave too little attention to people displaced by the conflict. Vice wrote that remarks of that kind appeared in Azerbaijani state media, and that an Azerbaijani intern in his Bundestag office, there under the International Parliamentary Scholarship, had praised Aliyev online and referred to Armenians as “animals” or “dogs.” It did not report that Gutting endorsed those posts.

SWR reported a bribery investigation of Fischer; it did not report one of Gutting. Vice reported investigations of Strenz and Fischer and said prosecutors were considering whether to investigate Hauptmann, who gave up his Bundestag seat at the beginning of March 2021 after Azerbaijan-related lobbying allegations. Bareiß told Vice he had had no contact with TEAS or Namati and had received nothing from TEAS. The SPD member Lothar Binding told SWR that the signatories were either inexplicably naive or knowingly supporting a dictatorship. These reports did not record a charge that Gutting had taken money, gifts or other benefits.

The 2024 undercover lobbying report

On 24 July 2024 ZDF broadcast Das Lobbyismus-Experiment, in the series Die Spur, made with abgeordnetenwatch.de. Reporters had posed as staff of Ianua Strategy, a fictitious firm in Luxembourg, and said they represented an unnamed maker of disposable e-cigarettes in the United Kingdom. In September 2023 they emailed 27 members of the Bundestag about a possible German factory and, as they later described the approach, a state scheme to move smokers onto e-cigarettes. Members of Alliance 90/The Greens and the Left mostly declined. Six sitting members met them: two each from the CDU and the Free Democratic Party, and one each from the SPD and Alternative for Germany. Former ministers Dirk Niebel and Rudolf Scharping were among ex-politicians who, abgeordnetenwatch reported, offered to arrange paid access to people in government.

Gutting, a member of the Finance Committee, which handles the taxation of e-cigarettes, met the reporters in the Paul-Löbe-Haus in early November 2023. Abgeordnetenwatch reported that he called the coalition stricter than he was and, during the meeting, emailed them an unpublished CDU/CSU draft, “Improve the proper disposal and handling of disposable e-cigarettes.” He discussed how some colleagues viewed youth protection and later asked another CDU member to spare time for “Mr Wagner,” the reporters’ cover name. At a second meeting, in a Berlin steakhouse at the reporters’ expense, he offered to put a written question to the government and asked for wording, then wrote that he was trying to “place the question.” The outlet said the government answered a question from that exchange. He also texted them about a meeting involving the head of the North Rhine-Westphalia state chancellery as a chance to raise the project. In the same test, AfD member Jan Wenzel Schmidt filed a minor interpellation the reporters had helped to draft, CDU member Astrid Damerow offered to patronise a lobbying event, and SPD member Alexander Bartz later published the contact.

Gutting’s written reply to the reporters was that anyone who wished received an appointment, that they had held out jobs and tax revenue from a company settlement in Germany, and that supporting such an investment was, in his view, part of a member’s work. He told the Badische Neueste Nachrichten that ZDF had acted “betrügerisch,” pretending a settlement of that kind was planned, and he called the reporters “Betrüger” (swindlers). The contact ended, he wrote, because they produced no concrete figures; a broadcast he called a stunt without insight was a matter for ZDF’s television council. He added that his own meetings had concerned a possible British investment, not a subsidised e-cigarette programme. The accounts did not allege that he was paid, or that the meetings led to a criminal investigation.

Outside offices and disclosed income

Public-law bodies and company boards

Members of the Bundestag notify its President, under sections 45 and following of the Members of the Bundestag Act (Abgeordnetengesetz), of paid work beside the mandate, posts in companies, public-law bodies and associations, and company holdings. Notice is due within three months of taking the seat and of any change. Income above €1,000 in a month or, if not, €3,000 in a calendar year is published to the cent, as a gross amount or, for turnover or a share of partnership profit, as pre-tax profit. Notes dated 23 June 2026 state that a year before a one-off sum is the calendar year of receipt, and that regular pay is marked monthly or annual. Gutting’s biography was dated 21 October 2026.

Under company functions that page enters, against the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) in Bonn, a post as Vertrauensmann at Wüstenrot Bausparkasse AG, with €8,046.59 gross for 2026. At Volksbank Kraichgau eG in Wiesloch he was deputy chair of the supervisory board until 25 July 2025 and a member from that date, at €8,000 gross a year until 2025 and €9,000 from 2026. The archived return for the 20th electoral term records him as chair of the supervisory board of Volksbank Bruhrain-Kraich-Hardt eG in Oberhausen-Rheinhausen until November 2021, at €6,000 gross a year, and as deputy chair at Volksbank Kraichgau from that month, there at higher annual gross rates of €12,000 until December 2023, €18,000 for 2024 and €19,000 from January 2025.

He is a member of the board of trustees of the Fonds zur Finanzierung der kerntechnischen Entsorgung (KENFO), the fund that finances nuclear-waste disposal, and its deputy chair from 13 October 2025. The biography gives no euro amount for that office; KENFO lists him as deputy chair. He sits on the administrative board of KfW at €5,948 gross a year, plus irregular payments of €400 gross in 2025 and €400 gross in 2026.

Association posts, with no published euro amount except as stated, are the political advisory board of the Bundesverband mittelständische Wirtschaft (BVMW); the board of the Deutsch-Georgisches Forum für Politik, Wirtschaft und Kultur; the board of the Institut Mittelstand & Compliance in Pforzheim; the Zukunftsrat of the Verband der Sparda-Banken, at €2,380 gross a year; and deputy chair of the Weltliga für Freiheit und Demokratie (WLFD) Deutschland.

On 5 June 2025 the civil-society organisation Finanzwende, reviewing outside income on the new Finance Committee, wrote that Gutting, of the Christian Democratic Union, had declared €18,000 for 2024 and €2,000 for 2023 from the Volksbank Kraichgau board and the Sparda-Banken Zukunftsrat. It grouped those seats with savings-bank and cooperative-bank posts held by other members, called the pattern a concerning proximity to financial-sector bodies that could affect independence on bank regulation, and noted that he published the amounts.

Legal practice income

The largest published receipt is from legal practice. Under paid activity beside the mandate the biography names Gutting Steuerberater und Rechtsanwälte GbR, in Oberhausen-Rheinhausen, and lists him as a lawyer, with a profit distribution (Gewinnausschüttung) of €550,342.00 labelled 2026. The June 2026 notes use that label for the profit share paid to a partner who personally helps perform the firm’s contracts, once the thresholds are passed. The year denotes the year of receipt, and the page is updated as further notifications are processed, so the sum is what stood under the 2026 label on 21 October 2026, not a reporting year the notes treat as already closed.

Beneath that entry, without euro amounts of their own, are 22 anonymized private clients (Privatbereich)—clients 9, 11, 14, 32 and 54 to 71—tagged to 2025, 2026 or both. The notes describe them as counterparties of the partnership on contracts he helped perform, where the firm’s gross receipts exceeded the thresholds; confidentiality replaces a name with a sector label. His stake in the GbR is listed with a cross-reference to those outside earnings, so the profit share is not shown twice.

Personal life

Olav Steffen Gutting was born on 14 October 1970 in Karlsruhe, Germany. The Bundestag biography, which the parliament states is based on members’ own information, gives that date and place and describes him as Roman Catholic, married, and the parent of one child. The Federal Returning Officer’s list of members elected in 2025 uses that fuller form, entering him as “Gutting, Olav Steffen,” with 1970 as the year of birth. The Baden-Württemberg Interior Ministry’s compilation of constituency nominations for that election records the same name, the birth year 1970, Karlsruhe as place of birth, the occupation “Rechtsanwalt, MdB” (lawyer and member of the Bundestag), and Oberhausen-Rheinhausen as his place of residence.

On his own website he states that he has been married since 12 April 2003 to the lawyer Diana Lux and that they have one daughter, who is not named. The Bundestag biography likewise gives no name for the spouse or the child. A commercial directory, the Deutsches Anwaltsregister, lists a lawyer named Diana Gutting at Händelweg 1, 68794 Oberhausen-Rheinhausen, and states that the entry is supplied by the register rather than offered by the lawyer. The Gutting firm’s own page of lawyers names Olav Gutting and Tino Steinle and does not list Diana Gutting.

Oberhausen-Rheinhausen is a municipality in the northwest of the district of Karlsruhe. The municipal administration says it was created in 1975, during Baden-Württemberg’s communal territorial reform, by joining the previously independent municipalities of Oberhausen and Rheinhausen; that it is the northwesternmost municipality in the district; and that the Rhine forms the western boundary of its territory. It puts the population at about 9,500, of whom about 6,500 live in Oberhausen and about 3,000 in Rheinhausen. The 2025 nomination list gives the municipality, not a street address, as his residence. Händelweg 1 in Oberhausen-Rheinhausen is the address of the Gutting tax and law firm and the address published for his constituency office; the Bundestag lists a separate office in Berlin.

A profile in his name on the firm’s website says that he grew up in his mother’s craft business and in his parents’ tax-advisory practice. The personal-data page on his website lists his hobbies as sport, languages (Spanish and English), and reading.