# Oliver Kaczmarek

# Oliver Kaczmarek

Oliver Kaczmarek (born 8 August 1970 in Kamen) is a German politician of the [Social Democratic Party of Germany](/organizations/social-democratic-party-of-germany) (SPD) and a member of the Bundestag. He represents the constituency Unna I in North Rhine-Westphalia, and the SPD parliamentary group lists him as a member in the 17th through 21st electoral terms. The 17th Bundestag opened its first sitting in Berlin on 27 October 2009.

He took the Abitur at the Carlo-Schmid-Gesamtschule in Kamen, did civilian service in an Arbeiterwohlfahrt senior centre in Unna, and completed the state examination for secondary-school teaching in history and social sciences at Ruhr University Bochum. Before his election he worked as a freelance employee in the social-welfare services of the German hard-coal industry, from 2000 as a youth-education officer for the SPD state association in North Rhine-Westphalia, and from 2003 as a policy officer in the state ministry for schools and further education, where he was appointed a senior government councillor (Oberregierungsrat) in 2009. On the night of the 2025 federal election, Westdeutscher Rundfunk described him as a social scientist and Oberregierungsrat who had been the SPD group's spokesperson for education and research since 2017.

In the 21st Bundestag, elected in the snap federal election of 23 February 2025, the SPD group made him spokesperson of its working group on research, technology, space and technology assessment on 21 May 2025. From the same day he has been a deputy member of the Committee on Education, Family, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, and since 3 June 2025 a member of the faction's executive. The group also lists him as spokesperson of its North Rhine-Westphalia state group.

The federal returning officer recorded him as elected in constituency 143, Unna I, with 49,685 first votes (31.8 percent), 9.0 percentage points below the SPD candidate's 2021 share in the constituency, ahead of Tilman Rademacher of the [Christian Democratic Union](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany) on 46,509 votes (29.8 percent). WDR reported the same first-vote percentages on election night and noted that in 2021 he had carried the then constituency 144 with 40.8 percent, ahead of Hubert Hüppe of the CDU on 25.1 percent. Second votes in Unna I in 2025 placed the CDU on 27.4 percent and the SPD on 24.7 percent, with [the Alternative](/organizations/the-alternative) for Germany on 18.8 percent. Turnout was 82.7 percent among 190,464 people eligible to vote.

He joined the SPD in 1988. The parliamentary group's biography lists him as unmarried and the father of one daughter.

## Early life and education

### Family and schooling in Kamen

Oliver Kaczmarek was born on 8 August 1970 in Kamen, a town in the Unna district. Kamen's growth was tied to hard-coal mining in the Ruhr: sinking of the Monopol colliery's Grillo 1 shaft began in April 1873, coal was being raised by 1878, and the population rose from about 3,700 in 1870 to about 10,000 by 1902 as companies built colonies for miners recruited from Silesia, Poland and Austria. The Kamen shaft plant closed in 1981, and the older Monopol workings were finished by 1983, while Kaczmarek was still a child; the winding tower on the former pit, now a technology park, is the structure still most widely associated with that history. The Ruhr University Bochum describes the Ruhr, in North Rhine-Westphalia, as a region that had factories and coal mines before it had a university.

A 2021 profile in the *Hellweger Anzeiger* placed his childhood in the Kalthof workers' settlement, in a house he shared with his parents and a brother nearly ten years older, and described him as the first person from a mining family to study at university. The same article reported that his parents would rather have seen him take a job at a savings bank. On his own site he has written that, as a child from a working-class family, social-democratic education policy opened new occupational paths for him. The Bundestag biography, compiled from members' own statements, lists him as Protestant, unmarried and the father of one child; the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) parliamentary group specifies a daughter, and the local profile described a blended family.

The SPD group's curriculum vitae names the Glückauf primary school in Kamen, using the miners' greeting that local accounts say is still routine in the town's public speeches, and the Carlo-Schmid-Gesamtschule, where he passed the Abitur. Kamen's comprehensive school, whose first Abitur cohort of 98 pupils left in 1978, had begun about nine years earlier with 13 classes on split sites in Heeren-Werve and Kamen before moving into a large new building on Gutenbergstraße, then described as one of Germany's biggest secondary schools. Soon after it opened, the school was divided on a politically balanced basis into the Carlo-Schmid school and the Hermann-Ehlers school. Kaczmarek has said that he was already politically active as a pupil representative at the Kamen Gesamtschule, and that he joined the SPD in 1988.

### Civilian service and university

The Bundestag biography places Zivildienst between his Abitur and his degree. The SPD group locates that civilian service at the senior centre of the Arbeiterwohlfahrt in Unna.

He then studied at Ruhr University Bochum for the teaching qualifications (*Lehrämter*) of Sekundarstufe II and Sekundarstufe I in history and social science, and completed the *Staatsexamen*. The published biographies do not give the year of the examination or record a subsequent teacher-training placement in a school. Teacher education at the university has run since 1965, when it began offering qualifications for *Gymnasien*, *Realschulen* and vocational schools; by 1972 history was among the subjects examined for the *Gymnasium* teaching degree, and a prorector in 2025 called teacher training one of the university's concerns from the start. The university's own account presents that campus, the first in the Ruhr, as part of a shift away from a landscape of pits and factories.

## Career before parliament

### Mining-industry social work

Biographies published by the Bundestag and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) parliamentary group list, before his party-staff and ministry posts, freelance work in the company social-welfare services of Germany's hard-coal industry (*betriebliches Sozialwesen des deutschen Steinkohlebergbaus*). The Bundestag notes that members' biographical entries rest on their own statements. Neither account names an employer or gives dates. The most specific setting he has described is a coal-industry holiday home, Haus Monopol in Willingen.

Company welfare was part of the organisation of Ruhr hard-coal mining. The Ruhrkohle AG, later RAG AG, was founded in Essen on 27 November 1968 by the consolidation of 19 mining companies, with the stated aim of a sound economic and social basis for the industry and its workforce. Haus Monopol was built in the 1950s, on the initiative of codetermination, as a rest home for young miners from the Monopol colliery in Kamen. Miners from the Unna district helped build it. It was afterwards used by miners and their families, at first those of Monopol employees.

Kaczmarek, whose father was a miner in Kamen, has said that he spent time there as a guest and as a member of staff and that, during his studies, he led leisure-education programmes in the Willingen houses for miners and their families. His own account of a 2013 visit adds that he had worked in the enlarged house as a leisure educator during school holidays. The account does not say whether that employment was the freelance activity named in the curricula, which also do not mention the Revierarbeitsgemeinschaft für kulturelle Bergmannsbetreuung. That association later joined him in inviting former miners to a 2013 visit to the house.

### Youth education and the school ministry

From 2000 the same curricula list him as a youth-education officer (*Jugendbildungsreferent*) of the SPD state association of North Rhine-Westphalia. The Bundestag biography places the post in Düsseldorf. The Young Socialists in the SPD (Jusos) are the party's youth organisation, and the curricula list his local and district Jusos offices separately from this staff appointment. Neither the Bundestag biography nor the SPD parliamentary-group biography describes him as chair of the North Rhine-Westphalia Jusos or as head of a Jusos state office.

From 2003 he was a *Referent* in the state's Ministry for Schools and Further Education (*Ministerium für Schule und Weiterbildung*), and in 2009 he was appointed to the grade of *Oberregierungsrat*. Published accounts do not identify the ministers or Land governments under whom he worked. Under the North Rhine-Westphalia School Act the ministry is the supreme school-supervision authority: it supervises the whole school system, decides matters of fundamental importance and sets statewide foundations for schools' work, with district governments as the upper tier and state school offices as the lower. The present Ministry for Schools and Education likewise describes itself as the Land's school-supervision authority, with the school offices and district governments in its remit.

He entered the Bundestag in October 2009. The parliament's disclosure of his occupation before membership lists him as a *Referent* at the ministry in Düsseldorf with a right of return (*Rückkehrrecht*). Under the Members of the Bundestag Act, the rights and duties arising from a salaried civil servant's office are suspended for the duration of the mandate, and the official may use the grade with the addition "außer Dienst" (*a. D.*). After the mandate, the official may apply to be returned to the former service relationship in an office with at least the same final basic salary.

## Roles in the Social Democratic Party

### Local and state offices

Kaczmarek joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 1988. The North Rhine-Westphalia SPD dates his offices in the Young Socialists in the SPD to 1990–1999: chair of the Juso working group in Kamen-Mitte and deputy district chair for Western Westphalia. The SPD group in the Bundestag instead lists those Juso posts as lasting until 2003. Abgeordnetenwatch’s profile, drawing on a published curriculum vitae, also gives 1990–1999. The state-party biography and the Bundestag group agree that he has been on the executive of the SPD branch in Kamen-Mitte since 1990.

The Bundestag group’s biography lists him as a member of the executive of SPD sub-district Unna since 1999 and as its chair since 2005. He gave up the chair on 29 October 2022, after 17 years, at a sub-district congress in Unna’s Stadthalle. Local reporting quoted him as saying that the Bundestag seat for Unna I needed his full attention through the stretch from the coronavirus pandemic to rising energy prices. Delegates then chose, for the first time, two equal chairs: Martina Förster-Teutenberg with 121 of 126 valid votes and Maik Luhmann with 120. The North Rhine-Westphalia SPD’s profile records the chairmanship as 2005–2022. The Bundestag group’s page, and the Bundestag biography based on members’ own information, still describe him as chair of the Unna SPD.

On the state party, the Bundestag group’s biography says he has sat on the North Rhine-Westphalia executive since 2006. A Kamen news site reported that the state congress in Bochum on 24 September 2016 re-elected him, and that his state-level work was especially concerned with education. At a retreat in Düsseldorf on 19 November 2016, the state executive chose a new Präsidium, the smaller body that carries out executive decisions and handles day-to-day political management. Beside chair Hannelore Kraft, the deputies, the general secretary and the treasurer, the new Präsidium included Hans-Willi Körfges, Apostolos Tsalastras, Gisela Walsken, Kaczmarek, Sonja Jürgens, Birgit Sippel, Stefan Kämmerling and Dörte Schall. The state executive is elected for two years. Kaczmarek was not a candidate when the Bochum congress of 23 June 2018 elected a new slate of assessors. He does not appear on the executive or Präsidium published by the state party, and the state party’s profile of him omits both bodies. The Bundestag group’s biography still says only that he has been a state-executive member since 2006.

### National executive and party conventions

Since December 2017 Kaczmarek has been an assessor (*Beisitzer*) on the SPD’s federal executive, the block of members elected alongside the party’s officers. At the ordinary congress in Berlin on 8 December 2017, 35 assessors were to be chosen and the first-round quorum was 290 votes; he received 349 and was elected in that round. On 7 December 2019 the congress again filled 24 assessor seats, with a first-round quorum of 290; he had 278 votes in the first round and 322 in the second, when a simple majority sufficed. He was returned in the first round on 11 December 2021 with 399 votes (quorum 277), on 9 December 2023 with 442 (quorum 302), and on 28 June 2025 with 490 (quorum 307). In 2021, 2023 and 2025 the congress elected 24 assessors.

He has also served on the *Tagungspräsidium*, the panel that chairs a [federal convention](/organizations/federal-convention). At the extraordinary congress on 22 April 2018 in Wiesbaden, the party executive proposed Doris Ahnen, Niels Annen, Kaczmarek, [Anke Rehlinger](/people/anke-rehlinger) and [Manuela Schwesig](/people/manuela-schwesig). The protocol records no votes against and no abstentions, and it records him presiding over the questioning of the candidates for the party chair, including Andrea Nahles. At the ordinary congress of 6–8 December 2019 in Berlin, acting chair [Malu Dreyer](/people/malu-dreyer) proposed Niels Annen, Martin Dulig, Kaczmarek, Gabriele Lösekrug-Möller, Anke Rehlinger and Johanna Uekermann. Delegates adopted the slate by show of cards, and the protocol records Kaczmarek chairing stretches of the debate. The same congress re-elected him as an assessor.

### The Parliamentary Left

The Parliamentary Left (*Parlamentarische Linke*) is a current inside the SPD Bundestag group, not a post in the party organization. The Federal Agency for Civic Education describes such factions as anchored in the parliamentary group, with offshoots in the wider party. In that account the Seeheimer Kreis, dating from the mid-1970s, is the grouping of the party right; the Parliamentary Left organizes the left wing; and the Netzwerk Berlin, formed in 1998 by younger members of parliament, places itself in the center while standing relatively close to the Seeheimers on policy. The Parliamentary Left’s own history traces the current to a “Gruppe der 16. Etage” of mostly young SPD members of the Bundestag in October 1969, the Leverkusener Kreis after the 1972 election, and the present name from 1980. It describes itself as the organized wing of left-wing members of the group, set up to press debates and proposals inside the group and beyond it.

Its website names three equal spokespersons, [Wiebke Esdar](/people/wiebke-esdar), Dagmar Schmidt and [Carmen Wegge](/people/carmen-wegge), and Hakan Demir as treasurer. Kaczmarek is listed in the *Leitungskreis*, the steering circle, with other members of the Bundestag group, and not among the spokespersons.

## Bundestag elections in Unna I

### The constituency

Unna I is a Bundestag constituency in the district of Unna, North Rhine-Westphalia. At the election of 23 February 2025 it was numbered 143 and comprised Bergkamen, Bönen, Fröndenberg/Ruhr, Holzwickede, Kamen, Schwerte and Unna. Lünen, Selm and Werne, together with the independent city of Hamm, form the neighbouring constituency Hamm – Unna II. Official structure data give Unna I an area of 347.3 square kilometres and a population of 253,700 at the end of 2023.

The same seven municipalities made up the seat when it was numbered 144 in 2013, 2017 and 2021. In 2013 the Unna district election committee described constituency 144 as the former constituency 145 and listed those towns, with Lünen, Selm and Werne again in Hamm – Unna II. The move from 144 to 143 in 2025 was a statewide renumbering; constituency names in North Rhine-Westphalia did not change. Eligible voters fell from 202,933 in 2009 to 190,464 in 2025.

### Direct mandates, 2009–2021

On 27 September 2009 Oliver Kaczmarek, candidate of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in constituency 145, won 62,638 first votes, 42.6 percent of 147,152 valid first votes. Turnout was 73.4 percent, 6.8 points below 2005. Hubert Hüppe of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) received 47,702 votes (32.4 percent). Friedrich Ostendorff (Alliance 90/[The Greens](/organizations/the-greens)) took 12,737 (8.7 percent), Walter Wendt-Kleinberg ([The Left](/organizations/the-left-slovenia)) 12,451 (8.5 percent) and Gero Heinrich Bangerter (FDP) 9,418 (6.4 percent). Second votes were SPD 37.6 percent (down 12.7 points), CDU 26.2, FDP 12.1, The Left 9.4 and the Greens 9.3.

On 22 September 2013, in constituency 144, Kaczmarek rose to 46.7 percent (68,287 votes), 4.1 points above 2009 and his highest first-vote share from 2009 to 2021. Hüppe, again the CDU candidate, received 52,433 votes (35.8 percent). Malte Johannes Spitz (Greens) had 8,242 (5.6 percent) and Wendt-Kleinberg 7,749 (5.3 percent). Turnout was 74.0 percent of 200,068 eligible voters. Second votes put the SPD on 40.9 percent and the CDU on 31.9; the Greens had 7.9 percent, The Left 6.2, the FDP 4.0 and the Alternative for Germany (AfD), with no constituency candidate, 3.8.

On 24 September 2017 Kaczmarek’s share fell to 38.8 percent (58,019 votes), 7.8 points below 2013, and Hüppe’s to 31.8 percent (47,452). Andreas Handt (AfD) was third with 13,558 votes (9.1 percent). Michael Sacher (Greens) and Heike Schaumann (FDP) each took 6.4 percent, and Ruth Tietz (The Left) 5.4 percent (8,048 votes). Turnout was 76.2 percent of 197,873 eligible voters. Second votes were more divided: SPD 33.6 percent (down 7.4 points), CDU 27.2, FDP 11.5, AfD 9.8, and the Greens and The Left 6.9 each.

On 26 September 2021 Kaczmarek received 40.8 percent (59,869 votes), up 2.0 points, while Hüppe fell to 25.1 percent (36,810), a gap of 23,059 votes. Sacher rose to 13.9 percent (20,340), Ulrich Lehmann (AfD) took 8.0 percent (11,736), Suat Gülden (FDP) 6.2 percent (9,137) and Andreas Meier (The Left) 3.2 percent (4,731). Turnout was 76.1 percent of 194,493 eligible voters. Second votes gave the SPD 36.4 percent (up 2.8 points), the CDU 21.8 (down 5.4), the Greens 13.6 (up 6.8), the FDP 10.4, the AfD 7.8 and The Left 3.5.

### The 2025 election

The 2025 federal election applied Zweitstimmendeckung: a party candidate who leads a constituency is seated only if that seat is also covered by the party’s second votes. In constituency 143, 157,467 of 190,464 eligible voters took part, a turnout of 82.7 percent, 6.5 points above 2021.

Of 156,059 valid first votes, Kaczmarek received 49,685 (31.8 percent), down 9.0 points, and was recorded as elected in the constituency. The CDU candidate, Dr Tilman Rademacher, received 46,509 (29.8 percent, up 4.7 points). The margin was 3,176 votes, or 2.0 percentage points, against 23,059 in 2021. Friederike Christine Hagelstein (AfD) took 29,070 (18.6 percent, up 10.6 points), the largest first-vote swing on the ballot. Sacher had 14,059 (9.0 percent, down 4.9), Oliver Christian Schröder (The Left) 9,491 (6.1), Benjamin Lehmkühler (FDP) 3,974 (2.5), Christina Lea Emler (Volt) 1,948 (1.2) and Sebastian Rühling ([Bündnis Deutschland](/organizations/bundnis-deutschland)) 1,323 (0.8).

Second votes put the CDU ahead of the SPD: 42,845 (27.4 percent, up 5.6 points) to 38,638 (24.7 percent, down 11.7). The AfD followed with 29,405 (18.8 percent, up 11.0), the Greens with 16,276 (10.4), The Left with 11,269 (7.2), Bündnis [Sahra Wagenknecht](/people/sahra-wagenknecht) with 6,286 (4.0) and the FDP with 5,437 (3.5, down 6.9). Both Kaczmarek’s first-vote share and his lead over the CDU were the lowest of his direct mandates since 2009.

## Parliamentary committees and offices

### Education and research committees through 2025

Kaczmarek entered the Bundestag in 2009 for the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). The biography the parliament posted in December 2009 listed him as an ordinary member of the Petitions Committee and of the Committee on the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, and as a deputy member of the Committee on Labour and Social Affairs and of the Committee on Education, Research and Technology Assessment. A capture of the same page in June 2011 no longer named the environment or labour committees. The education, research and technology-assessment committee appeared immediately before the deputy-member heading, and that heading covered the Petitions Committee and the Parliamentary Advisory Council on Sustainable Development. By May 2012, and still in a September 2013 capture, the biography named the education committee and deputy membership of the Petitions Committee only.

The archived biography for the 18th Bundestag (2013–2017) records ordinary membership of the Committee on Education, Research and Technology Assessment and deputy membership of the labour and social affairs committee and of the Petitions Committee. It does not list an Obmann office. The archive for the 19th Bundestag (2017–2021) keeps those three assignments and adds Obmann of the education, research and technology-assessment committee. On 30 January 2018 the SPD Bundestag group elected its working-group spokespersons and named Kaczmarek for education and research.

For the 20th Bundestag (2021–2025) the archived biography lists ordinary membership and the Obmann office on that education committee, and deputy membership only of the Committee on Labour and Social Affairs. On 16 December 2021 the group again named him spokesperson of the education and research working group. In the Bundestag glossary, an Obmann or Obfrau is the member each parliamentary group names in a committee as the main contact for that group’s leadership. Each group has one in every committee. Obleute help set the group’s line, state its interests, agree agendas and plan the work, and keep the group informed of the detail.

### The 21st Bundestag

In the 21st Bundestag the old education-and-research committee was split. The current biography lists Kaczmarek as an ordinary member, and separately as Obmann, of the Committee on Research, Technology, Space and Technology Assessment, and as a deputy member of the Committee on Education, Family, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth. The SPD group’s profile dates both committee places, and his role as spokesperson of the matching research working group, from 21 May 2025. It also lists him from that day as a deputy member of the group’s working group on education, family, senior citizens, women and youth.

The group’s notice of 20 May 2025 calls the election the choice of “Sprecherinnen und Sprecher (Obleute)” for the committee working groups. It assigns research, technology, space and technology assessment to Kaczmarek, and education, family, senior citizens, women and youth to [Jasmina Hostert](/people/jasmina-hostert). At the constitutive meeting on 21 May 2025 the members elected Karl Lauterbach (SPD), whom the parliament’s report describes as the former federal health minister, as chair. The same report gives the committee 30 members: ten from the CDU/CSU, seven from the Alternative for Germany, six from the SPD (Kaczmarek, Lauterbach, [Holger Mann](/people/holger-mann), [Lina Seitzl](/people/lina-seitzl), [Carolin Wagner](/people/carolin-wagner) and [Maja Wallstein](/people/maja-wallstein)), four from Alliance 90/The Greens and three from [Die Linke](/organizations/die-linke). “Obmann” on the Bundestag membership list is the SPD coordinator in that committee, the office the group calls spokesperson of its working group, and not the chair.

The free-text biography on Kaczmarek’s Bundestag page, which the parliament says rests on members’ own statements, still calls him the SPD group’s education and research spokesperson and still numbers his constituency 144. The structured list of offices on that page has been updated. That page gives a Berlin office at Deutscher Bundestag, Platz der Republik 1, 11011 Berlin, and a constituency office at Friedrich-Ebert-Straße 61, 59425 Unna. The same Berlin address is printed on the biographies for the 18th, 19th and 20th terms and on the December 2009 page. The faction profile lists his seat as Unna I (143) and names Hagen–Ennepe-Ruhr-Kreis I (137) as a betreuter Wahlkreis, an additional constituency carried on that profile. The 18th, 19th and 20th biographies number Unna I as constituency 144.

### Faction board and the North Rhine-Westphalia group

On 3 June 2025 the SPD Bundestag group elected 25 members of its extended executive, the erweiterter Fraktionsvorstand, and Kaczmarek was among them. The group’s Landesgruppen page, dated 30 March 2026, names Dr. Wiebke Esdar and Oliver Kaczmarek jointly as speakers of the North Rhine-Westphalia group and gives that group 31 members. His own faction profile uses the title Sprecher of the Landesgruppe Nordrhein-Westfalen and gives no start date.

## Education, training and student support

The SPD Bundestag group elected Kaczmarek spokesperson for education and research on 30 January 2018. He still held that brief in 2024, through most of the 19th and 20th legislative periods.

### Student finance

In the first COVID-19 wave the SPD argued for opening BAföG to students who had lost jobs or parental support, and did not prevail. On 30 April 2020 education minister [Anja Karliczek](/people/anja-karliczek) announced interest-free KfW bridging loans of up to 650 euros a month, for at most one year and initially until March 2021, plus 100 million euros for emergency funds at the Studierendenwerke. Kaczmarek said opening BAföG would have been desirable but had failed on the minister's "ideological resistance", while noting that his party would still back the package. The Deutsches Studentenwerk, the fzs and the GEW criticised debt that could exceed 7,000 euros. Kai Gehring of Alliance 90/The Greens called it a failure to assist, FDP spokesperson Jens Brandenburg a duplicate of the KfW loan, and CDU spokesperson Stefan Kaufmann a misuse of the crisis.

In May 2024 *Der Spiegel* reported that [Bettina Stark-Watzinger](/people/bettina-stark-watzinger) (FDP) planned a third BAföG amendment of the term without raising the *Bedarfssätze*, last increased by 5.75 percent for winter semester 2022/23. Kaczmarek said a zero round was "unacceptable" for the SPD group: if parental allowances rose, basic need and the housing supplement had to rise too. He opposed a higher cap on repayment, arguing that fear of debt already deterred applications. CDU deputy group chair Nadine Schön said the draft ignored rising rents, food and energy costs.

The coalition then agreed a 5 percent rise. Tagesschau reported on 5 June 2024 that the basic student allowance would go from 452 to 475 euros and the housing lump sum, for those not living with their parents, from 360 to 380 euros, with parental allowances up 5.25 percent. A higher minimum repayment instalment was dropped, and the ceiling on repayable debt stayed at 10,010 euros. Kaczmarek told dpa the SPD group had forced the deal and averted the freeze. The 29th amending act, also introducing a non-repayable 1,000-euro study-start grant and one extra semester without a stated reason, took effect on 25 July 2024; the government said the maximum award rose from 934 to 992 euros. Matthias Anbuhl of the Deutsches Studierendenwerk called five percent better than nothing but "still too weak".

### Schools, the Digital Pact and Startchancen

The 2021 coalition agreement promised Startchancen for more than 4,000 general and vocational schools with many socially disadvantaged pupils. The federal education ministry later described a ten-year programme from school year 2024/25, with federation and Länder each putting up to one billion euros a year — about 20 billion euros — into some 4,000 schools and more than one million pupils. Money follows social conditions, especially poverty and migration history, with an emphasis on primary schools as well as secondary and vocational schools. Three pillars cover learning spaces, school-level "opportunity budgets", and staff for multi-professional teams. The aim is to halve, at participating schools, the number of pupils missing minimum standards in mathematics and German.

CORRECTIV.Lokal reported in September 2024 that it began with 2,125 schools and that several Länder counted existing programmes toward their share: about 80 million of nearly 100 million euros in Lower Saxony's first year, and about three quarters of Saarland's 11 million. Michael Wrase of the WZB called that "Augenwischerei", said three to four billion euros a year were needed against educational poverty, and noted that 40 percent of federal money went into buildings. Kai Maaz, leading the scientific monitoring at the Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education, said the sum was "not all fresh" but could be a paradigm shift if old measures were integrated, not relabelled.

The first Digital Pact for Schools (2019–2024) left the Länder with 10 percent of the cost, was raised by 1.5 billion euros in the pandemic, and like its successor began at five billion euros. The 2021 agreement had promised a less bureaucratic Digital Pact 2.0. A federal-Länder deal followed only in December 2025: five billion euros for 2026–2030, split equally, with most of the federal half from the special fund for infrastructure and climate neutrality. Maintenance may now be funded, and up to 250 million euros go to research on digital teaching, but the money is still time-limited. Rhineland-Palatinate education minister [Sven Teuber](/people/sven-teuber) (SPD) had wanted a permanent stream; heise online wrote that another funding gap after expiry looked likely.

### Coalition negotiations

In the autumn 2021 talks, Kaczmarek sat on SPD working group 13, "Education and opportunities for all", with Ties Rabe and [Stefanie Hubig](/people/stefanie-hubig). Andreas Stoch, not Kaczmarek, was to lead the SPD side. *Spiegel* reported promises of more parent-independent BAföG and higher rates, especially for housing, plus Startchancen, Digital Pact 2.0, cooperation across levels of government, and talks on changing the Basic Law if needed. GEW chair Maike Finnern said finance stayed vague under the debt brake; the VBE said plans to recruit staff were missing; the student-services body called a funded BAföG reform overdue.

After the February 2025 election the SPD named Kaczmarek to lead its side of working group 8, "Education, research and innovation", with Hubig as deputy, in talks with the CDU and the CSU. He told KamenWeb the group would specify fairer chances, a return of language-support nurseries, continuation of Startchancen and early vocational orientation. The agreement *Verantwortung für Deutschland* says Startchancen should be run with less bureaucracy, extended to more schools and to nurseries, and used as a model for multi-professional work. It promises a new Digital Pact for infrastructure, administration, teacher education, AI-supported learning and devices for children in need. On BAföG it sets one rise in the housing allowance, to 440 euros a month from winter semester 2026/27, a two-step link of the student basic allowance to basic social security in 2027/28 and 2028/29, and an unchanged loan cap.

## Research, technology and space policy

### Higher education and research funding

Since 21 May 2025 Kaczmarek has been spokesperson, and a full member, of the SPD Bundestag group's working group on research, technology, space and technology assessment.

His recorded line on competitive university funding predates that role. In a February 2014 reply on Abgeordnetenwatch he described the Excellence Initiative as incentives for top-level research and for Germany's competitiveness, not as a scheme for awarding titles. He cited joint federal and Länder sums of €1.9 billion for 2005–2012 and a further €2.7 billion for 2010–2017, and said the effects still had to be tested: an external evaluation was planned for 2015, with the report due in 2016, after which parliament would decide whether and how the programme should continue.

On 3 June 2016, debating a standing excellence strategy, he rejected a contrast between excellence funding and either good teaching or broad support. Research-oriented teaching, he said, was a funding condition. He argued for breadth at the top—"we have more to offer than Harvard"—rather than fewer than the eight to eleven peak sites then discussed. Continuing excellence funding, he said, also meant attending to base funding (*Grundfinanzierung*): money should stay in the system, the pacts should be developed, and Higher Education Pact funds made permanent in the next electoral term.

### The Hightech Agenda and space

On 30 July 2025 the cabinet of the CDU/CSU–SPD coalition adopted the Hightech Agenda Deutschland, described by the research ministry as a project from the coalition agreement. Transmitted to the Bundestag that day and published as Drucksache 21/1100, it focuses first on six key technologies—artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, microelectronics, biotechnology, fusion and climate-neutral energy generation, and technologies for climate-neutral mobility—and on five strategic research fields, including aerospace, health, security and defence, marine, climate and sustainability research, and the humanities and social sciences. Roadmaps were to start in autumn 2025.

On 1 August 2025 the ministry said it would invest at least €18 billion in the agenda by 2029: about €5.5 billion from the special fund for infrastructure and climate neutrality, just under €4.5 billion from the Climate and Transformation Fund, and about €2 billion a year from the core research budget. The same note on the 2026 draft put about €550 million toward national space programmes and about €1.1 billion toward the European Space Agency, after space had moved into the research ministry from the economy ministry.

On 13 November 2025 the Bundestag debated the paper and referred it to committee, led by the committee on research, technology, space and technology assessment. For the SPD, Kaczmarek called science indispensable to security and European sovereignty, to innovative jobs and to [social cohesion](/drivers/social-cohesion), and speed the agenda's principle. He wanted funding that joins fields—health technology, medical technology and AI in medicine was his example—and that brings universities, non-university institutes and firms together. The SPD, he said, still wanted a transfer tool for smaller firms ("Initiative Forschung & Anwendung"), an *Innovationsfreiheitsgesetz*, and better conditions for researchers.

In that debate [Andrea Lübcke](/people/andrea-lubcke) of Alliance 90/The Greens said funds meant for microelectronics were being used to plug budget holes, including road building, and that €2.45 billion planned for fusion was being spread across approaches whose timing and electricity cost were unknown. [Ayse Asar](/people/ayse-asar), also of the Greens, said that after launches in July and October little was concrete and it was unclear who would decide. [Christoph Birghan](/people/christoph-birghan) of the AfD said innovation could not be decreed. In January 2026, answering Die Linke on an alleged €2.52 billion shift inside the special fund from microelectronics toward road building, the government said the agenda's overall financing was secured.

The German Aerospace Center reported a visit by Kaczmarek to its Cologne site on 22 July 2025, covering space-experiment facilities, the:envihab aerospace-medicine unit, the LUNA lunar analogue run with ESA, and the school lab.

### Technology assessment and health research

The committee also steers parliamentary technology assessment. The Office of Technology Assessment at the [German Bundestag](/organizations/german-bundestag) analyses scientific and technical developments and their effects on society. A rapporteur group—one member from each parliamentary group, meeting monthly in sitting weeks and working by consensus—prepares decisions on new studies, commissions and final reports. TAB presented itself to the new committee on 4 June 2025; the group met on 12 September 2025, with Kaczmarek as the SPD member alongside the chair, Karl Lauterbach.

On 14 November 2025 the SPD group said the budget committee had cleared up to €50 million a year for ten years—up to half a billion euros—for research on Long Covid, ME/CFS and other post-infectious diseases. It said the parliamentary push rested on a concept by Lauterbach and would fund networks, interdisciplinary studies and clinical projects. Rapporteur [Svenja Schulze](/people/svenja-schulze) said the 2026 sum was more than three times what had first been planned; Kaczmarek called the decade a first step in a strengthening of health research that the SPD had treated as a priority in the coalition talks. The same day *Deutsches Ärzteblatt*, citing the ministry, reported about €500 million from 2026 over ten years, linked to the budget-conciliation sitting, and quoted Research Minister Dorothee Bär on a long-term strategy for causes, mechanisms and care.

## Civic offices, disclosures and public profile

### Welfare, unions and science boards

On 17 February 2024 about 50 delegates from the district associations of Hamm, Unna and Warendorf, meeting in the Stadthalle in Kamen, unanimously elected Oliver Kaczmarek chair of the Arbeiterwohlfahrt (AWO) Unterbezirk Ruhr-Lippe-Ems. He succeeded Wolfram Kuschke, who had taken the chair in 2021 and did not stand again; the conference made Kuschke an honorary chair. On its own site the association gives its scale as about 2,700 employees in more than 170 facilities in Unna, Warendorf and Hamm, and more than 3,700 members in 32 local groups.

The Bundestag register also lists him as an assessor on the board of AWO Bezirk Westliches Westfalen and, marked honorary, as a deputy supervisory-board member of three AWO companies in Dortmund and as a supervisory-board member of Umwelt-Werkstatt gGmbH in Lünen.

The SPD group’s biography states that the memberships it prints produce no side income. They are the boards of trustees of Stiftung Lesen, the Deutsches Studentenwerk, the Evangelisches Studienwerk and the Evangelische Perthes-Stiftung; the advisory boards of the Informations- und Dokumentationszentrum für Antirassismusarbeit (IDA) and of AIDS-Hilfe Kreis Unna; the board of trustees of the Internationales Bildungs- und Begegnungswerk (IBB) in Dortmund; and membership of ver.di, the AWO, Förderverein Monopol 2000, the Naturfreunde and the Verein für Demokratie und Völkerverständigung. The Bundestag biography, from members’ own information, adds IG BCE, the DLRG, Gegen Vergessen – Für Demokratie and a seat in the senate of the Leibniz Association. That register marks as honorary the Leibniz seat, the Stiftung Lesen, Perthes, Evangelisches Studienwerk and IBB trusteeships, the board of the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology in Dortmund, and the German Adult Education Association’s continuing-education advisory board.

The FernUniversität in Hagen named him, on 28 September 2022, in the core group of its reconstituted parliamentary advisory board, chaired by Kai Gehring; the register calls the seat honorary. He chaired the German–Belarusian parliamentary group in the 18th electoral term and was a deputy chair in the 19th; the deutsch-belarusische gesellschaft called him its deputy chair at the 2017 Minsk Forum, though its current imprint does not list him on the representative board. In April 2021 the SPD group had him open an online meeting from the Unna office on German aid in Belarus after the Chernobyl disaster, with a [Friedrich Ebert Foundation](/organizations/friedrich-ebert-foundation) briefing on the political situation and a talk on Belarusian civil society.

### Disclosures and constituency work

Under sections 45 onwards of the Members of the Bundestag Act, outside posts must be notified, and income above 1,000 euro a month or 3,000 euro a year is published to the cent. The label “honorary” is added only on request, and only if a post brings no income beyond expense reimbursement. Kaczmarek’s page lists the offices above, most marked honorary, and has no category of paid outside work and no euro sums. It does record his earlier post in the North Rhine-Westphalia school ministry, with a right to return, plus a seat on the advisory board of Sparkasse Dortmund and the AWO district assessorship, the last two without the honorary label.

Parliamentwatch (abgeordnetenwatch.de) records 15 of 16 questions on his profile as answered. Its side-job entries for the 2025–2029 mandate repeat the Bundestag list and carry no income level. Constituency work includes “Roter Rucksack” walks. In October 2026 Rundblick Unna reprinted his office’s account of one through Bönen, led by councillor Thomas Köster past the Königsborn III/IV winding tower, with the backpack standing for questions carried back to Berlin. The Bundestag biography, which the parliament says rests on members’ own information, describes him as Protestant, unmarried and the father of one child; the SPD group page specifies a daughter.

### Reception

National pieces quote him on education finance more often than they profile him. In May 2024 [Der Spiegel](/organizations/der-spiegel) reported his description of a planned BAföG reform without higher rates as an unacceptable “Nullrunde.” In July 2026 the Süddeutsche Zeitung quoted him on a later reform, whose housing supplement had been delayed by half a year, as meaning more money, more reliability and less bureaucracy for students. In August 2020 the *Hellweger Anzeiger* reported a dispute with Holzwickede mayor Ulrike Drossel over a planned station underpass: the paper wrote that the “Durchstich” appeared to have collapsed and asked who had known when, while Kaczmarek rejected what the headline called dishonest accusations.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/oliver-kaczmarek