# Paula Piechotta

# Paula Piechotta

Paula Piechotta (born 19 September 1986 in Gera, Thuringia) is a German specialist in radiology and a politician of Alliance 90/[The Greens](/organizations/the-greens). She has been a member of the Bundestag since 2021, elected on the state list of Saxony. She was the Green candidate in Leipzig II, numbered constituency 153 in the 20th Bundestag and constituency 152 in the 21st.

According to the biography she supplied to the Bundestag, she attended the state specialist music school in Weimar from 1999 to 2006, then studied human medicine from 2006 to 2014 and molecular medicine (M.Sc.) from 2011 to 2015 at the University of Jena, passed the second state medical examination in 2014 and received her doctorate in 2015. The same account says she trained in radiology from 2015 to 2020 at University Hospital Heidelberg and Leipzig University Hospital, worked there as a specialist in 2020 and 2021, and has practised since 2022 at MedVZ Leipzig, the hospital's medical care centre. Bundestag disclosures record paid radiology work at that centre from 1 April 2022. She joined the Greens in 2010, and before her mandate she was a policy adviser to the Green group in the Saxon Landtag.

In the 20th electoral term she was a full member of the Budget Committee and of the Audit Committee, where she was her group's lead member, and a deputy member of the Health Committee and of the Committee on Education, Research and Technology Assessment. In the 21st term the Bundestag lists her as a full member of the Budget Committee, the Audit Committee, the federal financing body (Bundesfinanzierungsgremium) and the coronavirus enquete commission, as lead member of both the Audit Committee and the enquete, as a deputy on the Health and Defence committees, and as deputy chair of the German–Japanese Parliamentary Group.

At the 2021 federal election in Leipzig II, [Die Linke](/organizations/die-linke) took the direct mandate with 22.8 percent of first votes and the Greens placed second with 18.4 percent; on second votes the Greens led the constituency with 21.3 percent, and turnout was 78.2 percent. In 2025 [Sören Pellmann](/people/soren-pellmann) of Die Linke won the direct mandate with 36.8 percent of first votes, while the Green first-vote share was 10.2 percent and the second-vote share 16.2 percent, on a turnout of 84.2 percent. Piechotta entered the Bundestag in both terms through the Saxon list. Reporting in 2025 presented her as a prominent Green critic of protective-mask contracts signed while Jens Spahn of the [Christian Democratic Union](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany) was health minister during the [COVID-19 pandemic](/drivers/covid-19-pandemic); she relied on a report by special investigator Margaretha Sudhof, and Spahn said a Bundestag committee hearing had disposed of most of the allegations against him. She sat on the Leipzig city council for the southern district from 2024 until 25 June 2025, as the Green group's spokesperson on economic policy, and resigned citing narrow majorities and conflicting sitting days in Leipzig and Berlin; the teacher Anna-Lisa Möbius succeeded her.

## Early life and education

### Childhood and schooling

Paula Louise Piechotta was born on 19 September 1986 in Gera. The curriculum vitae printed with her medical dissertation places her early schooling in Schmölln: a state primary school from 1993 to 1997 and the state Gymnasium [Roman Herzog](/people/roman-herzog) from 1997 to 1999. A September 2014 profile in the *Ostthüringer Zeitung*, written when she was a candidate for the Thuringian state parliament, likewise referred to childhood years in Schmölln.

From 1999 to 2006 she attended the Musikgymnasium Schloss Belvedere in Weimar, which that vitae describes as a state boarding school. The Bundestag biography, compiled from members’ own information, lists the same years as the Staatliche Spezialschule für Musik in Weimar. The school at Schloss Belvedere is a state *Spezialgymnasium* maintained by the Thuringian ministry of education. A 2022 photo caption in the *Thüringische Landeszeitung* states that she took her Abitur at the Musikgymnasium Belvedere.

In an essay published on her website in January 2017, Piechotta identified herself as a pastor’s daughter and wrote that she had left the church. She recalled a visit, as a child in the early 1990s, to an elderly member of a parish council who moved a carpet aside to show a trapdoor used to hide Stasi files, including a file on her father about meetings of the Junge Gemeinde.

### University studies

Piechotta studied human medicine at the University of Jena from October 2006 to May 2014. The Bundestag biography dates that course from 2006 to 2014 and records the second state examination in human medicine in 2014. Alongside medicine she took a master’s degree in molecular medicine at the same university. The biography gives the M.Sc. programme as 2011 to 2015; the curriculum vitae dated 23 June 2014, while the degree was still unfinished, lists it as underway since October 2012. In the dissertation acknowledgement she credited scholarships from the IZKF at Jena University Hospital and from the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes, which she named in English as the German National Academic Foundation, with making the laboratory work possible.

### Doctorate

The doctorate is a Dr. med. in physiology rather than in radiology. The thesis, *The TPenA Binding Site in TREK-1 Channels*, was submitted to the medical faculty in Jena. The statutory declaration is dated 23 June 2014 in Jena, and the public defence took place on 5 May 2015. The reviewers were Thomas Zimmer of the Institute of Physiology II at the university, Thomas Baukrowitz of the Institute of Physiology, and Ralf Mrowka of the Department of Internal Medicine III at Jena University Hospital. She named Baukrowitz as her supervisor and thanked Klaus Benndorf for the opportunity to work in his institute.

The study concerns two-pore-domain potassium (K2P) channels and, in particular, TREK-1, a background potassium channel regulated by pH, lipids, pressure, temperature and voltage and discussed in the thesis in connection with depression, epilepsy and anaesthesia. Using site-directed mutagenesis and inside-out giant-patch recordings, Piechotta described derivatives of tetraethylammonium with longer alkyl chains—TnA compounds, including tetrapentylammonium (TPenA)—as pore blockers of TREK-1 and identified their binding site. The thesis argues that these molecules act as open-channel blockers; that, unlike most potassium channels, TREK-1 has no cytosolic gate and is constitutively open on the intracellular side; and that gating instead lies at or within the selectivity filter. The last point rests on mutations near the filter, which changed pH sensitivity, and on the effect of replacing the permeant potassium ion with rubidium or thallium. The dissertation states that the results had already been published in 2011 in *The EMBO Journal* as “The pore structure and gating mechanism of K2P channels,” with Piechotta as first author.

## Medical career and research

### Specialist training

From 2015 to 2020 Piechotta completed specialist training in radiology (*Facharztweiterbildung*) at University Hospital Heidelberg and Leipzig University Hospital. The Bundestag biography, which the parliament states rests on members' own information, places that training after a second state examination in human medicine in 2014 and a doctorate in 2015. It does not say how the five years were divided between the hospitals. Papers from 2018 list her in the Department of Neuroradiology at the Heidelberg medical center.

### Clinical practice

From 2020 to 2021 she worked as a *Fachärztin für Radiologie* at Leipzig University Hospital.

*Main entrance of Leipzig University Hospital.*

In September 2022 the Bundestag newspaper *Das Parlament* reported that she still practised at the Leipzig university hospital twice a month, which she described as a way to stay clinically current and personally independent of politics. The paid side activity registered with the Bundestag is work as a radiologist for MedVZ Medizinisches Versorgungszentrum am Universitätsklinikum Leipzig gemeinnützige GmbH. The hospital describes that gGmbH as a wholly owned subsidiary of Universitätsklinikum Leipzig AöR, set up in 2007.

The archived biography for the 20th electoral period dates the post from 1 April 2022, with published gross monthly pay of €620.80 from then, €641.60 from 18 January 2024, and €667.26 from 1 August 2024. The current disclosure lists €667.26 a month gross through 31 October 2025 and €740.48 from 1 January 2026. Her own transparency page states that she had worked full-time at the university hospital until her election, and that the MedVZ contract covers two working days a month, fitted around Bundestag sittings, with a pause in November and December 2025. The pre-mandate hospital post is recorded with the note *Kündigungsschutz*. Bundestag rules require members to say whether a right to return, or dismissal protection under section 2(3) of the Members of the Bundestag Act, applies. The same self-reported biography lists membership of the Deutsche Röntgengesellschaft and the Marburger Bund.

### Scientific publications

A PubMed search for "Piechotta PL" returns five papers. The earliest is outside radiology: a 2011 article in *The EMBO Journal*, "The pore structure and gating mechanism of K2P channels." Paula L. Piechotta, of the Institute of Physiology II at Jena University Hospital, is one of four authors marked as contributing equally and is listed first. Quaternary ammonium ions blocked the two-pore-domain potassium channel TREK-1 at a deep site in the pore even before activation by intracellular pH or pressure. They concluded that this channel's bundle-crossing gate stays open, unlike in most other potassium channels, and that activation occurs at or near the selectivity filter. The Thuringian University and State Library holds her 2015 medical dissertation, *The TPenA Binding Site in TREK-1 Channels*, on the tetrapentylammonium blocker used in that study; the Bundestag biography dates the doctorate to the same year.

As first author in *Investigative Radiology* (2018), she reported a test-retest study of 55 patients with contrast-enhancing intra-axial brain tumors. After one dose of a macrocyclic gadolinium chelate, contrast-enhancing volume on 3-tesla MRI was a median 32 percent larger when the T1-weighted scan was acquired at a median of 16.27 minutes rather than 6.72 minutes, and the authors warned that late enhancement can fall outside the usual four-to-eight-minute window. A 2018 *Neuro-Oncology* paper, again listing her at Heidelberg neuroradiology, found that a radiomic signature from multiparametric MRI of 181 patients with newly diagnosed glioblastoma improved prediction of progression-free and overall survival beyond the molecular, clinical, and standard imaging factors tested.

Another of the five is a 2022 *RöFo* phantom study of CT-guided puncture by radiology residents, listing her with the Leipzig diagnostic and interventional radiology department. In 2023 she co-authored an *Insights into Imaging* paper, again from that Leipzig department, on MRI in patients with cochlear implants. Of 66 attempted examinations, 48 (72.7 percent) were completed; the magnet dislocated and needed surgical replacement in four cases (6.1 percent), three of them outside the head, and 13 scans were stopped for pain. The authors reported that such complications were common, at least with fixed-magnet models, even when precautions and manufacturer instructions were followed.

## Party activity before the Bundestag

### Joining the Greens

Piechotta has said that, while studying medicine in Jena, she was in the Green Youth (Grüne Jugend), whose work then consisted largely of summer weekend counter-demonstrations in small towns on the edge of Thuringia. Her archived Bundestag biography, which the parliament says rests on members' own information, records membership of Alliance 90/The Greens since 2010. In an application of 19 October 2020 to the Leipzig district association, seeking a vote on the 2021 Bundestag list, she also listed herself as state spokesperson of the Thuringian Green Youth from 2010 to 2012, a member of the federal working group on social policy and health from 2011 to 2013, and a member of the Jena city executive from 2011 to 2013. Separately, the state delegates' conference in Erfurt on 29–30 November 2013 elected her an assessor on an enlarged Thuringian executive; Stephanie Erben and Dieter Lauinger were the state spokespersons.

### State election candidacies

At the election to the Landtag of Thuringia on 14 September 2014, she was the Green candidate in constituency 43, Altenburger Land I. The district returning officer recorded 706 votes for her out of 19,768 valid constituency votes; Simone Schulze of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) was elected. Statewide the Greens received 5.7 percent of the list vote and six seats, all from the list. The list adopted in November 2013, headed by Anja Siegesmund and Dirk Adams, did not include Piechotta among the leading places announced, and she did not enter the Landtag.

In March 2019 the Leipzig district association nominated her, with 88 percent at a members' meeting, for constituency 28 (Leipzig South) in the Saxon state election. On 1 September she received 8,655 direct votes (18.9 percent), third behind Juliane Nagel of Die Linke (27.4 percent) and Karsten Albrecht of the CDU (21.1 percent). Green list votes in the constituency were 21.5 percent. Across Saxony the Greens took 8.6 percent of the list vote and 12 of 119 seats. Nagel won the constituency, and Piechotta did not enter the Landtag of Saxony.

### Coalition negotiations and staff work

After the Thuringian election, Die Linke, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Greens signed an agreement for the state's first red-red-green government, with [Bodo Ramelow](/people/bodo-ramelow) to be elected minister-president. [Deutsche Welle](/organizations/deutsche-welle) reported the signing on 4 December 2014 and named Lauinger among the Green leaders present. Piechotta's 2020 application states that she took part in those talks on health, drug policy and nursing care. She was an assessor and an unsuccessful candidate, not a Landtag member, and accounts of the signing do not list her as a lead negotiator.

On 12 October 2019 the Saxon Greens met in Leipzig to decide whether exploratory talks with the CDU and the SPD should become formal negotiations; the other majority then discussed was a CDU arrangement with [the Alternative](/organizations/the-alternative) for Germany. *nd* reported that Piechotta said papers from difficult talks in other states had already sketched compromises, whereas the Saxon text only listed disagreements, and the *Leipziger Zeitung* described her as sceptical of governing with the CDU and the SPD. Delegates authorised negotiations anyway. On 20 December 2019 the three parties signed the Kenya-coalition agreement under Minister-President [Michael Kretschmer](/people/michael-kretschmer); the Greens nominated Katja Meier and Wolfram Günther as ministers. The 2020 application says she took part on health and nursing. October reporting quotes her as a critical delegate and Meier, Günther and others as the negotiators of the paper.

Before the Bundestag mandate, her disclosable-interests entry listed "specialist policy advice" (*fachpolitische Beratung*) to the Green group in the Saxon Landtag, in Leipzig and Dresden, as work preceding membership, alongside employment at Leipzig University Hospital. It gives no dates. In January 2021 the Thuringian Greens described her as an assessor on the Leipzig district executive.

## Bundestag candidacies and elections

Paula Piechotta has been a member of the Bundestag since the constitutive sitting of the 20th Bundestag on 26 October 2021. She has not won a constituency seat. In both the 2021 and 2025 federal elections she was the candidate of Alliance 90/The Greens (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen) in Leipzig II and held first place on the party's Saxony state list, and both times the seat she took was a list seat.

### 2021 federal election

A Green state delegate assembly in Leipzig on 24 April 2021 elected her, unopposed, to list place 1, with 91 votes in favour, 16 against and three abstentions. Bernhard Herrmann was placed second and Merle Spellerberg third. The party aimed for at least three seats and a double-digit second-vote share, after 4.6 percent in Saxony in 2017, at the federal election on 26 September 2021.

She stood in constituency 153, Leipzig II. In the final result of the Federal Returning Officer, Sören Pellmann of Die Linke kept the constituency with 40,938 first votes (22.8 percent). The Green first-vote total, cast for Piechotta, was 32,995 (18.4 percent), ahead of the Social Democratic Party on 29,731 (16.6 percent) and the Christian Democratic Union on 29,538 (16.5 percent). Turnout was 78.2 percent.

A plurality of first votes then elected the constituency member, while second votes for a closed state list decided how many seats a party received. Piechotta therefore did not become the member for Leipzig II. The Federal Returning Officer's notice of 23 November 2021 in the Bundesanzeiger named her as an elected Saxony list candidate in first place, followed by Herrmann, Spellerberg and [Kassem Taher Saleh](/people/kassem-taher-saleh).

### 2025 federal election

On 15 December 2024, at a state assembly in Löbau, the Saxon Greens again chose Piechotta for list place 1. There was no opposing candidate, and she received 82.4 percent. Places two to five went to Saleh, Spellerberg, Herrmann and Monique Hänel.

The election on 23 February 2025 was the first in which a party candidate won a constituency seat only with the most first votes and only if the party's second votes in the Land covered that seat. The constituency number changed from 153 to 152 because one constituency moved from Saxony-Anhalt to Bavaria and former constituencies 72 to 255 were renumbered; Leipzig II's boundaries were not redrawn.

Pellmann again took the constituency seat, with 71,811 first votes (36.8 percent). Christoph Neumann of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) was second on 18.7 percent and Dietmar Link of the CDU third on 16.0 percent. Piechotta was fourth, with 19,954 votes (10.2 percent), 8.2 points below 2021. Turnout was 84.2 percent, and the Green second-vote share in the constituency was 16.2 percent (31,717 votes). The roll of those elected in Saxony lists two Green list members, Piechotta on place 1 and Saleh on place 2, and lists Pellmann, not Piechotta, as elected in constituency 152.

### Constituency and list context

Leipzig II consists of the Leipzig boroughs Mitte, Süd, Südost, Südwest and West; the remaining boroughs form Leipzig I. For 2025 the Federal Returning Officer describes that area as constituency 152, the territory numbered 153 in 2021.

In 2021, second votes in Leipzig II were Greens 21.3 percent (38,264), SPD 20.9, Die Linke 14.7, CDU 13.1, AfD 11.2 and FDP 9.7. Across Saxony the Greens had 212,320 second votes, 8.6 percent, behind the AfD (24.6), the SPD (19.3), the CDU (17.2), the FDP (11.0) and Die Linke (9.3); statewide turnout was 76.5 percent. The constituency figure was more than twice the state share, which is why list place 1, on a list that returned four members, supplied the seat Pellmann's plurality had denied.

In 2025, first votes were Pellmann 36.8 percent, AfD 18.7, CDU 16.0, Greens 10.2, SPD 8.5 (Nadja Sthamer) and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance 5.2 (Eric Recke). Second votes were Die Linke 23.9 percent, AfD 18.7, Greens 16.2, CDU 15.8, SPD 11.2 and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance 7.1. Statewide the Greens fell to 167,269 second votes, 6.5 percent, behind the AfD (37.3), the CDU (19.7), Die Linke (11.3), the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (9.0) and the SPD (8.5), on a turnout of 81.1 percent. Leipzig II was still well above the state Green vote, but the decline from 8.6 to 6.5 percent left the list with two elected members instead of four.

## Budget, audit and federal financing

### Budget Committee

The Budget Committee (Haushaltsausschuss) of the Bundestag debates the annual federal budget and follows execution of that budget, including financial assistance tied to euro-area stabilization. In the Bundestag’s account, the federal government receives nothing from the treasury without parliamentary consent; the committee has 42 members. Each chapter (Einzelplan) is prepared by cross-party rapporteurs (Berichterstatter), whom the presiding officer names when the chapter is called. The assignment is a reporting task, not a decision reserved to one group.

Paula Piechotta, of Alliance 90/The Greens, was an ordinary member for the whole 20th electoral term, from 26 October 2021 to 25 March 2025, and again from the constituent sitting of the 21st term on 25 March 2025. For the 2022, 2023 and 2024 budgets the plenary named her, with rapporteurs from the other groups, for Einzelplan 12, then the Federal Ministry for Digital and Transport (31 May 2022, 21 November 2022 and 30 January 2024), and for Einzelplan 15, the Federal Ministry of Health (2 June 2022, 24 November 2022 and 1 February 2024). The 30 January 2024 sitting named other members, including Bruno Hönel for the Greens, for Einzelplan 30, then the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, so those debates do not record a standing research portfolio for her. The health-budget assignment was later the setting for questions she put in the committee about federal spending on pandemic procurement.

In the 21st term, transport was no longer combined with digital affairs, and research, technology and space formed one ministry. At the second reading of the 2025 budget, on 16 and 17 September 2025, she was named for Einzelplan 12, the Federal Ministry for Transport; for Einzelplan 15; and for Einzelplan 30, the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space. The 2026 budget repeated the three assignments, transport and health on 27 November 2025 and research on 28 November. Bundestag Drucksache 21/2012 of 16 October 2025, the committee recommendation on Einzelplan 12, prints her as Berichterstatterin with the other groups’ rapporteurs. The same 27 November sitting also named her for Einzelplan 19, the Federal [Constitutional Court](/organizations/constitutional-court), taken with the Justice Ministry chapter. Reporting a chapter was not the same as voting for it: the committee recommended the 2026 budget law with the CDU/CSU and SPD against the Greens, the AfD and the Left.

In the first reading of the 2027 draft she spoke on 8 September 2026 on rail, road and waterway investment, on 10 September on the health budget, and on 11 September on the research budget. Those sittings did not use the second-reading formula that lists rapporteurs.

### Audit Committee

The Audit Committee (Rechnungsprüfungsausschuss) has the organization of a standing committee but is a subcommittee of the Budget Committee, and its members also sit on that committee as full or deputy members. Where the Budget Committee authorizes spending, the Audit Committee follows the use of the funds, examines the Federation’s budgetary and economic management, and prepares the plenary’s discharge of the federal government from the remarks of the Bundesrechnungshof. The Bundestag lists 18 members. Every ordinary member of the Budget Committee is also a deputy member of the Audit Committee.

The biography separates ordinary membership from the office of Obfrau, and the committee page lists Obleute apart from the chair (Vorsitz). The Obfrau is the parliamentary group’s lead member, not the chair of the committee. Piechotta was an ordinary member and the Greens’ Obfrau from 26 October 2021 to 25 March 2025. The current biography, dated as modified on 29 September 2026, again lists both ordinary membership and the Obfrau role from 25 March 2025, so the group-lead function is recorded for the 21st term and is not left as an ordinary seat alone.

### Bundesfinanzierungsgremium

The Bundesfinanzierungsgremium is the body under § 3 of the Federal Debt Management Act (Bundesschuldenwesengesetz). The Bundestag elects it for one electoral term from members of the Budget Committee and sets its size, composition and procedure. A member who leaves the Bundestag or their group, or who becomes a federal minister or parliamentary state secretary, loses the seat and is replaced. The Federal [Ministry of Finance](/organizations/ministry-of-finance) informs the body of every question of federal debt; the ministry and the Bundesrechnungshof are permanently represented, and members must keep secret what they learn there.

The Bundestag states that the government also informs the body, under § 69a of the Federal Budget Code, about federal stakes in private-law companies and about how those stakes are managed. From 1 January 2018 the body took over the former Finanzmarktgremium. Under § 10a of the Stabilisation Fund Act it is briefed on the Finanzmarktstabilisierungsfonds. The Economic Stabilisation Fund Act of 27 March 2020 extended that control to the Wirtschaftsstabilisierungsfonds, used for real-economy support in the coronavirus crisis and reactivated in 2022 for the energy crisis. Piechotta’s archived 20th-term biography does not list the body. The current biography lists her as an ordinary member from 25 March 2025.

## Health policy

### Committee role

Piechotta, a specialist in radiology, was in the 20th Bundestag (26 October 2021–25 March 2025) a deputy member of the Health Committee and of the Committee on Education, Research and Technology Assessment. Her ordinary seats were the Budget Committee and the Audit Committee. In the 21st Bundestag, from 25 March 2025, the education deputy seat did not continue; the health deputy membership did.

The Bundestag group of Alliance 90/The Greens gave her pharmacy policy in the 20th term although she was not an ordinary Health Committee member. [Janosch Dahmen](/people/janosch-dahmen) remained health spokesperson. In May 2025 the group told *Apotheke Adhoc* she would keep the brief, and the *Pharmazeutische Zeitung* again named her the Greens’ pharmacy rapporteur. She also spoke on medicine prices and medical devices.

### Medicines, pharmacies and homeopathy

At the federal conference of Alliance 90/The Greens in Hanover on 28 November 2025, delegates adopted, against the party executive, a motion from Berlin-Tempelhof/Schöneberg that statutory insurers should not pay for homeopathic treatments whose effect beyond placebo is not shown. Piechotta said the old compromise did not hold and that tight funds had to pay “only for what demonstrably works.” She had often helped keep such motions off the agenda since 2019, including a January postponement before the Bundestag campaign. Manuela Rottmann put the annual sum at about €25 million against about €350 billion for health care; physician Yatin Shah called a refusal a devastating signal. The *taz* linked the row to homeopathy’s following in Baden-Württemberg, where [Cem Özdemir](/people/cem-ozdemir) faced a state campaign.

In the first reading of the pharmacy-supply bill on 27 February 2026 she rejected a flat rise in the fixed dispensing fee, the Fixum, costed at about €1 billion. Bavarian figures, she said, showed an annual result of €14,000 in the lower third of pharmacies and more than €300,000 in the upper third, so a uniform sum would help the largest businesses and not the supply. She asked health minister [Nina Warken](/people/nina-warken) of the CDU how a single parent on €1,500 gross, or a delivery rider, should accept higher contributions so that pharmacies earning millions received more, and called a billion spent “ohne Sinn und Verstand” no longer explicable. She did accept wider vaccination, on-call supplements and restored discounts. *Deutsches Ärzteblatt* reported the coalition figure as a rise from €8.35 to €9.50.

CSU deputy [Stephan Pilsinger](/people/stephan-pilsinger) said the fee had been frozen since 2013 despite inflation of about 30 percent, that one pharmacy in five had closed, and that the coalition text differentiated: €9.50, and up to €11 in rural areas. SPD politician [Christos Pantazis](/people/christos-pantazis) called the fee [the base](/organizations/the-base) of local supply but tied it to a financeable insurance system. On 7 November 2025 ABDA president Thomas Preis demanded an economic strengthening of pharmacies, warning that without it more would close; pay, he said, had not tracked costs for 13 years.

In June 2026, during debate on a savings package for statutory insurance, she told MDR Aktuell that some drugs cost about twice their 2010s prices because manufacturers may set the launch price freely for six months while insurers must pay, and that Germany paid among the highest prices after the United States. Jasmina Kirchhoff of the German Economic Institute warned that lower prices could weaken Germany as a pharmaceutical location.

### Devices and care

On 11 April 2024, on a CDU/CSU motion on device supply (Drucksache 20/9735), Piechotta said tighter rules rested on patient safety. She cited a fatal error on an intensive-care oxygenator and roughly 10,000 women in Germany given breast implants filled with industrial silicone, and said safety mattered “a trace more” than firms’ interests. She agreed the EU Medical Devices Regulation was extremely hard to implement and should be improved in Europe, not diluted. At a Health Committee hearing on 5 June 2024, BVMed warned that slow certification could remove established products, the statutory-insurance funds’ association said no systemic shortage was then detectable, and the German Coalition for Patient Safety put patient safety above profit.

On staffing she parted from the ABDA. In November 2025 she told the *Pharmazeutische Zeitung* that pharmaceutical technical assistants temporarily managing a pharmacy could keep rural pharmacies open for older patients, though not urgently in cities, and she backed non-live vaccination where missed appointments limit uptake. Preis rejected taking management out of pharmacists’ hands, because a pharmacist had to be present or care would thin out, while welcoming more prevention, vaccination and early tests.

## Pandemic procurement and the coronavirus inquiry

### Scrutiny of mask procurement

In the early COVID-19 pandemic in Germany, the Federal Ministry of Health under Jens Spahn (CDU) bought masks on a scale the Bundesrechnungshof later called a purchase without quantity control. Its report of 28 March 2024 to the Bundestag Budget Committee said the ministry acquired 5.7 billion masks — 1.7 billion particle-filtering half-masks and 4 billion surgical masks — for 5.9 billion euros, against a three-month import need of 75 million filtering masks and 200 million surgical masks. By the end of 2023, 1.7 billion had been distributed in Germany, 1.2 billion destroyed and 1.7 billion marked for destruction, with about 800 million left without a plan. Storage and related costs were 460 million euros, with up to 534 million euros more expected in 2024.

Later audit figures reported in 2025 differed slightly: about 5.8 billion masks for 5.9 billion euros, roughly 3.4 billion destroyed or still to be destroyed, and side costs around 510 million to 517 million euros. A March 2020 open-house offer, described from the Sudhof file by NDR, WDR and the *Süddeutsche Zeitung*, was not a competitive tender: the ministry promised to take any FFP2 mask at a fixed 4.50 euros. A 500 million euro budget was passed within days, and commitments exceeded 5 billion euros. Mid-2025 accounts cited about 100 suits still open, with 2.3 billion euros in dispute, plus ministry estimates of up to 120 million euros in contract risk and 360 million euros from litigation, separate from money already spent.

Paula Piechotta, a radiologist for Alliance 90/The Greens on the Budget Committee, questioned the contracts there. t-online called her Spahn's greatest opponent in the affair; Stern, his sharpest adversary. She tied that work to shifts in a Leipzig hospital, where she said masks and disinfectant had gone missing and staff had been afraid every day, and told *Die Zeit* she assumed more than half the masks were unusable. Storage and burning, she said, were costly on their own, and Spahn's WhatsApp messages and unarchived Bundestag emails to dealers who later sued the federation looked to her like a "banana republic."

### The Sudhof report and budget follow-up

In July 2024 Spahn's successor Karl Lauterbach (SPD) commissioned Margaretha Sudhof, a former state secretary. Her report of about 170 pages, filed in January 2025 and marked for official use only, found — as NDR, WDR, the *Süddeutsche Zeitung* and t-online recounted it — that the ministry had bought heavily against its specialist departments. They wrote that it pushed the Münster firm Fiege, from a district next to Spahn's, ahead of DHL and Schenker despite the Interior Ministry's procurement office, on a no-competition contract Sudhof put at 1.5 billion euros in services, and that the open-house flood collapsed the logistics. Fiege denied any personal link to Spahn.

Health minister Nina Warken (CDU) at first withheld the report. Piechotta said that was to protect Spahn's career; before a redacted copy circulated she told *Die Zeit* that "everything relevant will be blacked out." t-online credited her with helping to bring the text out, first only with deletions; newsrooms then reported an unredacted version. On 8 July 2025 the Budget Committee heard Sudhof in confidence, at the request of the Greens and Die Linke. Piechotta spoke of more open questions than answers — "statement against statement, and one of them is lying" — and said only an inquiry committee, under oath, could question Spahn and the dealers. The two groups lacked the votes and would not take them from the AfD.

CDU budget spokesman Christian Haase said Sudhof had been hired to improve lawsuits against suppliers, not to prove misconduct. SPD floor leader [Matthias Miersch](/people/matthias-miersch) opposed an inquiry. CDU general secretary [Carsten Linnemann](/people/carsten-linnemann), after meetings attended by chancellor [Friedrich Merz](/people/friedrich-merz), said Spahn had full party support and that the report added only "subjective, personal remarks." Spahn denied taking money from the deals, called that suggestion defamatory, and rested on the emergency — to WDR and NDR, "better to have than to need." He preferred an enquete to an inquiry committee. He was not on the Budget Committee in 2025. Given a seat in early September 2026, he was criticised by Piechotta over the mask spending and left it on 28 September. Tagesschau linked the resignation to a missed sitting during a Sardinia holiday, not to a new finding on the contracts.

### Enquete commission

On 10 July 2025 the Bundestag set up the Enquete-Kommission "Aufarbeitung der Corona-Pandemie und Lehren für zukünftige pandemische Ereignisse". It constituted itself on 8 September 2025 under Bundestag president [Julia Klöckner](/people/julia-klockner); Franziska Hoppermann (CDU/CSU) was elected chair. Piechotta is an ordinary member and the Greens' *Obfrau*, with [Lena Gumnior](/people/lena-gumnior) as the other full member. The other groups' spokespersons were [Mechthilde Wittmann](/people/mechthilde-wittmann) (CDU/CSU), [Kay-Uwe Ziegler](/people/kay-uwe-ziegler) (AfD), [Lina Seitzl](/people/lina-seitzl) (SPD) and Ates Gürpinar (Die Linke). Fourteen members of parliament and 14 outside experts are to report by 30 June 2027.

On 15 December 2025 the commission heard Spahn. A Bundesrechnungshof official again called the purchases massive over-buying. Piechotta, as Green *Obfrau*, said no decision had authorised twenty times the crisis staff's volume and that the contracts were legally defective. Spahn answered that the procurement offices could not have moved fast enough and that "the whole world wanted the same thing at the same time." SPD member [Jens Peick](/people/jens-peick) said nobody was in the dock.

## Leipzig city council

### Election and roles

In the Leipzig city-council election of 9 June 2024, Paula Piechotta stood for Alliance 90/The Greens in Wahlkreis 4 – Süd, in eleventh and last place on the Green district list. Voters could cast up to three votes for named candidates. She received 2,531 valid votes and was elected, with Gesine Märtens (5,641); Anna-Lisa Möbius, third on the list, had 2,332 votes and was the first substitute. The election committee confirmed the result on 24 June 2024. Citywide the Greens won 11 of 70 seats. The new council, in its eighth term, was constituted on 18 September 2024 in the Old Town Hall and continued on 19 September in the New Town Hall, where the mayor swore in the councillors. Piechotta has stated that she lives in the south of Leipzig.

The Green group named her its spokesperson for economic policy. The Bundestag register of members’ interests, listing these offices as ended on 25 June 2025, records her as a member of the finance committee and of the committee for the economy, labour and digital affairs, as a deputy on the sports committee and the allotment-garden advisory board, and as an unpaid member of the supervisory board of Invest Region Leipzig GmbH.

### Resignation

On 13 June 2025 it was announced that Piechotta would give up the mandate and that Möbius, a teacher, would succeed her for Wahlkreis Süd. Piechotta said that, “in view of the very narrow majorities both in the Leipzig city council and in the German Bundestag, which in this form had not been foreseeable before the elections,” and of meetings held at the same time, “political responsibility requires that the formation of majorities not be put at risk by overlapping appointments.” Kristina Weyh, chair of the Green council group, said votes had become increasingly close, “where every vote counts,” that the Bundestag likewise had narrow votes and lengthy deliberations, and that the group therefore understood the step and thanked Piechotta for her work.

At its sitting of 25 and 26 June 2025 the council decided, in the wording published in the *Leipziger Amtsblatt* of 5 July, that Piechotta was ending the honorary office because exercising it would considerably hinder her occupation or care for her family (VIII-DS-00026-DS-02). That is the statutory “important reason” in section 18 of the Saxony municipal code: a person may seek to leave an honorary office on that ground, and the council decides whether it applies. It is not the scheduling explanation in the 13 June statement. Möbius wrote in the same *Amtsblatt* that she had taken the seat on 25 June. The council removed her from the Süd district advisory board and named her, in Piechotta’s place, deputy on the allotment-garden board. Weyh said Möbius would represent the group on the committees for youth, schools and democracy and for general administration. The Bundestag register dates the end of the council seat, the committees and the Invest Region supervisory-board place to 25 June 2025.

## Further parliamentary and public roles

### Defence and the German–Japanese group

In the 20th Bundestag (2021–2025), the archived biography does not list Paula Piechotta on the Defence Committee (Verteidigungsausschuss). It records ordinary membership of the Budget Committee and the Audit Committee, and deputy membership of the Committee on Education, Research and Technology Assessment and of the Health Committee.

For the 21st Bundestag, structured data on the current biography give 25 March 2025 as the start of the roles listed there. She is named as a deputy member (stellvertretendes Mitglied) of the Defence Committee and, again, of the Health Committee. The ordinary seats on that page are the Budget Committee, the Audit Committee, the Bundesfinanzierungsgremium and the inquiry commission on the coronavirus pandemic.

The same biography lists, under other bodies, the deputy chair (stellvertretender Vorsitz) of the German–Japanese Parliamentary Group (Deutsch-Japanische Parlamentariergruppe). That office does not appear in the 20th-term archive. Parliamentary groups are cross-party associations through which members maintain the Bundestag’s relations with parliaments abroad, and they are reconstituted at the start of each electoral term. In the 21st term there are 47 such groups, covering relations with about 180 countries, and a parliamentary party that does not hold a group’s chair may send a deputy chair. Groups dealing with Japan were among the first, formed in the third Bundestag (1957–1961). In September 2025 Andreas Lenz of the [Christian Social Union](/organizations/christian-social-union-in-bavaria) took the chair of the German–Japanese group. The Bundestag’s board list for the 21st term includes Piechotta among the officers of that group.

### SED Dictatorship foundation

The Federal Foundation for the Study of the SED Dictatorship (Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur) was set up under a law signed on 5 June 1998, after the Bundestag’s second and third readings that April. The foundation states that its task is to promote examination of the causes, history and consequences of dictatorship in the Soviet occupation zone and in East Germany, and to accompany German unity.

Its council (Stiftungsrat), in the fifth council constituted in 2021, includes representatives of the Bundestag, the federal government and Berlin, together with people particularly engaged in that work. Under members elected by the Bundestag on proposals from the parliamentary groups, the foundation lists Piechotta as a member, with Bernhard Herrmann as her substitute, and publishes a short curriculum vitae. The Bundestag’s register of outside positions records the seat as unpaid (ehrenamtlich) from 7 July 2022, and the current biography still lists membership of the council.

### Public media

*Ostgrün* is a podcast Piechotta has co-hosted with Martin Meißner. The programme’s feed describes it as a podcast of Alliance 90/The Greens in which Piechotta, identified as a Bundestag member from Leipzig, and Meißner, described as active in local politics, discuss what is being debated and decided in eastern Germany and in federal politics in Berlin, from a Green eastern perspective. The earliest item in that feed, “Smalltalk mit Olaf”, is dated 12 July 2022; a copy retrieved in October 2026 contained 58 episodes. The same description, naming Meißner as co-host, is published on podcast.de.

## Political positions and reception

### East Germany, climate and infrastructure

Piechotta has treated the place of people from eastern Germany in federal politics as a question of representation. In the March 2025 coalition talks between the CDU and the SPD, she said that, apart from [Manuela Schwesig](/people/manuela-schwesig) and Michael Kretschmer, the exploratory round had been a western affair, and that the cabinet of Friedrich Merz must not become a "backward step" for the east. Saxony's SPD leader Henning Homann, in the same report, likewise wanted eastern ministers. After the new Bundestag presidium was elected with no member born or raised in the east, she said eastern Germans were again underrepresented in central institutions, partly because of how many eastern Germans had voted. The AfD had finished first in the five eastern Länder.

In September 2025 she co-wrote, with Madeleine Henfling, Luna Möbius and Julia Schneider, an "Ostpapier" for the first eastern congress of Alliance 90/The Greens. The *taz* counted her among the realo authors. The paper called for eastern figures, including non-academics, a social policy of its own because people in the east depend disproportionately on social insurance, and more attention to unequal wealth, [drought risk](/drivers/drought-risk), and Poland and the Czech Republic. In a 2021 *Leipziger Zeitung* interview she had put climate in carbon-budget terms: if emissions continued unchanged, that budget would be used up in about nine years, and every tenth of a degree still mattered.

On transport she has argued for repair over replacement. In a July 2026 *Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung* essay, "Sanierung statt Verschleiß und Abriss," she wrote that decades of wear had left bridges such as the Carolabrücke in Dresden failing without warning. In March 2026 she told MDR the Greens had backed the 500-billion-euro special fund because bridges, roads and rail were to be repaired, not to fill budget holes, and cited four billion euros for hospitals' past operating costs as money that was not investment.

### Media portrayal and criticism

National coverage in 2025 cast her above all as Jens Spahn's antagonist over pandemic mask purchases. A *t-online* profile that July called her his greatest opponent, quoting her line that "the small are hanged and the large are let go." Spahn answered with "conspiracy theories," "assumptions" and later "defamation." In a June interview, *Die Zeit* reported her expectation that everything relevant in the Sudhof report would be blacked out. *Stern* headlined a portrait "Spahn's sharpest adversary." That September it ran an interview with answers missing; *Welt* reported that *Stern* accused her of striking questions before authorisation — including whether Merz was an "asshole," a callback to a remark about [Olaf Scholz](/people/mig-olaf-scholz) — while she said her answers had not been written down.

*t-online* also reported that she had called Scholz an "asshole" and apologised only after criticism, including from former Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg mayor Monika Herrmann. In July 2026 she told *Bild* that Spahn's use of a US surrogate mother, despite earlier opposition to surrogacy, was one reason "all of Germany hates Jens Spahn." Green colleagues were quoted saying hate was not a category for democratic competitors; she stood by the sentence.

The *Deutsche Apotheker Zeitung* reported a December 2025 post accusing pharmacies of pandemic windfalls — more than 3.5 billion euros in extra income from 2020 to 2022, on her figures — and of "numerous black sheep," including illegal Paxlovid resale. The paper noted omissions in that account, including how much unused Paxlovid had simply expired. One pharmacist asked the Green executive for a reprimand and her resignation; the ABDA had not replied in public. In Leipzig, *[Der Spiegel](/organizations/der-spiegel)* reported her dispute with Left opponent Sören Pellmann over anonymous leaflets promoting him, which she called illegal and "dangerous for democracy."

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/paula-piechotta