# Rebecca Lenhard

# Rebecca Lenhard

Rebecca Lenhard (born 24 May 1995 in Forchheim) is a German politician of Alliance 90/[The Greens](/organizations/the-greens) and a member of the Bundestag. She took her seat in the 21st electoral term when that Bundestag constituted itself on 25 March 2025. The Federal Returning Officer lists her as elected from place 11 on the party's Bavaria state list, after she also stood in constituency 243, Nuremberg-Nord.

The biography published by the Bundestag, which rests on the member's own account, records that she passed the Abitur in 2014 at the Herder-Gymnasium in Forchheim, in Upper Franconia. In 2020 she completed a Bachelor of Science in computer science at the University of Erlangen–Nuremberg, with business administration as a minor subject. The same account says that since 2022 she has studied communication psychology by distance learning at IU International University.

From 2020 she worked as a technical project lead and analyst on information-technology projects. From 2022 to 2024 she was a product owner and analyst on projects at the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees. Since 2024 she has been a self-employed IT consultant in Nuremberg; the Bundestag lists that as her occupation before entering parliament and describes her as a certified project manager, analyst, software architect and developer.

Lenhard joined the Greens in 2019. She was a member of the Nuremberg-Stadt district executive from 2019 to 2022 and district chair from 2022 to 2025, and she has sat on the Bavarian Greens' state committee since 2024. At the federal election on 23 February 2025 she received 32,432 first votes in Nuremberg-Nord, 21.6 percent, behind the [Christian Social Union in Bavaria](/organizations/christian-social-union-in-bavaria) on 30.2 percent. The Returning Officer recorded no directly elected member for the constituency, which remained vacant for lack of sufficient second-vote coverage.

In parliament she is a full member of the Committee on Digital Affairs and State Modernization and a deputy member of the Interior Committee and the Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy. The [Green Party](/organizations/green-party) faction (Bundestag) lists her as its spokesperson for digital affairs and state modernization. Since May 2025 she has co-chaired the economic circle on digital regulatory policy at the [Heinrich Böll Foundation](/organizations/heinrich-boll-foundation). In 2026 a written question from her drew a government reply, reported by netzpolitik.org, that about 1.8 million cable connections might fall short of broadband thresholds while satellite or mobile service can still count as supply; she called the statutory right to a connection too complicated and slow for many households to use.

## Early life and education

### Childhood and schooling in Forchheim

Rebecca Lenhard was born on 24 May 1995 in Forchheim. The Bundestag biography that records the date and place states that its biographical details are the member's own account; the same text describes her as non-denominational and unmarried. Forchheim is a major district town (Große Kreisstadt) of about 33,000 people in Upper Franconia, Bavaria, in the Regnitz valley between Bamberg and Nuremberg. The year 1995, though not the day or the town, is repeated in the Federal Returning Officer's volume of preliminary results for the 2025 Bundestag election ("Lenhard, Rebecca 1995") and on Abgeordnetenwatch.

That self-reported biography says she passed the Abitur in 2014 at the Herder-Gymnasium in Forchheim. The school is a state Gymnasium at Luitpoldstraße 1. For 2025/26 the Bavarian Ministry of Education recorded 694 pupils and 66 teachers employed full-time or more than half-time, across humanist, language, music and economics streams. The school marked its 125th anniversary in 2025. No official or press account names the stream she followed, or gives grades or anything about her family. A *Bayerische Staatszeitung* profile of 28 February 2025, when she was 29, called her the youngest of the new Bavarian Greens entering the Bundestag and reported that she plays football and handball in her free time.

### Computer science at Erlangen–Nuremberg

The Bundestag entry states that in 2020 she received a Bachelor of Science in computer science (Informatik) from the University of Erlangen–Nuremberg (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg), with business administration as a minor. Abgeordnetenwatch lists the qualification as "Informatik B.Sc." The university's National High Performance Computing Center later described her as an alumna of FAU computer science, after she visited the Erlangen center on 12 March 2026. Neither source describes the course of the degree.

The program is taught in German at the Faculty of Engineering in Erlangen. It does not restrict admission, normally lasts six semesters, and the university lists more than 600 students on it. Early semesters cover mathematics and the core subject; later ones add electives, a seminar, a software practical, one minor and a bachelor's thesis. The rules require 15 ECTS in a single minor. For bachelor's students the business minor, offered by the Institute of Information Systems, is 10 ECTS of required courses and 5 ECTS of electives. Published biographies do not name Lenhard's modules, thesis or grade, and they do not explain why the degree came in 2020, six years after the Abitur and longer than the standard three years.

### Further study

Since 2022, again on the Bundestag's self-reported biography, she has been enrolled in a distance program in communication psychology at the IU International University of Applied Sciences (IU Internationale Hochschule). The entry does not say that a degree has been awarded. IU is a private, state-recognized university of applied sciences. Its communication-psychology course is a Bachelor of Science by distance learning: 180 ECTS, six semesters (36 months) full-time, with longer part-time models and online examinations. The February 2025 *Staatszeitung* profile called her a "studierte Informatikerin und Kommunikationspsychologin", a trained computer scientist and communication psychologist. That wording treats communication psychology as finished study, while the parliamentary biography lists only a distance program begun in 2022.

## Professional career

### Project management and analysis

The biographical note published by the Bundestag states that Rebecca Lenhard has worked since 2020 as a technical project lead and analyst on various information-technology projects, and that she is a certified project manager, analyst, software architect and developer. The parliament marks those details as the member's own account. The note names neither employers nor clients, and it does not identify who issued the certificates.

A profile published by the Heinrich Böll Foundation dates an IT-consultant engagement from October 2020 to January 2021. On her own website she names the employer for that spell as PRODATO Integration Technology GmbH. The dated posts in that profile leave January 2021 to February 2022 unaccounted for.

On 20 February 2025 she wrote, in a reply on Abgeordnetenwatch, that she was an IT consultant with almost ten years in the industry, most recently as external product owner of a software project at the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, and that she had been self-employed since the previous year. That span is wider than the posts dated from October 2020; the published biographies do not itemize any earlier employer.

### Federal Office for Migration and Refugees

For February 2022 to August 2024 her website states that she worked as a software analyst and product owner at Atos/Eviden. The Böll Foundation profile gives the same months and titles without naming the firm. The Bundestag biography places her, for 2022 to 2024, as product owner and analyst on projects at the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge, BAMF). Her February 2025 answer describes that post as external product owner of one software project at the office. None of these accounts names the system.

The office is the federal migration authority headquartered in Nuremberg, in the portfolio of the [Federal Ministry of the Interior](/organizations/federal-ministry-of-the-interior). Its digitalization agenda, in the authority's own description, is meant to make asylum and integration work more efficient, and it treats digitalization as a change in organization and working methods as well as in the use of IT. The office has set the aim of operating as a "digital, breathing authority." She has described the BAMF work as an external product-owner assignment on one software project.

### Independent consulting

From September 2024 the Böll Foundation profile describes her as a freelance IT consultant; the Bundestag biography summarizes the same step as self-employment since 2024. The occupation published for the time before membership of the Bundestag is "IT consultant, Nuremberg" (IT-Beraterin, Nürnberg).

Under the code of conduct in the Members of the Bundestag Act, the mandate is meant to stand at the center of a member's activity, while other professional work remains generally allowed. Members must notify the President of the Bundestag of the last occupation before the seat and of paid work alongside the mandate. Income from a side activity is published when it exceeds 1,000 euro in a month or, if not, 3,000 euro in a calendar year. Notices are due within three months of taking the seat and within three months of any later change. On the biography as published, and on the Abgeordnetenwatch copy of that record, last amended on 20 November 2025, IT consulting appears only as the occupation before membership. No consulting income alongside the mandate is listed there.

The published record runs from project analysis and external product ownership on a BAMF software project to self-employed consulting in Nuremberg. She entered the Bundestag on 25 March 2025; the brief she then took up is digital policy and state modernization.

## Party roles in Nuremberg and Bavaria

### Joining the party

Rebecca Lenhard has been a member of Alliance 90/The Greens since 2019. The Bundestag biography that records the membership, and her later party offices, states that its entries rest on information supplied by the members themselves. The *Bayerische Staatszeitung* reported in February 2025 that she had come to the Greens six years earlier through [Fridays for Future](/organizations/fridays-for-future); the profile did not describe any office she held in that movement. Her party work was in the Nuremberg-Stadt district association, the Greens' organization for the independent city of Nuremberg inside the state association in Bavaria. At the district annual meeting on 26 September 2020 she was re-elected to the board, which identified her as a 25-year-old IT consultant, alongside Elke Leo and Jörg Lipp. The Bundestag biography places that period on the Nuremberg-Stadt board in 2019–2022.

### District leadership

The same biography lists her as a district chair (*Kreisvorsitzende*) from 2022 to 2025. In June 2024 the *Nürnberger Nachrichten* reported that the members' assembly had re-elected her and newly elected Marie Hartz as the other chair, describing a female dual leadership for the campaigns of 2025 and 2026 after what the paper called a setback in the European election.

The association elects a board of eight, with two chairs of equal standing; at least half the members must be women, including at least one chair. Lenhard first took a chair at the annual meeting of 7 May 2022 at the Gemeinschaftshaus Gostenhof, in a co-chair team with Xenia Mohr, who had herself been elected chair in 2020 with 98 percent of the vote. Jörg Lipp became treasurer. In June 2023 the assembly added Marie Hartz and Armin Bibic after Hangwen Maierhofer and Florian Tischler left the board for professional and private reasons.

On 2 October 2024 the board, with Lenhard among the signatories, said it noted with respect that the district's Bundestag member Tessa Ganserer would not stand again after that legislative period. The *Bayerische Staatszeitung* later wrote that Lenhard stood as direct candidate in succession to Ganserer, who, the paper reported, no longer wanted to run because of the hostility she faced as a trans woman. After Lenhard entered parliament, the association on 4 April 2025 published her letter resigning the chair. She wrote that election to the 21st Bundestag was the reason, that she was not leaving the district association, and that almost three of five and a half years on the board had been as chair. On 21 April 2025 the *Nürnberger Nachrichten* described Bibic as her successor, serving with Hartz, and said Lenhard intended to concentrate on the Bundestag. The association reported on 2 May 2025 that a members' assembly had elected Bibic, already a board member, with 93.7 percent of the vote, to lead the district jointly with Hartz.

### Bavarian Greens

The Bundestag biography lists Lenhard as a member of the *Landesausschuss*, the state committee of the Bavarian Greens, since 2024, without saying which seat she held. The state statute gives that committee the tasks of coordinating the Landesverband's political work, advising the state executive, and linking local, regional and state levels, and of provisional budget decisions and recognition of state working groups. As the committee describes itself, its members include the state executive, the chair and deputy of the Green group in the Landtag of Bavaria, the two spokespersons of the Bavarian Bundestag delegation, one representative from each regional executive, and nine people elected by the state delegates' conference. Elected members serve two years; the statute does not require one who later wins a Landtag, Bundestag or [European Parliament](/organizations/european-parliament) seat to resign, and the committee meets at least every two months.

While she was district chair, the Nuremberg association sent 12 delegates and numerous substitutes to the state delegates' conference held on 19 and 20 October 2024 at the Congress Centrum in Würzburg, under the state party's title "Bayern verdient Zuversicht." It reported that Lenhard, board member Armin Bibic and Hauke Wulfmeyer were drawn by lot to speak in Saturday's debate on confidence for Bavaria and on a politics of solidarity and sustainability.

## Candidacy and the 2025 federal election

### Nomination in Nuremberg-Nord

Constituency 243, Nuremberg-North, was the district in which Rebecca Lenhard stood for the Bundestag at the 2025 German federal election. Alliance 90/The Greens had to name a new candidate after Tessa Ganserer, a sitting member, announced in early October 2024 that she would not run again in Nuremberg-North, citing what Bayerischer Rundfunk reported as “menschenverachtendem Hass” directed against her. The *Nürnberger Nachrichten* described the withdrawal as unexpected and reported that the Nuremberg Greens then had to refill the constituency.

The district association nominated Lenhard on 9 November 2024 at a members’ meeting in the Marmorsaal of the Presseclub Nürnberg. Bayerischer Rundfunk reported that the then 29-year-old IT consultant received 59 of 63 votes. The district association said she defeated one other candidate by a large majority; the *Nürnberger Nachrichten* called the outcome a clear vote (*klares Votum*) and identified her as Ganserer’s successor.

### Bavarian state list

On 14 and 15 December 2024, at a congress in Hirschaid, 328 delegates of the Bavarian Greens elected a slate of 62 candidates. [Jamila Schäfer](/people/jamila-schafer) was placed first and Anton Hofreiter second; Lenhard was elected to place 11.

On 24 January 2025 the constituency election committee in Nuremberg admitted eleven nominations for Wahlkreis 243, on condition that each party’s state list was itself admitted under section 28 of the Federal Elections Act (*Bundeswahlgesetz*). In the order recorded by the committee, the candidates were Sebastian Brehm for the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU); [Gabriela Heinrich](/people/gabriela-heinrich) for the [Social Democratic Party of Germany](/organizations/social-democratic-party-of-germany) (SPD); Lenhard for the Greens, listed as a self-employed IT consultant, born in 1995 in Forchheim and resident in Nuremberg; Katja Hessel for the Free Democratic Party (FDP); Roland Hübscher for [Alternative for Germany](/organizations/alternative-for-germany) (AfD); Robert Franz Mahler for the [Free Voters](/organizations/free-voters); Titus Schüller for [Die Linke](/organizations/die-linke); Jörg Knapp for Die PARTEI; Inga Hager for the Ecological Democratic Party (ÖDP); Christian Penninger for [Volt Germany](/organizations/volt-germany); and Karin Podufal for the Marxist–Leninist Party of Germany (MLPD).

### Vote and mandate

Polling was on 23 February 2025. Of 187,179 people eligible in Nuremberg-North, 151,372 voted, a turnout of 80.9 percent, 3.7 percentage points higher than in 2021. The final count contained 150,494 valid first votes and 150,754 valid second votes.

On first votes Brehm led with 45,424 (30.2 percent, up 1.7 points). Lenhard was second, with 32,432 (21.6 percent, down 1.0 point); the official result marks the Greens as the runner-up (*Erstunterlegen*). Heinrich received 26,738 (17.8 percent, down 4.2), Hübscher 18,093 (12.0 percent, up 6.1), Schüller 14,697 (9.8 percent, up 4.4) and Hessel 4,976 (3.3 percent, down 4.2). Mahler took 2,963 (2.0 percent), Penninger 2,243 (1.5 percent), Knapp 1,598 (1.1 percent), Hager 984 (0.7 percent) and Podufal 346 (0.2 percent).

Second votes, which fix each party’s number of seats, were also led by the CSU, with 41,088 (27.3 percent, up 3.5 points). The Greens received 29,684 (19.7 percent, down 3.9), ahead of the SPD on 23,567 (15.6 percent, down 5.3), Die Linke on 19,233 (12.8 percent, up 6.8) and the AfD on 18,303 (12.1 percent, up 6.0). The FDP took 6,530 (4.3 percent, down 5.8), the Bündnis [Sahra Wagenknecht](/people/sahra-wagenknecht) 5,628 (3.7 percent) and the Free Voters 1,762 (1.2 percent).

The Federal Elections Act as amended in 2023, in force from June that year, fixes the Bundestag at 630 members after the 20th Bundestag had grown to 736. Voters still cast a first vote for a constituency candidate and a second vote for a Land list, but only second votes determine the size of each party’s delegation, and overhang and compensatory seats no longer arise. In each Land, a party’s constituency candidates who hold a plurality are ranked by their share of valid first votes, and seats are given out from the strongest share only until that party’s second-vote entitlement in the Land is used up. A plurality alone does not elect the candidate; if coverage runs out, the weakest constituency stays vacant rather than passing to the runner-up. On 30 July 2024 the Federal [Constitutional Court](/organizations/constitutional-court) held this second-vote coverage (*Zweitstimmendeckung*) compatible with the Basic Law, while finding the five-percent threshold in its then form not fully required and ordering that it continue provisionally with a rule resembling the former basic-mandate clause.

In Bavaria that arithmetic left Nuremberg-North empty. The CSU received 2,964,028 second votes in the Land, 37.2 percent, and 44 seats, but it led the first-vote count in all 47 Bavarian constituencies, so the three weakest pluralities were uncovered. Nuremberg-North ranked 47th, at 30.2 percent, after Augsburg-Stadt (31.1 percent) and Munich-South (30.4 percent). The Bundestag named Brehm, with Claudia Küng and Volker Ullrich, among 23 constituency leaders nationwide who received no mandate. All 44 CSU seats in Bavaria were constituency seats, leaving the party no remaining list seats in the Land. The result for Wahlkreis 243 states that the constituency remains unfilled because of insufficient second-vote coverage.

Lenhard’s mandate came from the list. The Greens won 957,435 second votes in Bavaria, 12.0 percent, and 14 seats, every one of them a list seat: the party had no constituency plurality in the Land. Those 14 were part of 85 Green seats nationwide, assigned by the Sainte-Laguë/Schepers method from 5,762,380 second votes. Place 11 fell inside the Bavarian allocation, and the roll of members elected records “Lenhard, Rebecca 1995 GRÜNE Land Bayern (Platz 11) Wahlkreis 243”. The constituency number on that roll identifies where she stood; it does not mean the direct seat was filled.

## Membership of the Bundestag

### Taking the seat

Rebecca Lenhard became a member of the Bundestag on 25 March 2025, when the 21st [German Bundestag](/organizations/german-bundestag) held its constituent sitting in the Reichstag building in Berlin. The parliament's biography dates her membership from that day and places her in the parliamentary group of Alliance 90/The Greens. She holds the mandate through the state list of Bavaria, not as the member directly elected for a constituency: the same page records her as elected via the Landesliste and, separately, as a candidate in constituency 243, Nuremberg-North, in Nuremberg.

Article 39 of the Basic Law requires the Bundestag to meet no later than the thirtieth day after an election, and provides that an electoral term ends when the newly elected Bundestag convenes. The 25 March sitting was the first of the 21st electoral term. [Gregor Gysi](/people/gregor-gysi) opened it as Alterspräsident, and the House elected [Julia Klöckner](/people/julia-klockner) president.

### Committees and spokespersonship

In the 21st Bundestag she is a full member of the Committee on Digital Affairs and State Modernization (Ausschuss für Digitales und Staatsmodernisierung) and a deputy member of the Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy (Ausschuss für Wirtschaft und Energie) and of the Interior Committee (Innenausschuss).

The digital committee constituted itself on 21 May 2025. Bundestag vice-president [Andrea Lindholz](/people/andrea-lindholz) presided at the opening, and the committee elected [Hansjörg Durz](/people/hansjorg-durz) of the CDU/CSU as chair, with 23 votes in favour and seven abstentions. It has 30 full members and 30 substitutes. The Green full members named were [Jeanne Dillschneider](/people/jeanne-dillschneider), [Moritz Heuberger](/people/moritz-heuberger), Lenhard and [Anna Lührmann](/people/anna-luhrmann). Durz, who had been deputy leader of the Digital Agenda committee in the 19th electoral term, traced the body from an enquiry commission in the 17th term through the Digital Agenda committee to lead responsibilities in the 20th term, and said that adding state modernization had increased its weight. The Bundestag describes the committee's focus as network policy—digital sovereignty, digital infrastructure and the digital economy—together with the digital state.

The committee's website later records a visit on 25 June 2025 by Karsten Wildberger, federal minister for digital affairs and state modernization, the portfolio of the Federal Ministry for Digital Transformation and Government Modernisation. Reporting the constituent meeting, netzpolitik.org wrote that digital policy in the Bundestag now stood beside a free-standing digital ministry for the first time, and that the Greens' members of the committee were new to it.

In the Green parliamentary group, working groups correspond to Bundestag committees. They prepare committee sittings, bills, motions and questions to the government, and their leaders are the group's policy spokespersons. Lenhard leads the working group on Digital Affairs and State Modernization; Dillschneider is deputy leader, and Heuberger and Lührmann are the other members listed. The group places that working group in its third policy department (Fachbereich 3), coordinated by [Konstantin von Notz](/people/konstantin-von-notz). Her profile uses the title spokesperson for digital affairs and state modernization (Sprecherin für Digitales und Staatsmodernisierung). Netzpolitik.org described Dillschneider, not Lenhard, as the Greens' Obfrau on the committee—the member who is the faction leadership's principal contact there.

### Offices and outside roles

The Bundestag lists her Berlin parliamentary office at Platz der Republik 1, 11011 Berlin, the parliament's postal address. The Green group publishes that address with the telephone number 030/22770898 and the email address rebecca.lenhard@bundestag.de, and a constituency office at Frauentorgraben 3, 90443 Nuremberg, at rebecca.lenhard.wk@bundestag.de. The biography gives the same Nuremberg street address.

Disclosable posts appear separately from employment before election, which the biography records as IT consultant in Nuremberg. From May 2025 the entry under functions in associations, federations and foundations is co-chair of the Economic Circle on Digital Regulatory Policy (Wirtschaftskreis Digitale Ordnungspolitik) of the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Berlin. The foundation's Brussels office gives the same starting month. In 2021 the foundation described the circle as a forum for a digital regulatory framework—rules, goals and limits for competition and for the respective roles of market and state as more decisions are automated and more data are collected. That account predates her co-chairmanship.

## Digital policy and state modernization

### Sovereignty and procurement

On 11 November 2025 the Bundestag group of Alliance 90/The Greens tabled “Strategie zur digitalen Souveränität” (printed paper 21/2726), with Rebecca Lenhard, Konstantin von Notz and Anna Lührmann among the first signatories. It asked for an independent survey, by the end of the first quarter of 2026, of dependence on non-European suppliers, and then a national strategy with the Federal Office for Information Security and the federal data-protection commissioner. Sovereignty was defined as freedom of choice, not isolation. The motion sought measurable open-source targets, a procurement preference for open standards and open-source software (“Public Money, Public Code”), monitoring of framework contracts, a Deutschland-Stack able to fit a European “EuroStack”, and lasting funds for openDesk, openCode and ZenDiS. It also called for excluding untrustworthy security products, naming Palantir, and cited June 2025 testimony by a Microsoft lawyer to the French Senate on possible US access under the CLOUD Act.

On 14 November 2025 the motion was rejected: only the Greens voted for it, the CDU/CSU, the SPD and [the Alternative](/organizations/the-alternative) for Germany voted against, and Die Linke abstained. Lenhard said the slogan “#WirMachen” went with deeper dependence, citing welcome for OpenAI in the federal administration, Bundeswehr use of Google Cloud, and Interior Minister [Alexander Dobrindt](/people/alexander-dobrindt)’s lack of discomfort about Palantir.

[Thomas Pauls](/people/thomas-pauls) (CDU/CSU) said Microsoft Office was already on more than 95 percent of federal workplaces and pointed to ZenDiS, the Deutschland-Stack and openDesk as work under way. [Ruben Rupp](/people/ruben-rupp) (AfD) accepted a stocktake but opposed the AI Act; [Maja Wallstein](/people/maja-wallstein) (SPD) backed a European path and said the coalition was already moving on products such as Palantir. Konrad Körner (CDU/CSU) said a Franco-European summit covered parts of the text, and [Donata Vogtschmidt](/people/donata-vogtschmidt) (Die Linke) said the dependencies were already known.

A written answer reported by n-tv, from figures first given to *Süddeutsche Zeitung Dossier*, put Microsoft licence spending on the federal framework contract at 481.4 million euro in 2025, after 347.7 million in 2024 and 274.1 million in 2023. The government said earlier totals were not strictly comparable and that it had no Länder or municipal figures; Lenhard called the rise dangerous. In February 2026 state secretary [Thomas Jarzombek](/people/thomas-jarzombek) wrote, as reported by t-online, that a full new stocktake was still not planned and pointed to studies from 2019 and 2021; Lenhard cited the sanctions cutoff of ICC prosecutor Karim Khan’s Microsoft email. In April 2026 heise quoted Digital Minister Karsten Wildberger as ranking independence above the Microsoft tie, while Dobrindt still looked to Palantir for short-term police use. In a May 2026 interview with the Heinrich Böll Foundation, close to the Greens, Lenhard said that rhetoric still coincided with funding dependency rather than a shift to open standards and the state as anchor customer.

### Administrative modernization

On 17 October 2025 the Bundestag debated the government’s modernization agenda (printed paper 21/2150) and referred it to the digital committee. Wildberger offered a timetable with measurable goals after saying Germany had tied itself in rules. Ruben Rupp (AfD) blamed about 60 percent of bureaucracy on the European Union, [Armand Zorn](/people/armand-zorn) (SPD) called modernization a democratic task, [Franziska Brantner](/people/franziska-brantner), for the Greens, contrasted limited projects with a single “Deutschland-App”, and [Anne-Mieke Bremer](/people/anne-mieke-bremer) (Die Linke) called the paper slogans.

The data-centre strategy (printed paper 21/4910) was debated on 16 April 2026 and referred to that committee. Wildberger aimed to at least double capacity by 2030 and at least quadruple it for high-performance computing and artificial intelligence. Lenhard said a written question had shown no demand analysis for the quadrupling, warned of misinvestment, and called a promise of sustainable centres incompatible with weakening the Energy Efficiency Act, describing the split as greenwashing and saying energy use would quadruple by 2045. [Johannes Schätzl](/people/johannes-schatzl) (SPD) backed the strategy but not a race on volume alone; Marvin Schulz (CDU/CSU) called the timing right; Robin Jünger (AfD) argued for nuclear baseload; [Sonja Lemke](/people/sonja-lemke) (Die Linke) called the expansion unsustainable given scarce connections in Berlin and Frankfurt.

### Networks and digital identity

In a written answer reported by netzpolitik.org on 7 April 2026, Jarzombek told Lenhard that about 4.4 percent of households — roughly 1.8 million connections at about 1.4 million addresses — would be potentially underserved on fixed lines alone. The minimum he cited was 15 Mbit/s down, 5 Mbit/s up and at most 150 milliseconds of latency; mobile or satellite access can meet it, and the Federal Network Agency held no satellite coverage data. About 1,650 applications were made in 2025 under the right to supply in force since 2021, an estimated 95 percent closed quickly by pointing to an alternative, often Starlink, part of [Elon Musk](/people/elon-musk)’s group. Lenhard called the procedure too slow and asked Wildberger for clearer minima and flat-rate compensation.

At the first reading of a Telecommunications Act amendment, summarised by the Bundestag on 9 October 2026, the coalition proposed faster permits and a Gigabit register to speed fibre-optic and mobile rollout. Lenhard demanded protection against pressure into a dearer contract and flat compensation for under-performance. Hansjörg Durz (CDU/CSU) said fibre already reached almost 29 million households and business sites, while the AfD doubted real acceleration and Die Linke treated access as a public service still missing in rural areas.

netzpolitik.org reported a debate on 23 September 2026, about 100 days before a planned 2 January 2027 launch of the German EU digital-identity wallet, “d-you”, starting with the identity function only. Wildberger said use would stay voluntary and credentials encrypted. Lenhard said pseudonyms and zero-knowledge proofs would be missing although, she argued, the EU regulation requires both, and that trust “cannot be installed later with an update”; the consumer group vzbv made a similar demand, and she added that municipalities were unprepared. Lemke asked for a delay, citing warnings from the BSI and the federal data-protection commissioner about signed credentials; [Markus Reichel](/people/markus-reichel) (CDU) said more than 90 percent of over 300 local officials at a July meeting were still in early preparation. The bill was referred to the digital committee, with a hearing set for 6 October 2026.

## Artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and civil liberties

### AI rules and liability

Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, the European Union’s Artificial Intelligence Act, has applied in stages since 1 August 2024, but member states still had to name market-surveillance authorities. Federal bill 21/4594 gave the Federal Network Agency that role where no specialist authority was already competent, plus a coordination centre, a chamber for certain high-risk systems, a complaints desk and at least one sandbox. On 20 March 2026 Digital Minister Karsten Wildberger (CDU) told the Bundestag that Germany and Europe should set the pace with “smart regulation” and without duplicate structures.

Speaking for Alliance 90/The Greens, Rebecca Lenhard said the same technology could save lives and also “destroy, surveil and manipulate”. She welcomed the network agency as a complaints body but warned that without staff it would be a bottleneck, said implementation was already more than half a year late, and opposed using the EU “omnibus” to lower protections for large technology firms. She wanted public-interest sandboxes, an advisory council and disclosure of administrative AI use, demands already in Green motion 21/2349 of 21 October 2025, introduced with Konstantin von Notz: resources, an independent chamber, a binding register of federal AI uses, deepfake labelling, and a ban on biometric identification in public spaces. The motion said plans to match faces against images scraped from the open internet would conflict with the Act’s ban on building facial-recognition databases that way. AlgorithmWatch, on the September 2025 draft, likewise urged a public-sector register.

On 11 June 2026 the Bundestag passed the amended bill with the CDU/CSU and the SPD; the AfD, the Greens and the Left voted against. It rejected 21/2349 and a Left motion against automated biometric recognition in public spaces.

Motion 21/8810, printed on 27 October 2026 and again led by Lenhard and von Notz, asked the government to require transparent review of serious AI security incidents and to hold providers and their executives liable under new and existing practicable rules. It is not law. Lenhard told the *Handelsblatt* that security “must no longer be left solely to the companies that develop” the systems and that whoever causes damage must be liable, “including the bosses of the large AI corporations”. The comments followed a critical flaw in the PHP language—a software bug, not an AI failure—after which many sites were taken offline as a precaution. She argued that AI could help attackers find and exploit such weaknesses faster; she did not say AI had caused the PHP flaw. Agency copy noted the difficulty of dividing liability among maker, operator and user, after a proposed EU AI-liability directive was withdrawn in February 2025.

### Security institutions

The same motion asked for more staff, money and technical capacity at the Federal Office for Information Security, and for Germany’s AI security institute, AISI, to become an independent evaluator working with the EU AI Office. It also sought enforcement of the [Cyber Resilience](/drivers/cyber-resilience) Act, emergency planning for administration, critical infrastructure and smaller firms, and, as a last resort, study of how autonomous or self-improving systems could be interrupted and shut down. It also wanted common standards at the [United Nations](/organizations/united-nations), with the United States and China included.

The text said large AI firms dominated the safety debate and pointed to tests in which agents bypassed limits and reached third-party systems without authorisation, citing a 2026 Bitkom report for annual damage from IT attacks, espionage and sabotage in the hundreds of billions of euros. Von Notz said announcements now had to be followed by action. In March, Hansjörg Durz (CDU/CSU) had called the AI Act not yet innovation-friendly enough, while [Ralph Brinkhaus](/people/ralph-brinkhaus) defended European rules “with a sense of proportion”, and AfD speaker Robin Jünger objected to new posts and costs. Network-agency president Klaus Müller told a 23 March hearing the agency was ready, and was cooler than some experts toward an AI advisory council.

### Surveillance and data protection

On 9 October 2025, in a topical hour on a “German no” to EU “chat control”, Lenhard opposed drafts that would have required services such as WhatsApp or Signal to scan private messages automatically. She said child protection was urgent, but that suspicionless scanning struck at fundamental rights and secure communications, and called it a scandal that Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt had not clearly rejected it until a day or two earlier; CDU whip [Hendrik Hoppenstedt](/people/hendrik-hoppenstedt) interjected that they had. She asked instead for investigators, deletion of abuse imagery and prevention: “Protecting children is our duty. Protecting our freedom is our responsibility.” SPD deputy [Carmen Wegge](/people/carmen-wegge) also rejected client-side scanning as unlikely to survive German courts and thanked Justice Minister [Stefanie Hubig](/people/stefanie-hubig) and Dobrindt; CDU speakers said the rejection was not new. In June 2025 the [Chaos Computer Club](/organizations/chaos-computer-club), with 21 other organisations, had urged Dobrindt not to abandon Germany’s earlier opposition, calling the plan an attack on end-to-end encryption.

Motion 21/2349 had sought a national exclusion of biometric identification in public spaces, with only tightly limited retrospective identification of suspects if it met constitutional and EU law. Parliament did not adopt that exclusion.

In April 2026 Lenhard asked what the government had done since the justice and interior ministries published, on 2 May 2025, a feasibility study for an overall surveillance account (*Überwachungsgesamtrechnung*). Parliamentary State Secretary Anette Kramme replied on 24 April that the study, a stocktake of the law through 2022, had been noted, but that the coalition agreement for the 21st term did not provide for continuing it.

## Economy, energy and interior work

### Economic affairs and energy

Since 25 March 2025 Lenhard has been a substitute member of the Bundestag Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy.

On 11 November 2025 she co-signed the Alliance 90/The Greens motion “Wirtschaft 2045” (printed paper 21/2723), which called for a bridge electricity price of 5 cents per kilowatt-hour for energy-intensive industry, an electricity tax at the European minimum, further renewable expansion, lower grid fees and a faster green-hydrogen build-out, and named microelectronics, batteries, steel and chemicals among industries to support.

In written question 177 (printed paper 21/5249, 10 April 2026) she asked how the National Data Centre Strategy’s aim of at least quadrupling artificial intelligence computing capacity by 2030, relative to 2025, accounted for different requirements for pre-training, post-training and inference. Thomas Jarzombek answered on 7 April 2026 that AI-optimized infrastructure could in principle serve all three, that use was generally a private choice the strategy could not pre-empt, and that no differentiated demand plan by those uses had been prepared. On 16 April 2026 she told the Bundestag that this left the strategy without a reliable needs analysis, because scientific high-performance computing and decentralized capacity for administrations and medium-sized firms determined what was built, where, and how much energy it used. She cited a study by the think tank interface and the [Bertelsmann Stiftung](/organizations/bertelsmann-stiftung) on the risk of missing real demand, said the promise of sustainable data centres was paired with a weakening of Energy Efficiency Act rules, stated that German data-centre energy use would quadruple by 2045, and called the split greenwashing. The Bundestag’s report of the debate noted the government goal of at least doubling data-centre capacity by 2030 and quadrupling AI computing power.

On 12 March 2026 she visited the Erlangen National High Performance Computing Center at the University of Erlangen–Nuremberg. According to [the centre](/organizations/the-centre), the discussion covered energy-efficient infrastructure, AI and quantum technologies; she saw the GPU clusters “Alex” and “Helma” and was briefed on the Nordbayerisches Hochleistungsrechenzentrum, then starting construction, which was designed for energy efficiency and to feed waste heat into district heating in Erlangen.

The Green motion “Europa zum KI-Standort machen” of 2 July 2026 (printed paper 21/6825), with Lenhard as first-named author, asked for data-centre efficiency and sustainability standards, efficient chips, sites where waste heat, renewable electricity and land coincide, capacity tied to additional renewables and existing grid connections, strict water standards, and needs analyses against overcapacity.

### Interior committee

She has been a substitute member of the Interior Committee since the same date. In printed paper 21/8312 (2 October 2026), a question in the interior ministry’s section, she asked what short-term consequences the government drew for the Federal Office for Information Security from its description, at the government press conference of 14 September 2026, of growing AI capabilities as “a completely new threat scenario”, including any change in staff, money and equipment. [Daniela Ludwig](/people/daniela-ludwig) replied that the National Security Council had decided to establish AISI Deutschland under the joint lead of the digital-affairs and interior ministries, that the office would use its findings, and that any extra resources were not yet settled.

## Public profile

### Regional press

In Nuremberg, the Nürnberger Nachrichten has carried most of the reporting. Marco Puschner covered the search for a successor to Tessa Ganserer and, on 11 November 2024, Lenhard’s selection. The same day Bayerischer Rundfunk reported 59 votes out of 63 and quoted her calling Minister-President Markus Söder a “Fähnchen im Wind” who was “seines Amtes nicht würdig.” On 30 January 2025 the NN called her Ganserer’s “ausgesprochen junge” successor.

*Rebecca Lenhard in the Bundestag chamber, in a photograph published with a February 2026 Nürnberger Nachrichten interview on her first year as a member.*

After she entered the Bundestag on the Bavarian list, NN interviews were paywalled past the lead. On 16 March 2025 Puschner wrote that at 29 she lowered the average age of the 21st Bundestag despite missing the direct seat. On 21 October 2025 Katharina Wasmeier quoted a refusal to live anywhere but Nuremberg and dated her joining the local Greens to 2019. Harald Baumer’s 28 February 2026 column said she would describe what had surprised her and what she was occasionally ashamed of; the answers were not in the teaser. *Flamingo und Dosenbier* (8 July 2025) printed unedited replies from nine of 24 Bavarian women members; she linked more women in parliament to her experience “als lesbische Frau.” *NB Times* (Kevin Kienle, 22 April 2026) cast her as demanding an inquiry after councillors’ contact details were reportedly sent to every group, including the Alternative for Germany. None of these pieces describes a personal scandal.

### Specialist and national coverage

Specialist and national media have treated her as the Greens’ digital spokesperson and as the author of written questions, rather than as a biographical subject. On 21 May 2025 netzpolitik.org placed her, with other newcomers, in a wholly new Green team on the digital committee. Daniel Leisegang called her “knapp 30” and the group’s spokesperson, and quoted a claim about software she had designed at the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees. The standfirst of a Der Tagesspiegel *Background* portrait by Viola Heeger (21 August 2025) said voting and collecting rubbish had no longer been enough, and that she wanted digital sovereignty and local value creation. The rest was paywalled; the photograph was credited to her.

On 9 February 2026 n-tv, from a government answer first available to Süddeutsche Zeitung Dossier, reported Microsoft licence spending of 481.4 million euros in 2025, after 274.1 million in 2023 and 347.7 million in 2024, and quoted her “gefährlichen Trend.” heise online used the same numbers the next day to discuss lock-in. On 24 June 2026 Stefan Krempl credited a further question with a wider 2017–2025 total above 1.9 billion euros, while quoting criticism from the Left’s Wagner rather than from her. A 25 May 2026 heise online article quoted her on fibre overbuilding. netzpolitik.org quoted her on reliance on Starlink, on a broadband claims process she called too slow and unreasonable, and on trust in a digital wallet that “kann man am Ende nicht mit einem Update einspielen.”

Longer interviews remained inside the trade press. *t3n* (Florian Zandt, 6 July 2026) introduced a subscription interview on US office and AI tools and on costs her February question had put in the hundreds of millions. Handelsblatt (Josefine Fokuhl, 27 October 2026) quoted her demanding that AI firms and their executives be liable for harm. Parliamentwatch recorded answers to 11 of 13 questions, 85 percent. No personal controversy appears in this coverage.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/rebecca-lenhard