# Renata Alt

# Renata Alt

Renata Alt (born 27 August 1965 in Skalica) is a chemical engineer and a German politician of the Free Democratic Party (FDP). She was a member of the Bundestag from October 2017 to March 2025, returned on the Baden-Württemberg state list for the Nürtingen constituency. In the 20th Bundestag she chaired the Committee on Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid, elected by secret ballot on 15 December 2021.

Her Bundestag biography records an Abitur in 1983 and a Diplom-Ingenieur course from 1983 to 1987 at the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, Slovakia, in the faculty of chemical technology, specializing in food chemistry and biotechnology; Baden-Württemberg recognized the degree in 1994. From 1987 to 1991 she worked in foreign trade for Technopol AG in Bratislava, in machinery and the food industry, and in 1991 in the Europe and European Economic Community department of the foreign-trade ministry in Prague. She was an economic attaché at the Czechoslovak consulate general in Munich in 1992 and at the Slovak consulate general there in 1993; the biography for the 19th Bundestag adds that the foreign ministry in Prague sent her as a diplomat and that she was accredited by Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel. From 1994 to 2021 she worked as a consultant in foreign trade and external relations, and from 1997 to 2021 as a scientific adviser in food chemistry and biochemistry.

Alt joined the FDP in 2009. She has chaired the party's Baden-Württemberg expert committee on international politics and has been vice-chair of the Liberal Women in the state; from 2015 she also sat on the state executive. From December 2016 to May 2022 she was a city councillor in Kirchheim unter Teck for the FDP/KiBü group, and from May 2019 she chaired that group. In 2017 she stood in Nürtingen and in seventh place on the FDP state list. In the constituency the FDP took 9.9 percent of the first votes (16,390) and 15.0 percent of the second votes. During the 19th Bundestag she was a full member of the Committee on [Foreign Affairs](/organizations/foreign-affairs), her group's spokesperson (Obfrau) on the Subcommittee on Civilian Crisis Prevention, Conflict Management and Integrated Action, and a deputy member of the Health Committee.

At the federal election of 26 September 2021 she again entered via the Baden-Württemberg list, with 13.8 percent of the first votes in Nürtingen. In that term she was a deputy member of the Foreign Affairs Committee and of the Health Committee as well as chair of the human-rights committee. After the European Union tightened sanctions over Iran's crackdown on protests, Tehran announced counter-sanctions on 23 people and 13 organizations, among them Alt, Roderich Kiesewetter (CDU) and Michael Roth (SPD), covering entry bans and the freezing of any assets in Iran. The FDP's national second-vote share at the election of 23 February 2025 was 4.3 percent, down from 11.4 percent in 2021, and the party received no seats. Her membership ended in March 2025. Leaving parliament, she described a debt package passed in the final days as "a scandal."

## Early life and education

### Childhood in Skalica

Renata Alt was born on 27 August 1965 in Skalica, a town in western Slovakia. She grew up there in the Slovak part of Czechoslovakia, then the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. The town is in the Záhorie region, close to Moravia in what is now the Czech Republic. Alt has described Skalica as a former royal town, recalled close ties between Záhorie and Moravia, and said that visits to family and friends there still matter to her.

She has said that she grew up in what she called the hardest years of communist rule. In an account of remarks she gave at a Berlin event, her parents and grandparents had lived through the Prague Spring of 1968 and its suppression and talked about it at home, while the children were drilled in what they could repeat at school or among friends. The same account says she was not allowed to bring friends into the house because the family kept books that stood on the index of banned literature.

Alt has dated an interest in politics to her secondary-school years behind the Iron Curtain. From Skalica it was possible to receive Austrian public television from ORF. She began private German lessons at the age of five and later compared Czechoslovak state broadcasts with Austrian ones, which she said drew her toward international politics and toward the hope that the border regime would end. She has also been described as successful, while still a schoolgirl, in research competitions. The Bundestag biography records an Abitur in 1983, the term used there for her secondary-school leaving qualification; published biographies do not name the school. She has since said that she carries “three souls”—German, Czech and Slovak.

### University studies in Bratislava

From 1983 to 1987 Alt took a Diplom-Ingenieur course in Bratislava at the institution German biographical records call the Slovak Technical University, in its Faculty of Chemical Technology, specializing in food chemistry and biotechnology. That school was then the Slovenská vysoká škola technická (SVŠT), the name it had carried since 1939. A law of the Slovak National Council renamed it the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava (Slovenská technická univerzita, STU) with effect from 1 April 1991, after she had finished the course. The chemical faculty itself had been renamed the Faculty of Chemical Technology (Chemickotechnologická fakulta) in 1965; on 1 July 2001 it became the Faculty of Chemical and Food Technology.

Her curriculum vitae gives the diploma thesis as “Charakterisierung der inhibitorischen Wirkung von Zephalosporinen auf die Synthese der Zellwand bei Bakterien,” a study of how cephalosporins inhibit synthesis of the bacterial cell wall. The parliamentary biography lists the qualification as Diplom-Ingenieurin in chemistry. In 1994 the Ministry of Science and Research of Baden-Württemberg, in Stuttgart, formally recognized the degree. According to Alt’s own CV, the ministry treated both the course of study and the Dipl.-Ing. title as equivalent in substance to a degree from a German university. A 2022 magazine profile summarized the same Bratislava qualification as graduation in biotechnology and food processing, with a master’s-level degree in chemistry.

## Professional career

Renata Alt’s recorded working life runs from foreign trade in Czechoslovakia to a posting as economic attaché in Munich, and then to consulting and scientific advisory work in Germany. The year-by-year posts below come chiefly from Bundestag biographies compiled from her own statements; the archive notes that those biographies rest on members’ self-disclosures.

### Foreign trade and the Munich consulate

The biography for the 20th Bundestag states that from 1987 to 1991 she worked at Technopol AG in Bratislava, in foreign trade for the machinery and food industries. Technopol was entered in the Slovak commercial register on 18 February 1970. That extract records that the Ministry of Foreign Trade in Prague authorized the company for foreign-trade activity on 6 February 1970 (file 297/70), and that its statutes gave the German name Technopol Aktiengesellschaft Bratislava. The same Bundestag text places her in 1991 at the Ministry of Foreign Trade in Prague, in the department for Europe and the European Economic Community, with “EU” added in parentheses.

The biography for the 19th Bundestag, also drawn from her statements, says that in 1992 the foreign ministry in Prague sent her to Germany as a diplomat and that she was accredited by Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel. It records her that year as economic attaché (*Wirtschaftsattaché*) at the consulate general of the Czechoslovak Republic in Munich, and in 1993 in the same role at the consulate general of the Slovak Republic. The later biography repeats those two posts and years but does not mention Kinkel or name the ministry that sent her. She has used the same Kinkel sentence in the self-description published by abgeordnetenwatch.de.

A September 2017 *Stuttgarter Nachrichten* profile, written while she was a candidate, likewise described her as having been sent by the Prague foreign ministry to work as an economic attaché at the Czech consulate general in Munich. The article dated the posting to “15 years” earlier, which would fall around 2002 and does not match the 1992–1993 chronology in the Bundestag biographies.

In an April 2023 interview with Luboš Palata, a European editor at the Czech daily *Deník*, she said she had been a Czechoslovak diplomat at the Munich consulate at the time of the dissolution of Czechoslovakia. She called the split a sad experience: colleagues at the consulate had got along and had not understood why they had to separate, and she described the division as the aim of nationalists who held no referendum. A short curriculum vitae printed with the interview says she worked at the Technopol international-trade company and then at the Czechoslovak Ministry of International Trade, and that she was appointed trade attaché in Munich in 1993—a shorter account than the two calendar years given by the Bundestag.

### Consulting and scientific work in Germany

The 20th-term biography states that from 1994 to 2021 she worked in consulting on foreign trade and external relations, and from 1997 to 2021 as a scientific adviser in food chemistry and biochemistry. The 19th-term text, which still described that work as current, widened the advisory fields to health, food chemistry, nutritional science, biotechnology and biochemistry. In the disclosure of activity before membership in the Bundestag, she was listed as a scientific adviser in food chemistry and biochemistry in Kirchheim unter Teck. On abgeordnetenwatch she used almost the same wording and added that the consulting included work as an interpreter. In 1994 the Ministry of Science and Research of Baden-Württemberg in Stuttgart recognized her Bratislava diploma, the year the biographies date the start of the consulting.

The Bundestag biographies describe the consulting without naming a company. The curriculum vitae published with the 2023 interview states that she and her husband own a trading company called Consultex and live in Kirchheim unter Teck.

On abgeordnetenwatch she writes that she has held German citizenship since 2000. The Palata interview put the naturalization in 2000, after eight years in Germany. She said she had not known that she could apply a few years after marrying, did so once she learned of her eligibility by chance, and had to give up Slovak citizenship because she could not keep both nationalities; she said her parents were heartbroken for many years. The printed CV likewise says that, after the Munich appointment, she married a German citizen and herself became one in 2000.

## Entry into the FDP and local politics

### State party roles

Renata Alt joined the Free Democratic Party (FDP) in 2009. At a discussion in March 2023, as reported in a *Freitag* community article, she said she had entered “wegen der Freiheit” and because of foreign-policy figures such as [Hans-Dietrich Genscher](/people/hans-dietrich-genscher). The report places that step after she acquired German citizenship in 2000, and after a childhood in communist Czechoslovakia. The office lists she filed with the Bundestag are marked there as members’ own statements. They record the 2009 entry but give no separate account of the motive.

In Kirchheim unter Teck, the *Teckbote* described her in April 2016 as deputy chair of the association Kirchheim–Weilheim–Lenninger Tal and as a state delegate to the federal congress. On the state international-policy committee she was first a deputy. The Baden-Württemberg report for 2015–2017 names Daniel Obst as chair and Alt among the deputy chairs, and lists her on the matching federal committee. The 2017–2019 report still names Obst as chair and again lists her on the federal committee. In September 2017 the *Teckbote* quoted her saying she had already worked in that federal committee and intended to use the brief in parliament. The state report for 1 July 2019 to 30 May 2021 names her chair, with deputies including Klara Krägeloh, Sascha Schmidt and Rudolf Rentschler. The annex for June 2021 to June 2023 still lists her as chair, and her 20th-term Bundestag biography, current through March 2025, does the same, also calling her a delegate to federal and state congresses.

She was a deputy chair of the FDP-affiliated Liberale Frauen in Baden-Württemberg. On 16 March 2018, at a members’ meeting in Singen, the *Teckbote* reported that Judith Skudelny was confirmed as state chair and that Alt and Elke Bass were again elected deputies. Bundestag biographies for the 19th and 20th terms both list the vice-chairmanship; the later text calls the group an FDP *Vorfeldorganisation*.

On the state executive she was a *Beisitzerin* of the board chosen at the 113th ordinary congress in Balingen on 12–13 June 2015. The 2015–2017 report, updated to 4 July 2017, still includes her. The board was elected again on 8 July 2017 at the 116th congress in Karlsruhe, and the next business report again lists her as a *Beisitzerin*. At the 119th congress in Heilbronn on 13 July 2019, *Vierpunktnull* named her among the *Beisitzer* of the new board, the meeting at which [Michael Theurer](/people/michael-theurer) was re-elected state chair. She did not stand on 19 June 2021 in Stuttgart. The magazine thanked her, Kai Buschmann and Martin Gassner-Herz for their work over the previous two years.

A by-election at the 73rd ordinary federal congress then put her on the federal executive. The party reported her election as a *Beisitzerin* of the first department with 85.39 percent. The state report for June 2021 to June 2023 records that, at the federal congress in Berlin in mid-May 2023, Pascal Kober, Skudelny, Alt and Florian Toncar were elected *Beisitzer*. When the board was renewed, the result published on 17 May 2025 from the 76th congress gave the Baden-Württemberg seat in that department to Skudelny, with 71.38 percent. Alt was not among those elected.

### Kirchheim unter Teck council

The council seat ran in parallel. The biography Alt supplied for the 20th Bundestag states that she sat for the joint FDP/KiBü group in Kirchheim unter Teck from December 2016 until May 2022, and chaired the group from May 2019 until she left. Local reporting does not independently date the December 2016 start. By 26 September 2017 the *Teckbote* was already calling her the councillor who would represent the constituency from Berlin, after she had settled in the town in 1994.

For the 2019 municipal election the paper reported on 1 April that she headed the [joint list](/organizations/joint-list) of the FDP and the Kirchheimer Bürger (KiBü), identified as a Bundestag member and a chemical engineer. Branch chair Albrecht Ellwanger said the aim was to regain *Fraktion* status together with the Kirchheimer Bürger. The May 2019 start she gives for the chairmanship matches the new council term after that election. Coverage of the 2024 election described her as the list’s main draw five years earlier and noted that she was absent. The FDP/KiBü candidates reported as winning seats were Hans Kahle and Jens Hildebrandt. The May 2022 end of the mandate is in the Bundestag self-report; the local articles consulted do not explain the resignation.

## Bundestag elections

### Candidacies from 2013 to 2021

Renata Alt sought a seat in the Bundestag for the Free Democratic Party (FDP) at the federal elections of 2013, 2017 and 2021, each time as the party's candidate in constituency 262, Nürtingen, and on its Baden-Württemberg state list. Voters cast a first vote for a constituency candidate and a second vote for a party list. List seats follow mainly from second votes, and a party below five percent of the national second vote receives none unless it wins enough constituencies outright.

On 22 September 2013 she stood nineteenth on the state list. The FDP's first-vote share in Nürtingen was 2.5 percent (3,997 votes), 9.1 points below 2009, and its second-vote share in the district was 6.9 percent. Nationally the party took 4.8 percent of second votes and does not appear in the Federal Returning Officer's distribution of seats, so Alt did not enter the 18th Bundestag. The direct mandate went to the [Christian Democratic Union](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany) (CDU), with 51.0 percent. Michael Hennrich, the CDU member for Nürtingen since 2002, held that direct seat in the two terms that followed.

At the election of 24 September 2017 she was seventh on the state list. Her first-vote share rose to 9.9 percent (16,390), and the FDP's second-vote share in the district to 15.0 percent (24,922). Across Baden-Württemberg the party won 12.7 percent of second votes (762,008) and 12 of the state's 96 Bundestag seats, all of them list seats, so seventh place was enough for the 19th Bundestag. Hennrich again took the constituency, with 39.4 percent.

For 26 September 2021 she was seventh once more, on the list adopted on 17 October 2020 at a party assembly in Friedrichshafen. Her Nürtingen first-vote share reached 13.8 percent (22,765), the highest of her four candidacies, and the FDP took 17.5 percent of the district's second votes. Statewide the party reached 15.3 percent (908,039 second votes). The official seat calculation gave that list 16 seats, and she entered the 20th Bundestag. Hennrich won the direct mandate with 30.1 percent. He resigned on 10 February 2023, with effect from the end of 28 February, and was succeeded by Alexander Föhr.

| Election | State-list place | First votes | Share | FDP second votes in the district | Share |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 22 Sep 2013 | 19 | 3,997 | 2.5% | 10,880 | 6.9% |
| 24 Sep 2017 | 7 | 16,390 | 9.9% | 24,922 | 15.0% |
| 26 Sep 2021 | 7 | 22,765 | 13.8% | 28,807 | 17.5% |
| 23 Feb 2025 | 7 | 9,105 | 5.3% | 11,503 | 6.7% |

Vote figures are the Federal Returning Officer's final results for constituency 262. Because Alt was the FDP's constituency candidate, the party's first-vote total is hers. List places are those recorded for her candidacies.

### The 2025 election and the end of the mandate

The Bundestag chosen on 23 February 2025 was elected early. Alt was again the Nürtingen candidate and seventh on the state list adopted by the Landesvertreterversammlung on 23 November 2024. Her first-vote share fell to 5.3 percent (9,105), 8.6 points below 2021, and the FDP's second-vote share in the district to 6.7 percent (11,503). Turnout was 85.1 percent, up from 80.5 percent in 2021 and 81.2 percent in 2017. The direct seat went to Matthias Hiller of the CDU, recorded as Dr Matthias Fabian Hiller, with 37.7 percent (64,951 votes). The runner-up was Christof Helmut Deutscher of [the Alternative](/organizations/the-alternative) for Germany, with 17.8 percent. The *Nürtinger Zeitung* reported that evening that Hiller had the most first votes and that Alt would have to leave parliament.

In Baden-Württemberg the FDP still received 5.6 percent of second votes (357,539). Nationally it received 4.3 percent (2,148,757) and is absent from the final allocation of seats. Tagesschau's preliminary count was 4.33 percent, with the FDP and the Bündnis [Sahra Wagenknecht](/people/sahra-wagenknecht) both short of the five-percent hurdle.

Alt told the *Nürtinger Zeitung* she had expected not to return even if the party cleared that hurdle, because an electoral reform would leave the new Bundestag about 100 members smaller than the one elected in 2021. The national result then removed the whole FDP group. Under the Basic Law, an electoral term ends only when the next Bundestag convenes, which must be no later than the thirtieth day after the election. The 21st Bundestag held its constitutive sitting on 25 March 2025. In June the *Teckbote* reported that Alt, like her FDP colleagues, had given up the mandate after seven and a half years, was looking for a new role, and was still keeping up international contacts.

## Foreign affairs

### Committee work on Eastern Europe

In the 19th Bundestag (2017–2021) Alt, of the Free Democratic Party (FDP), was a full member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and a full member and FDP spokesperson (*Obfrau*) of its subcommittee on civilian crisis prevention, conflict management and integrated action. The Bundestag later described her as that committee’s rapporteur for Russia and Ukraine; in the 20th Bundestag she was only a deputy member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, while chairing the Committee on Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid.

Through 2019 her line combined condemnation with a call for a diplomatic reset. As lead signatory of the FDP motion “A new impulse for peace in Ukraine” (printed paper 19/10010, 8 May 2019), she marked five years since what the motion called Russia’s unlawful annexation of Crimea, put deaths in eastern Ukraine at nearly 13,000, and said the Normandy format and the Minsk agreements had not secured a settlement. On Abgeordnetenwatch that July she quoted the Bundestag research service classifying the takeover as an annexation, called the 2015 package “de facto dead” for lack of sequencing, deadlines and consequences, and asked both Russia and Ukraine to work toward pacification.

The poisoning of [Alexei Navalny](/people/alexei-navalny) shifted her toward economic pressure without dropping the wish for relations. In the Bundestag on 11 September 2020 she said she liked Russia and found the estrangement from the West unbearable, condemned the attack, and still wanted good European Union–Russia relations and asylum for dissidents—but demanded that Nord Stream 2 be frozen until the case was clarified, plus personal sanctions and a European Magnitsky Act. In February 2021 she told the *Teckbote* that a moratorium on the pipeline and sanctions on [Vladimir Putin](/people/vladimir-putin)’s supporters were a way to confront the Kremlin, and called the United States an important transatlantic partner.

After the full-scale invasion that caveat disappeared. On 6 April 2022, citing a [Human Rights Watch](/organizations/human-rights-watch) account from Vorzel, she called images from Bucha a caesura after which there would be “no return to business as usual with Putin’s Russia,” and urged Russia’s total economic isolation and prosecutions of decision-makers. On 18 January 2024 she opposed an [Alternative for Germany](/organizations/alternative-for-germany) (AfD) motion, calling the war a crime Putin could end at once and the AfD his stirrup-holder. In December 2024 she was second signatory of an FDP motion demanding immediate release of Taurus missiles and a stronger European pillar of NATO in light of [Donald Trump](/people/mig-donald-trump)’s return. In April 2021 she had led an FDP motion for an “engaged and realistic” EU perspective for the Western Balkans, with strict rule-of-law conditions and a strategy against Russian, Chinese and other outside influence.

### Parliamentary friendship groups

Alt was not chair of a separate German–Slovak group. In the 19th term she chaired the combined Parliamentary Group on Slovakia, Czechia and Hungary; the deputies included [Katrin Staffler](/people/katrin-staffler) (CDU/CSU), Marianne Schieder (SPD) and Petr Bystron (AfD). In the same term she was a deputy chair, not the chair, of the German–Southeast European Parliamentary Group (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia), whose chair was Josip Juratovic (SPD).

From 4 to 8 February 2019 she led the group to Bratislava and Prague, with [Thomas Erndl](/people/thomas-erndl), [Marcus Bühl](/people/marcus-buhl) and Stephan Kühn; a pre-trip notice had also named Karl Holmeier. She said merging the formerly separate country groups had at first caused incomprehension, and that both sides wanted to move past the 2015 refugee crisis. Slovak and Czech interlocutors, she reported, wanted a place in the EU core and coordination in the [Visegrád Group](/organizations/visegrad-group), but objected to German solo moves on migration, the nuclear phase-out and Baltic gas, and viewed Nord Stream 2 extremely critically.

She did not keep the chair in the 20th term. A Bundestag list dated 12 July 2024 names [Steffen Kotré](/people/steffen-kotre) (AfD) as chair and Alt as one of four deputy chairs, with Jörg Nürnberger (SPD), [Martina Englhardt-Kopf](/people/martina-englhardt-kopf) (CDU/CSU) and [Tina Winklmann](/people/tina-winklmann) (Greens); she is absent from the Southeast European board. The AfD leadership was contested. In April 2024 Radio Prague International quoted Nürnberger calling the group “dysfunctional” because its chair was Bystron, whom Czech politicians and, he said, the Czech and Slovak ambassadors would not meet; Bystron blamed both governments, and Nürnberger had already opened a parallel German–Czech parliamentary forum in Prague in November 2023.

### OSCE and wider international engagement

Alt sat on the German delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE. At the 29th annual session in 2021 she was a member under Doris Barnett, not a deputy head. At Vancouver (30 June–4 July 2023) the report names Daniela De Ridder as acting head and Alt as a member. By the Vienna winter meeting of 22–23 February 2024, and again at the Bucharest session of 29 June–3 July 2024, Bundestag documents list her as deputy head under [Robin Wagener](/people/robin-wagener) (Greens).

In Vancouver she argued that Russia should answer for the Kakhovka dam’s destruction and for leaving flood-zone residents to themselves. She tabled a supplementary item on deported children; the Bundestag’s report cites her figure of more than 20,000 taken to Russia and Belarus and cleared for adoption, and records the committee’s adoption of her call for prosecutions and an OSCE-led return. In January 2024 she said Putin and his henchmen had paralysed the OSCE for two years, which made an AfD proposal for an OSCE-led peace delegation pointless.

The *Stuttgarter Zeitung* reported that she observed the November 2024 U.S. presidential election in Maryland and Washington, D.C., described the voting as highly professional and peaceful despite preparations for unrest, and said Germany and Europe would have to deal with Trump as an unpredictable partner while becoming more independent and competitive.

## Human rights and humanitarian aid

### Committee leadership

In the 19th Bundestag (2017–2021), Renata Alt was not a member of the Committee on Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid. The archived biography lists her as a full member of the Foreign Affairs Committee and as both a full member and the FDP Obfrau—the group's coordinator, not the chair—of its Subcommittee on Civilian Crisis Prevention, Conflict Management and Integrated Action (Unterausschuss „Zivile Krisenprävention, Konfliktbearbeitung und vernetztes Handeln“). She was a deputy member of the Health Committee.

*Renata Alt, with a nameplate identifying her as chair, beside Bundestag Vice President Aydan Özoğuz at the constitutive meeting of the Committee on Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid on 15 December 2021.*

On 15 December 2021, at the committee's constitutive meeting in the 20th Bundestag, she was elected chair by secret ballot. Vice President [Aydan Özoğuz](/people/aydan-ozoguz) (SPD) conducted the sitting. The committee had 19 full members; the FDP's two were Alt and Peter Heidt. The biography of [Norbert Maria Altenkamp](/people/norbert-altenkamp) (CDU/CSU) for 2021–2025 lists him as deputy chair. Alt's biography for that term lists her as chair and full member, and as a deputy member of the Foreign Affairs and Health committees. Those records describe a Bundestag committee office. They do not give her the separate title of FDP spokesperson on human rights.

In a December 2023 Bundestag interview for the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, she said the committee's main themes that year had been LGBTIQ+ rights and worsening food insecurity and [water scarcity](/drivers/water-scarcity). On 18 December 2024 the committee held a public hearing on "forgotten humanitarian crises." Experts from the International Committee of the Red Cross, Médecins Sans Frontières, [Plan International](/organizations/plan-international) and the UN World Food Programme warned that funding was falling and that aid was increasingly steered by geopolitical interest rather than need.

### Iran sanctions and advocacy

On 20 February 2023 foreign ministers of the European Union added asset freezes and entry bans on 32 further Iranian officials and two organizations, citing repression and executions during the protests that followed the death of Jina [Mahsa Amini](/people/mahsa-amini). Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, died on 16 September 2022 in police custody after the morality police arrested her; Spiegel reported that hundreds were killed and thousands detained in the protests.

The next day Iran listed 23 people and 13 organizations for entry bans and the freezing of any assets in the country. The names included Alt, [Roderich Kiesewetter](/people/roderich-kiesewetter) (CDU) and [Michael Roth](/people/michael-roth) (SPD), Josef Schuster of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, members of the [European Parliament](/organizations/european-parliament) and other national parliaments, and several arms companies. Tehran accused them of supporting terrorism, interfering in internal affairs and inciting unrest. Spiegel noted that the three Bundestag members had recently criticised the crackdown.

That day a revolutionary court sentenced the German-Iranian Jamshid Sharmahd to death on terrorism charges. Spiegel reported that his family said Iranian intelligence had abducted him in Dubai in 2020 and that his trial had begun in February 2022. On 23 February Alt told Deutschlandfunk that expelling two Iranian diplomats was not enough and that Germany should act on its own so Sharmahd could have an appeal. The day before, she wrote that she regarded the listing, in these circumstances, as an honour, and that she would keep pressing his case, the protest movement, and designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as terrorists. On 28 October 2024, after Iran announced Sharmahd's execution, she called it terrible news and "further evidence that constructive negotiations with this terror regime are not possible."

### Other country and thematic work

Under the Bundestag programme Parliamentarians Protect Parliamentarians, relaunched for the 20th term, Alt sponsored the Belarusian activist Svetlana Kupreeva, who had collected signatures and coordinated campaign work in Minsk for the 2020 opposition candidate [Viktor Babaryko](/people/viktor-babaryko). The chamber's account says the KGB arrested her on 11 June 2020, that she spent about 16 months in pre-trial detention, and that she was released on 12 October 2021 under reporting and travel restrictions while a tax charge Alt called politically motivated remained open. Alt sought an acquittal, avoided direct contact so as not to endanger her, and argued for continued sanctions on the government of [Alexander Lukashenko](/people/alexander-lukashenko), including because Belarus had become complicit in Russia's war against Ukraine.

From November 2022 she sponsored the [Russian opposition](/organizations/russian-opposition) politician Vladimir Kara-Murza. In April 2023 he was sentenced to 25 years in a penal colony for public criticism of the war; the Bundestag account called it the first treason conviction in Russia since the Soviet Union. She wrote to him and stayed in touch with his family. He was freed in August 2024 in the largest Russia–West prisoner exchange since the Cold War, in which Germany played a central role. The patronage ended that September at his request, and he asked her to take up other Russian political prisoners.

On 2 September 2022, after a [United Nations](/organizations/united-nations) report on Uyghurs in China, she told Deutschlandfunk that one had to speak of crimes against humanity, that Germany should reduce its dependence on China, and that the West should place personal sanctions on the Chinese leadership, including President [Xi Jinping](/people/env-person-xi-jinping). In December 2023 she named Russian war crimes in Ukraine, repression in Iran and the Hamas attack on Israel among her main concerns, and described closer ties among China, Russia and Iran as a particular worry. She said human rights were not negotiable and should not be sacrificed to economic interests, and called for a European ban on goods made with forced labour.

## Political positions and criticism

### European and security policy

For the 2017 Bundestag election Alt told Abgeordnetenwatch that foreign policy was her focus: a stronger European foreign and security policy, closer NATO–European Union cooperation, reforms “for a better EU,” and closer work with eastern EU neighbours. The same list said Germany should stay in dialogue with Russia, use free trade, and not arm crisis regions. On 22 July 2019 she wrote that the Free Democrats favoured a European army under joint command and parliamentary control, and a defence union of willing member states, while remaining “unreservedly” committed to NATO and keeping the NATO–Russia Council as a channel despite disagreements.

Her 2021 goals added “open strategic sovereignty” for the EU, a new rule-of-law mechanism, and a joint EU external energy policy. In the Wen-Wählen questionnaire before the February 2025 election she opposed leaving the EU, the euro area, or NATO, and supported a gradual common European army, more money for the Bundeswehr, and a larger German role in missions such as UN operations. On the war she answered that Russia should be pressed to make peace and return territory taken in its unlawful attack on Ukraine; that Ukraine should not be pressed to cede land; and that Germany should send more aid, including longer-range weapons, alongside diplomacy. Her committee work on the war is covered elsewhere. She rejected rewriting the constitutional borrowing limit so investment could more easily be exempted.

### Migration, health and domestic issues

Her 2017 positions included an immigration law for “steered and controlled” immigration. Before the 2025 election she listed “a new realpolitik in migration” among her main goals. In that questionnaire she ranked limiting immigration fifth among tasks she supported and “invest more in protecting the borders” first among economic demands she backed. She answered yes to returning more asylum seekers who had entered through other European countries, even at the cost of relations with those states, and yes to recruiting qualified workers from abroad.

In the 20th Bundestag she was a deputy member of the Health Committee. Her 2021 goals included digitising health care and stronger protection against cyberattacks. On 10 December 2024 she described gematik’s TI-Messenger, due from the third quarter of 2025, as the way insured people would communicate inside the electronic patient record with clinicians and insurers. Providers would be encouraged, not obliged, to use it; patients could block transfer of care data to the research data centre and still use the record. In 2025 she rejected forcing the self-employed and civil servants into the statutory sickness funds and confining private insurers to supplementary cover. She ranked advancing digitalisation second among tasks she supported, opposed a special tax on digital services and any wider commercial use of citizens’ data that weakened data protection, and was “rather” in favour of more European funding for artificial intelligence. She answered yes to lower Bürgergeld with tighter sanctions, and was undecided on a much higher minimum wage, which she said the social partners should set.

### Contested statements and votes

On 18 March 2025 the outgoing Bundestag adopted, by 512 votes to 206, amendments to the Basic Law from the SPD and the CDU/CSU. As Abgeordnetenwatch summarised them, defence and other security spending above 1 percent of gross domestic product would leave the debt brake; a credit-financed special fund of up to €500 billion would cover extra infrastructure investment and extra investment toward climate neutrality by 2045; and the Länder would be able to borrow more. The change needed a two-thirds majority. Alt, still the member for Nürtingen, voted no. An FDP amendment for a one-off Bundeswehr fund of up to €300 billion failed by 630 votes to 85, and a separate FDP defence-fund bill was also defeated. In a farewell interview the *Nürtinger Zeitung* published on 26 March 2025, the paper reported that she regarded the debt package, which it described as having been pushed through, as “a scandal.” The questionnaire was not a flat rejection of borrowing: she answered “rather yes” to higher public debt in the short term if it raised growth, writing that faster growth made debt easier to reduce, while ranking “allow higher state debt” as the economic demand she most opposed.

On 31 January 2025 the Bundestag rejected the CDU/CSU influx-limitation bill, which would have suspended family reunification for people with subsidiary protection and restored “limitation” as an aim of residence law. The result was 349 against and 338 in favour, with five FDP abstentions and 41 members not voting. *Der Tagesspiegel* reported that [Friedrich Merz](/people/friedrich-merz) blamed the FDP and listed Alt among 16 FDP members who cast no vote, beside two noes and five abstentions, treating the gaps as members declining to follow the group. It noted that Marco Buschmann was ill and gave no reason for Alt. The Alternative for Germany had backed the bill in advance.

## Affiliations and public roles

Alt’s documented roles outside her committees concerned remembrance of National Socialist injustice, foreign cultural relations and European dialogue, as recorded in Bundestag papers or by the organizations themselves.

### Foundations and memorial bodies

On 2 July 2020 the Bundestag elected Alt to the board of trustees (Kuratorium) of the Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future (Stiftung „Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft“, EVZ), on a nomination from the Free Democratic Party group, with Ulla Ihnen as deputy. On 4 July 2024 it elected her again, on a joint nomination of the Social Democratic, Green and FDP groups, again with Ihnen as deputy. The foundation’s trustee list continues to name her for the Bundestag’s FDP seat. EVZ was established in 2000 as a foundation under public law after the founding law acknowledged a political and moral responsibility toward victims of National Socialism. Its initial assets of 10.1 billion Deutsche Mark (about 5.2 billion euros) came equally from the federal government and German industry. From 2001 to 2007 it paid 4.4 billion euros to more than 1.66 million former forced laborers in 98 countries. The Kuratorium decides the foundation’s fundamental questions, sets funding priorities and adopts guidelines for the use of its resources; members serve four-year terms.

The Walther Rathenau Institute, a non-partisan foundation in Berlin founded at the beginning of 2008, lists Alt on its advisory board and identifies her there as a member of the Bundestag. It says it commemorates Walther Rathenau, industrialist and foreign minister of the Weimar Republic, and promotes political education and foreign-policy research in the spirit of democratic values, international understanding and tolerance. The page does not date her appointment.

In 2021 she sat on the political advisory council of the German-Polish expert commission that drafted the concept for an “Ort des Erinnerns und der Begegnung mit Polen” in Berlin. Chaired by Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, the council met on 2 February and 22 June 2021. The concept answered a Bundestag resolution of 30 October 2020 calling for a prominent Berlin site devoted to Polish victims of the Second World War and of the occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany. Her archived Bundestag biography also lists membership of the advisory board of the expert commission “Erinnerungsort für polnische NS-Opfer.”

### Peace operations and European associations

Yearbooks of the Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations (ifa) list Alt as an ordinary member by virtue of office, among representatives of the Bundestag groups, for 2019, 2020 and 2022/23. The 2019 and 2020 entries note that she was the FDP spokesperson on the subcommittee for civilian crisis prevention, conflict management and integrated action, and a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee; the 2022/23 entry identifies her as chair of the Committee on Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid. ifa describes its work as international cultural relations aimed at bringing people together. The Bundestag biography records her as a member of ifa’s members’ assembly.

The German-Czech Discussion Forum’s archive lists her on its board for 2019/2020, 2021/2022 and 2023/2024, and not for 2017/2018. The board has 15 German and 15 Czech members, appointed by the two foreign ministers for two-year terms. The 2019/2020 list describes her as chair of the Bundestag parliamentary group for the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary; the later lists, as its deputy chair. The Bundestag biography records membership of the forum without dates.

Europa-Union Deutschland, which describes itself as a non-partisan citizens’ organization for European unification and the German section of the [Union of European Federalists](/organizations/union-of-european-federalists), lists Alt in its parliamentary group in the 20th Bundestag for 2021–2025. The Bundestag biography states that she is a member of the Europa-Union, and the Baden-Württemberg association includes her among former deputies.

## Personal life

### Family and residence

Renata Alt is married to Thomas Alt. In September 2017 the *Teckbote* reported that she had met him, a master hairdresser (*Friseurmeister*) in Kirchheim, while posted in Munich, and moved to Baden-Württemberg in 1994. She has said she fell in love with her future husband there, stayed in Germany, and married about two years later; a curriculum vitae printed with later interviews names Thomas Alt as that German citizen.

Those notes also state that the couple own a firm called Consultex and live in Kirchheim unter Teck. North Data’s extract for Consultex Vermittlung + Beratung Service GmbH (Amtsgericht Stuttgart, HRB 231190; Villastr. 22, Kirchheim) gives its object as mediating and advising on economic and cultural cooperation between German companies and Slovak or Czech ones, and records liquidation on 12 January 2023 with Thomas Alt as liquidator. Archived Bundestag biographies, marked as members’ own statements, list her as married and *konfessionslos* (without religious affiliation) but name neither her husband nor a firm.

On abgeordnetenwatch she writes that she has held German citizenship since 2000 and lives in Kirchheim, and she adds interpreting to the foreign-trade consulting she dates from 1994. In a 2023 interview she said she learned only by chance, a few years after marrying, that she could apply for naturalization, and that she had to give up Slovak citizenship because she could not then keep more than one nationality; her parents, she said, were heartbroken for years. She has described “three souls”—German, Czech and Slovak—and has said that part of her family lives in Slovakia and part in the Czech Republic. Biographical notes with the interviews list Slovak, English, German, Russian and some French.

### Life after parliament

The archived biography dates her Bundestag membership from October 2017 to 25 March 2025. In “Adieu, Bundestag,” published by the *Nürtinger Zeitung* the next day, the paper said the 59-year-old was speaking about her last days in parliament—she had chaired the Committee on Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid in the previous term and had represented the Nürtingen constituency since 2017. It reported that she called the debt package rushed through by the outgoing Bundestag “ein Skandal,” and that she was leaving federal politics with some melancholy (*Wehmut*) while looking forward to “das Neue.” Around the February election she had told the same paper she had expected not to return even if the Free Democratic Party re-entered, because electoral reform would leave the new chamber about 100 members smaller than in 2021.

In June 2025 the *Teckbote* reported that she, like her FDP colleagues, had given up the mandate after seven and a half years, held no political office, and was still looking for a new role while keeping international contacts. The article placed her in the Kirchheim constituency office, describing appointments at conferences and talks with ambassadors, and noted that she had attended the GLOBSEC forum in Prague.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/renata-alt