Robin Wagener

Robin Till Nils Johannes Wagener (born 16 August 1980 in Bielefeld) is a German lawyer, social-court judge and politician of Alliance 90/The Greens. He has been a member of the Bundestag since 2021 for North Rhine-Westphalia, sitting through the 20th and 21st electoral terms on the strength of the state list rather than a direct constituency seat. The parliament lists his pre-mandate occupation as judge and records his candidacy in constituency 134, Lippe I; the official candidate registers give his residence as Bad Salzuflen.

He took the Abitur in 1999, then spent 2000–2001 in civilian service with the fire brigade in Detmold. From 2001 to 2008 he studied law at Bielefeld University, followed by a legal traineeship at the Detmold regional court from 2009 to 2012. He then worked as a programme-communications officer and deputy coordinator of the university’s “richtig einsteigen” scheme (2012–2013) and as an officer for schools, culture and sport at the Association of Cities and Municipalities of North Rhine-Westphalia (2013–2015). From 2015 to 2017 he was a judge at the social court in Münster, and from 2017 until he entered parliament a judge at the Sozialgericht Detmold; that judicial office is suspended for the duration of the mandate.

At the 2021 German federal election he stood in tenth place on the Green list in North Rhine-Westphalia, described on the register as a judge living in Bad Salzuflen, and entered the Bundestag on that list. In Lippe I, then constituency 135, the Greens received 26,932 first votes (15.8 percent); the Social Democratic Party won the direct seat with 30.7 percent, and turnout was 76.8 percent. He was returned at the 2025 German federal election, held on 23 February 2025, again from list place 10. In Lippe I, renumbered constituency 134, the Greens polled 21,911 first votes (12.1 percent), down 3.7 points from 2021; the Christian Democratic Union won the seat with 31.3 percent, and turnout rose to 82.4 percent.

In the 20th Bundestag he was a full member of the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Committee on European Union Affairs, a deputy member of the Defence Committee, chair of the German–Ukrainian Parliamentary Group, and head of the German delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. On 8 February 2023 the federal cabinet appointed him coordinator in the Federal Foreign Office for intersocietal cooperation with the South Caucasus, the Republic of Moldova and Central Asia, with effect from 1 March 2023; Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock also charged him with contact to democratic and government-critical civil society from Belarus and Russia in exile, and tied the new post to the effects of Russia's war against Ukraine. The Bundestag biography records that coordinator’s post as running from 2023 to 2025. In the 21st Bundestag he is a full member of the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Defence Committee, a deputy member of the EU affairs committee, a deputy member of the German OSCE Parliamentary Assembly delegation, a full member of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, and still chair of the German–Ukrainian Parliamentary Group.

Early life and education

Childhood and schooling

Robin Wagener was born on 16 August 1980 in Bielefeld, in the Ostwestfalen-Lippe region of North Rhine-Westphalia. The Bundestag biography, compiled from members' own statements, records that date and place and an Abitur in 1999, and does not name the school. He has treated the neighbouring Lippe district, and Bad Salzuflen in particular, as home. In a 2017 interview with the Lippische Landes-Zeitung he called Bad Salzuflen his hometown and said, "Ich bin ein echter Lipper, und ich lebe gern hier."

That portrait located his early political surroundings in his family. It described his mother as a psychologist and his father as a pastor and a co-founder of the Greens, and wrote that he brought social and political engagement from home. At 16, the paper reported, he entered politics himself through the Green Youth, the youth organisation of Alliance 90/The Greens. He told the interviewer that he had been "eigentlich sehr schüchtern" and that activity with the German Red Cross and the fire service had given him confidence.

Civilian service and law studies

From 2000 to 2001 Wagener performed Zivildienst with the fire brigade in Detmold. While conscription in Germany was still in force, Zivildienst was the civilian substitute for men who refused armed service on grounds of conscience; the Federal Agency for Civic Education notes that both conscription and Zivildienst ended when compulsory military service was suspended in 2011. His curriculum vitae adds that in 2001 he qualified as a Rettungssanitäter, an emergency-medical technician, with the same Detmold brigade.

From 2001 to 2008 he studied law at Bielefeld University. In a 2018 interview he said that during those studies he considered changing course and training as a pastor, because he came from a pastor's family and worship had always mattered to him, and he later called the decision to stay with the law the right one. The same CV places him in 2008–2009 as a research assistant at the university, working on a dissertation that was not completed.

Full qualification for the legal professions is defined in section 5 of the German Judges Act: a university course in law closed by a first examination, then preparatory service closed by a second state examination, which confers the Befähigung zum Richteramt, the qualification for judicial office. The Bundestag biography records that preparatory service, the Rechtsreferendariat, from 2009 to 2012 at the regional court (Landgericht) in Detmold. That training was the route to his later appointment as a social-court judge, beginning in Münster in 2015.

Career before parliament

Legal traineeship and earlier posts

Wagener's German curriculum vitae states that in 2008–2009 he was a research assistant at Bielefeld University and worked on a dissertation that was not completed. From 2009 to 2012 he undertook the Rechtsreferendariat, the preparatory service for fully qualified lawyers, at the regional court (Landgericht) in Detmold. The biography published by the German Bundestag is based on members' own statements.

Under the German Judiciary Act that service lasts two years, in compulsory stages at a civil court, a public prosecutor's office or criminal court, an administrative authority and a law office, plus elective stages. It ends with the second state examination, which with the first examination confers the qualification for judicial office (Befähigung zum Richteramt).

From 2012 to 2013 he was an officer for programme communication and deputy coordinator of "richtig einsteigen" at Bielefeld University. The university says the programme, funded from April 2012 by the federal Qualitätspakt Lehre and continued in a second phase from the winter semester of 2016/17 until December 2020, supported new students with orientation and with mathematical, writing and data skills, in seven sub-projects.

From 2013 to 2015 he was a Referent for schools, culture and sport at the Städte- und Gemeindebund Nordrhein-Westfalen, the association of towns and municipalities in North Rhine-Westphalia. His curriculum vitae adds media, copyright and cemeteries. The association represents member municipalities toward the state government, parliament and administration, is consulted on legislation affecting them, and advises its members.

Social-court judgeship

From 2015 to 2017 Wagener was a judge at the social court in Münster, and from 2017 to 2021 a judge at the Social Court in Detmold. The Bundestag lists his occupation as judge (Richter).

Social courts (Sozialgerichte) are the first-instance courts of Germany's social jurisdiction. They decide public-law disputes over statutory pension, health, long-term-care and accident insurance, employment promotion and basic income support for jobseekers, social assistance including benefits for asylum seekers, social compensation and disability assessment, and other matters assigned by the Social Courts Act. In an oral hearing a chamber has one professional judge and two honorary judges. Proceedings are free of court fees for insured persons, benefit recipients and people with disabilities taking part in that capacity. Judgments may be appealed to a higher social court (Landessozialgericht), within the limits of the Act.

The state assigns the Detmold court the city of Bielefeld and the districts of Gütersloh, Herford, Höxter, Lippe, Minden-Lübbecke and Paderborn, and the Münster court the city of Münster and the districts of Borken, Coesfeld, Steinfurt and Warendorf. The Detmold court states that it covers the Detmold administrative region, about two million inhabitants, with a staff of about 85, and shares a justice centre at Richthofenstraße 3 with the labour court.

The Bundestag biography states that the Detmold judgeship is currently suspended (ruht), and its disclosure register records a right of return and protection against dismissal. Under the Members of the Bundestag Act, the rules for civil servants apply to judges: rights and duties from the public-law service relationship rest during membership, from the federal electoral committee's determination or acceptance of the mandate. Official secrecy and the ban on gifts remain, and the title may be used with the addition "außer Dienst" ("a. D."). After membership ends they rest for at most six further months; an application within three months leads to return to the former service relationship in an office of the same or an equivalent career, with at least the same final basic salary.

Local politics

Bad Salzuflen and the Lippe district

Wagener dates his local political activity in Bad Salzuflen, in Kreis Lippe and in Alliance 90/The Greens to 1998. His Bundestag biography records two periods on the Bad Salzuflen city council (Stadtrat), 2002–2013 and 2020–2023. The Lippische Landes-Zeitung reported on 5 February 2013 that he had chaired the Green council group since 2004 and was leaving at once for a post in Düsseldorf with the Association of Towns and Municipalities of North Rhine-Westphalia, covering schools, culture and sport. Ingo Scheulen took the chair until the 2014 local election, and Dagmar Ludwig moved from the reserve list into the seat.

He was no longer a councillor when he stood for mayor on 13 September 2015, listed officially as the candidate of the Greens and a voters’ group. He received 5,058 votes (29.1 percent), behind Volker Heuwinkel of the CDU (35.9 percent) and Roland Thomas of the SPD (32.6 percent); a Pirate Party candidate took 2.4 percent, and turnout was 41.1 percent. Thomas won the runoff on 27 September 2015 with 52.5 percent.

After the 2020 local elections Wagener returned to the council and again led the Green group, then the third-largest faction. The Landes-Zeitung reported on 5 January 2022 that, about a year after that election, he had given up the chair: since entering the Bundestag in the autumn of 2021 he no longer had enough time for it. The group elected Wiebke Kopsieker, then 37, at a retreat. The parliamentary biography places the end of this second council term in 2023, before the 2020–2025 municipal term expired.

At district level he was the Green candidate for Landrat of Lippe on 13 September 2020. He received 28,109 votes (18.6 percent), third behind the incumbent, Axel Lehmann (SPD; 40.3 percent), and Jens Gnisa (CDU; 32.7 percent); the FDP and Die Linke candidates took 4.8 and 3.6 percent. Lehmann won the runoff on 27 September 2020 against Gnisa with 56.0 percent. The Kreistag chosen at the same election included Wagener. In December 2020 the Landkreistag Nordrhein-Westfalen listed him as third honorary deputy Landrat, after Kurt Kalkreuter (SPD) and Stephan Grigat (CDU), under Lehmann. The Lippe Greens’ 2020–2025 group list records the same council seat and deputy role.

On 23 November 2020 the Kreistag also sent him, with Moritz Ilemann, to the assembly (Verbandsversammlung) of the Landesverband Lippe for 2020–2025; that assembly was constituted on 9 December 2020. The district term ended with the municipal election of 14 September 2025. For 2025–2030 Kreis Lippe names two honorary deputies of Landrat Meinolf Haase: Birgit Tornau (CDU) and Kurt Kalkreuter (SPD). Wagener is not among the seven members the Green Kreistag group lists for 2025–2030. The new Kreistag did return him to the Landesverband assembly. At its constitutive sitting, reported on 11 December 2025, he and Birgitt Höhn formed the Green group, with Wagener as chair.

Party offices in Lippe and North Rhine-Westphalia

A members’ meeting of the Lippe district association, reported on 30 November 2015, elected Wagener unanimously as Kreissprecher, to serve with Friederike Menz, a speaker since March, and treasurer Jens Lux. He succeeded Werner Loke, speaker on the district executive since 2008, who was to concentrate on the Green group in the Kreistag. The Bundestag biography lists Wagener as chairman (Vorsitzender) of the Kreisverband from 2015 to 2021.

On 23 April 2016 a state party conference in Neuss elected the full 20-member executive of the North Rhine-Westphalia Greens. Mona Neubaur and Sven Lehmann were confirmed as chairs, with 90.5 and 92.2 percent of the vote, and Robin Wagener of the Lippe association was among the further members chosen. The same parliamentary biography dates his membership of that state executive from 2016 to 2022.

Bundestag elections

In both the 2021 and 2025 federal elections, Robin Wagener was the constituency candidate of Alliance 90/The Greens in Lippe I and was placed tenth on the party's North Rhine-Westphalia state list. He won neither constituency contest. Each Bundestag mandate came from that list place.

Lippe I is the northern and central part of Kreis Lippe. It comprises Bad Salzuflen, Barntrup, Blomberg, Detmold, Dörentrup, Extertal, Kalletal, Lage, Lemgo, Leopoldshöhe and Oerlinghausen; the district's other municipalities form the neighbouring constituency. For the 2025 election the Federal Returning Officer recorded 11 municipalities, an area of 889.2 square kilometres and a population of 293,600 as of 31 December 2023. Those municipalities were already grouped as constituency 135 in 2021. The later redistribution of constituency numbers left the area unchanged and renumbered it 134.

The 2021 election

The election was held on 26 September 2021. The Lippe Greens nominated Wagener, a judge living in Bad Salzuflen: a digital constituency assembly on 18 March chose him unanimously, and a members' postal ballot counted on 6 April confirmed the nomination. At a three-day hybrid state delegate conference that weekend, about 280 delegates adopted an 80-place list and elected him to place 10. The list lodged for the election recorded him there as Robin Till Nils Johannes Wagener.

In constituency 135 the Greens received 26,932 first votes, 15.8 percent of the valid votes and 9.1 percentage points more than in 2017, for third place. The direct seat went to Jürgen Berghahn of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, with 52,359 votes (30.7 percent). The Christian Democratic Union was second, with 44,650 votes (26.2 percent). Turnout was 76.8 percent of 224,415 eligible voters. Green second votes were 13.6 percent in the constituency, against 16.1 percent for the party across North Rhine-Westphalia. With the constituency won by Berghahn, Wagener's seat was the one attached to list place 10. The Bundestag records him as a member since 2021, and the 20th Bundestag opened on 26 October 2021.

The 2025 election

He stood again in the renumbered constituency at the election of 23 February 2025. The Kreis Lippe constituency committee admitted the Green nomination on 24 January. On the weekend of 7–8 December 2024 a state delegate conference in Bielefeld, of about 280 delegates, again elected him to place 10; the Lippische Landes-Zeitung reported 94.76 percent of the vote. The state association's order put Britta Haßelmann and Katharina Dröge first and second and Wagener tenth.

The final constituency result, determined on 27 February 2025, gave Wagener 21,911 first votes, 12.1 percent and 3.7 points below 2021, which was fourth place. Kerstin Vieregge of the CDU won the seat with 56,640 votes (31.3 percent). The SPD was second with 23.5 percent and the Alternative for Germany third with 21.8 percent. Turnout was 82.4 percent of 221,604 eligible voters. Green second votes were 10.6 percent in the constituency and 12.4 percent in the state. The Federal Returning Officer lists Wagener as elected for the Land North Rhine-Westphalia at list place 10, and as having also stood in constituency 134. The 21st Bundestag opened on 25 March 2025.

Work in the Bundestag

Committee memberships

Wagener has sat in the Bundestag for Alliance 90/The Greens since 2021, returned on the North Rhine-Westphalia state list. In the 20th term, whose committees were constituted on 15 December 2021, he was an ordinary member of the Foreign Affairs Committee—46 members, chaired by Michael Roth of the Social Democratic Party, with seven Greens—and of the Committee on European Union Affairs, 40 members chaired by Anton Hofreiter, with six Greens. He was not an ordinary member of the Defence Committee, constituted the same day under Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann; the archived biography lists him as a deputy and still shows the two ordinary seats at the end of the term.

The 21st-term committees were constituted on 21 May 2025. Wagener became an ordinary member of Foreign Affairs—42 members, six Greens, chaired by Armin Laschet (CDU/CSU)—and of Defence—38 members, five of them Greens, chaired by Thomas Röwekamp (CDU/CSU). On the EU committee, again chaired by Hofreiter and with five ordinary Greens, he was only a deputy. From 1 March 2023 until 2025 he also held a coordinator's post at the Federal Foreign Office, without leaving the 20th-term committees.

The Afghanistan inquiry

On 8 July 2022 the Bundestag constituted its 1st Committee of Inquiry of the 20th term to examine the Bundeswehr withdrawal from Afghanistan between the Doha Agreement of 29 February 2020 and 30 September 2021. Ralf Stegner (SPD) was elected chair. Wagener was the Greens' Obmann, the group's spokesperson, with Sara Nanni the other ordinary member and Canan Bayram and Jamila Schäfer as deputies.

In September 2022 Wagener said cooperation with the Foreign and Defence Ministries was working but that requested files from the Federal Intelligence Service were still missing. After a November hearing of a former local employee was broken off, the groups' spokespersons (Obleute) agreed that such sessions would be accompanied by a psychotherapist and that members would be offered training on retraumatisation. Wagener said the committee had a duty of care toward people traumatised during the Taliban takeover.

He had left by the end of March 2023. A Heinrich Böll Foundation interview published on 25 May 2023 described Nanni as Obfrau since the end of March, coinciding with his Foreign Office post from 1 March. The final report, printed paper 20/14700 and more than 1,400 pages, was handed to Vice President Aydan Özoğuz; taz dated that step to 18 February 2025 and reported 111 witnesses. Its faction assessments, summarised by the Bundestag, show the SPD, CDU/CSU, Greens and FDP drawing similar conclusions; the Greens wrote of "einer organisierten Verantwortungslosigkeit" (organised irresponsibility) and of blockage by individual departments. Wagener had already left.

Other parliamentary business

The biography also lists the chair of the German-Ukrainian Parliamentary Friendship Group; leadership in the 20th term of the German delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE, with a deputy seat on that delegation in the 21st; ordinary membership of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in the 21st term; and, from 1 June 2025, a board seat at the Deutsche Härtefallstiftung. In the Green parliamentary group he is Eastern Europe spokesperson (Beauftragter für Osteuropa).

Disclosed outside receipts are gross amounts. His Detmold social-court judgeship stayed suspended. In the 20th term the Lippe district council paid €415 a month until the end of 2023, then €423.30, €494.70 and €504.60 from January 2025, plus irregular sums of €282.50, €425, €1,000 and €765 in 2021–2024. The deputy Landrat's allowance was €727.50 a month until the end of 2023, €742.05 through 2024 and €756.90 from 2025. A seat and the group chair on the Landesverband Lippe assembly paid €970 a month until the end of 2023, €989.40 in 2024 and €1,009.19 from 2025. In Bad Salzuflen the filing lists €420 a month as a councillor, €1,251.60 as group chair until 31 October 2021 and €630 as deputy group chair, and, from 3 May 2023, expert citizen (sachkundiger Bürger). Honorary entries included the Deutsche Atlantische Gesellschaft board (from 17 May 2022), co-chair of the DRK-Dialogforum (from 5 July 2022), municipal-association seats until 14 May 2024, and the TuWas Stiftung advisory board (21 September 2022–19 April 2023).

The 21st-term disclosure kept the council and deputy-Landrat rates, €504.60 and €756.90 a month, until 14 September 2025, with €25.50 irregular in 2025. The Landesverband Lippe payment was €1,009.19 a month until 31 October 2025, €832.35 for the rest of 2025 and €1,188.66 from 1 January 2026; he remained group chair, and Bad Salzuflen still listed him as an expert citizen.

Ukraine and Eastern Europe

German–Ukrainian Parliamentary Group

The Bundestag biography of Robin Wagener, of Alliance 90/The Greens, lists him as chair of the German–Ukrainian Parliamentary Group in the 21st electoral term. His parliamentary group had named him chair on 27 February 2022, and the group then constituted itself as the first friendship group of the 20th Bundestag, staying in contact with the Verkhovna Rada through visits to Berlin, calls and video conferences.

In June 2022 he said Ukraine was defending “the idea of a free and democratic Europe” and needed political, financial, humanitarian and military support, and he linked Germany’s role, including the Normandy Format, to historical responsibility such as the 1941 massacre at Babyn Yar. After a visit by Rada chairman Ruslan Stefanchuk, he reported wide agreement on a credible European Union accession process. On 30 November 2022 he opened debate on the joint SPD, CDU/CSU, Green and FDP motion on the Holodomor (Drucksache 20/4681), calling the 1932–33 famine a Kremlin decision under Joseph Stalin and drawing a parallel with Vladimir Putin’s war. The Bundestag adopted the text, which treated a classification as genocide as obvious; the Alternative for Germany and Die Linke abstained.

From 3 to 7 February 2026 he led a delegation to Lviv and Kyiv with Bastian Ernst (CDU/CSU), Maja Wallstein (SPD) and Rainer Kraft (AfD). They reported that Russian strikes on civilian energy infrastructure were using winter as a weapon, and in Kyiv, with Wagener present, met Ukrainian Red Cross director general Maksym Dotsenko.

Aid, sanctions and EU accession

Deutschlandfunk and n-tv have described Wagener as the Green Bundestag group’s Eastern Europe commissioner. At a January 2025 taz discussion he said sanctions alone would not suffice, because “the language Putin respects is the military one,” and that his standard was “as resolute as it takes” and “as long as it takes.” Jan van Aken of Die Linke argued that debate was too fixed on Taurus and Leopard deliveries and wanted stronger economic pressure; Gesine Schwan backed arms deliveries but defended Olaf Scholz’s caution.

In May 2025 he said voices for normalisation with Moscow were growing louder in government, accused the SPD of blocking further aid, and cited parliamentary-group leader Matthias Miersch, who had opposed a Taurus delivery. He also said some in the CDU/CSU were again discussing Russian gas, and asked Chancellor Friedrich Merz not to threaten Russia with consequences he would not carry out. In October 2025, with WEB.DE putting arrivals from Ukraine since the war began at about 1.3 million, he called CDU general secretary Carsten Linnemann’s demand to stop recent arrivals “fatal” and an echo of the AfD. He blamed Russian attacks on energy and water supplies and Kyiv’s decision to let men aged 18 to 22 leave, since call-up begins at 25, and said Taurus and stronger air defence would also protect that infrastructure. He asked Merz to contradict Linnemann and Markus Söder.

On 8 July 2026 the Greens tabled a motion demanding a Taurus delivery; Wagener called long-range weapons, more air defence and a harder line on the shadow fleet the most important thing Germany could do for its own security. In April 2026 he told n-tv that shadow-fleet tankers lost the right of innocent passage when they breached the law of the sea, so authorities could check insurance and flags and use environmental law to refuse passage, but lacked an order from the government to do so.

As lead signatory of the Green motion of 24 June 2025 (Drucksache 21/572), he asked the government to work in the G7 to make frozen Russian state assets fully available to Ukraine in line with international law, citing more than €260 billion in frozen central-bank assets. On 5 December 2025 the Bundestag adopted the Finance Committee’s recommendation to reject that motion, by 454 votes to 77, with 53 abstentions: the CDU/CSU, SPD and AfD voted to reject it, the Greens against rejection, and Die Linke abstained. In July 2026 he told Ukrinform that Merz’s idea of an “associate membership” must not replace full EU membership, which he said had to remain the strategic goal, with reconstruction tied from the start to the single market.

Russia and Belarus

When Annalena Baerbock announced in February 2023 that Wagener would, from 1 March, coordinate intersocietal cooperation with the South Caucasus, Moldova and Central Asia at the Federal Foreign Office, she also made him the government’s central contact for democratic and government-critical Belarusian and Russian civil society in exile, because the rulers in Russia and Belarus were cutting links abroad. He said supporting democrats in the European neighbourhood was in Germany’s own interest.

On 8 November 2023 he opened the debate on the coalition motion “For a democratic Belarus in the European family,” with Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya present. He said Alexander Lukashenko had become Putin’s accomplice and Belarus a staging area for the Russian army, and named prisoners including Ales Bialiatski, Maria Kalesnikava and the journalist Ihar Losik. CDU/CSU deputy Knut Abraham described cross-party work with Wagener and contrasted it with an AfD deputy’s visit to Minsk.

Government coordinator for the South Caucasus, Moldova and Central Asia

Appointment and remit

On 8 February 2023 the federal cabinet, on the proposal of Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, appointed Robin Wagener coordinator for intersocietal cooperation with the South Caucasus, the Republic of Moldova and Central Asia (KO-SMZ) in the Federal Foreign Office. He took up the post on 1 March 2023 while remaining a Bundestag member for Alliance 90/The Greens.

The post replaced, in narrower form, the coordinator for cooperation with Russia, Central Asia and the Eastern Partnership countries, vacant since December 2021. The government later said a role still including Russia was no longer tenable after the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine and the suspension of most cooperation projects with Russia. The 2023 redesign, it said, concentrated civil-society support on Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova and the Central Asian states. Ukraine was outside the remit.

Baerbock said those societies should be met on their own terms rather than as “Russia’s backyard,” and that Wagener would be the government’s contact for democratic and government-critical Belarusian and Russian civil society in exile. The task covered links among state bodies, non-governmental organisations, academia, culture, education and religious communities. By January 2024 the office had 1.5 higher-service posts and half an intermediate-service post, all filled, and an annual expense allowance of €31,000. Names of individual interlocutors were withheld on security grounds.

Regional engagement

On 5 June 2023 he went to Tbilisi to discuss Georgia’s European Union perspective and the twelve reform priorities with government, parliament, opposition and civil society, after March protests had stopped a first “foreign agents” bill. On 28 August he attended an OSCE meeting of Central Asian civil-society representatives in Almaty, Kazakhstan, then continued to Tajikistan for foreign-ministry talks and meetings on the economy, education and human rights.

After Azerbaijan’s offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh on 19 September 2023, the government recorded that Wagener had publicly called on Azerbaijan to stop using military force. Reuters reported that more than 100,000 people had reached Armenia by 30 September, citing the United Nations. On 9 October he flew to Yerevan to discuss shelter and German help with the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Technisches Hilfswerk, the Armenian foreign ministry and people who had fled, and warned against letting the exodus destabilise Armenian democracy.

In Berlin he held three round tables on Russia in 2023, on 31 March, 7 July and 13 November, and two on Belarus, on 13 June and 20 October. The Foreign Office later said his contacts included Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Mikhail Khodorkovsky and, after his release, Vladimir Kara-Murza; later sessions covered women’s rights in Russia and Belarusian cultural workers in exile.

In April 2024 he told Deutsche Welle that a draft law on the “transparency of foreign influence,” together with planned anti-LGBT legislation, was a step away from the EU. Civil.ge reported on 2 May his statement that on that course there would be no membership in 2030 or later, and that violence against protesters was unacceptable. In an interview published on 10 October he said accession could not advance while those laws stood, that the 26 October election had to be a free choice under OSCE observation, that Germany would not sanction alone because EU measures need unanimity, and that visa-free travel for Georgian citizens should remain.

On 17–18 December he returned to Tbilisi, met civil society and the Georgian Patriarchate, and watched protests on Rustaveli Boulevard. He said Georgian Dream had abandoned democratic standards, condemned violence and detentions of opposition figures and journalists, and stated that Berlin was reviewing cooperation, had withdrawn some aid, and wanted targeted sanctions on those responsible for the escalation. On 3 September he had visited Chișinău before Moldova’s presidential election and EU referendum, meeting civil society, the foreign ministry and the EU Partnership Mission. The Council of the EU had opened accession negotiations with Moldova on 25 June 2024.

End of the office

The Bundestag biography records the post as 2023–2025. On 6 May 2025 a CDU/CSU–SPD cabinet took office and Johann Wadephul succeeded Baerbock. In a reply dated 1 June 2026 the government said the KO-SMZ had not been continued in its previous form from 2025, because of budget consolidation and a restructuring of the Foreign Office. The tasks, it said, had been absorbed into existing structures rather than dropped, and no successor had been named. Separate project funding for civil society in the Eastern Partnership countries and Russia, the Bundestag-initiated ÖPR programme, was described as still running.

OSCE, NATO and defence policy

OSCE Parliamentary Assembly

In the 20th Bundestag (2021–2025), Robin Wagener of Alliance 90/The Greens was head (Leiter) of the German delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. The delegation’s report on the 31st annual session, held in Bucharest from 29 June to 3 July 2024, names him Delegationsleiter. On his initiative the delegation held a side event titled “Countering Russian disinformation campaigns — challenges and proven practice”; the general debate centred on the war in Ukraine. As delegation head at the autumn meeting in Yerevan in November 2023, he said a lasting peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan had to be negotiated, after Azerbaijani forces retook Nagorno-Karabakh that September and more than 100,000 people fled. The delegations of Russia, Azerbaijan and Turkey did not attend.

The office changed with the 21st Bundestag. At the 32nd annual session in Porto, from 29 June to 3 July 2025, the delegation report listed Tobias Winkler of the CDU/CSU as acting head and included Wagener among the members the Bundestag sent; the debate covered the 50th anniversary of the Helsinki Final Act, the war in Ukraine and the Middle East. In a Bundestag interview published on 1 December 2025, Winkler was described as head of the delegation, and the interviewer noted that its members had recently elected him head for the legislative period. Wagener’s biography for the 21st Bundestag lists him as a deputy member (Stellvertretendes Delegationsmitglied), not as head. The Bundestag press office did not include him in the delegation it named, under Winkler, for the autumn meeting in Istanbul on 17–19 November 2025.

NATO Parliamentary Assembly and defence positions

The NATO Parliamentary Assembly lists Wagener as a member since 2024, sitting for the Greens in the Bundestag, and assigns him to several of its committees and subcommittees. In the 21st Bundestag he is an ordinary member of the German delegation to the assembly. He is also an ordinary member of the Defence Committee; in the 20th Bundestag he had been a deputy member of that committee and an ordinary member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, a seat he has kept. Since 17 May 2022 he has been an unpaid associate member of the board (Beisitzer des Vorstandes) of the Deutsche Atlantische Gesellschaft in Berlin.

The same biography records Zivildienst, civilian service in place of conscription, with the fire service in Detmold in 2000–2001 rather than service in the Bundeswehr. In a profile of 28 August 2025, the Bundestag weekly Das Parlament reported that he had refused compulsory military service in the 1990s and had later withdrawn that refusal. He said he did not want to decide on military missions while keeping himself out, and that “unfortunately we are not surrounded by friends, as some long wanted to believe,” so that Germany had to mature in defence policy. He described the Greens’ turn toward military strengthening of the Bundeswehr as consistent with debates inside the party since the 1990s, including over participation in the Kosovo War, and said that if the necessary increase in soldiers could not be reached by volunteering, other models would have to be discussed. The profile called the Greens some of the most vocal supporters of arms deliveries to Ukraine.

German Hardship Foundation

On 17 September 2025 the Bundestag news service heute im bundestag (hib 429/2025) reported that the Green parliamentary group had nominated Wagener, in Drucksache 21/1672, for the board of trustees (Stiftungsrat) of the Deutsche Härtefallstiftung. The plenary elected him the next day without debate: every group voted for the nomination except the Alternative for Germany, which abstained. The foundation, based in Bonn, assists active and former members of the Bundeswehr, former members of the East German National People's Army, and their families and surviving dependants, in exceptional hardship that may have arisen from their service. Eight members of the Bundestag sit on the board. Wagener’s published register of members’ interests records the trusteeship as beginning on 1 June 2025.

Civic engagement and personal life

German Red Cross

Wagener has been a member of the German Red Cross (Deutsches Rotes Kreuz, DRK) since 1996. From 2009 to 2013 he was Bundesleiter of the Deutsches Jugendrotkreuz, the DRK's youth association, and in that office a member of the DRK Präsidium.

The Jugendrotkreuz report for September 2009 to August 2010 states that he represented the youth association on the Präsidium, elected in full at the 2009 DRK Bundesversammlung under a new federal statute. That year the Präsidium met ten times; its business included child-protection standards after sexual abuse. Wagener's listed brief was the Präsidium and the JRK Bundeskonferenz; deputies included Marcus Janßen.

The 2012/13 report, still signed by him as Bundesleiter, adds the JRK Länderrat, international work, the Ausschuss Ehrenamtlicher Dienst, the Deutscher Bundesjugendring and the "helfende Verbände". In November 2009 he joined the DRK delegation to the General Assembly of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in Nairobi and sat for the European societies on the drafting committee for the closing declaration. In March 2010 he attended the eighth European Regional Conference in Vienna and, with deputy Julia Grychtol, meetings of the European Union Red Cross Youth Network.

At the 63rd DRK Bundesversammlung on 29 November 2013, Janßen was elected to the Präsidium as the Jugendrotkreuz representative; the 2013/14 report names him Bundesleiter. Since 5 July 2022 Wagener has been unpaid co-chair of DRK-Dialogforum e.V. in Berlin.

Church, sport and family

Since 2018 he has been a Prädikant (lay preacher) of the evangelical Lutheran parish of Bergkirchen in Bad Salzuflen, in the Church of Lippe. The regional church reported that Superintendent Andreas Lange commissioned him in June 2018 for service there. In a 27 June 2018 interview in the Lippische Landes-Zeitung, reprinted by the parish, he said he came from a pastor's family, had considered the pastorate during his law studies, and had instead begun a distance course of the Evangelical Church in Germany about two years earlier, with the practical work done in Bergkirchen. He said he would lead a service about once a quarter and would keep party politics out of the sermon. The parish archive records his introduction with Prädikant Peter Homburg, pastor Cornelia Wentz and Lange.

On 10 August 2020 the same newspaper, profiling candidates for Landrat of Lippe, described him as a trainer at the Shotokan karate dojo in Bad Salzuflen and wrote that he lived with his wife and their two children in Wüsten, a district of the town. The Bundestag biography for the 20th electoral term, drawn from members' own statements, listed him as evangelical Lutheran, married and the father of two children; the biography for the 21st term gives neither denomination nor family. A later curriculum vitae on his website states that he is Protestant, married and living separately, and that he has two children.

The current biography also lists further unpaid posts: member of the Werner-Schulz-Initiative from 13 October 2024; member, from 7 September 2024, of the Deutsch-Ukrainische Gesellschaft – für unsere und eure Freiheit (a German–Ukrainian society); and Beisitzer on the board of the Deutsche Atlantische Gesellschaft from 17 May 2022.

Reception

Parliamentary language

On 24 September 2026, in the 96th sitting of the 21st Bundestag, Robin Wagener of Alliance 90/The Greens answered Markus Frohnmaier of the Alternative for Germany during debate on the AfD motion “Keine EU-Mitgliedschaft und keine militärischen Beistandsgarantien für die Ukraine” (Drucksache 21/8124). The record quotes him: “Das Moskau-Minion der AfD hat eben wieder pflichtbewusst das Memo aus dem Kreml vorgetragen. Spasibo, Towarischtsch!” He then called the AfD in the chamber a propaganda amplifier for Vladimir Putin and “das Kleinkaliber des russischen Informationskriegs.”

The next day, in the 97th sitting, Vice-President Omid Nouripour, also a Green, quoted that sentence, called the label “eindeutig herabsetzend,” and gave Wagener a call to order; the protocol notes applause from the AfD. The Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung reported that Nouripour broke into later business to deliver the reprimand. It described Frohnmaier as a confidant of AfD co-leader Alice Weidel who in June 2026 had attended a St Petersburg forum under Putin’s patronage; he rejected claims of Kremlin closeness and called his contacts diplomacy.

Commentary on his foreign-policy line

In October 2022 the Bielefeld daily Neue Westfälische reported an appeal Wagener had drafted, signed by about two dozen Green and Free Democratic deputies, asking the government and partners in the European Union and NATO to review military plans so Ukraine could receive more advanced weapons. SPD budget politician Wiebke Esdar said a Bundestag member should not “play extra-parliamentary opposition,” which she called a question of style. SPD deputy floor leader Achim Post said the resolution “Frieden und Freiheit in Europa verteidigen” was already the parliamentary basis, and treated further appeals to one’s own government as a personal choice.

On 26 June 2024 WEB.DE published Wagener’s answer to CSU politician Alexander Dobrindt, who wanted Ukrainians he called unwilling to work sent back. Wagener spoke of “groteske Ahnungslosigkeit” in parts of the CDU/CSU, said people were fleeing “Putin’s bombs and not the German welfare state,” and called the argument a “tactically staged envy debate” to which “only Putin applauds.” CDU parliamentary manager Thorsten Frei had said Bürgergeld created the wrong incentives; social-law professor Constanze Janda told WEB.DE that returning unemployed Ukrainian refugees was legally excluded under EU temporary protection.

On 31 October 2025 WEB.DE, putting arrivals since the war at about 1.3 million, quoted CDU general secretary Carsten Linnemann, who had told Stern that young men should stop coming because Ukraine needed soldiers; Bavarian minister-president Markus Söder had spoken similarly. Wagener called that “fatal” and an echo of the AfD, and said Chancellor Friedrich Merz should contradict it or solidarity would erode. He tied fewer departures to air defence and to Taurus strikes on launch sites.

At a taz discussion published on 22 January 2025, Jan van Aken of Die Linke told him, “Sie denken nur in Raketen, Panzern und Bomben,” and said debate was stuck on Taurus and Leopard deliveries. Wagener answered that sanctions alone would not do, because “the language Putin respects is the military one.” Gesine Schwan agreed on arms but defended the caution of Chancellor Olaf Scholz. The taz introduced him as the government’s coordinator for Eastern Europe. On 10 October 2024, the day the Bundestag adopted “A European Future for Georgia,” he told Civil.ge that the EU’s doors were open but that the government in Georgia had taken the other path with what he called the Russian law and anti-LGBTIQ legislation, which would end the accession process. Caucasus Watch reported that the CDU/CSU, the AfD and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance voted against that text and Die Linke abstained.