# Sabine Poschmann

# Sabine Poschmann

Sabine Poschmann (born 4 October 1968 in Castrop-Rauxel) is a German politician of the [Social Democratic Party of Germany](/organizations/social-democratic-party-of-germany) (SPD) from North Rhine-Westphalia. She has sat in the Bundestag since the constituent sitting of the 18th electoral term on 22 October 2013, holding the direct mandate for Dortmund II, an eastern Dortmund constituency in the Ruhr. Since 6 May 2025 she has been parliamentary state secretary to the federal minister for housing, urban development and building, [Verena Hubertz](/people/verena-hubertz), in the government appointed after [Friedrich Merz](/people/friedrich-merz) became chancellor.

The Bundestag's biography states that she is married and has one child, and the housing ministry's curriculum vitae says she lives with her family in Dortmund. She joined the SPD in 1985. From 1985 to 1988 she trained as an industrial clerk, and from 1988 to 1994 she worked in personnel deployment and planning at Dortmunder Stadtwerke AG while studying business administration at a Verwaltungs- und Wirtschaftsakademie from 1989 to 1992. The Bundestag lists her occupation as Betriebswirtin (VWA). From 1995 until 2013 she was employed by Dortmunder Energie- und Wasserversorgung GmbH (DEW21), on fundamental questions and contract law, as a press spokesperson for construction-site communication and innovation, and in corporate strategy; the parliament records her last pre-mandate post as Kommunalmanagerin.

She was a member of the Dortmund city council from 1999 to 2009 and, from 2004 to 2009, deputy chair of the SPD council group for economic and employment promotion, the environment, urban development and housing. Since 2012 she has been a member of the executive of the SPD Unterbezirk Dortmund.

The state returning officer of North Rhine-Westphalia records her as the directly elected candidate in constituency 143, Dortmund II, with 46.7 percent of valid first votes in 2013, 38.8 percent in 2017 and 39.1 percent in 2021. At the 2025 federal election the Federal Returning Officer lists her, again for the SPD, as elected in the renumbered constituency 142 with 32.4 percent of first votes, ahead of Michael Depenbrock of the [Christian Democratic Union of Germany](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany) on 24.8 percent; turnout in the constituency was 78.9 percent. In the SPD parliamentary group she was commissioner for small and medium-sized enterprises and the skilled trades from 2014 to 2021 and deputy spokesperson on economic and energy policy from 2015 to 2021, and the ministry curriculum vitae describes her as the group's sports-policy spokesperson from 2021 to 2025. She keeps her Bundestag seat as parliamentary state secretary and, with Sören Bartol, supports Hubertz at a ministry responsible for housing construction, urban development, building and spatial planning.

## Early life and education

### Family and upbringing

Sabine Poschmann was born on 4 October 1968 in Castrop-Rauxel, a city in the Ruhr in North Rhine-Westphalia that borders Dortmund. The Bundestag biography, compiled from members' own disclosures, records that she is married and has one child. A curriculum vitae issued by the Federal Ministry for Housing, Urban Development and Building states that she lives with her family in Dortmund; she has said that she, her husband and their son live in the borough of Aplerbeck.

In a November 2012 *Süddeutsche Zeitung* profile, written when she was a first-time candidate for the Bundestag, she described a life the paper called close to a social-democratic model biography. Her father was a full-time employee of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, and her mother sat for the party on a city council. As a child she was taken to party congresses, where, she told the paper, adults were friendly because few children were present, and she came to know the party as a welcoming place. On her own website she adds that she grew up in rather modest circumstances and has called herself a typical *Siedlungskind*—a child of a housing estate—who had many friends and learned early to stand her ground. Those accounts do not name her school or the city whose council her mother served on.

### Schooling and vocational training

After a leaving certificate from a Realschule, she completed an apprenticeship as an *Industriekauffrau* (industrial clerk) at Dortmunder Stadtwerke, the municipal utilities, from 1985 to 1988. The *Süddeutsche Zeitung* later set the sequence out as Realschule certificate, apprenticeship, second-chance education, study and further training, followed by a working life at the Stadtwerke and their energy subsidiary. She joined the SPD in 1985, the year the apprenticeship began, and was active in the Young Socialists in the SPD (Jusos).

From 1988 to 1994 she stayed at Dortmunder Stadtwerke AG, working in personnel deployment and planning. Alongside that post, from 1989 to 1992, she studied business administration and qualified as a *Betriebswirtin (VWA)*, the occupation listed by the Bundestag. The Verwaltungs- und Wirtschafts-Akademien, associated in the Bundesverband Deutscher Verwaltungs- und Wirtschafts-Akademien, offer part-time courses for people already working in business and public administration. The *Betriebswirt (VWA)* title is awarded by member academies as a non-formal qualification, not a degree fixed by statute; the German Qualifications Framework places it at level 6, and, together with a completed apprenticeship, it can confer higher-education entrance under the rules of the individual Länder. Official curricula vitae do not name the academy she attended. The 2012 profile described her as a long-standing member of the works council at the utilities before she entered Dortmund local politics; she has also said that she was a youth and apprentice representative during the training.

## Career in municipal utilities

### Dortmunder Stadtwerke

Before she entered the Bundestag, Sabine Poschmann worked in the municipal utilities of Dortmund. From 1985 to 1988 she served an apprenticeship as an Industriekauffrau at the Dortmunder Stadtwerke; the Bundestag biography, drawn from members' own information, records that training and lists her occupation as Betriebswirtin (VWA).

From 1988 to 1994 she stayed at Dortmunder Stadtwerke AG in personnel deployment and planning, which she has described as her main work there. From 1989 to 1992, alongside that job, she studied business administration at the Verwaltungs- und Wirtschaftsakademie in Dortmund. A November 2012 *Süddeutsche Zeitung* portrait placed her working life to that point at the Stadtwerke and their energy subsidiary.

The same profile called her a long-standing member of the works council who had been active in the Young Socialists in the SPD (Jusos) before the council and later the city council. She writes that she also sat as a youth and apprentice representative. A *Ruhr Nachrichten* profile of 12 April 2012, as she sought the SPD Bundestag nomination, listed her as chair of the party's works group at DEW21.

Dortmund's municipal-economy report traces the Stadtwerke to an 1857 gas company, with the tramway added in 1939. In 1995 the then gas, water and transport utility took over much of the city's electricity network from Vereinigte Elektrizitätswerke Westfalen (VEW) and founded an energy and water subsidiary. The group later added "21" to its names; the parent, now DSW21, is owned by the city through a 5.1 percent direct stake and a 94.9 percent holding, under a domination agreement.

### DEW21

In 1995 Poschmann moved to Dortmunder Energie- und Wasserversorgung GmbH (DEW21). A curriculum vitae published by the Federal Ministry for Housing, Urban Development and Building, prepared in her Bundestag office, dates that employment from 1995 to 2013.

The CV summarises those years as fundamental issues and contract law, press work on construction-site communication and innovation, and corporate strategy. The Bundestag biography gives the same order and names the last post regional manager for energy and corporate strategy. In November 2012 the *Süddeutsche Zeitung* still described press spokesperson as her latest role, so the regional title came afterwards. The members' register, already in the 18th electoral term, records the pre-mandate occupation as Kommunalmanagerin at DEW21 in Dortmund; the official texts do not date the posts more finely.

DEW21 supplies electricity, natural gas, heat and water in Dortmund and also beyond the city. The municipal report says it was founded in 1995 by the Stadtwerke and VEW; at the end of 2024 a Stadtwerke subsidiary held 60.1 percent and Westenergie AG 39.9 percent, with profits transferred to DSW21. Its address is Günter-Samtlebe-Platz 1. The *Zeitung für kommunale Wirtschaft*, covering her later appointment as a parliamentary state secretary, called her a former DEW21 manager and counted five Bundestag members from a Stadtwerk or another municipal enterprise in the previous term.

The utility job ended with the mandate. The 18th Bundestag held its constituent sitting on 22 October 2013, and the CV and parliamentary biography date her membership from 2013, with DEW21 as the employer until then.

## Municipal politics in Dortmund

### City council

Sabine Poschmann, a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) since 1985, sat on the council (Rat) of Dortmund from 1999 to 2009. In a city with county rank in North Rhine-Westphalia, the council consists of the elected members and the full-time mayor (Oberbürgermeister), who chairs and represents it and votes except on specified personnel and procedural questions. Dortmund elects the council for five years by personalized proportional representation in 40 wards: one vote selects both a ward candidate and the party’s reserve list, and overhang and compensatory seats can enlarge the body.

Her years on the council covered the terms chosen on 12 September 1999 and 26 September 2004. In 1999 the SPD fell to 41.0 percent and 34 of 82 seats, losing the absolute majority it had held in 1994 with 46 of 83 seats. The Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) was narrowly ahead on votes, at 41.7 percent, but also took 34 seats; Alliance 90/[The Greens](/organizations/the-greens) won eight, the German People’s Union and the Bürgerliste two each, and the Free Democratic Party (Germany) and a [Left Alliance](/organizations/left-alliance) one each. Turnout was 54.9 percent. In the mayoral election the SPD’s Gerhard Langemeyer trailed the CDU’s Dr. Geers, 42.2 percent to 45.6 percent, then won the runoff on 26 September with 52.2 percent to 47.8 percent.

On 26 September 2004 the SPD received 41.3 percent and 36 of 88 seats and was again the largest group; the CDU fell to 32.7 percent and 29 seats. Langemeyer was re-elected in the runoff of 10 October 2004 with 62.5 percent against the CDU candidate Hengstenberg. Published biographies end her council membership in 2009, the year of the next local election, at which the SPD remained the largest group with 37.8 percent and 37 of 96 seats.

From 2004 to 2009 she was deputy chair of the SPD council group, whose chair from 1999 was Ernst Prüsse. The Bundestag biography, based on members’ own information, assigns the deputy chairmanship the fields of economic and employment promotion and of the environment, urban development and housing. A curriculum vitae issued by the Federal Ministry for Housing, Urban Development and Building, prepared in her Bundestag office, instead attaches environment, urban design and housing to her whole council membership from 1999 and lists the deputy chairmanship for 2004–2009 without those headings. On her website she calls herself the youngest council member of those ten years; neither the Bundestag biography nor the ministry curriculum vitae repeats that description.

On 19 December 2006 she welcomed guests, as deputy chair, to the group’s sixtieth anniversary in the Bürgerhalle. In the address printed in the group’s festschrift she read the motto “Im Rathaus links oben” as the third-floor location of the group office, as a description of the SPD as a party of the left, and as a reference to its position in Dortmund since 1946, and she spoke of a shift from coal, steel and brewing toward services, logistics and microtechnology. The programme included a speech by Jochen Dieckmann, then chair of the North Rhine-Westphalian SPD, and a discussion with earlier group chairs, among them Günter Samtlebe and Prüsse.

Councillors who live in a borough, or who stood as candidates there, may attend that borough’s directly elected Bezirksvertretung with an advisory voice; they are not ordinary voting members. The minutes of the Aplerbeck assembly on 26 August 2008 place Poschmann among the non-voting members and record her as absent.

### Local SPD offices

A November 2012 *Süddeutsche Zeitung* profile reported that Poschmann had been active in the Young Socialists in the SPD (Jusos), then on a works council, and then on the city council, and described her as chair of an SPD local branch (Ortsverein) in Dortmund. Her own account dates the membership and the Jusos activity to 1985, the start of her apprenticeship, names the branch as the Ortsverein in Aplerbeck, which she says she chaired for many years, and states that she chaired the SPD’s Aplerbeck borough organization from 2010 to 2014. The Bundestag biography does not list the Jusos work or those two chairs.

Since 2012 she has been a member of the executive of the SPD Unterbezirk Dortmund, the office the Bundestag biography records continuously from that year. The 2012 newspaper profile placed her local-branch chairmanship in the same period, when she was already a candidate for the Bundestag.

## Bundestag elections and Dortmund II

### The constituency

Dortmund II is the eastern of the two Bundestag constituencies in Dortmund, in the Ruhr area of North Rhine-Westphalia. The Federal Returning Officer assigns it the district of Innenstadt-Nord, within the Innenstadt borough, and the boroughs of Eving, Scharnhorst, Brackel, Aplerbeck and Hörde; the rest of the city is Dortmund I. That description is the same for the elections of 2013, 2021 and 2025.

At the federal election of 27 September 2009 the seat was numbered 144. Ursula Burchardt of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) was elected with 42.4 percent of the valid first votes, ahead of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) on 29.1 percent, from 208,840 eligible voters and a turnout of 67.6 percent. The North Rhine-Westphalia returning officer used that result as the comparison base for constituency 143, still named Dortmund II, at the election of 22 September 2013.

The number remained 143 for the elections of 24 September 2017 and 26 September 2021. On 23 February 2025 it became number 142, after population change moved one constituency from Saxony-Anhalt to Bavaria and the former constituencies 72 to 255 were renumbered. The 2025 comparison counts for Dortmund II are the 2021 figures for constituency 143, including 199,317 eligible voters.

A first vote is cast for a constituency candidate and a second vote for a party list. In 2025 a plurality of first votes did not by itself decide who sat: under the reformed electoral law, constituency winners were established only once second-vote coverage had been applied. The final result recorded Sabine Poschmann as elected in the constituency, and the Bundestag lists her mandate for Wahlkreis 142, Dortmund II.

### Election results

Poschmann was the SPD candidate in 2013, 2017, 2021 and 2025 and won the direct mandate each time. She took her seat on 22 October 2013, when the 18th Bundestag convened; the archived biography for that term records a direct election in constituency 143, Dortmund II.

On 22 September 2013 she received 63,388 first votes, 46.7 percent. Steffen Kanitz, the CDU candidate, received 43,688 votes, 32.2 percent, a margin of 19,700 votes. [Die Linke](/organizations/die-linke) took 6.9 percent, Alliance 90/The Greens 6.8 percent, the [Pirate Party Germany](/organizations/pirate-party-germany) 3.0 percent and the Free Democratic Party (Germany) (FDP) 1.5 percent. Turnout was 66.5 percent, 137,503 voters out of 206,701 eligible, and second votes were 40.9 percent for the SPD and 29.1 percent for the CDU. Kanitz did not win the seat but entered the 18th Bundestag on the North Rhine-Westphalia state list; the Bundestag records him for constituency 143 as a list member from 22 October 2013 until 24 October 2017.

On 24 September 2017 Poschmann's first-vote share fell to 38.8 percent (55,038 votes). Kanitz, again the CDU candidate, took 28.1 percent (39,933), and the margin was 15,105 votes. [Alternative for Germany](/organizations/alternative-for-germany) (AfD), which had no first-vote candidate in the constituency in 2013, received 10.6 percent; Die Linke had 8.6 percent, and the Greens and the FDP 6.4 percent each. Turnout rose to 70.7 percent (143,834 of 203,300 eligible voters). Second votes were 32.7 percent for the SPD, 24.5 percent for the CDU and 10.9 percent for the AfD. Kanitz was not re-elected.

On 26 September 2021 Poschmann received 55,695 first votes, 39.1 percent. Michael Depenbrock, the CDU candidate, received 28,897 votes, 20.3 percent, 7.9 points below the CDU share in 2017; the margin of 26,798 votes was the widest of the four elections. The Greens took 14.8 percent (21,028 votes), the AfD 8.3 percent (11,816), the FDP 7.2 percent and Die Linke 4.1 percent. Turnout was 72.2 percent (143,855 of 199,317 eligible voters), and second votes were 35.8 percent for the SPD, 19.4 percent for the CDU and 15.2 percent for the Greens.

On 23 February 2025, in constituency 142, Poschmann received 49,553 first votes, 32.4 percent, 6.6 points below 2021. Depenbrock, again the CDU candidate, received 37,891 votes, 24.8 percent, up 4.5 points, and the margin narrowed to 11,662 votes. The AfD rose to 18.5 percent of first votes (28,240), the Greens fell to 10.3 percent (15,742) and Die Linke rose to 9.0 percent (13,794); the FDP had 2.6 percent. Turnout was 78.9 percent, 154,308 voters out of 195,508 eligible, the highest of the four elections, although the electorate was smaller than in 2013. Second votes were closer: the SPD 24.5 percent (37,511), the CDU 23.5 percent (36,025), the AfD 18.0 percent, the Greens 11.3 percent and Die Linke 10.2 percent. Bündnis [Sahra Wagenknecht](/people/sahra-wagenknecht), which had no constituency candidate, took 4.8 percent of the second votes. Poschmann's first-vote share ran 7.9 points ahead of the SPD list, compared with 3.3 points in 2021. Depenbrock finished second and did not enter the Bundestag.

From 2013 to 2025 the SPD stayed ahead on both ballots. Its first-vote lead over the CDU moved from 14.5 points to 10.7, then 18.8, then 7.6, while its second-vote share went from 40.9 percent to 32.7, 35.8 and 24.5 percent. The AfD's first-vote share was 10.6 percent in 2017, 8.3 percent in 2021 and 18.5 percent in 2025, when it placed third.

## Economic, craft and energy policy

### Mittelstand and the skilled trades

From 2014 to 2021 Sabine Poschmann was the SPD Bundestag group's commissioner for the Mittelstand and the skilled trades, and from 2015 to 2021 deputy spokesperson of its working group on economic affairs and energy. In 2015–16 she led the project group #NeueErfolge – Vorsprung durch Innovation. In March 2016 she contrasted Germany's hidden champions with smaller firms that were innovating less, and called for less bureaucratic support aimed at companies that did not innovate continuously.

The master craftsperson's certificate was [the centre](/organizations/the-centre) of her work on the trades. Opening a joint CDU/CSU–SPD motion on 5 December 2014, she called the Meisterbrief a competitive factor and the basis of the dual education system. She said the 2004 removal of the licensing duty for part of the trades had produced mostly one-person and other micro-firms, more than half of which had left the market within five years, and that training then took place 95 percent in still-licensed trades. With the European Union reviewing access rules for regulated professions, she said the certificate was not a bargaining item.

On 9 March 2017 the Bundestag, with CDU/CSU, SPD and Die Linke in favour and Alliance 90/The Greens abstaining, found that [European Commission](/organizations/european-commission) drafts for a stricter notification procedure and a mandatory proportionality test of professional rules breached the Lisbon Treaty's subsidiarity and proportionality principles. The same resolution said a proposed electronic European services card could be issued without a real host-state check and undercut national social standards. Poschmann later told *Zahnärztliche Mitteilungen* that she had initiated the objection and that cutting cross-border barriers was desirable, but not a country-of-origin principle "through the back door."

On 13 December 2018 she quoted the coalition pledge to keep the Meisterbrief and examine an EU-compatible return for some occupations, and called an AfD bill "naked populism." Citing the Göttingen Institute for Small Business Economics, she said only 30 percent of craft employees were still paid under a collective agreement, so the certificate had to sit beside skilled immigration and guilds acting again as bargaining partners.

On 12 December 2019 she said the House was "saying yes to the master" by returning twelve trades to the licensing requirement under the fourth amendment of the Crafts Code, a coalition item rather than an AfD proposal. She named the German Confederation of Skilled Crafts and the German Trade Union Confederation as supporters and the Monopolkommission as a critic, and said expert opinions and hearings were meant to make the law harder for courts and the EU to overturn. The Monopolkommission's brief of 24 January 2019 had argued that a wider requirement would raise entry barriers without being needed for quality or training, and that the certificate should stay voluntary. FDP member Manfred Todtenhausen said his group would not let the cultural-heritage rationale sink the bill, but that it was hard to justify for coopers and turners, and that successors should have 24 months rather than six to qualify. The Bundesrat approved the change on 20 December 2019. It took effect on 14 February 2020, moving twelve trades from Annex B1 back to Annex A, with protection for firms already trading.

On 5 May 2021, on a fifth amendment, Poschmann again cited 30 percent collective coverage and said the law should clarify the guilds' bargaining role, give unions a nomination right and parity on master-examination bodies, and speed up results. On 7 September 2021 the Central Association of Sign and Illuminated-Advertising Makers awarded her its golden pin of honour for that trade's return to the licensing list.

### Committee work and energy

In the 18th electoral term she was a full member of the Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy and of its subcommittee on regional economic policy and ERP economic plans, and a substitute on the Interior Committee. In the 19th term she remained a full member of the economic and energy committee. Disclosures for both terms list her on the Mittelstandsbeirat at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. From 2022 the group's biography listed her on the economic-affairs working group and as a full member of the Economic Affairs Committee.

In the first reading of the 2019 economy-and-energy budget, on 13 September 2018, she said competitiveness turned on innovation and that the Mittelstand had catching-up to do. She argued for a research-tax incentive, against a planned cut to IGF, and for keeping ZIM, extending the "Willkommenslotsen" hiring programme, and a third Bureaucracy Relief Act with real relief for smaller firms. On 28 June 2019 she cited the KfW start-up monitor's finding that new founders had created the equivalent of 219,000 jobs the previous year, while saying founding activity was still too low.

On the Energiewende, Poschmann replied on 25 June 2020 to a constituent who argued that the coal-exit bill would entrench generation through compensation contracts. She called the statute a real coal phase-out: coal-fired power was to end by 2038 at the latest, with interim cuts, on the coal commission's consensus that closures would be compensated and the contracts published. Later governments, she wrote, could still advance the date without further compensation, for example through a higher CO2 price; coal regions were to receive 14 billion euros under a structural-strengthening law, with a further 26 billion euros foreseen for science and transport, beside stimulus funding for renewables and 7 billion euros for hydrogen.

## Sports policy

### Funding and the spokesperson role

On 16 December 2021 the SPD group in the Bundestag elected Sabine Poschmann spokesperson of its sports working group. The archived biography for the 20th legislative period lists her as an ordinary member and as Obfrau of the sports committee, and the current biography dates the spokespersonship from 2022; she held it for the rest of that term.

The main bill was a Sportfördergesetz, meant as the first statute fixing federal elite-sport funding and routing it through an independent agency. In a current-affairs hour on 24 April 2024, called by the CDU/CSU to seek "ways to make a fresh start", Poschmann called the draft a change of system and Union proposals "half-baked". She said the 2024 budget still raised sport spending, that €786 million was available that term to renovate facilities, that the Safe Sport contact point had opened and a centre was on track, and that a sports development plan was due in the summer. The government, she added, backed an Olympic bid, days before UEFA Euro 2024 and shortly before the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris, and Interior Minister Nancy Faeser ranked sport higher than earlier CDU/CSU interior ministers.

Opening that debate, CSU politician Stephan Mayer said criticism ran from the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) through regional and national federations to coaches, who he said had threatened a boycott, and that a new agency would add bureaucracy rather than flexibility. Colleagues interjected that facility money had been cut and that no euro was provided for a bid. On 1 March 2024 DOSB president Thomas Weikert had called the draft a "bitter disappointment": a ministerial veto through the foundation chair meant the agency was not independent, and the Federal Administrative Office would preserve the bureaucracy that distracted federations from athletes. Poschmann replied that criticism was the federations' role, that the ministry and the DOSB had reached a common understanding on central points, and that Land sports ministers, including from CDU-led states, had welcomed the draft, while her group still wanted changes for coaches.

The cabinet adopted a bill on 6 November 2024, hours before the coalition collapsed. Athleten Deutschland told ZDFheute it stayed "far short of its possibilities": Maximilian Klein opposed a DOSB right to nominate athlete representatives, and president Karla Borger said promises to put athletes first were barely in the text. The group, with representatives from 47 federations, also sought social cover, including at least €1,700 a month for squad athletes outside the Bundeswehr and federal police, and protection from violence as a funding condition. After the CDU/CSU and the FDP refused further work before the election, Poschmann called the blockade "irresponsible and a severe setback for German sport". Mayer said athletes needed a serious law in the next term, not a "legislative quick shot"; DOSB director Olaf Tabor regretted the failure and said the confederation would try again with the next government.

On 9 July 2023 she told Deutschlandfunk that the Olympics would "do us good again" against inactivity and for cohesion, if past mistakes were not repeated. After Paris, on 12 August 2024, she said a new agency should improve conditions for athletes and coaches, with a top-five medal-table place as the aim.

### Integrity, anti-doping and fan culture

Bundestag disclosures list an unpaid seat on the supervisory board of the Nationale Anti-Doping Agentur Deutschland (NADA) in Bonn from 26 April 2022 until 4 June 2025. In April 2024 she told the chamber that the Safe Sport contact point was open and the planned centre advancing.

After clubs in the Bundesliga and the second division narrowly voted on 11 December 2023 to pursue an investor in the Deutsche Fußball Liga, she told *Merkur* the ballot was democratic and should be respected, yet raised "serious questions and concerns". Fans should be heard, she said, because "football lives through the passion and commitment of its fans — it is more than just a business"; she opposed matches abroad at an investor's wish or any say over the fixture list, and said she viewed further commercialisation critically. Mayer called the vote right if German football was to keep up with the Premier League. After weeks of stadium protests she told *Der Tagesspiegel*: "The fans are the soul of football — therefore their voices deserve our full attention," and, citing how the first ballot had come about, demanded another vote. Krämer also favoured considering one, while FDP spokesperson Philipp Hartewig urged talks rather than a decision imposed by politics. On 21 February 2024 the DFL presidium stopped the process; spokesman Hans-Joachim Watzke said a successful continuation no longer seemed possible.

When FIFA awarded the 2034 men's World Cup to Saudi Arabia on 11 December 2024 by acclamation, with no rival bid, Poschmann said she could not approve it politically. On human rights, she said, Saudi Arabia was "at least as problematic as Qatar", and FIFA's system was unacceptable because federations could fear disadvantages for dissenting, while simultaneous awards of the 2030 and 2034 tournaments reversed a FIFA reform. The *Berliner Zeitung* reported coalition criticism against a CDU/CSU call for a "fair chance", prior consent by the German Football Association, and a Green description, from Krämer and Boris Mijatovic, of an opaque process and a FIFA that was "in itself dysfunctional".

## Housing, urban development and government office

### Appointment

On 6 May 2025 the Bundestag elected Friedrich Merz of the Christian Democratic Union, on a second ballot, chancellor of a coalition with the [Christian Social Union](/organizations/christian-social-union-in-bavaria) and the Social Democratic Party of Germany; he and the 17 ministers then received their deeds of appointment from President [Frank-Walter Steinmeier](/people/frank-walter-steinmeier). The curriculum vitae published by the Federal Ministry for Housing, Urban Development and Building dates Sabine Poschmann's start as parliamentary state secretary to that day, under the SPD minister Verena Hubertz. The day before, ZfK and the *Ruhr Nachrichten* reported that the SPD would place the Dortmund member, a former manager at the municipal energy company DEW21, in the ministry rather than in the cabinet.

Parliamentary state secretaries are not members of the federal government. Under the statute of 24 July 1974 they must be Bundestag members, they support the minister to whom they are attached, and the federal president appoints them on the chancellor's proposal with that minister's agreement; the oath is taken before the minister. Poschmann therefore kept the direct mandate for constituency 142, Dortmund II, in North Rhine-Westphalia, and the Bundestag lists the function as parliamentary state secretary for housing, urban development and building. She told Radio 91.2 that [Lars Klingbeil](/people/lars-klingbeil) had rung her, unexpectedly, on the way to Berlin. In a longer interview she said she had taken a night to decide, and that the role was to represent the minister in public and to link the parliamentary group to the government.

A ministry statement of 26 May 2025 recorded that she was already in post, succeeding [Elisabeth Kaiser](/people/elisabeth-kaiser), who had become the federal government's commissioner for eastern Germany in the Finance Ministry, while Sören Bartol stayed as the other parliamentary state secretary. The same statement said Hubertz had appointed Olaf Joachim, previously Bremen's representative to the federation, as civil-service state secretary in place of Rolf Bösinger. The leadership page describes Hubertz as responsible for housing construction, urban development, building and spatial planning, with Poschmann, Bartol and Joachim beside her. From 1999 to 2009, on Dortmund council, Poschmann's own brief had included the environment, urban design and housing.

### Portfolio

The ministry's directorates separate housing — affordable building, social housing, the benefit Wohngeld, homelessness, non-profit and cooperative homes, owner-occupation and tenancy law — from urban programmes, spatial planning and federal construction. The leadership page assigns no exclusive slice of that field to either parliamentary state secretary. Before taking office Poschmann said plans for 400,000 homes a year had lately produced only about 250,000, and that the coalition wanted faster procedures, a "housing-construction turbo", an extended rent brake and more building; Dortmund, she said, would gain a direct line to Berlin.

Section 246e of the Federal Building Code, in force until 31 December 2030, lets a municipality consent to departures from planning law for new or converted housing where public interests, weighed against those of neighbours, allow it. The Bundestag passed the containing act on 9 October 2025, the Bundesrat raised no objection on 17 October, and the act was promulgated on 29 October and took effect the next day; use remains each council's choice.

Dortmund's council resolved on 26 March 2026 to apply the rule. A ministry case note dated 1 February 2026, sourced to the city, describes the planned conversion of the former VEW headquarters on Rheinlanddamm — empty since 2023, about 43,000 square metres, last used by Amprion — into about 200 apartments, practices and a shop, still in planning. Planning director Stefan Szuggat said, before the vote, that skipping a full rewrite of the 1973 plan could save one and a half to two years. The SPD council group invited Poschmann to a public forum in the town hall on 27 May 2026. On 4 August 2026 the *Ruhr Nachrichten* reported her walk through the Kronprinzenviertel, about 650 apartments of which the headline said 242 were finished; Beta's managing director Dirk Salewski explained progress and bureaucratic problems from a viewing platform.

The city's report of 2 September 2026 put 2025 completions at 898 homes, almost 44 per cent down, with permits down 42 per cent, vacancy at 2.6 per cent and new lets at 9.30 euros a square metre in the existing stock. A record 109.5 million euros was approved for 604 subsidised homes, yet price-controlled rental stock was projected to fall from nearly 20,000 to about 11,700 by 2035 unless about 800 new social homes were funded each year, and about 2,600 households were on the waiting list.

Nationally, 27,283 new social apartments and 4,701 dormitory places were funded in 2025, while 57,621 homes left the binding, a net loss of about 20,000; total completions were 206,600, the lowest since 2012. In North Rhine-Westphalia about 8,000 new units stood against more than 26,000 leaving the binding. Hubertz's stated reply was 23.5 billion euros of federal investment by 2029; [Caren Lay](/people/caren-lay) of Die Linke said money on that scale was needed every year, and the report paraphrased critics as putting the shortage at up to a million homes. On 21 May 2025 the ministry had set that year's federal programme, agreed with the Länder, at 3.5 billion euros, against a stock of 1,046,031 social rental homes at the end of 2024.

On 13 April 2026 Poschmann met the Advisory Board for Spatial Development, appointed by Hubertz and sitting independently without pay, and described the work as reconciling housing, the energy transition, infrastructure and livable regions. The board, whose themes include faster planning, land-use conflicts, defence, civil protection and critical infrastructure, adopted recommendations that day on planning acceleration and competing uses.

## Party roles and civic engagement

### Party and trade-union roles

Offices in the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) group in the Bundestag appear on the group's pages and, more briefly, in the parliamentary biography, which the Bundestag says rests on members' own statements. The group listed her on its municipal-policy working group in the 18th and 19th terms and as deputy spokesperson for economy and energy from 13 October 2015, renewed from 30 January 2018, with the group executive from 20 March 2018. For the 20th term it names the executive from 11 January 2022 and deputy chair of the North Rhine-Westphalia *Landesgruppe* from 16 December 2021, beside the sports spokesperson's role. A notice of 13 January 2022 placed her among 25 members elected to the extended executive, which with the managing executive plans and coordinates the group's work.

The profile for the 21st Bundestag lists her government post and does not repeat those internal offices. Her biography, as published on 2 November 2026, still groups the extended executive, the economic and municipal-policy working groups, *Netzwerk Berlin* and the North Rhine-Westphalia *Landesgruppe* board as functions from 2022, without the deputy-chair title on the 20th-term page. *[Der Spiegel](/organizations/der-spiegel)* in June 2025 described *Netzwerk Berlin* as the third current in the SPD Bundestag group, between the Seeheimer Kreis and the Parliamentary Left, with about 30 deputies on its own account. The biography lists her as a member, not a speaker.

It also names, with no office or payment, membership of ver.di and IG BCE, both in the German Trade Union Confederation, and of the Arbeiterwohlfahrt and the Sozialistische Jugend Deutschlands – Die Falken. ver.di was formed in 2001 from five service-sector unions; IG BCE organises mining, chemicals, energy and related industries. The Arbeiterwohlfahrt, founded in 1919, is an independent welfare association; Die Falken is a self-organised socialist children's and youth association.

### Voluntary offices

Code-of-conduct filings are published after an administrative check, and the biography states that its narrative is self-reported. Abgeordnetenwatch reproduces them. The posts below are marked honorary (*ehrenamtlich*), with no income band.

She sits on the trustees of aidshilfe dortmund e.V., founded in 1985, which calls itself Dortmund's main non-profit contact for sexual health, HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections. That unpaid *Kuratorium* of local figures advises the executive and lists her as a Bundestag member. Until 28 February 2022 the biography records the advisory board of the Bundesverband der Unternehmervereinigungen in Berlin, a non-partisan charitable umbrella founded in 2009.

From 28 March 2024 she is unpaid chair of KINDER FERIEN PARTY Westfalen e.V.; the imprint names her first chair and Friedrich Dieck managing director (Amtsgericht Dortmund, VR 2395). The association runs a donation-funded free summer programme at the Helmut-Körnig-Halle. For the 54th edition, 20–31 July 2026, the *Ruhr Nachrichten* named her as chair and reported a programme first held in 1973, with more than 40 activities and an expected 35,000 to 40,000 children.

From 1 April 2023 she has been an unpaid trustee of the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology in Dortmund, part of the [Max Planck Society](/organizations/max-planck-society). The institute says the body advises on science policy, finance and organisation and on links with the city and region, and lists her as a Bundestag member and parliamentary state secretary.

*The Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology in Dortmund, on whose board of trustees Poschmann has sat since 2023.*

The same filings record an unpaid seat on the National Anti-Doping Agency's supervisory board from 26 April 2022 to 4 June 2025. From 10 March 2026 they list her as unpaid deputy chair of the supervisory board of the Zukunftszentrum für Deutsche Einheit und Europäische Transformation gGmbH in Halle (Saale); Abgeordnetenwatch logged the entry on 13 May 2026. The imprint names Elisabeth Kaiser as chair and Dr Uta Bretschneider and Holger Lemme as managers (Amtsgericht Stendal, HRB 34830). Still being built at the Riebeckplatz, it describes a place of scholarship, culture and encounter on eastern Germany and eastern Europe since German reunification, now in a workshop phase of events.

## Parliamentary record and public profile

### Votes and remuneration

Since 1 July 2025 the taxable monthly allowance for members of the Bundestag has been 11,833.47 euro, with no Christmas or holiday bonus. A 4.2 percent rise to 12,330.48 euro, due on 1 July 2026 under the wage-index rule, was not applied. The tax-free expense allowance was 5,467.27 euro a month, and from 1 May 2026 up to 27,396 euro a month was available for staff, paid to the employees rather than to the member.

Where a member also draws official pay, section 29 of the Members of the Bundestag Act reduces the parliamentary allowance by half, but by no more than 30 percent of that other income. On a disclosure page last modified in January 2026, Poschmann lists her pay as parliamentary state secretary as 12,436.88 euro in taxable salary, a taxable local supplement of 1,187.26 euro and 230.08 euro in tax-free official expenses, plus an official car; a parliamentary allowance of 7,658.59 euro after deductions of 4,142.46 euro under that rule and 32.42 euro, which she calls a cost-containment amount; an expense allowance of 4,327.12 euro after a 1,140.15 euro cut for the car; a staff budget of up to 26,650 euro for three full-time employees and two student assistants; and no outside activity that produces income. Abgeordnetenwatch shows no euro amounts on her 2025–2029 register. The entries are marked unpaid — the supervisory board of the National Anti-Doping Agency until 4 June 2025, and from 10 March 2026 deputy chair of the supervisory board of the Zukunftszentrum für Deutsche Einheit und Europäische Transformation — or record her pre-Bundestag post at Dortmunder Energie- und Wasserversorgung (DEW21).

Abgeordnetenwatch lists 549 roll-call results from the 18th Bundestag through the 21st (121, 180, 163 and 85), 41 of them absences. On the 508 in which she voted, the choice matched the majority of SPD members voting, except three polls in 2013–2017. On 30 June 2017 she voted for opening [marriage to same-sex couples](/facts/same-sex-marriage-in-germany) ("Ehe für alle"), taken without a whip; 192 SPD members voted yes and one did not. She voted for Bundeswehr mandates, including Afghanistan on 19 December 2014, the deployment against the Islamic State on 4 December 2015 and the Mali mission's continuation on 26 January 2017, and on 3 June 2022 for the Bundeswehr special fund. On 17 January 2024 she voted against supplying Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine, with the SPD (190 no).

The departures were these. On 16 October 2015 she voted against reintroducing data retention (129 SPD yes, 43 no). On 25 February 2016 the plenary minutes place her among SPD members voting no on Asylpaket II; Abgeordnetenwatch records 142 SPD yes votes, 30 no and four abstentions. On 28 April 2016 she was one of 40 SPD abstentions on a motion for a general fracking ban, against 141 no votes; the motion failed.

### Public profile

The Bundestag lists her constituency office at Brüderweg 10–12, 44135 Dortmund.

*Ruhr Nachrichten* interviewed her before the 2025 election on migration, prices, housing and political extremes, and reported that she would join the CDU/CSU–SPD government but not as a minister. The *Zeitung für kommunale Wirtschaft* described the appointment through her years at DEW21, wrote that members from municipal companies were rare — five on its count for the previous term — and noted that she had again won Dortmund II with 32 percent of the first votes after serving as the SPD sports-policy spokesperson.

On 28 March 2023 she appeared on Tagesthemen, which *Ruhr Nachrichten* put at 1.75 million viewers, and argued for excluding athletes from Russia and Belarus so the [Russian government](/organizations/russian-government) could not use them, after an [International Olympic Committee](/organizations/international-olympic-committee) recommendation that they compete as neutrals. Sport1 quoted her calling a neutral-flag start an "Irrweg", alongside the sports spokespersons of the CDU/CSU, Alliance 90/The Greens and the FDP. On 13 November 2014 the *Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung* reported her election as chair of the "Bundestags-Borussen", a Borussia Dortmund supporters' group she began with Dirk Wiese and Michael Groß, initially 17 members and mostly SPD.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/sabine-poschmann