Sandra Carstensen

Sandra Carstensen (née Thomsen; born 2 October 1971 in Flensburg) is a German lawyer and a politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in Schleswig-Holstein. She has sat in the Bundestag since the 21st electoral term was constituted on 25 March 2025, as the directly elected member for constituency 006, Plön – Neumünster, and as a member of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group. The Bundestag lists her occupation as Juristin and records that she is Protestant and married.

At the federal election of 23 February 2025 she took the constituency with 32.7 percent of the first votes (46,370), 4.8 percentage points above the CDU's 2021 share, ahead of the Social Democratic incumbent Kristian Klinck on 24.0 percent (33,977). Turnout was 82.6 percent of 173,740 eligible voters, up 6.2 points from 2021. She was also placed eighth on the CDU state list for Schleswig-Holstein. NDR reported that the 53-year-old was entering the Bundestag for the first time and that she described the result as the CDU matching the combined vote of the parties then in government.

Her professional career, as set out in the Bundestag biography drawn from her own information, runs from legal practice into airport personnel management. From 2001 to 2007 she was head of department for personnel, legal affairs, insurance and procurement at Flughafen Stuttgart GmbH and a member of its extended management. From 2010 until 2024 she led the central personnel department of Hamburg Airport (Flughafen Hamburg GmbH) and, from 2012, held Prokura for the company; the same biography records managing-director posts at airport subsidiaries between 2008 and 2017.

She has been a CDU member since 1987 and was a city councillor in Schleswig from 1994 to 2001. On 31 December 2009, then still Sandra Thomsen, she married Peter Harry Carstensen, the minister-president of Schleswig-Holstein, at a civil ceremony in Wrixum on the North Sea island of Föhr. In the 21st Bundestag the chamber lists her as a full member of the Committee on Labour and Social Affairs and of the Petitions Committee, as a deputy member of the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Homeland, and as a deputy member of the Baltic Sea Parliamentary Conference.

Early life and education

Childhood and schooling

Sandra Carstensen was born on 2 October 1971 in Flensburg, in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. The biography published by the Bundestag carries an editorial note that the biographical details are the member's own statements; it records that she is Protestant (evangelisch). She has written that she grew up in Schleswig, the town where she later finished secondary school.

She took the Abitur at the Domschule in Schleswig. The Domschule is a Gymnasium of the city of Schleswig, at Königstraße 37. The school dates its earliest documentary mention to 1307 and maintains a classical-language branch. A portrait published on 24 September 2018 on the national all-day-schools portal called it the oldest Gymnasium in Schleswig-Holstein. At that time it had nearly 1,000 pupils, and its head teacher described a longstanding humanist orientation in which Latin and Greek were still taught. Those details describe the institution decades after Carstensen had left. The Bundestag biography does not name her parents or her primary school, and it does not give the year of the Abitur.

Legal studies and state examinations

From October 1991 to April 1997 Carstensen studied law at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel in Kiel. In 1997 she passed the first state examination in law (1. Staatsexamen).

The faculty of law is one of the four founding faculties of the university. It dates from 1665, when Duke Christian Albrecht of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorf established the university after the Thirty Years' War, and it is the only law faculty in Schleswig-Holstein. The faculty states that its principal task, since that foundation, has been to train lawyers for the courts, the public administration and business in the state.

Under section 5 of the German Judges Act (Deutsches Richtergesetz), the qualification for judicial office (Befähigung zum Richteramt) is acquired by completing a university law course with the first examination and a subsequent preparatory service (Vorbereitungsdienst) with the second state examination. Section 5b provides that the preparatory service lasts two years. A reform statute of 11 July 2002, in force from 1 July 2003, divided the first examination into a university examination in a chosen special subject and a state examination in the compulsory subjects; students already enrolled could, under transitional rules, still be examined under the previous law if they registered in time. Carstensen's first examination, taken in 1997, preceded that change, and the Bundestag biography records it as the first state examination. The same section of the Judges Act requires the university course and the preparatory service to be coordinated in content.

From June 1998 to August 2000 she completed the Referendariat in the district of the regional court (Landgericht) in Flensburg, and in 2000 she passed the second state examination. As the Act now stands, the service is spent at compulsory stations — a civil court, a public prosecutor's office or a criminal court, an administrative authority, and a lawyer's office — together with one or more elective stations. Her published biography does not identify the stations she was assigned inside the Flensburg district. For lawyers trained in Germany, section 4 of the Federal Lawyers' Act (Bundesrechtsanwaltsordnung) makes the qualification for judicial office a condition of admission to the bar. The second examination therefore closed the formal course of legal qualification, after which she entered legal practice.

Professional career

Legal practice

The Bundestag lists Carstensen’s occupation as jurist (Juristin). Its biography, which the parliament notes is based on information supplied by the member, records work at the law firm Bisset Boehmke McBlain in Cape Town and freelance work for the firm Kessel & Partner in Schleswig after her second state examination in law in 2000. Her own curriculum vitae places the Cape Town work in September to November 2000, in commercial and company law, private international law and family law, and the Schleswig freelance work in August to September 2000 and from November 2000 to March 2001. In the separate disclosure of activity before she entered parliament, the only professional post she reported was a later one at Flughafen Hamburg GmbH in Hamburg, as Prokuristin (an authorized commercial signatory) and head of the personnel department.

Stuttgart Airport and the move north

From 2001 to 2007 she was, on that account, head of the main department for personnel, law, insurance and purchasing at Flughafen Stuttgart GmbH and a member of its extended management (erweiterte Geschäftsleitung). The company operates Stuttgart Airport. The state of Baden-Württemberg holds 65 percent of Flughafen Stuttgart GmbH and the city of Stuttgart 35 percent.

From 2007 to 2009 she was head of personnel at Flughafen Hamburg GmbH, operator of Hamburg Airport, and in 2008–2009 she was also managing director of AIRSYS – Airport Business Information Systems GmbH. The City of Hamburg’s 2014 participation report still listed AIRSYS as a wholly owned subsidiary of the airport company. For 2009 to 2010 the Bundestag biography records her as head of personnel and law at the CITTI corporate group in Kiel. Her website instead dates a managing directorship of HAM Ground Handling GmbH to April 2009–June 2010. That company name was not yet in the commercial register: HAM Ground Handling Verwaltungs GmbH was, until a renaming resolved in July 2016, ANG – Airport Networks Gesellschaft mbH, and the register records Carstensen’s appointment as its managing director only from an entry of 30 September 2016.

Hamburg Airport, ground handling and personnel leadership

From 2010 to 2024 she headed the central personnel department (Zentralbereich Personal) of Flughafen Hamburg GmbH and from 2012 was also a Prokuristin of the company. Her curriculum vitae dates the post from July 2010 to March 2024 and the power of representation from April 2012, and states that the remit covered a group of about 1,900 employees, with direct responsibility for about 75 people. In the city’s 2014 participation report the airport company itself, counted separately from its subsidiaries, had 704 employees and 14.8 million passengers. The report set out a layered ownership: 94.9 percent of Flughafen Hamburg GmbH was held by FHK Flughafen Hamburg Konsortial- und Service GmbH & Co. oHG, which was in turn owned 51 percent by the municipal holding HGV and 49 percent by Hamburg Airport Partners.

From 2012 the personnel role ran alongside managing directorships in the airport’s ground-handling companies. The 2014 participation report named Carstensen and Christian Noack as managing directors of GroundSTARS GmbH & Co. KG, a wholly owned subsidiary formed by spinning a business unit out of the airport company, whose object was passenger, apron, baggage and cargo handling. It likewise named them at STARS Special Transport and Ramp Services GmbH & Co. KG, held 51 percent by Flughafen Hamburg GmbH and 49 percent by Lufthansa Engineering and Operational Services GmbH, whose object was transport and aircraft-towing services. The 2018 edition of the report still listed both names for both companies, by then under HAM Ground Handling GmbH & Co. KG. The commercial register of the general partner, GroundSTARS Verwaltungs GmbH, records her appointment in June 2012, with Schierensee given as her place of residence, and her departure in an entry of 15 October 2016 following a shareholders’ meeting on 12 September 2016; Burkhardt Höfer and Lutz Tilgner were appointed in her place. Her website limits the managing directorships of GroundSTARS, CATS Cleaning and Aircraft Technical Services and STARS to April 2012–August 2016 and puts about 900 employees across those firms. The Bundestag biography gives 2012–2017 for all three and for HAM Ground Handling GmbH. The register of HAM Ground Handling Verwaltungs GmbH records her as managing director from the September 2016 entry until an entry of 23 January 2018, when Höfer was appointed managing director.

At a public hearing of the Bundestag Committee on Labour and Social Affairs on 12 January 2026, Carstensen said that as long-time personnel director at Hamburg Airport she had, in 2012, had to introduce the first statewide minimum wage of €8.50 under First Mayor Olaf Scholz. The Hamburg parliament passed a state minimum-wage statute in April 2013, in force from 10 June 2013, setting €8.50 an hour for employees of the city and of municipal companies and for work performed under public contracts; it did not bind private employers generally, because a state lacks that legislative power. A general statutory minimum wage in Germany has existed only since 1 January 2015. In a statement dated 20 November 2012, Hamburg’s social authority said city employees already earned more than €8.50 and that the few public undertakings still below that rate would adjust when the rule took effect, including by changing in-house collective agreements.

In February 2025 the regional news site sh:z reported that she had given up the job of personnel director at Hamburg Airport and was standing for the Bundestag, and reported that she wanted more to do with people. On 8 July 2025 Hamburg Airport announced that Svenja Bonnichsen would become head of human resources on 1 October 2025; until then, managing director Berit Schmitz and an external adviser were to cover the function. The announcement did not name a predecessor. The personnel journal Personalwirtschaft identified Carstensen as the previous personnel chief, who had left the company for politics.

Early political activity

Young Union and party offices

Carstensen's earliest party offices were in the Young Union (Junge Union), an independent youth association whose statute, in the version of 22 October 2023, admits members from the completed 14th year of age. Ordinary membership does not require joining the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) or the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU), but members of the Young Union's state and federal executives are expected to belong to one of those parties. In Schleswig-Holstein the association is organized in district branches, among them the Young Union of Schleswig-Flensburg, the rural district administered from the town of Schleswig. The state association states that membership ends automatically at 35.

She dates her own involvement to the mid-1980s. On her website she writes that she became active in the Young Union in 1986 and joined the CDU in 1987, and that her party posts included service as a local chair (Ortsvorsitzende). In February 2025 she told NDR that she had entered the CDU at 16. The Bundestag biography, which the parliament says rests on members' own information, records CDU membership since 1987—consistent with a 16th birthday on 2 October 1987—and lists "various functions," specifically the business management (Kreisgeschäftsführung) of the Young Union in Schleswig-Flensburg, membership of a local executive (Ortsvorstand) and membership of the town council. The biography speaks of board membership rather than a local chairship. No contemporary local report reviewed for this article independently confirms either the chair or the district business post, so those details remain her account of local CDU and Young Union work in Schleswig rather than a documented party career.

Schleswig city council

The same biography states that she was a Ratsfrau of Schleswig from 1994 to 2001. Press reports at the end of 2009, identifying her under her birth name Sandra Thomsen, said she had sat for seven years for the CDU on the town's Ratsversammlung. In the 2025 NDR interview she spoke of six years. Published sources do not resolve that difference. Digitized minutes, electoral rolls or news reports that name Sandra Thomsen as the author of particular motions were not found, so her work inside the council is not documented beyond the fact of CDU membership on it.

Mirror-painted vault of the Ständesaal in Schleswig town hall, the room the city uses for meetings of the Ratsversammlung.

Under the city's main charter the municipal council (Stadtvertretung) bears the title Ratsversammlung, and its members are styled Ratsfrau or Ratsherr. The Bürgervorsteherin or Bürgervorsteher represents the council toward the mayor, who heads the administration. The city states that the council now meets principally in the Ständesaal of the town hall, the hall in which the estates of the Duchy of Schleswig sat from 1836 to 1846. That account does not say whether the room was already the regular meeting place throughout the 1990s.

The years she reports on the council ran alongside legal training. The Bundestag biography places her first state examination in 1997 and the second in 2000, and dates the Schleswig seat through 2001, the year it also dates the start of her employment at an airport company in Stuttgart. She has not, in the sources reviewed, described any later municipal mandate in Schleswig. A chronicle of the local Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) association says the SPD was the largest group after the municipal election of 20 March 1994, with 16 seats and no absolute majority, and again after the 1998 election, with 15 seats, when only three parties sat on the Ratsversammlung. Those figures are the association's own narrative, not an official statistical return, and they do not name the CDU councillors.

Personal life

Marriage to Peter Harry Carstensen

Sandra Carstensen, née Thomsen, is married to Peter Harry Carstensen, who was minister-president of Schleswig-Holstein when the couple married. The Landtag in Kiel elected him to that office on 27 April 2005. He made the relationship public at his 60th birthday in 2007, thanking her before about 600 guests for how his private life was going. The marriage was his second. His first wife, Maria, had died of cancer in 1998, and he later said that he had remained alone for a long time afterward.

The civil ceremony was held on 31 December 2009 in the Friesenstube of the Inselhotel Arfsten in Wrixum, on the North Sea island of Föhr. Carstensen was then 62, and Thomsen, a lawyer, was nearly 25 years younger. She had already sat for seven years as a member of the Christian Democratic Union on the council of Schleswig. The Rheinische Post reported that both said they were happy and that the celebration was limited to a small circle of family and friends. In a report four days earlier, the same paper, citing Bild am Sonntag, named the entrepreneurs Günther Fielmann and Frederik Paulsen as the intended witnesses. Government spokesman Knut Peters did not confirm those plans. He said only that the minister-president would spend New Year's Eve privately on Föhr and that the state chancellery would not discuss details.

A church wedding followed on Saturday, 26 June 2010, at St. Catharinen in Westensee, in the district of Rendsburg-Eckernförde, about six months after the civil ceremony and before roughly 120 guests. Hans Christian Knuth, the retired bishop of Schleswig, conducted the service. Die Welt reported that Sandra then also bore the surname Carstensen, and that Fielmann and Paulsen were among the guests; afterward the couple returned to a shared home in Schierensee. Carstensen said he wanted to affirm the marriage before God as well as at the registry office. The Bundestag biography lists her as Protestant and married.

Later regional coverage has called her Schleswig-Holstein's "Ex-First-Lady," a press label rather than an office. A 2024 shz headline used that wording for her Bundestag candidacy and identified her husband as the state's former minister-president.

Residence and honorary offices

Abgeordnetenwatch records her place of residence as Mühbrook, and her own website states that she lives there with Peter Harry Carstensen. Reporting on the 2010 church wedding had placed the couple's home in Schierensee.

Under the code of conduct for members of the Bundestag, two unpaid positions have been published for her. From 30 July 2025 she has been a member of the Kuratorium of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön. From 20 November 2025 she has been a member of the board of the Akademie für die Ländlichen Räume Schleswig-Holsteins e.V. (ALR) in Flintbek. Both entries are marked honorary. Abgeordnetenwatch's list of side activities reproduces those two functions, together with her pre-mandate employment as authorized signatory and head of personnel at Hamburg Airport, and shows no paid outside activity for the current term.

Candidacy for the Bundestag

Nomination in October 2024

Six members of the Christian Democratic Union sought the party's nomination for Bundestag constituency 6, Plön – Neumünster, which covers the Plön district, the city of Neumünster and, in the Segeberg district, the municipalities of the Amt Boostedt-Rickling: Boostedt, Daldorf, Groß Kummerfeld, Heidmühlen, Latendorf and Rickling. Before the vote, the six were presented at a series of five regional conferences. At the fourth, on the evening of 19 September 2024 in the Volkshaus Tungendorf in Neumünster, Siamak Aminmansour, Christian Rahe, Sandra Carstensen, Dirk-Justus Hentschel, Yavuz Yilmaz and Axel Schreiner presented themselves to members from the constituency.

The sh:z, the Schleswig-Holsteinischer Zeitungsverlag, headlined its report on that evening "Sicherheit und Migration" ("Security and migration"). The Neumünster CDU, describing the same meeting of about 50 members, wrote that the six agreed migration and internal security needed clearer positions, and that the nomination would be decided on 17 October at a members' assembly in the Uttoxeter-Halle in Schwentinental.

Carstensen had told local branches in late July 2024 that she would run. André Jagusch, the Plön CDU chairman, confirmed the candidacy to the Deutsche Presse-Agentur, which said the Kieler Nachrichten had published it first and that several other applicants were already in the field; the assembly in Schwentinental was then set for 17 October. The agency described her as the 52-year-old former personnel director and the wife of Peter Harry Carstensen, the former minister-president of Schleswig-Holstein, and set the bid beside other candidacies by relatives of prominent politicians: Michelle Müntefering, wife of former Social Democratic Party chairman Franz Müntefering; Caroline Bosbach, daughter of Wolfgang Bosbach; and Johannes Volkmann, a grandson of former chancellor Helmut Kohl. The sh:z used the label "Ex-First-Lady" and asked why her chances were thought to be good.

On Thursday 17 October 2024 the members' assembly nominated her. The Kieler Nachrichten reported that 274 adult CDU members were eligible to vote, that she was the only woman among the six, and that 144 votes gave her an absolute majority on the first ballot, ahead of Rahe with 61. Ole Plambeck, Segeberg CDU district chairman and a Landtag member from Henstedt-Ulzburg, chaired the meeting. Carstensen told the hall that what was required was responsibility, trust, empathy and good communication, and promised to be present in the constituency; accepting the result, she said, "Jetzt sind wir dran. Attacke!" ("Now it is our turn. Attack!"). Local reports presented her as the successor to Melanie Bernstein, the CDU member of the Bundestag from Bornhöved, who had been nominated with 97 percent for the neighbouring constituency of Segeberg – Stormarn-Mitte. The Kieler Nachrichten still gave 28 September 2025 as the date of the next federal election.

Campaign

The timetable was then brought forward. On 11 December 2024 a state delegates' assembly of the CDU in Neumünster adopted its list for an early federal election on 23 February 2025. Johann Wadephul was placed first; Carstensen was eighth on the list the assembly approved. The direct candidacy in constituency 6 remained the route on which regional coverage focused. The Hamburger Abendblatt, reporting the internal primary, said she now wanted to take Plön/Neumünster and again led with her marriage to the former minister-president.

In a February 2025 interview the sh:z wrote that the 53-year-old from Mühbrook had given up her job as personnel director at Hamburg Airport because she wanted more contact with people, and was therefore standing for the 21st Bundestag. NDR, profiling her as the votes were counted, reported the motto she had used in the campaign, "Nicht lange schnacken - anpacken!" ("Don't talk at length — get on with it"), and wrote that she wanted to support rural areas and agriculture. The same account, drawing on what she told the broadcaster, noted that she had joined the CDU at 16 and had later sat for six years on the council in Schleswig. From the July announcement through the February profiles, regional coverage returned to the same two points: her years in personnel management and her marriage to the former minister-president.

Election of 2025

Constituency Plön – Neumünster

Constituency 6, Plön – Neumünster, is a Bundestag seat in Schleswig-Holstein. For the 2025 German federal election the Federal Returning Officer defined it as the independent city of Neumünster, the whole district of Plön, and, from the district of Segeberg, the Amt Boostedt-Rickling — the municipalities of Boostedt, Daldorf, Groß Kummerfeld, Heidmühlen, Latendorf and Rickling. The rest of Segeberg was divided between constituencies 3 and 8.

On 31 December 2023 the constituency contained 92 municipalities, covered 1,302.4 square kilometres and had 223,000 inhabitants, a density of 171.2 people per square kilometre. At the end of 2022, 87.5 percent of its area was vegetation or water and 12.5 percent settlement or transport. Socially insured employment on 30 June 2023 was spread across other services (30.3 percent), trade, hospitality and transport (28.3 percent) and manufacturing (21.2 percent), with agriculture, forestry and fishing at 1.5 percent. Unemployment at the end of November 2024 was 5.8 percent.

The direct seat had already switched party once since 2017. In that year Melanie Bernstein of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) won it: the CDU took 53,109 first votes (40.7 percent) against 37,728 (28.9 percent) for the Social Democratic Party (SPD), on a turnout of 75.3 percent among 174,937 eligible voters. At the 2021 election the district electoral committee declared Dr Kristian Klinck (SPD) elected with 41,497 first votes (31.4 percent); Bernstein received 36,870 (27.9 percent). Turnout was 76.5 percent of 174,908 eligible voters, and the SPD also led the second votes, 29.2 percent to the CDU's 22.9 percent.

Eight constituency nominations were admitted for 23 February 2025 and published by the constituency returning officer on 30 January 2025. They were Klinck, listed as a secondary-school teacher, sitting member of the Bundestag and resident of Preetz; Sandra Carstensen (CDU), a lawyer living in Mühbrook; Juliane Michel-Weichenthal of Alliance 90/The Greens; Dr Christian Zidorn of the Free Democratic Party (FDP); Andreas Preuß of the Alternative for Germany (AfD); Lennart Elias Niemeyer of Die Linke; Thomas Balster of the Free Voters; and Simon Martin Wadehn of Volt Germany. The South Schleswig Voters' Association (SSW), Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) and several smaller parties had state lists but no constituency candidate. On the CDU state list, which the state electoral committee admitted on 24 January 2025, Carstensen was placed eighth and Bernstein, described there as a sitting member of the Bundestag, fourth.

Result and mandate

The final result showed 173,740 people eligible to vote and 143,576 ballots cast, a turnout of 82.6 percent, 6.2 points higher than in 2021. Invalid ballots numbered 1,863 first votes (1.3 percent) and 921 second votes (0.6 percent), leaving 141,713 valid first votes and 142,655 valid second votes.

Carstensen was returned for the constituency with 46,370 first votes, 32.7 percent, a gain of 4.8 points on the CDU share in 2021. Klinck, the incumbent, received 33,977 votes (24.0 percent, down 7.5 points), 12,393 fewer than Carstensen. Preuß placed third on 25,249 votes (17.8 percent, up 10.7 points from the AfD's 7.1 percent in 2021). Michel-Weichenthal followed with 18,852 (13.3 percent, down 2.4 points), Niemeyer with 7,623 (5.4 percent, up 2.6) and Zidorn with 4,693 (3.3 percent, down 6.1). Balster received 3,022 votes (2.1 percent, up 0.3) and Wadehn 1,927 (1.4 percent); Volt had not stood a constituency candidate there in 2021.

The CDU also led the second votes, with 40,815 (28.6 percent, up 5.8 points), 4.1 points behind Carstensen's share of the first votes. The SPD fell to 27,342 (19.2 percent, down 10.0 points). The AfD's 25,683 second votes (18.0 percent, up 10.7) left it 1,659 short of the SPD. The Greens received 19,957 (14.0 percent, down 3.4), Die Linke 9,657 (6.8 percent, up 3.6) and the FDP 6,150 (4.3 percent, down 7.7). BSW, on the ballot for the first time, took 5,042 votes (3.5 percent), and the SSW 4,523 (3.2 percent, up 0.8). The remaining valid second votes went to the Free Voters (1,160; 0.8 percent), Volt (1,117; 0.8 percent), Die PARTEI (992; 0.7 percent), Bündnis Deutschland (177) and the MLPD (40).

NDR reported that Carstensen had won the direct mandate. The Federal Returning Officer likewise recorded her as elected in the constituency, with Klinck as runner-up. The Bundestag dates her membership from 25 March 2025 and identifies her with Wahlkreis 006, Plön – Neumünster, in Schleswig-Holstein. That was the day the 21st Bundestag held its constituent sitting; the ballot for president was taken against a membership of 630, with a majority of 316 required.

Parliamentary work

Committees

Sandra Carstensen took her seat in the 21st Bundestag when it was constituted on 25 March 2025 in the Reichstag building in Berlin. The CDU/CSU group records her from that date as the directly elected member for constituency 6, Plön–Neumünster in Schleswig-Holstein, and in its working group on labour and social affairs.

The Bundestag biography of 30 October 2026 lists her as a full member of the Committee on Labour and Social Affairs and of the Petitions Committee, and as a deputy member of the Committee on Agriculture, Food and Homeland. Abgeordnetenwatch records the same labour and agriculture seats but lists petitions as a deputy membership, and the group page names only the labour committee. Where the lists differ, the bundestag.de biography is parliament's own record.

With 42 members, the labour committee is among the largest of the 21st term; parliament describes its field as pensions, labour-market policy, unemployment support and the inclusion of people with disabilities. Her website states that she is the CDU/CSU rapporteur for collective-bargaining policy, skilled immigration including a "Work-and-Stay" agency, the minimum wage and questions of principle, which neither the biography nor the group profile lists. The stenographic report of 26 February 2026 does record her calling herself rapporteur for the second and third reading of the federal tariff-compliance bill.

At the committee's 16th sitting on 12 January 2026 she questioned experts for the CDU/CSU on motions from Alliance 90/The Greens and Die Linke for a statutory minimum of €15 an hour (printed papers 21/346 and 21/347). She asked Steffen Kampeter of the Confederation of German Employers' Associations about the Minimum Wage Commission's independence and the employment effects of a further rise, especially for lower-skilled workers, and asked Gregor Thüsing which tools he thought more effective than repeated political increases. She said that, as personnel director at Hamburg Airport, she had introduced a statewide floor of €8.50 in 2012 under First Mayor Olaf Scholz.

As a deputy she sits on the agriculture committee, whose 30 members cover food, farming, forestry, hunting, fishing, climate protection, animal welfare and rural areas. The Petitions Committee, which the Bundestag lists as a full membership of hers, describes itself as the interface with citizens since the founding of the Federal Republic: its 26 members examine federal requests and complaints and call the committee a seismograph of public mood, while Länder matters fall outside it.

Baltic Sea Parliamentary Conference

The biography also lists her as a deputy member of the delegation to the Baltic Sea Parliamentary Conference. In October 2026 that delegation had five full members, headed by Johannes Schraps of the Social Democratic Party, with Georg Günther (CDU/CSU) as deputy head, and five deputies, among them Carstensen and Simone Borchardt for the CDU/CSU, with further seats held by the Alternative for Germany, the SPD and the Greens. Abgeordnetenwatch does not list the delegation.

The Bundestag describes the conference as cooperation among national and regional parliaments to strengthen a common identity of the Baltic Sea region, and as the parliamentary counterpart of the Council of the Baltic Sea States. Its account dates the cooperation from 1991, when the Finnish parliament's president, Kalevi Sorsa, called a first conference, with annual meetings since Warsaw in 1994; rules adopted at Mariehamn in 1999 gave the body its present name, and a 2005 revision in Vilnius strengthened the Standing Committee between sessions.

Speeches, questions and votes

On 26 June 2025, in the 14th sitting, she spoke for the CDU/CSU on a Left motion to raise collective-bargaining coverage. She treated bargaining autonomy as a pillar of the social market economy, opposed state interference in wages, and, citing more than 20 years as a personnel manager, said problems were solved with the social partners on the spot rather than by universal applicability and new documentation duties. She said the coalition agreement already provided for a federal tariff-compliance law, with bureaucracy kept light.

On 28 November 2025, in the 45th sitting, she spoke on Einzelplan 11, the budget of the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, which she put at almost €200 billion, about a third of the federal budget, including a pension of about €128 billion and Bürgergeld of almost €30 billion. She called the latter a sign of economic pressure and said it was not social to leave people dependent on the state. Asked by Pascal Meiser of the Left whether the CDU/CSU's young members would cut pensions in nominal terms after 2032, she replied that the Young Group and the Young Union stood for stable pensions, not those cuts.

On 26 February 2026, in the 59th sitting, Julia Klöckner called her for the second and third reading of the tariff-compliance bill for federal public contracts (printed papers 21/1941 and 21/4325). Speaking as rapporteur, she said that after ten rapporteur meetings she welcomed excluding supply contracts, requiring the labour ministry to designate representative agreements only together with the economics ministry, limiting checks to specific occasions, and easing certification for firms already applying an agreement, but that doubts remained and she was anything but satisfied.

On 10 June 2026, in the 82nd sitting, she closed debate on the Petitions Committee's 2025 report (printed paper 21/6000), citing petitions on domestic violence and on housing and day care for adults with disabilities, the latter referred to the federal government for consideration. She linked the procedure to Article 17 of the Basic Law, under which every petition is examined on its substance regardless of support.

Documentation indexed under her name records these speeches and, in that search, no written question (Schriftliche Frage) submitted by her. Abgeordnetenwatch records that she answered all 12 questions put through that site; those are questions from its users, not Bundestag interpellations. Roll calls it records include, on 16 October 2026, support for amending the Fuel Emissions Trading Act; on 15 October, support for extending the Bundeswehr missions UNMISS in South Sudan and EUNAVFOR Aspides in the Red Sea; and on 8 October, support for retaining specified tax advantages on large property deals and very large inheritances, and opposition to ending exemptions on sales of rented property after ten years and on cryptocurrency gains after one year, in that site's wording.

Policy positions and constituency work

Labour market and social policy

Carstensen is a full member of the Bundestag Committee on Labour and Social Affairs. On her website she describes herself as the CDU/CSU rapporteur for collective-bargaining policy, skilled immigration including a planned Work-and-Stay agency, the minimum wage and general questions, and says she wants to use skilled immigration, cut bureaucracy and give firms more room while strengthening employees' rights.

In committee she has put those issues to witnesses rather than naming a rate of her own. On 3 November 2025, at the hearing on the draft law requiring collective-agreement pay in federal contracts, she asked employers about proof and control duties, interference with collective bargaining and freedom of association, the displacement of company agreements and subcontractor liability, and she asked Caritas how churches and welfare bodies could raise coverage without losing their own agreements. On 12 January 2026, on motions by Alliance 90/The Greens and Die Linke for a €15 statutory floor, she said that as personnel director at Hamburg Airport she had had to introduce a statewide €8.50 in 2012 under then First Mayor Olaf Scholz, and that she respected the independent Minimum Wage Commission. She asked what a further rise would do to jobs in smaller firms and among lower-skilled workers, which other instruments would help low earners more than repeated political increases, and where political guidance becomes interference in the commission. That matched the group line. On 29 October 2025 the CDU/CSU labour spokesman, Marc Biadacz, welcomed the commission's unanimous steps to €13.90 on 1 January 2026 and €14.60 on 1 January 2027 and said the Union still did not want a politically fixed minimum wage.

Speaking for the CDU/CSU on the budget of the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, she said on 11 July 2025 that the 2025 draft was a necessary strain. About €123 billion would go to the statutory pension insurance, plus about €12 billion for basic security in old age. Care programmes, including for family carers and rural areas, should not be cut; spending on inclusion and on integration into work was too slow; more than a third of unemployed people were long-term unemployed; and Bürgergeld near €30 billion was an alarm signal. With the Social Democratic Party of Germany she pointed to investment incentives in preparation, and said anyone able to work should not stay on solidarity benefits: work must pay.

On 28 November 2025 she put the 2026 labour chapter at almost €200 billion, about a third of the federal budget, with the pension at about €128 billion plus €12 billion for basic security. She welcomed a pension commission and told Pascal Meiser of Die Linke that the Young Group and the Young Union wanted stable pensions and a fair generational contract, not cuts. She again tied Bürgergeld of almost €30 billion to a weak economy, called sound economic policy the best labour-market policy, and said incentives and sanctions should bring that bill down. A Left proposal she put at an extra €64 billion, more than half for Bürgergeld, would keep people dependent on the state rather than in paid work.

In a written reply on 17 July 2026 about psychotherapy in Boostedt, she said she had voted to return those fees to the morbidity-related overall remuneration, ring-fenced, and that continuous care, especially for children and young people, remained the aim, with exceptions the health committee had requested for treatments already begun past 31 December 2026.

Rural areas, agriculture and local representation

NDR reported on 24 February 2025 that she wanted, among other things, to support rural areas and agriculture in Schleswig-Holstein. She is a deputy member of the Committee on Agriculture, Food and Homeland. Interest disclosures list her from 20 November 2025 as an unpaid board member of the Akademie für die Ländlichen Räume Schleswig-Holsteins in Flintbek, and from 30 July 2025 as an unpaid trustee of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön. The chamber of agriculture's Bauernblatt of 12 December 2025 reported a visit to its Futterkamp centre, covering training, research, animal-handling simulators and converted livestock housing, and said she was impressed by the practical focus. On her website she calls for planning certainty and less bureaucracy for farms, and for rural infrastructure, affordable energy, medical care, digital connections and prospects for young people.

The Bundestag lists constituency offices in Plön, at Lange Straße 12 / Stadtgraben, and in Neumünster, at Großflecken 54. Written replies have mostly restated group positions. Asked on 7 April 2025 about abolishing the Freedom of Information Act as it stood, she wrote that citizens must still see what is done in their name and that the Act should continue in a reformed form, with citizens' assemblies kept. Asked on 29 August 2025 about rooftop-solar subsidies, she wrote that support should continue but serve the grid, with priority for photovoltaics plus storage, and that a small new system could already be attractive without a subsidy. On cuts to "Demokratie leben!", she replied on 5 May 2026 that grants should be transparent, justified and reviewed, and that she would not judge individual organisations; a reply dated 22 April 2026 said the group was working on laws against digital violence and for victims.