Sara Nanni

Sara Nanni (born 29 May 1987 in Datteln) is a German politician of Alliance 90/The Greens and a member of the Bundestag from North Rhine-Westphalia. The chamber opened its 20th electoral term on 26 October 2021, and she took her seat in that term on the party's state list after standing in constituency 107, Düsseldorf II. She returned for the 21st term, which the Bundestag dates from 25 March 2025, again via the North Rhine-Westphalia list and in association with the renumbered constituency 106. The Green parliamentary group lists her as its spokesperson for security policy. In the 21st Bundestag she is a full member and the group's Obfrau on the Defence Committee, and a deputy member of the subcommittee on arms control, non-proliferation and disarmament.

In the 2021 election the Federal Returning Officer recorded 30,201 first votes (21.4 percent) and 31,524 second votes (22.3 percent) for the Greens in Düsseldorf II, behind the SPD on 41,169 first votes (29.2 percent) and ahead of the CDU on 34,801 (24.7 percent). Nanni was the Greens' direct candidate there and has described her 2021 state-list place as 17. In December 2024 a Green state conference in Bielefeld placed her 16th, one place higher than four years earlier, and the Rheinische Post reported that she would again contest the southern Düsseldorf seat, against Johannes Winkel of the CDU and Adis Selimi of the SPD. At the election of 23 February 2025 the Greens' first-vote total in constituency 106 was 27,347 (18.2 percent), 3.2 points below the comparable 2021 share, with 25,780 second votes (17.1 percent).

The Bundestag's biography, drawn from her own disclosures, says she grew up in Waltrop, took her Abitur in Münster in 2007, and during school and university worked in restaurants and in sales and marketing. She completed a bachelor's degree in Franco-German social sciences in 2010, studied in Bordeaux and at the University of Stuttgart, and a master's in peace and conflict studies in 2014 at Goethe University Frankfurt and the Technical University of Darmstadt. From 2012 she worked at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt on the Academic Peace Orchestra Middle East and on Salafism in Germany, at RWTH Aachen on a pilot study of a military-technical transformation index, and at Hochschule Düsseldorf on the Horizon 2020 project Dialogue about Radicalisation and Equality, in the FORENA research unit on right-wing extremism. Parliament lists her occupation as peace and conflict researcher; her last post before the Bundestag was as a research associate at the Düsseldorf university of applied sciences.

The same biography records party activity from a children's and youth parliament in Waltrop and the Green Youth, through a Stuttgart education-strike alliance and a Frankfurt working group on civil clauses, and membership of the Greens from 2009. From 2015 to 2020 she sat on the spokesperson team of the party's federal working group on peace and international affairs, and from 2019 to 2021 she was an assessor on the Düsseldorf district executive. Since 2019 she has been a member of the Heinrich Böll Foundation's Forum Neue Sicherheitspolitik. In the 20th term the Bundestag also listed her as a full member of the Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly and as Obfrau of both the Defence Committee and the first committee of inquiry, on the withdrawal from Afghanistan, and as a member of the body overseeing the Bundeswehr special fund.

In January 2024, as the group's defence spokesperson, she urged Chancellor Olaf Scholz to supply Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine, telling the Rheinische Post that striking targets on Russian territory and in occupied eastern Ukraine, the areas from which attacks were launched, was the most effective protection for civilians and was covered by international law. She called the refusal to deliver the missile a major error and said the restraint came above all from the chancellor rather than from the government as a whole. In April 2022, after Ukraine withdrew an invitation to President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, she wrote that only someone who was completely ignorant could be seriously surprised or offended by the disinvitation, and that Steinmeier himself should not have been surprised.

Early life and education

Childhood and school

Sara Nanni was born on 29 May 1987 in Datteln and grew up in Waltrop, a town in the Ruhr in Kreis Recklinghausen. In an August 2021 profile, the Waltroper Zeitung reported that she had described her background, on her own website, as a "Malocher-Familie" — Ruhr German for a household of manual workers — and that she had not been raised in the milieu of Alliance 90/The Greens. The same interview placed the family home on Hochstraße, opposite the Blue Inn, formerly the Posthorn, and recorded that as a child she walked to the Galenschule, the local name for Waltrop's Kardinal-von-Galen-Schule, a municipal primary school (Gemeinschaftsgrundschule). She continued at the Theodor-Heuss-Gymnasium in Waltrop. In Year 11 she wanted French as a Leistungskurs, an advanced course taken for the Abitur, but the course was not offered. She had already repeated a year voluntarily and was 18; she then moved to Münster and passed the Abitur there in 2007.

From September 2002 to August 2005, still at school in Waltrop, she was a board member and chair of the town's Kinder- und Jugendparlament, a children's and youth council outside the parties. The Waltroper Zeitung quoted that entry from her curriculum vitae and reported that she had refused to be claimed by either the SPD or the CDU. During her school years and her studies she also worked in gastronomy and in sales and marketing, according to the biography she supplied to the Bundestag, which states that such details rest on members' own information.

University studies

After the Abitur she took the integrated Franco-German bachelor's course in social sciences run by the University of Stuttgart with Sciences Po Bordeaux, the Institut d'études politiques de Bordeaux, and known in French as the filière intégrée franco-allemande. The university describes a cohort of about 24 German and French students who change campus each year: the first and third years in Bordeaux, where history, economics and law sit alongside the social sciences, and the second year at Stuttgart's Institute of Social Sciences, centred on politics, sociology and methods, with bilingual teaching focused on the two societies. Nanni finished the Bachelor of Arts in 2010; in the account she gave the Bundestag the degree is titled "Deutsch-Französische Sozialwissenschaften", taken in Bordeaux and Stuttgart.

She afterwards studied for the master's Internationale Studien/Friedens- und Konfliktforschung, a joint programme of Goethe University Frankfurt and the Technical University of Darmstadt in which the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (Hessische Stiftung Friedens- und Konfliktforschung) also takes part. Goethe University describes the course as interdisciplinary, drawing on political science, sociology, philosophy, law and selected offerings from informatics, engineering and the natural sciences, with the weight on conflict resolution, the maintenance of peace, international institutions and ecologically and socially sustainable development. She received the M.A. in 2014; the Bundestag biography shortens the title to "Friedens- und Konfliktforschung" and places the degree in Frankfurt am Main and Darmstadt.

The studies were supported by a scholarship from the Hans Böckler Foundation under its Böckler-Aktion Bildung. The foundation describes that scheme as support for people starting a degree, meant to widen access, including where university is not a given, and says funding can run to the end of a first course of study, within federal student-aid time limits, as a means-tested grant plus seminars and other non-financial help. In Mitbestimmung (issue 6/2021) she said the programme had brought her into contact with people she would not otherwise have met at university, and that the scholarship had been, in her view, not only financial help but also a personal strengthening.

Research career

Sara Nanni's Bundestag biography, drawn from members' own statements, dates work in peace and conflict research and on radicalization from 2012 at the Hessische Stiftung Friedens- und Konfliktforschung—now the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF)—then at RWTH Aachen University, and last at Hochschule Düsseldorf, where she was a wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin until she entered parliament in 2021.

Peace Research Institute Frankfurt

At PRIF she worked on the Academic Peace Orchestra Middle East, a track II diplomacy project begun in 2010 under Bernd W. Kubbig. About 70 experts, mainly from the Middle East, met several times a year in working groups to develop ideas for a conference on a zone free of weapons of mass destruction and their delivery vehicles. Expert dialogue, modelled on Daniel Barenboim's West–Eastern Divan Orchestra, was presented as a step against regional misunderstanding. Policy briefs, of which about 40 were planned for 2011–2014, were written for diplomats and decision-makers; listed funders included the Norwegian and Swiss foreign ministries, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation and the Protestant Church of Hesse and Nassau.

Nanni is named as a co-author of Policy Briefs Nos. 26/27 (2013), Exploring Economic Cooperation in the Middle East – A Catalyst for the Helsinki Conference?, alongside Kubbig and regional specialists. The brief argued that arms talks, including a conference then envisaged for Helsinki, would not take place in a political vacuum, and that economic ties among Israel, the Palestinian territories, Egypt, Jordan and Turkey could make compromise easier even while peace treaties stayed "cold" and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict was unresolved. PRIF's 2013 annual report also lists her among the authors of an article on the orchestra's experience in the Palestine-Israel Journal. A Heinrich Böll Foundation profile describes this as experience gained while she was still a student.

The Bundestag biography also places her in PRIF work on Salafism in Germany. The project, Salafismus in Deutschland: Forschungsstand und Wissenstransfer, reviewed research on Salafism and jihadism and on advice needed by politics, administration and civil society. Its 2016 collection reports funding from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research under grant 01UG1502. Modules covered data, recruitment, careers, narratives, transnational networks, and prevention. One strand argued that figures from the offices for the protection of the constitution did not disclose how people were classified and reduced Salafi milieus to a security issue. Christopher Daase and Harald Müller are named as directors. Outputs included 2016 studies, the Campus volume Salafismus und Dschihadismus in Deutschland (reissued in 2017 by the Federal Agency for Civic Education), and two Berlin events that April. Nanni is not a listed author; in a 2016 essay collection from the same grant, editors Janusz Biene and Julian Junk thank her as a team member who helped edit the book.

Later research posts

The Bundestag biography next records a pilot study at RWTH Aachen, the Military-Technical Transformation Index. The Böll profile describes that pilot as work on the digital transformation of weapon systems and on their spread.

Her last research post was at FORENA, Hochschule Düsseldorf's right-wing-extremism unit, founded in 1987. FORENA was a partner in Dialogue about Radicalisation and Equality (DARE), a Horizon 2020 project coordinated by Hilary Pilkington at the University of Manchester. Under grant 725349 the project ran from 1 May 2017 to 31 October 2021 at a total cost of €4,999,053.75, with 17 partners in 13 countries; Düsseldorf's net European Union contribution was €393,146.25. DARE treated radicalization as a societal as well as a security problem and studied young people's encounters with "Islamist" and "extreme-right" milieus, including partial, stalled and non-radicalization.

Nanni's published contribution is the February 2021 country report Young people's trajectories through radical Islamist milieus: Germany ("Neustadt and beyond"), issued under the Düsseldorf affiliation. In 2018–2019 she interviewed 18 people aged 16 to 30 (13 men and five women, six of them converts) in a Rhineland city with a neo-Salafist network known beyond the region. The report finds that respondents tied radicalism to illegitimate violence but disagreed on what was legitimate; that economic inequality and racial discrimination did not appear to facilitate radicalization, while political inequalities somewhat did; and that only those facing serious biographical difficulties who also had access to neo-Salafist interpretations adopted non-violent neo-Salafist positions or joined such groups. The Böll profile dates this work from 2018. She left the post on entering parliament.

Political activity before the Bundestag

Early activism and joining the party

Nanni dates voluntary work in green politics to 2006 and has said that, until the Bundestag, it was unpaid. The Bundestag biography, which rests on her own information, adds that after Waltrop's children's and youth parliament she joined the Green Youth (Grüne Jugend); that she joined Alliance 90/The Greens in 2009; and that as a student she took part in the education-strike alliance in Stuttgart and later the civil-clause working group in Frankfurt. The Green Youth was founded in 1994, took its present name in 2000 and was recognised in 2001 as the party's youth organisation; it calls itself independent and willing to criticise the party.

The Stuttgart alliance belonged to the 2009 education strike. Der Spiegel described it as a loose coalition of pupil and student groups, unions and party organisations demanding more education funding, an end to tuition fees, and changes to the bachelor's degree introduced under the Bologna Process.

While taking the master's degree in peace and conflict studies she finished in Frankfurt and Darmstadt in 2014, she worked with the AK Zivilklausel. A civil clause commits a university to civilian and peaceful teaching and research. At Goethe University Frankfurt, 76.3 percent of students voting in January 2012 backed such a clause; in March 2013 the university wrote the principle into its preamble and said it was the twelfth in Germany to do so.

Federal and local party roles

From 2015 to 2020 Nanni was on the spokesperson team of the Bundesarbeitsgemeinschaft Frieden und Internationales; the Heinrich Böll Foundation and the Westdeutsche Zeitung describe her as its spokesperson for four years. The unpaid group develops positions on foreign policy, human rights, peace and security, civilian crisis prevention and disarmament, and favours a concept of security that includes human security and feminist foreign policy as well as military capacity. Delegates come from state working groups, with further seats for the parliamentary groups, the federal executive and the Green Youth; it meets in public two or three times a year and says those years went to programme work and civilian conflict resolution. The newspaper wrote that this party work, rather than any public office or role in Düsseldorf municipal politics, was what had made her known.

The same period covered the basic-programme rewrite. After nearly three years under "Neue Zeiten. Neue Antworten", the first fully digital congress adopted the fourth programme, "... zu achten und zu schützen... Veränderung schafft Halt". The Böll profile states that Nanni worked in the foreign-policy impulse group, and she was a delegate at the November 2020 congress. The text names peace as a core value, ranks civilian crisis prevention above military force, and allows force only as a last resort, with a United Nations Security Council mandate where another state's sovereignty is at stake. It calls a veto that shields crimes against humanity a dilemma, and the Bundeswehr a parliamentary army and a necessary security instrument. A Telepolis commentary on the June 2020 draft read even that limited acceptance of intervention as clearing a path into government.

From 2019 to 2021 she was an assessor (Beisitzerin) on the Düsseldorf district executive, which the members' assembly elects for two years. Assessors are voting members of that board alongside two equal spokespersons, a treasurer and a political director.

Since 2019 she has also belonged to the foundation's Forum Neue Sicherheitspolitik. Founded in November 2019, it is a closed network — 39 people in the foundation's account — of green-aligned specialists from government, think tanks, research and parliament. Members debate security policy as independent experts, without a duty to agree or a party line. In May 2020 Nanni co-wrote its second impulse paper with Nina Bernarding, Felix Deist and Juliana Wimmer, arguing that only the Security Council may authorise force and that a blocked council should not be bypassed by "coalitions of the willing".

Bundestag elections

2021 election and the 20th Bundestag

At the 2021 German federal election on 26 September 2021, Sara Nanni stood for Alliance 90/The Greens in constituency 107, Düsseldorf II, and in 17th place on the party's state list in North Rhine-Westphalia. The constituency comprised boroughs 3, 8, 9 and 10 of Düsseldorf; the remainder of the city formed constituency 106, Düsseldorf I. The official ballot listed her as a peace and conflict researcher living in Düsseldorf. The other leading constituency candidates were Andreas Rimkus of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, Sylvia Pantel of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany, identified on the ballot as a sitting member of the Bundestag, Christoph Martin Schork of the Free Democratic Party, Uta Opelt of the Alternative for Germany, and Julia Susanne Marmulla of Die Linke.

Of 190,102 eligible voters, 142,287 cast ballots, a turnout of 74.8 percent. Rimkus won the direct mandate with 41,169 first votes (29.2 percent). Pantel was second with 34,801 (24.7 percent), and Nanni third with 30,201 (21.4 percent), 13.1 percentage points above the Greens' 2017 first-vote share in the constituency. Schork received 14,143 votes (10.0 percent), Opelt 8,214 (5.8 percent) and Marmulla 5,418 (3.8 percent). Second votes in the constituency were led by the SPD with 35,671 (25.2 percent), ahead of the CDU with 31,639 (22.4 percent) and the Greens with 31,524 (22.3 percent, up 12.2 points from 2017). The FDP took 17,335 (12.3 percent), the AfD 8,503 (6.0 percent) and Die Linke 6,931 (4.9 percent).

Nanni did not take the constituency seat. The state returning officer's final roll of members elected from the North Rhine-Westphalia Green list records her at place 17, with the occupation given as scientist and peace and conflict researcher and with residence in Düsseldorf; the separate roll of constituency winners names Rimkus for Düsseldorf II and does not include her. The 20th Bundestag held its constitutive sitting on 26 October 2021.

2025 election and the 21st Bundestag

For the snap 2025 German federal election on 23 February 2025, the same four Düsseldorf boroughs were again grouped as Düsseldorf II, now numbered constituency 106 rather than 107. Nanni was again the Green direct candidate, described on the City of Düsseldorf's official ballot as a peace and conflict researcher, and she stood in 16th place on the North Rhine-Westphalia Green list. The leading constituency candidates on that ballot were Adis Selimi (SPD), Johannes Winkel (CDU), Nanni, Lida Azarnoosh (FDP), Andrea Kraljic (AfD) and Lisa Schubert (Die Linke). Pantel contested the seat for WerteUnion.

Turnout rose to 80.4 percent, with 151,908 voters among 188,875 people eligible to vote. Winkel won the direct mandate with 43,282 first votes (28.7 percent, 4.1 points above the CDU's 2021 share in the constituency). Selimi, recorded by the Federal Returning Officer as the runner-up, received 34,739 (23.1 percent, down 6.1 points). Nanni was third with 27,347 (18.2 percent, down 3.2 points). Kraljic took 19,574 (13.0 percent, up 7.2 points), Schubert 14,024 (9.3 percent, up 5.5 points) and Azarnoosh 6,250 (4.1 percent, down 5.9 points). Pantel received 719 first votes (0.5 percent). On second votes the CDU led the constituency with 38,006 (25.1 percent), followed by the SPD with 28,535 (18.9 percent) and the Greens with 25,780 (17.1 percent, down 5.2 points). The AfD received 19,606 (13.0 percent), Die Linke 17,800 (11.8 percent), the FDP 8,236 (5.4 percent) and Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht 7,246 (4.8 percent).

The direct mandate went to Winkel, whom the state returning officer lists as the elected member for constituency 106. Nanni entered through the list. The Federal Returning Officer's register of elected members gives her year of birth as 1987, records her as elected for North Rhine-Westphalia in list place 16, and notes that she also stood in constituency 106. The state returning officer's final roll of members elected from state lists likewise places her 16th on the Green list. The 21st Bundestag met for its constitutive sitting on 25 March 2025 at 11:00 in the plenary chamber of the Reichstag building in Berlin.

Parliamentary roles

Defence Committee and the special fund

In the 20th Bundestag, the archived biography of Sara Nanni records her as an ordinary member and as Obfrau of the Defence Committee from 26 October 2021 to 25 March 2025. The 38-member committee was constituted on 15 December 2021 under Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann of the Free Democratic Party; Nanni was one of six members from Alliance 90/The Greens. The biography also lists her as a deputy member of the Committee on European Union Affairs and of the Budget Committee, and as an ordinary member—not Obfrau—of the body for the Bundeswehr special fund.

Under section 5 of the Act on financing the Bundeswehr and establishing a “Sondervermögen Bundeswehr”, that body advises on the €100 billion fund for closing equipment gaps and for longer procurement planning, and it meets in secret because armaments projects are confidential. On 22 September 2022 the plenary elected the members by secret ballot; 664 of 736 members voted, and 369 votes were required. Nanni received 489 votes in favour, 102 against, 48 abstentions and 25 invalid ballots, and was elected with the candidates of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, the CDU/CSU, the Greens and the Free Democrats who also cleared that threshold. The candidates of Alternative for Germany and Die Linke did not.

The Green parliamentary group lists her as its spokesperson for security policy (Sprecherin für Sicherheitspolitik). That faction title is separate from the office of Obfrau, the member who leads a group on a committee; the biographies attach the Obfrau role to the Defence Committee. In the 21st Bundestag the biography, dating the entries from 25 March 2025, again lists her as an ordinary member and Obfrau of the Defence Committee and as a deputy member of the Subcommittee on Arms and Proliferation Control, Non-Proliferation and International Disarmament. The committee was constituted on 21 May 2025 under Thomas Röwekamp (CDU/CSU), with Nanni among five Green members. The 21st-term biography does not repeat the Budget Committee, the EU-affairs committee or the special-fund body.

Afghanistan withdrawal inquiry

On 8 July 2022 the Bundestag constituted the 1st committee of inquiry of the 20th term, after the plenary adopted the motion of the SPD, the CDU/CSU, the Greens and the Free Democrats (printed papers 20/2352 and 20/2553); the AfD voted against and Die Linke abstained. Twelve full members were to form an overall picture of the Bundeswehr withdrawal within the international departure from Afghanistan. The period ran from the United States–Taliban deal of 29 February 2020 to 30 September 2021, and covered the withdrawal decisions, the evacuation from Kabul, and Afghan local staff after the Taliban took power. Ralf Stegner (SPD) was elected chair.

At that sitting Robin Wagener was the Greens’ Obmann and Nanni their other full member, with Canan Bayram and Jamila Schäfer as deputies. The group called an inquiry opened by governing parties unusual and described it as a responsibility toward the civilian and military personnel of the evacuation. By the end of the term the archived biography records Nanni herself as Obfrau as well as a full member.

The report, printed paper 20/14700, exceeds 1,400 pages and was given to Vice-President Aydan Özoğuz on 18 February 2025, after 111 witnesses and 6,843 files. The Bundestag’s account says the SPD, CDU/CSU, Greens and Free Democrats drew similar conclusions on the United States’ role and the German response, defects in crisis management, weak coordination and situation assessment among ministries, and failures in the local-staff procedure and the duty of care. The Greens wrote of “organised irresponsibility” and of departmental blockages over local staff, and of no reliable common picture of the situation. The AfD filed a separate critique of the mission and of the chair; Die Linke had left after losing group status in the split that produced the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported the finding that slow administration and a lack of decisiveness had prevented early, effective action in the weeks before the Taliban took Kabul.

International parliamentary bodies

The 20th-term biography lists one membership beyond the Bundestag’s committees: ordinary member of the Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly. It does not list the NATO Parliamentary Assembly or the Interparliamentary Conference on the Common Foreign and Security Policy and the Common Security and Defence Policy. Delegation reports from that term nevertheless name her among the members sent by the Bundestag: the conference’s 25th meeting, in Budapest on 9–10 September 2024, with Rainer Semet and Gerold Otten, and the NATO assembly’s 70th annual session in Montréal on 22–25 November 2024. The NATO assembly lists her in the German delegation from 2022. The conference, set up in 2012 under Protocol No. 1 to the Treaty of Lisbon, meets twice a year in the state holding the European Union Council presidency; the Bundestag may send up to six members, and may fill twelve of Germany’s 18 NATO-assembly seats.

The 21st-term biography changes the status of those seats. It lists her as an ordinary member of both the NATO assembly and the interparliamentary conference, and only as a deputy member of the Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly. In October 2025 she was again in the Bundestag delegation to a NATO assembly session, the 71st, in Ljubljana, led by Marja-Liisa Völlers.

Defence and security policy

Zeitenwende and force structure

As security-policy spokesperson of the Alliance 90/The Greens Bundestag group, Sara Nanni has argued for a larger Bundeswehr inside a wider idea of security. Three days after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Chancellor Olaf Scholz called the attack a Zeitenwende and announced a debt-financed special fund of €100 billion for the armed forces. On 1 June 2022 Nanni said the invasion challenged NATO militarily as well as politically, and that years of "bad shrinking" and then "bad growth", with procurement shaped by constituencies, meant Germany could not claim the forces were ready. In March 2024 she said the money had "in principle paid promises to NATO from the past" and was "not as strongly oriented toward the future as the chancellor has sometimes put it". She described the turn under Defence Minister Boris Pistorius from a deployment-focused force toward one organised for territorial and alliance defence as well. She rejected conscription as a "crowbar" for pushing recruits in: the priority was keeping good people, because recruitment by word of mouth would fail if soldiers reported late postings, uncertain planning or discrimination. The coalition then in office, she said, wanted the Bundeswehr to feel like home to everyone who wished to serve, "including people of colour, women and LGBTQI+".

On 18 March 2025 the outgoing Bundestag, with the CDU/CSU, the Social Democratic Party and the Greens, amended the Basic Law so that spending above 1 per cent of nominal GDP on defence, civil and population protection, the intelligence services, information-system protection, and aid to attacked states sits outside the debt brake; the Bundesrat agreed on 21 March. The SPD and the Union had wanted an exemption only for classic defence spending; the Greens pressed to add civil protection. Nanni later called that widening the core of the amendment.

Extremism, misconduct and personnel policy

Reported misconduct has been part of the personnel argument. At the end of 2025, allegations at Airborne Regiment 26 in Zweibrücken—about 1,700 soldiers—covered right-wing extremism, drugs, bullying and suspected sexual assaults in some 200 cases. Prosecutors investigated 19 non-commissioned officers, several soldiers were dismissed, and Pistorius called the cases "shocking", saying misconduct had not been recognised at once and that there must be no fear of reporting.

In October 2026 Der Spiegel reported investigations at Medical Regiment 1 in Weißenfels, including an alleged competition over sex with female recruits and drug use; according to Spiegel, at least one of those affected was a minor. The Bundeswehr told ZDF that ten people were accused, five cases had gone to prosecutors, and temporary bans on the barracks and on duty had been imposed. Nanni asked for an independent external reporting office, telling RTL/ntv the forces needed a setting "in which perpetrators do not feel safe", that there were signs they had counted on protection from superiors, and that the ministry was "taking a bit too much time" without a full set of measures. Pistorius said every perpetrator would be pursued, while adding that such cases kept occurring and that he did not know whether they could ever be stopped.

The ministry told Correctiv of 518 suspicion reports of sexualised misconduct by October 2026, against 312 in 2021 and 472 in 2025, and 1,965 cases from 2021 through 2025, under a stated "zero-tolerance" policy that still routes complaints through superiors. A dark-field study started in 2024 by parliamentary commissioner Eva Högl had finished data collection in August 2026, and a round-the-clock contact point outside the chain of command was due in November.

Conscription debate

On 5 December 2025 the Bundestag passed the Military Service Modernisation Act by 323 votes to 272, with one abstention; the Greens voted against. It was published on 29 December 2025 and was to apply from January 2026. The aim is 255,000 to 270,000 active soldiers by 2035, from a little over 184,000 at the end of October 2025, plus 200,000 reservists. Every 18-year-old is to get a questionnaire on motivation and suitability—obligatory for men, voluntary for women—and men born from January 2008 are to be mustered. Service was to stay voluntary at first, at about €2,600 gross a month; if numbers reported from 2027 fall short, a further law can impose a "needs-based" obligation, and the coalition compromise left a lottery as the way to choose who would be called. Pistorius called it a decisive step and said partial conscription could not be avoided if volunteering failed.

Nanni called the compromise a "change for the worse" beside Pistorius's earlier draft. "One needs the best for the Bundeswehr, not just anyone," she told the Funke newspapers: a second-stage lottery risked delaying changes that would attract volunteers.

On 5 December she said the Greens would vote no. Bundeswehr growth mattered, "but we also have to create growth in personnel for civil protection"; "a country is not defended by 18-year-olds", and the bill did not say how to activate every generation or join civil and military defence. She asked why the questionnaire young men must fill in was not open to all ages and genders, why it did not record skills or willingness to do more, civil or military, and why it did not offer training and basic service to people past 18. A link from the personnel office to voluntary options was not a systematic survey. She blamed disagreement with the interior ministry and Chancellor Friedrich Merz's lack of attention, and demanded a chancellery office for crisis management at once, plus pay for suitable people who would serve later than 18. "This country wants to defend itself, and the state has a duty to give all people the possibility of preparing for that. This law does not do that."

The motion Nanni introduced with Agnieszka Brugger and others backed registration and mandatory mustering if "modern and fair", but said a random draw "as provided for in the law" looked unjust. It asked for an enquiry commission on resilience, a chancellery register of skills, pay for civil-defence training or basic service, and at least 200,000 civilian voluntary-service places by 2030. Nyke Slawik said enough people would defend the country without compulsion, that a questionnaire and mustering were defensible, and that drawing lots was not. In June 2024 Nanni had told Deutschlandfunk she opposed obliging the young against their will and wanted any new service to cover all genders.

Ukraine, arms transfers and nuclear sharing

Support for Ukraine

As security-policy spokesperson for Alliance 90/The Greens in the Bundestag, Sara Nanni argued after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine that Germany should send more weapons, including from Bundeswehr stocks. In a Spiegel essay of 21 August 2022 with Social Democrat Kristian Klinck and Free Democrat Alexander Müller, she argued that Ukraine was defending German interests too, that temporary equipment gaps were acceptable if industry replaced what was given away, and that Berlin should not yield to nuclear threats.

The sharpest dispute was the Taurus KEPD 350, a German-Swedish cruise missile with a range of more than 500 kilometres. Ukraine requested it in May 2023; Chancellor Olaf Scholz of the Social Democratic Party of Germany refused. In the Rheinische Post of 6 January 2024 Nanni called non-delivery a serious mistake and the shipment long overdue. The best protection against Russian air attacks, she said, was striking targets on Russian territory and in occupied eastern Ukraine from which the attacks were launched—the best protection for civilians, and covered by international law. Restraint came above all from the chancellor, not the government as a whole. Germany had done much on air defence but should ask whether more was possible, and the strikes on civilians showed an "imperial aggressor" waging a war of subjugation outside the rules.

On 26 February 2024 Scholz said Germany must not be linked "at any point and in any place" with Taurus targets, and that target control by Britain and France "cannot be done in Germany," or Germany risked becoming a party to the war. Green deputy leader Agnieszka Brugger replied that nobody demanding Taurus wanted that, and that the claimed link was, so far as she knew, factually wrong. On 13 March he told the Bundestag he would not supply long-range systems that made sense only with German soldiers outside Ukraine, including planning done in Germany.

On 14 March a CDU/CSU motion for immediate delivery failed: of 687 votes, 494 were against, 188 in favour and five abstentions. Brugger said the Greens would still oppose it out of loyalty to the coalition. A statement the Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported would be signed by Nanni, Anton Hofreiter and others backed a ring exchange, yet said the signatories would reject the Union text because a February coalition resolution on long-range weapons had not named Taurus.

After Joe Biden allowed longer-range U.S. weapons to be used inside Russia, Nanni told the Rheinische Post on 18 November 2024 that Germany should follow and deliver Taurus; the Greens had been clear, and it was the chancellor's turn. The government said Biden's step changed nothing. The day before, lead candidate Robert Habeck said that as chancellor he would reverse Scholz: "The answer to this question is: yes." Friedrich Merz, who had urged delivery in opposition, said as chancellor on 25 March 2026 that there was no longer a need: Ukraine was "better armed than ever," his earlier demand had assumed enough serviceable missiles, and Kyiv needed money to build its own weapons.

F-35 and nuclear sharing

Under NATO nuclear sharing, the United States keeps nuclear weapons in Europe in its own custody, while some allies provide dual-capable aircraft and crews trained to carry them in war. NATO says the arrangement fits the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Germany joined that treaty on 2 May 1975 as a non-nuclear-weapon state, barred from acquiring nuclear weapons. Its delivery aircraft have been Panavia Tornado jets. U.S. B61 bombs have been reported at Büchel Air Base.

On 14 March 2022 Defence Minister Christine Lambrecht gave the nuclear role to the Lockheed Martin F-35A and electronic combat to a developed Eurofighter. Spiegel reported on 4 December 2022 that the classified paper for the budget committee—required above €25 million—priced 35 jets at nearly €10 billion, with first aircraft for Büchel in 2027, where German jets would carry stored U.S. bombs in an emergency. It called base works by 2026 "highly ambitious," foresaw delay and extra cost, warned a German flight licence might come late, and said the F-35A missed some instrument-flight equipment rules. The report described coalition unease. It did not quote Nanni. On 14 December the committee released the money. The ministry put 35 aircraft, engines, equipment, spares, training and weapons at about €8.3 billion from the special fund, to replace the Tornado in the nuclear role without a gap. Tagesschau called the same approval almost €10 billion.

Nanni later defended the buy. On 11 June 2025, asked whether doubts about the United States meant cancelling it for European industry, she answered no. The F-35 already did for European air forces, she wrote, what no European system could. Claims about freedom from American interference were often false, she said, but secrecy barred a public rebuttal. Having studied the system, she still wanted procurement to continue, "despite some challenges."

European defence industry

In the same answer she said that in the previous term she had pressed the Franco-German Future Combat Air System, so Germany could later secure its airspace in a European industrial group and import less from the United States. The ministry had framed the 2022 choice the same way: an F-35 for allied deterrence and European cooperation, with the Eurofighter kept for electronic combat.

Reception and criticism

Argument about Sara Nanni after 2022 focused on how Alliance 90/The Greens moved from a peace-movement identity toward military support for Ukraine, not on a personal scandal. In a 2026 essay for the Federal Agency for Civic Education, Arnd-Michael Nohl described that party shift from unconditional non-violence to conditional military engagement, using Nanni's phrase for it, a "schmerzhafter Erfahrungs- und Lernprozess". In a 2025 chapter she rejected a rupture dated only to February 2022 and called Green security policy a decades-long "gegenseitige Annäherung" with the Bundeswehr. In December 2023 she told the former diplomat Tim Guldimann that she wanted to soften the thesis of a Zeitenwende for the Greens: the movement had always had both "starke radikal pazifistische Teile" and "pragmatisch pazifistische Teile", and remained "die pazifistischste Partei".

The first widely reported split inside the party was diplomatic. On 13 April 2022 the Süddeutsche Zeitung recorded broad incomprehension after Ukraine indicated that a visit by President Frank-Walter Steinmeier was not wanted. Chancellor Olaf Scholz called the decision "etwas irritierend". The Greens' foreign-policy spokesman Jürgen Trittin said treating the German head of state as unwelcome was "ein großer Propagandaerfolg für Wladimir Putin" and urged Kyiv to reverse it. The same article quoted Nanni, the group's security-policy spokeswoman, the other way: "Nur wer völlig ignorant ist, kann ernsthaft überrascht und brüskiert von dieser Ausladung sein. Man muss das nicht gut finden. Aber überraschen sollte es niemanden. Auch Steinmeier selbst nicht."

Coalition partners rarely answered her arms line in personal terms; anti-militarist writers did. In a Rheinische Post interview reported on 6 January 2024 she called refusal to send Taurus cruise missiles "einen großen Fehler", located the hesitation "vor allem vom Bundeskanzler", and said strikes on launch sites in Russia and occupied eastern Ukraine were the most effective lawful protection of civilians. In August 2022 the Informationsstelle Militarisierung had described a Spiegel Online piece she wrote with Kristian Klinck of the Social Democratic Party and Free Democrat Alexander Müller as a plea for the first steps of a "Kriegswirtschaft" to arm Ukraine over the long term, even if Bundeswehr stocks temporarily came second. After the January 2023 decision to send Leopard 2 tanks, Tobias Schulze wrote in the taz that Nanni had worn a leopard-print sweater in the Bundestag while other Green deputies posted big-cat emojis. He warned that a tank turned into a "Gag-Maschine" and "Raubkätzchen" could cease to look like a last resort, and quoted Robert Habeck calling the decision right but no cause for celebration. The Informationsstelle's magazine Ausdruck treated the sweater and her "Free the Leopards. Just do it." post as "banaler Militarismus". In March 2024 Unsere Zeit, the German Communist Party's paper, called her a "Hardlinerin" for demanding Taurus and backing a Bundeswehr mission in the Red Sea.

Inside the party, objections usually named the security turn rather than Nanni. When the Green Youth's federal executive said on 25 September 2024 that it would leave, Der Spiegel reported that the board cited the €100 billion Bundeswehr special fund, with the Lützerath eviction and tighter asylum rules, as policies it would not defend from within. Her published complaints were aimed mainly at ministers. In January 2023 she told the taz that parliament should not have to reconstruct the Puma failures "aus Truppe und Presse" in "Versatzstücke", as Defence Minister Christine Lambrecht faced wider criticism. In January 2024 she told Der Spiegel that Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock's openness to further Eurofighters for Saudi Arabia was a surprise, that the government had ruled the jets out the previous summer "aus guten Gründen", and that future Saudi wars would resemble the bombing of Yemen. In the 2025 military-service dispute she told the taz that a lottery for who would serve would be "kontraproduktiv" for trust in the Bundeswehr, because "Wir brauchen diejenigen, die Lust haben auf einen Dienst bei der Bundeswehr."

Personal life

Nanni lives in Düsseldorf, in North Rhine-Westphalia. In January 2025 she told the Rheinische Post that she had moved there with her family about eight years earlier and lives in the city’s District 8; she described a mixed neighbourhood and an ordinary daily life, and said that moving to Berlin had never been considered. For sitting weeks she keeps a small flat near the Bundestag, and she said that combining the mandate with family life in Düsseldorf is often difficult. The biography for the 20th Bundestag, drawn from information she supplied, described her as married, with one child. The biography for the 21st Bundestag states that she has one child and does not record a marital status; the chamber notes that the text rests on the member’s own statements.

Her 2010 bachelor’s degree in Franco-German social sciences was taken in a programme of the University of Stuttgart and the Institut d’Études Politiques de Bordeaux that is taught in German and French and requires good French as well as English. In the 21st Bundestag she is a deputy member of the Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly; no proficiency level is stated.

Her self-reported memberships include the Allgemeiner Deutscher Fahrrad-Club (ADFC), a cyclists’ association campaigning for bicycle infrastructure and cycling-centred transport; Amnesty International, whose German section, founded in 1961, works on human rights; and the Plattform Zivile Krisenprävention, a civilian crisis-prevention affiliation the biography does not further identify. She also lists the Deutsche Gesellschaft für die Vereinten Nationen (DGVN), a non-partisan association founded in 1952 that informs the public about the United Nations and argues for a strong UN; ver.di (Vereinte Dienstleistungsgewerkschaft), the German services union, which negotiates collective agreements; and Women in International Security Deutschland, the German section of Women in International Security, a non-partisan association founded in 2003 to network women in foreign and security policy.

The 20th-term disclosures record three further offices. From 15 June 2022 she was a member of the advisory board of the Federal Academy for Security Policy. The board advises the academy’s trustees, identified by the Defence Ministry as the National Security Council, on interministerial training and on its teaching; members serve for three years. The ministry included her in the tenth board, constituted in Berlin on 19 May 2026. She sat on the DGVN board from 22 May 2022 to 31 October 2024. From 15 February 2022 to 30 June 2024 she was an unpaid member of the Europe/Transatlantic expert advisory board of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, the Green political foundation, whose expert boards advise it on its statutory work. The 21st-term disclosure page does not repeat those three entries.

The notices do not itemise paid outside employment, but they do record travel costs met by third parties. In the 20th term the Global Public Policy Institute, an independent Berlin think tank, covered €13,552.28 in 2023 and €12,270.00 in 2024, and the Ministry of the Armed Forces of France, in Paris, covered €4,539.92 in 2023. For the 21st term the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a non-partisan organisation working on the transatlantic partnership, covered €7,937.81 in 2026.