# Silke Launert

# Silke Launert

Silke Launert (born 27 December 1976 in Stadtsteinach) is a German politician of the [Christian Social Union in Bavaria](/organizations/christian-social-union-in-bavaria) (CSU) and a lawyer by training. She has been a member of the Bundestag since 22 October 2013, sitting with the CDU/CSU group. The Bundestag lists her mandate as a direct constituency seat for Wahlkreis 236, Bayreuth, in Bavaria. At the 2025 German federal election she took 44.5 percent of the first votes in that constituency, 59,366 votes, ahead of [the Alternative](/organizations/the-alternative) for Germany candidate Tobias Matthias Peterka on 18.8 percent. On the evening of 6 May 2025 Federal Minister Dorothee Bär appointed her parliamentary state secretary at the Federal Ministry for Research, Technology and Space, in the government of Chancellor [Friedrich Merz](/people/friedrich-merz).

The Bundestag's biography, based on her own disclosure, records that she is a Lutheran and has two children. She took the Abitur in 1996 at the Caspar-Vischer-Gymnasium in Kulmbach, studied law at the University of Bayreuth from 1996 to 2001, and passed the first state examination in law in 2001. From 2001 to 2002 she was a research assistant to Wilhelm Mößle. Her legal clerkship, from 2002 to 2004, was spent at the Landgericht Bayreuth, the government of Upper Franconia and the German embassy in Washington, D.C.; she passed the second state examination in 2004 and received a doctorate from the University of Bayreuth in 2013.

In 2005 she became a judge at the Amtsgericht Hof. She sat as a civil judge at the Landgericht Hof from 2005 to 2007 and again from 2011, and from 2007 to 2009 she was a public prosecutor at the Staatsanwaltschaft Hof. The CSU's profile of its executive members adds parental leave in 2009 and 2010 and dates her second period at the Landgericht Hof to 2011–2013, when she entered parliament. In the register of members' interests the Bundestag lists her former occupation as a regional-court judge employed by the Free State of Bavaria, with a right to return to that service.

She has been on the CSU party executive since 2013, sits on the party's Upper Franconia district executive, and since June 2013 has chaired the Frauen-Union in Upper Franconia and belonged to the Frauen-Union's Bavarian executive. The same CSU profile lists her as deputy state chair of the Bavarian Frauen-Union, head of its project group on the family, and chair of the CSU association in the city of Bayreuth. At the 2013 federal election she was not a constituency candidate; she stood in 32nd place on the CSU state list. Before the Merz cabinet was formed, Minister-President Markus Söder nominated Bär to lead a new federal ministry for research, technology and space and named Launert as the parliamentary state secretary who would work with her, a choice Bayerischer Rundfunk reported as unexpected. She has kept her seat in the Bundestag. The CDU/CSU group lists her in its women's group, its group on expellees, resettlers and German minorities, and the parliamentary circle for small and medium-sized enterprises.

## Early life and education

### Childhood in Upper Franconia

Silke Launert was born on 27 December 1976 in Stadtsteinach, in the Kulmbach district of Upper Franconia, Bavaria. The Bundestag biography, compiled from members’ own statements, records that she is evangelical Lutheran. She spent her childhood and youth in nearby Untersteinach, in the same district. At a Christian Social Union nomination meeting in 2016 she said she had grown up on a farm and had remained down-to-earth because of it.

In 1996 she passed the Abitur at the Caspar-Vischer-Gymnasium in Kulmbach, the district town. The school, a state *Gymnasium* with language, economics and social-science tracks, has occupied its building on Christian-Pertsch-Straße since 1969 and has carried the name of the Kulmbach Renaissance architect Caspar Vischer since 1975. A 2017 profile in the *Nordbayerische Nachrichten*, which called her a native of Untersteinach, reported that she delivered newspapers for four years until she came of age, and that once a month she collected subscription money from door to door. The profile presented that early round as the routine she later compared with campaigning house to house.

### Legal studies and doctorate

From 1996 to 2001 Launert studied law at the University of Bayreuth, and in 2001 she passed the first state examination in law. A biography carried by the CSU association in Bayreuth states that the examination was graded *vollbefriedigend*, described there as a *großes Prädikat*. From 2001 to 2002 she was a research assistant to Prof. Dr. Dr. Wilhelm Mößle at the university’s chair of public law. In the same period she took the university’s supplementary economics course, the *Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Zusatzausbildung* (WiWiZ). The university says that students on the state-examination law course may earn the additional title *Wirtschaftsjurist* or *Wirtschaftsjuristin* (Univ. Bayreuth) through that programme, and that Bayreuth is the only German institution which awards it. The CSU biography states that she received the title in 2002 with the grade “sehr gut”.

From 2002 to 2004 she completed the *Rechtsreferendariat*, the practical legal training that follows the first examination. The Bundestag lists the training at the regional court (*Landgericht*) in Bayreuth, the government of Upper Franconia, and the German embassy in Washington, D.C.; the CSU text describes the court as [the base](/organizations/the-base) of the traineeship and the regional government and the embassy as stations within it. In 2004 she passed the second state examination, which the CSU biography again gives as *vollbefriedigend*.

In 2013 the University of Bayreuth awarded her a doctorate. The German National Library catalogues *Der Rang von Unterhaltsansprüchen im Unterhaltsrechtsänderungsgesetz 2007* (Berlin: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Berlin, 2015; 557 pages; ISBN 978-3-86573-865-3) as the published form of a Bayreuth university dissertation of 2013. The statute named in the title, the Act to Amend Maintenance Law of 21 December 2007, was promulgated in the *Bundesgesetzblatt* on 28 December 2007 and entered into force on 1 January 2008. It rewrote § 1609 of the Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch so that, where a person liable for maintenance cannot satisfy every claimant, unmarried minor children and the privileged young adult children defined in § 1603(2), second sentence, stand in the first rank, ahead of a parent caring for a child and of spouses, including divorced spouses of a long marriage. The CSU biography describes the thesis as a study of family and maintenance law that also treated the constitutional foundations of marriage and family, and states that it was graded *summa cum laude*; the Bundestag entry records the doctorate without a grade.

## Judicial career

In 2005, the year after her second state examination, Silke Launert entered the judicial service of the Free State of Bavaria in Hof, in Upper Franconia. The Bundestag biography, drawn from members’ own statements, lists her as a judge at the Amtsgericht Hof in 2005, a judge at the Landgericht Hof in civil matters from 2005 to 2007 and again from 2011, and a public prosecutor at the Staatsanwaltschaft Hof from 2007 to 2009. A Christian Social Union leadership biography adds parental leave in 2009–2010 and dates the second Landgericht period 2011–2013, when she entered parliament.

### Courts in Hof

Ordinary jurisdiction runs from the Amtsgericht, or local court, through the Landgericht, or regional court, and the higher regional court to the Federal Court of Justice. Local courts hear civil claims up to a statutory limit—€10,000 in the current Courts Constitution Act—and some disputes whatever the amount; they also have family matters and most non-contentious business, including adult guardianship and probate. Regional courts hear the civil disputes not assigned to the local court.

In her own account, which the shorter official biographies do not itemise, the 2005 Amtsgericht Hof work was guardianship (Betreuung) and probate (Nachlass); the 2005–2007 Landgericht Hof work was general civil litigation, in particular capital-investment and insurance cases, banking matters, liability claims against lawyers and tax advisers, and insolvency-avoidance actions; and the post she resumed in January 2011 was general civil matters and medical-liability cases. On 10 March 2014 the Nordbayerischer Kurier still referred to her as a former judge (“vormalige Richterin”).

The judgeship was suspended rather than given up. In the Bundestag’s mandatory disclosures the occupation before membership is “Richterin am Landgericht, Rückkehrrecht” (judge at a regional court, with a right of return), for the Free State of Bavaria in Munich. Section 36(2) of the German Judiciary Act provides that a judge who accepts election to the Bundestag loses, without a further court decision, the right and the duty to exercise judicial office, on the terms set by other statutes. The Members of the Bundestag Act, which covers judges, suspends the rights and duties of that relationship for the length of membership, except duties such as official secrecy, and allows the title to be used with the addition “außer Dienst” (not on active duty). The biography nevertheless still describes her as a judge at the Landgericht Hof “since 2011.”

### Public prosecution

From 2007 to 2009, between the two periods on the bench, Launert was a public prosecutor (Staatsanwältin) at the Staatsanwaltschaft Hof. She has described that work as general criminal offences, juvenile crime, material depicting the sexual abuse of children (Kinderpornografie in her German account), domestic violence and stalking. The Nordbayerischer Kurier reported that, in an early Bundestag speech, she cited frustrating experience in the prosecutor’s post when arguing for stricter treatment of commercial online trade in images of children presented as harmless “posing” pictures. That assignment ended before the 2009–2010 parental leave. The right of return published by the Bundestag attaches to the Landgericht judgeship, not to the prosecutor’s office.

## Party offices

### Christian Social Union

Launert’s party posts are inside the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (Christlich-Soziale Union in Bayern, CSU). The statutes of 13 December 2025, filed with the federal returning officer, give the party its seat in Munich and organize it in Bavaria. The party congress elects the Parteivorstand — the chair, up to five deputies, two treasurers, two secretaries and 32 further members — which represents the party in public, treats urgent questions, supervises internal elections and approves the rules of the auxiliary organizations (Arbeitsgemeinschaften).

She has been a member of that board since 2013, according to the Bundestag biography, drawn from her own information, and the CSU’s historical register. The voting-member list filed in December 2025 names Markus Söder as chair and Launert as one of the 32 additional members (Beisitzer). A notice carried by the Wiesentbote reported that the Munich congress re-elected her on 12 December 2025.

Below Land level, a Bezirksverband generally covers one Regierungsbezirk. Upper Franconia is one such association: its board represents the party in the district and supervises internal elections in the county associations. The statutes allow up to five deputy district chairs and also seat the Frauen-Union district chair ex officio. The association states that the board was last elected in June 2025 in Naila. The published result names Launert as one deputy chair, and the board page also lists her separately as a statutory member in her capacity as Frauen-Union district chair.

A Kreisverband generally covers a rural district, an independent city, or a Landtag constituency in a large city, and its board represents the local party. In Bayreuth, the *Nordbayerischer Kurier* reported that the Kreisverband Bayreuth-Stadt elected Launert chair on the evening of 5 April 2019 with 93 percent of the votes, succeeding former mayor Michael Hohl, who did not stand again. She told the paper she did not plan to run for mayor in 2020. The paper reported her confirmation on 16 October 2021 with 97.4 percent of members present, and the association’s board page still lists her as Kreisvorsitzende.

### Frauen-Union

The Frauen-Union is one of eight Arbeitsgemeinschaften in the CSU statutes, with the Junge Union, the Senioren-Union and others. All are to spread the party’s ideas and recruit members. The Frauen-Union has the further task of bringing women into political life, winning them for party work, proposing them for leadership posts and public office, and taking positions on current issues. Its Land chair sits on the Parteivorstand ex officio; the December 2025 filing assigns that seat to Ulrike Scharf.

A notice dated 28 June 2013 reported that Launert, until then a deputy, had been elected Bezirksvorsitzende of the Frauen-Union in Upper Franconia with 98.4 percent of the vote, succeeding Gudrun Brendel-Fischer, who had held the post for 14 years. The notice put membership at just under 3,000. The Bundestag biography dates the chair from June 2013 and lists her as a member of the Land executive of the Frauen-Union in Bavaria and as head of its project group on family and women.

The CSU historical register dates the deputy Land chair from 2019. A notice of the June 2022 Land assembly in Munich said she was confirmed, with the highest result among the deputies elected, while Scharf remained Land chair. On 26 September 2025 the assembly again elected her a deputy chair, with 164 votes, and again chose Scharf. The Land organization uses several project groups for thematic work. A report of 23 July 2025 on a discussion of women in mathematics, informatics, science and technology named Launert as head of “Familie und Frauen” and Claudia Krüger-Werner as head of “Verbindungen leben – Netzwerke pflegen”.

## Elections to the Bundestag

### State-list entry in 2013

At the federal election of 22 September 2013, Silke Launert was not a constituency candidate in Bayreuth, then numbered 237. The seat was won by Hartmut Koschyk of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU), with 63,936 first votes (55.9 percent). Anette Kramme of the [Social Democratic Party of Germany](/organizations/social-democratic-party-of-germany) (SPD) was the runner-up, with 29,344 first votes (25.6 percent). Turnout was 70.2 percent among 164,828 people eligible to vote. On the party-list ballot in the same constituency the CSU received 56,846 votes (49.5 percent) and the SPD 26,676 (23.2 percent).

Launert stood on the CSU state list in Bavaria. The Federal Electoral Committee's directory of list candidates finally declared elected records her at list place 32. The Bundestag archive for the 18th electoral term (2013–2017) lists her mandate as election via the state list. The 18th Bundestag was constituted on 22 October 2013. Koschyk's archived biography for the same term records a direct mandate for constituency 237 Bayreuth.

### Direct mandate in Bayreuth

The Bayreuth constituency lies in Upper Franconia. For the 2021 election, as constituency 237, it comprised the independent city of Bayreuth, the whole district of Bayreuth, and part of the district of Forchheim: the municipalities of Egloffstein, Gößweinstein, Obertrubach, Pretzfeld and Wiesenttal; Ebermannstadt and Unterleinleiter in the Verwaltungsgemeinschaft Ebermannstadt; and Gräfenberg, Hiltpoltstein and Weißenohe in the Verwaltungsgemeinschaft Gräfenberg. The Federal Returning Officer used the same municipal list for constituency 236 in 2025.

The 2025 division of constituencies, in force from 14 March 2024, followed the German population as of 30 September 2023. One constituency was moved from Saxony-Anhalt to Bavaria, which changed the numbering of the former constituencies 72 to 255, and 16 constituencies were newly delimited, including several in Swabia. Bayreuth was not one of the redrawn seats: its area stayed the same and its number fell from 237 to 236.

Launert was the CSU candidate in constituency 237 at the election of 24 September 2017 and won it with 58,665 first votes (46.5 percent). Kramme, again the SPD candidate, received 26,785 (21.2 percent). Tobias Matthias Peterka of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) placed third with 11,845 (9.4 percent). Turnout was 77.6 percent of 163,934 eligible voters. The CSU's second-vote share in the constituency was 41.9 percent (53,063 votes), ahead of the SPD on 18.3 percent.

On 26 September 2021 she was returned in the same constituency with 54,465 first votes (42.4 percent). Kramme, who also held place 4 on the SPD state list, received 24,840 (19.4 percent). [The Greens](/organizations/the-greens) were third with 14,064 first votes (11.0 percent) and the AfD fourth with 10,777 (8.4 percent). Turnout was 79.5 percent of 162,430 eligible voters. The CSU took 43,768 second votes (34.1 percent); the SPD, with 26,584 (20.7 percent), was second on that ballot.

At the election of 23 February 2025, in renumbered constituency 236, Launert received 59,366 first votes (44.5 percent). Peterka, the AfD candidate, was runner-up with 25,144 (18.8 percent), and Kramme was third with 19,031 (14.3 percent). Of 159,361 eligible voters, 84.1 percent voted. The CSU's second-vote share was 38.5 percent (51,466 votes), followed by the AfD on 20.0 percent and the SPD on 12.3 percent. The Federal Returning Officer records Launert as elected in constituency 236; she had also been placed at position 20 on the Bavarian CSU list.

## Work in the Bundestag

### Committees and rapporteurships

Silke Launert has been a member of the Bundestag since 22 October 2013, the start of the 18th electoral term, sitting for the Christian Social Union in the CDU/CSU parliamentary group through the 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st terms. Archived Bundestag biographies list her committee seats by term. In the 18th Bundestag (2013–2017) she was an ordinary member of the Committee on Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth and of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Consumer Protection, and a deputy member of the Children's Commission (Kinderkommission).

In the 19th term (2017–2021) she remained an ordinary member of the family committee and was also an ordinary member of the Audit Committee (Rechnungsprüfungsausschuss). The same biography lists her as the CDU/CSU *Obfrau* on the family committee, and as a deputy member of the Committee on Internal Affairs and Community, the legal-affairs committee, the Budget Committee, the Children's Commission and the Subcommittee on Civic Engagement. In the 20th term (2021–2025) the archived biography lists her as an ordinary member of the Committee on Internal Affairs and Community and of the Budget Committee, as chair and ordinary member of that committee's Subcommittee on Questions of the European Union, and as a deputy member of the Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly. The biography for the 21st term records her function as Parliamentary State Secretary for research, technology and space and does not list committee seats.

Rapporteurships appear in committee papers as well as in those lists. The Budget Committee's recommendation of 19 October 2023 on the 2024 federal budget names her, with [Kathrin Michel](/people/kathrin-michel) of the SPD and rapporteurs from the other groups, for Einzelplan 11, the estimate of the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs. The agenda for the Audit Committee's 25th meeting of the 20th term, held on 27 September 2024, names her as rapporteur for a development-ministry report on shareholder indicators of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit.

### Family, women and youth

Family policy was her principal committee brief from the 18th term until 2021. A statement published by the *Neue Wiesentbote* on 30 January 2018 said the CDU/CSU group had that day elected her *Obfrau* for family, senior citizens, women and youth, so that she would represent the group in committee and act as its leadership's contact on family policy; the 19th-term Bundestag biography records the office.

In that role she spoke for the Union on business from the family committee. On 22 March 2019, in the 90th sitting, she was the last speaker on opposition motions about pay discrimination. She treated the unadjusted gap, cited as 21 per cent around Equal Pay Day, as driven mainly by occupation, part-time work and career breaks for children, argued for better childcare and for careers in part-time posts, and said further legislation should wait on an evaluation of the pay-transparency law. She was also a deputy member of the Children's Commission in the 18th and 19th terms. After 2021 she left the family committee. For the 2025 coalition talks the CSU assigned other members, not Launert, to the working group on family, women, youth, seniors and democracy.

### Interior affairs, the budget and Europe

Deputy seats in the 19th term became ordinary membership after 2021. At the constitutive meeting of the Committee on Internal Affairs and Community on 15 December 2021 she was one of the CDU/CSU ordinary members. On 12 January 2022 the Budget Committee, chaired by Helge Braun, set up its Audit Committee and its Subcommittee on Questions of the European Union and, in a secret ballot, unanimously elected Launert to chair the EU subcommittee. The AfD nominee for deputy chair, [Peter Boehringer](/people/peter-boehringer), did not obtain a majority. The 20th-term biography still lists her as that chair.

She carried the Union's line on the labour and social budget for which she was rapporteur. On 2 February 2024, at second reading, the House considered Einzelplan 11 as amended by the Budget Committee: about €175.68 billion, more than a third of federal expenditure, for the ministry led by Hubertus Heil. Launert said the coalition agreement had never been financed and that the estimate was shaped above all by the cost of Bürgergeld. The SPD, Alliance 90/The Greens and the FDP adopted it against the CDU/CSU and the Alternative for Germany.

### Parliamentary group roles

Her offices inside the CDU/CSU group were those of committee spokesperson and, from 2022, chair of a Budget Committee subcommittee, not a deputy chairmanship of the full parliamentary group. The group's website lists her as a member of three of its sociological groupings: the Group of Women; the Group of Expellees, Resettlers and German Minorities; and the Parliamentary Circle for Small and Medium-Sized Business (Parlamentskreis Mittelstand).

She also took part in coalition working groups at either end of this span of terms. A list of the 2018 CDU/CSU–SPD negotiating teams dated 25 January 2018 places her in the CSU seats on the working group on family, women, youth, seniors and the promotion of democracy. In March 2025, for the talks between the [Christian Democratic Union](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany), the CSU and the SPD, the CSU named her with [Andrea Lindholz](/people/andrea-lindholz) and Joachim Herrmann, interior minister of Bavaria, to working group 1 on interior affairs, law, migration and integration.

## Policy positions

### Family, maintenance and social policy

Launert's published legal research is on maintenance law. The German National Library catalogues her dissertation, accepted at the University of Bayreuth in 2013 and issued in Berlin in 2015, as *Der Rang von Unterhaltsansprüchen im Unterhaltsrechtsänderungsgesetz 2007*, on how the 2007 reform ranked competing maintenance claims. In the Bundestag she sat on the Committee on Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth. On 30 January 2018 the CDU/CSU group elected her its *Obfrau* for that portfolio; she said she would represent the group in committee and act as the Christian Social Union's spokesperson on family policy.

On 14 April 2015, as the Federal [Constitutional Court](/organizations/constitutional-court) opened Hamburg's challenge to the *Betreuungsgeld*, she defended it on Deutschlandfunk. Parents who did not use publicly funded care for a one- or two-year-old received €150 a month. She said the statute was gender-neutral, so a higher take-up by women — the interviewer cited Hamburg's figure of 95 percent — did not breach Article 3 of the Basic Law. She invoked constitutional guarantees of parents' right and duty to care for their children, and of their choice of who provides that care, and argued that the public spent about €1,000 a month on a Kita place while a parent at home received nothing. She said she had first feared it would push women "an den Herd," then accepted it for mothers of several small children, and that she would regret the court playing "the better legislator." Critics had called it a *Herdprämie*. On 21 July 2015 the First Senate unanimously voided the provisions for lack of federal competence under Article 72(2), not on the equality point she had stressed.

In April 2014 she told *Bild* that parents raising "the contributors of tomorrow" should pay a lower pension contribution than childless people, because only their upbringing and maintenance made the generational contract work, and that this was not a punishment of the childless. CDU MPs Martin Patzelt and Eckhard Pols made related suggestions; Pols wanted a higher rate only for chosen childlessness and noted how hard that was to prove. No such split in the statutory contribution was enacted.

### Migration and internal security

In November 2018 she opposed the United Nations Global Compact for Migration. *Der Spiegel*, citing *[Die Welt](/organizations/die-welt)*, reported that she asked the CDU/CSU group for a secret vote on the text. In a podcast interview with Gabor Steingart she said the compact listed advantages rather than risks such as crime and pressure on social structures, that integration required a signal that not everyone could come, and that telling people on escape routes how to enter Germany legally could create a pull effect. She described the group as split. *Spiegel* noted that the compact is expressly not legally binding and reserves migration policy to each state. [Alexander Dobrindt](/people/alexander-dobrindt), then CSU Landesgruppe leader, backed it while accusing the Foreign Office of informing parliament too little.

After the February 2025 election the CSU named her, with Andrea Lindholz and Bavarian interior minister Joachim Herrmann, to working group 1, "Interior, law, migration and integration," in the talks with the SPD. Her summary of the contract listed border returns even where asylum was sought, "in coordination (not consent)" with neighbouring states; a two-year suspension of family reunification for people with subsidiary protection; abolition of "turbo naturalization"; and replacement of Bürgergeld by a basic security with harder sanctions for refusal. She told constituency meetings that, despite compromises with the SPD, the Union had anchored "clear guidelines" on migration, and she called media descriptions of the deal as a weak compromise misleading. In May 2025 the cabinet approved Interior Minister Dobrindt's drafts to suspend family reunification for refugees without asylum status and to end naturalization after three years. Tagesschau reported both as what Union and SPD had agreed; Bundestag and Bundesrat still had to pass them. Dobrindt said the three-year "express naturalization" had been a wrong turn and that citizenship had to come at the end of integration, not the beginning.

### Fiscal policy and Europe

She voted against further financial assistance to Greece in 2015, breaking with Chancellor [Angela Merkel](/people/angela-merkel) and Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble. *Spiegel* lists her among CSU members voting no on 27 February 2015, on extending the second programme, and on 17 July 2015, on the mandate for a third package. *Focus* places her among 29 Union dissenters on the February vote and among 63 on 19 August 2015, when the third package was approved. Both passed by large majorities. Those accounts did not quote her reasons.

In the 20th Bundestag she was a rapporteur for the budget of the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs (Einzelplan 11), with Kathrin Michel, Markus Kurth, Claudia Raffelhüschen, [Ulrike Schielke-Ziesing](/people/ulrike-schielke-ziesing) and [Gesine Lötzsch](/people/gesine-lotzsch). On 1 February 2024 she said the coalition agreement had never been financed, contrasting revenue she put at €477 billion, including €39 billion of borrowing, with earlier budgets near €360 billion. On Bürgergeld she cited two rises of 12 percent within 13 months and doubted that another €2.5 billion the next year would hold. Cuts to the federal pension subsidy, she said, would lift the contribution from 18.6 to 18.8 percent from 2028 and shift the cost onto people in work. SPD members interrupted to ask which budget she was addressing.

On 12 January 2022 the Budget Committee elected her, unanimously by secret ballot, chair of its subcommittee on European Union questions; the AfD's candidate for deputy chair, Peter Boehringer, did not get a majority.

## Parliamentary State Secretary

### Appointment

On 6 May 2025 the Bundestag elected Friedrich Merz federal chancellor in a second ballot, with 325 of 618 votes cast, after which Federal President [Frank-Walter Steinmeier](/people/frank-walter-steinmeier) appointed him and the new cabinet. An organisational decree the Chancellor issued the same day, published in the Federal Law Gazette on 9 May, renamed the Federal Ministry of Education and Research as the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space. General, school and vocational education, lifelong learning, and the related educational research and financing were transferred to the ministry responsible for education, family, senior citizens, women and youth. Space policy, including the German Aerospace Center, together with designated parts of technology and innovation policy, moved to the research ministry from the economy and transport ministries. Dorothee Bär of the Christian Social Union took over the reshaped department.

A parliamentary state secretary is not a federal minister. Under the Act on the Legal Status of Parliamentary State Secretaries, members of the federal government may be assigned parliamentary state secretaries, who must themselves be members of the Bundestag. They stand in a public-law official relationship to the Federation and support the minister to whom they are attached in that minister's governmental duties. The Federal President appoints them on a proposal by the Chancellor made in agreement with the minister concerned. The Bundestag's glossary describes them as supporting the minister in the exercise of office and as able to represent the minister in parliament; they are, as a rule, members of the Bundestag at the same time.

The ministry states that Bär is supported by two parliamentary state secretaries, Dr Silke Launert (CSU) and [Matthias Hauer](/people/matthias-hauer) of the Christian Democratic Union, and by the civil-service state secretaries Dr Rolf-Dieter Jungk and Dr Marcus Pleyer, all of them in office since May 2025. The *Bayreuther Tagblatt* reported that, on the evening of 6 May, Bär presented Launert with the certificate for the office; the photograph published with that report also shows Hauer with a certificate. Launert remained the directly elected member for constituency 236, Bayreuth. The Bundestag lists her function as parliamentary state secretary for research, technology and space.

### Research, technology and space

Reported activity in the office has consisted largely of representation at research and space events. On 16 September 2025 she held the patronage of a parliamentary breakfast organised by the Helmholtz Association in the Jakob Kaiser House of the Bundestag. Directors from the association's earth and environment, health, and energy fields spoke there to members of parliament on climate resilience, ecosystems, energy technologies and health early-warning systems.

She attended the 2025 International Astronautical Congress in Sydney for the ministry. The BMFTR reported that she introduced the renamed ministry to the congress, held under the motto "Sustainable Space: Resilient Earth", and set out forthcoming plans, including Germany's hosting of the ministerial council of the European Space Agency in Bremen in November 2025. The same account says she met New Zealand's space minister, Judith Collins, and NASA acting administrator [Sean Duffy](/people/sean-duffy), with cooperation on the Artemis programme among the subjects, and that she opened the German pavilion, visited exhibiting German companies, spoke at a meeting of ministers and members of parliament, and welcomed guests at the German Night reception.

The University of Würzburg reported a visit to the control centre of its Interdisciplinary Research Centre for Extraterrestrials. Professor of space technology Hakan Kayal and vice-president Matthias Bode received her and presented work including the university's SONATE-2 small satellite, a concept for two small satellites to observe the asteroid Apophis during its close approach in 2029, and projects on communications and sensors for Mars-exploration scenarios.

Bundestag disclosures for the period of the office list three foundation seats. She joined the board of trustees of the German-Polish Science Foundation (Deutsch-Polnische Wissenschaftsstiftung) on 8 July 2025 and became its chair on 3 November 2025. She joined the foundation council of the German Foundation for Peace Research (Deutsche Stiftung Friedensforschung) on 1 April 2026 and became its chair on 23 April 2026. From 21 May 2026 she was a member of the board of trustees of the German Federal Environmental Foundation (Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt), a post disclosed with a monthly gross payment of 1,130 euros.

## Local politics and outside roles

### Bayreuth city council

Launert was elected to the Bayreuth city council (Stadtrat) in the municipal election of 15 March 2020 on the Christian Social Union list. She was re-elected on 8 March 2026 with 18,542 personal votes, the most of any CSU candidate; the list received 290,075 votes, 24.0 percent of valid votes. The city places her in the CSU/DU group and on the youth-welfare committee (Jugendhilfeausschuss), and gives her stated emphases as council business linked to federal politics, the Klinikum, the economy and family policy.

Under the Bundestag rules on outside activities, the council office is published, as of 30 October 2026, at 820 euro gross a month until 31 August 2025 and 899 euro from 1 September 2025, plus irregular gross payments of 1,284 euro in 2025 and 1,350 euro in 2026. Two further local posts ended on 5 May 2025, the day before [Julia Klöckner](/people/julia-klockner), as President of the Bundestag, announced the government in which Launert became a parliamentary state secretary for research, technology and space. She left the supervisory board of Klinikum Bayreuth GmbH, for which no sum is published, and the administrative board of Sparkasse Bayreuth-Pegnitz, disclosed at 519.27 euro gross a month.

### Boards, foundations and associations

The same disclosure records foundation offices that all began after that May 2025 appointment. Launert joined the Kuratorium of the Deutsch-Polnische Wissenschaftsstiftung in Frankfurt (Oder) on 8 July 2025 and chaired it from 3 November 2025; in March 2026 the ministry cited her as chair when the Kuratorium appointed [Florian Hahn](/people/florian-hahn) to lead the executive board. Since 16 December 2025 she has sat on the Stiftungsrat of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik). At the Deutsche Stiftung Friedensforschung in Osnabrück she joined the Stiftungsrat on 1 April 2026 and was elected chair on 23 April 2026, in what the foundation called the regular vote after new members were named by the federal government and the Bundestag. No payment is published for those three bodies.

The remunerated foundation role is the Kuratorium of the Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt, also in Osnabrück, from 21 May 2026, at 1,130 euro gross a month, with 400.97 euro in irregular payments recorded for 2026. She joined the advisory board of Oberfranken Offensiv e.V. on 22 September 2025; the Upper Franconia association lists her there as a parliamentary state secretary, and the Bundestag entry shows no fee. She was deputy chair of the supporters' association of the Chorakademie at the Benedictine monastery in Weißenohe until 19 May 2025.

Her parliamentary biography, which the Bundestag says rests on members' own information, adds a professional membership of the Bayerischer Richterverein and a seat on the Chamber for Migration and Integration of the Evangelical Church in Germany. The civic memberships named there sit in Bayreuth and the surrounding region: the local Deutscher Kinderschutzbund, Sozialverband VdK Bayern, Verband Wohneigentum, and the associations Kulturkreis, Förderer junger Künstler and Förderverein Lebens- und Wirtschaftsraum Fichtelgebirge. The mandatory disclosure publishes no remuneration for that group.

## Public debate

### Statements on family and migration

At a specialist conference of the Christian Social Union (CSU)-affiliated Hanns Seidel Foundation in Munich in early November 2015, held with former Federal Constitutional Court president Hans-Jürgen Papier, Launert described what she called a fundamental change of values on marriage and family. The *Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger* reported that she said rulings from Karlsruhe had changed society: financial and moral pressure had once held marriages together, while women’s economic independence and the end of lifelong maintenance made separation more likely. She cited more single parents, same-sex partnerships and patchwork families. Saying several times that a politician had to speak “politically correctly,” she quoted a single-mother member of her staff: “Früher sagte man asozial, heute heißt das Patchwork” (“In the past one said asocial; today that is called patchwork”). The *Neue Presse Coburg* reported that the remark set off a “shitstorm” on Facebook.

In the first week of November 2018, in a dispute inside the joint Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/CSU group in the Bundestag over the United Nations Global Compact for Migration, *[Der Spiegel](/organizations/der-spiegel)*, citing *Die Welt*, reported that Launert had demanded a secret ballot of the group. When it was refused, she called out to colleagues: “Wundert euch nicht, wenn hier in drei Jahren nur noch 100 Leute sitzen” (“Don’t be surprised if, in three years, only 100 people are sitting here”). The *Nordbayerischer Kurier* reported that she had also asked for a debate, estimated that at least half the Union members were against the compact, and left the meeting angry. *Focus* columnist Gabor Steingart, writing on 9 November, rendered the warning as “Wundert euch nicht, wenn hier bald nur noch hundert Leute sitzen,” and wrote that the leadership had blocked any formal vote. *Spiegel* also recorded that WerteUnion chair Alexander Mitsch feared an intrusion into national sovereignty, while CSU state-group leader Alexander Dobrindt backed the compact and blamed the Foreign Office for explaining it too little.

### Notable votes

On 30 June 2017 the Bundestag voted by roll call on a Bundesrat bill opening [same-sex marriage in Germany](/facts/same-sex-marriage-in-germany). President [Norbert Lammert](/people/norbert-lammert) announced 623 votes cast, 393 in favour, 226 against and four abstentions; the bill passed. All four abstentions were in the CDU/CSU group: Uda Heller, Launert, Albert Weiler and [Elisabeth Winkelmeier-Becker](/people/elisabeth-winkelmeier-becker). *Die Welt* reported 75 Union votes in favour and 225 against, and that Chancellor Angela Merkel voted no. The *Oberbayerisches Volksblatt* named seven CSU members who voted yes—Bernd Fabritius, Astrid Freudenstein, Hans Michelbach, Wolfgang Stefinger, Dagmar Wöhrl, Tobias Zech and Gudrun Zollner—and recorded Launert’s abstention, so most of the CSU group voted no. In the debate, SPD parliamentary leader Thomas Oppermann said that since that Monday the coalition partner had treated the question as a decision of conscience and that the vote therefore had to be freed from party discipline.

On 29 January 2025 a five-point Union motion on migration passed by 348 votes to 344, with ten abstentions; votes of the Alternative for Germany made the majority. *Der Spiegel* reported that it called for more turnbacks of asylum seekers at the border. Friedrich Merz, who had said the motions would be tabled regardless of who backed them, told the chamber he sought no majorities outside the [democratic centre](/organizations/democratic-centre). A second Union motion failed. The *Bayreuther Tagblatt* quoted Launert—“Die Migrationswende duldet keinen Aufschub” (“The turn in migration policy brooks no delay”)—calling the coalition’s policy a failure and the Union demands nothing new, and saying parliamentary majorities should be respected because the public wanted a change. SPD member Anette Kramme called the use of AfD votes a “Tabubruch,” noting the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Launert said there had been and would be no deals, talks or joint motions with the AfD, and no joint government with it, and that dropping the Union’s own demands for fear of AfD support would be absurd. A vigil was called outside the CSU office in Bayreuth that housed her constituency office; she said she respected dissent and hoped the protest would stay peaceful.

On 31 January 2025 the Bundestag rejected the CDU/CSU draft *Zustrombegrenzungsgesetz* on limiting what the bill called the illegal inflow of third-country nationals. The corrected roll call was 692 votes cast, 338 in favour, 349 against and five abstentions. Launert is listed among the CDU/CSU votes in favour.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/silke-launert