Stephan Albani

Stephan Theodor Johannes Albani (born 3 June 1968 in Göttingen) is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and a physicist who has been a member of the Bundestag since 2013. He took the Abitur in Norderstedt in 1987 and studied physics at the University of Göttingen from 1989 to 1994, graduating as a Diplom-Physiker. The Bundestag’s biography, based on his own disclosure, lists him as evangelical Lutheran, married, and the father of three children.

Before he entered parliament he worked for more than two decades in hearing research and medical technology in Oldenburg. From 1996 to 2018 he was managing partner of Hörzentrum Oldenburg GmbH, and from 2001 to 2018 managing director of HörTech gGmbH. He was managing board member of the Auditory Valley cluster in Hannover and Oldenburg from 2007 to 2018, and from 2012 to 2018 he led the Translational Research Center of the Hearing4All excellence cluster. From 2008 to 2013 he was an authorised signatory of the medical care centre at the Evangelisches Krankenhaus Oldenburg, and from 2010 to 2013 he sat on the advisory board of Lower Saxony’s LifeSciences initiative at the state economics ministry.

Albani has sat continuously since the constitutive meeting of the 18th Bundestag on 22 October 2013, through the 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st electoral terms. He has stood in constituency 27, Oldenburg–Ammerland, without taking the direct mandate, which in 2025 was again won by Dennis Rohde of the Social Democratic Party. In that election the CDU first-vote total in the constituency, cast for Albani, was 46,172 votes (24.0 percent), behind the SPD’s 66,280 (34.4 percent). He holds his seat through the CDU state list of Lower Saxony, on which he was placed eleventh for the 2025–2029 term.

In the 21st Bundestag he is a full member, and the parliamentary-group spokesman (Obmann), of the Committee on Research, Technology, Space and Technology Assessment, a full member of the Committee on Education, Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, and a deputy member of the Committee on Health. He chairs the German–Egyptian parliamentary group. Since 2015 he has been co-chair of the European TB Caucus, a network of parliamentarians concerned with tuberculosis, and since 2022 a member of the senate of the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres. He previously chaired the Bundestag’s parliamentary groups for Southeast Europe (2016–2017) and for Ireland (2017–2021), and since 2018 he has been an assessor on the federal executive of the Mittelstands- und Wirtschaftsunion, the CDU/CSU small-business organisation.

The overlap between those business posts and his committee seats became a public dispute. Transparency International Deutschland, relaying Nordwest-Zeitung reporting of August 2017, recorded that as advisory managing director of two companies receiving public money he had taken in about 120,000 euro since 2013, while sitting on the research and health committees, and that he himself said the arrangement could carry a taint (“Geschmäckle”). The managing roles ended in 2018. In 2021 he resigned at once as vice-president of the Bundesverband für Wirtschaftsförderung und Außenwirtschaft after reporting, including by ARD’s Kontraste, on the association’s contacts with networks linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin; the Nordwest-Zeitung wrote that his membership had already lapsed at the end of 2019 and that he pointed to a more Kremlin-friendly course by the association’s board.

Early life and education

Family background and schooling

Stephan Theodor Johannes Albani was born on 3 June 1968 in Göttingen, in Lower Saxony. Germany’s Federal Returning Officer lists him, under those three forenames, among the members elected to the 21st Bundestag, with 1968 as the year of birth and the Christian Democratic Union as his party. The Bundestag biography, which the parliament states is drawn from members’ own information, gives the same date and place of birth and describes him as Evangelical Lutheran, married, and the father of three children.

Little has been published about his parents. In a January 2015 profile, the Nordwest-Zeitung referred to him as coming from a medical family, without naming either parent, and identified his wife as Angela Albani. In answers the Oldenburger Onlinezeitung published on 30 August 2017, during that year’s Bundestag campaign, he said the couple’s children were a daughter, Viktoria, then 13 and in the eighth grade; a son, Lorenz, then 18 and completing the Abitur; and an eldest son, Simon, then 20 and about to begin university.

His own Abitur, the certificate required for university entrance, was taken in 1987 in Norderstedt. The city, on the northern fringe of Hamburg, describes itself as one of the younger cities of Schleswig-Holstein, assembled from four municipalities and tied into the Hamburg commuter area. The parliamentary biography does not name the school, and reporting has not identified it. By 2012 he was living in Petersfehn, a locality of Bad Zwischenahn in the district of Ammerland, beside Oldenburg. The Nordwest-Zeitung then called the Göttingen-born physicist a Wahl-Ammerländer resident of Petersfehn—someone who had settled in the district rather than being born there—and in 2013 again described him as a Petersfehner from Bad Zwischenahn. Abgeordnetenwatch lists his place of residence as Bad Zwischenahn.

University studies

From 1989 to 1994 he studied physics in Göttingen and qualified as a Diplom-Physiker. On an earlier personal page hosted by the medical-physics group at the University of Oldenburg, he wrote that the course had been at the Third Physical Institute (Drittes Physikalisches Institut) of the University of Göttingen, and that he was then writing a doctorate—he used the abbreviation Sc.D.—on hearing aids as a member of that group. The institute is a unit of Göttingen’s Faculty of Physics. The Bundestag biography and Abgeordnetenwatch both give Diplom-Physiker as his professional qualification and do not record a completed doctorate. The published chronology does not describe the two years between the Abitur of 1987 and the start of the degree in 1989, and it does not name a diploma thesis. The Diplom in physics is the academic qualification those biographies record before his later work in Oldenburg.

Hearing research and medical technology

Hörzentrum Oldenburg

On 12 June 1996 the newly founded Hörzentrum Oldenburg was presented at the University of Oldenburg. The university called it its fifth economically independent affiliated institute, set up with the Evangelisches Krankenhaus Oldenburg for applied hearing-aid research, difficult cases and training, and housed at first in containers on the Wechloy campus. A note a year later named the founders as Birger Kollmeier, physicist and physician and head of the medical-physics group, and Rüdiger Schönfeld, chief physician for phoniatrics and paediatric audiology at the hospital, who shared the centre’s direction. Ordinary aids, they wrote, amplified speech and noise together; the centre used a “virtual hearing aid” so listeners could compare devices without changing hardware, and worked with industry on putting the group’s results into products.

Albani’s parliamentary biography, drawn from members’ own disclosures, lists him as managing partner of Hörzentrum Oldenburg GmbH from 1996 to 2018. At his departure the company called him a co-founder and managing director since March 1996. In September 2002 the centre, as client and with money from Lower Saxony, opened the Haus des Hörens in the technology park in Oldenburg. Albani said it would house medical physics, the centre, HörTech and part of the hearing-technology and audiology course run with the Fachhochschule Oldenburg/Ostfriesland/Wilhelmshaven. Kollmeier, scientific director, traced both firms to the department he had started in the early 1990s. Siemens Audiologische Technik, GN ReSound, Phonak, AudioService, Sennheiser and KIND were named as firms that had devices tested there.

He kept the post after entering the Bundestag for the Christian Democratic Union in 2013, under a transitional arrangement agreed with the shareholders at that time. A handover reported in February 2019 ended it: management of the Hörzentrum and of HörTech passed to Sebastian Quirandt, a business graduate who had been controller and authorised signatory since 2014. Kollmeier, also spokesperson of Hearing4all and still scientific director, thanked Albani and described the companies as the link from research to patients and the hearing-system market. In 2021 the two firms, then with about 50 employees, merged into Hörzentrum Oldenburg gGmbH, still under Quirandt, with Kollmeier as scientific director. At a ceremony with science minister Björn Thümler, Kollmeier said support from the state science ministry had made it possible to plan on leaving that institute funding by 2025.

HörTech and Auditory Valley

HörTech gGmbH was founded on 15 November 2001 as a non-profit competence centre for hearing-aid system technology. University chancellor Günter Scholz and Thomas Kempe of the hospital signed as shareholders of the Hörzentrum, which created the company with the university — Oldenburg’s first stake in a capital company. Kollmeier’s group had won 7.5 million Deutsche Mark in a competition of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, partly for a “hi-fi” aid meant to come closer to the ear’s performance. Six projects were shared with the University of Giessen, the Academy for Hearing-Aid Acoustics, the hospital, and Siemens Audiologische Technik, AudioService and KIND. Albani was to manage HörTech as well as the Hörzentrum. The firm was to move into the Haus des Hörens, then under construction and expected in mid-2002.

From 2007 to 2018 his biography lists him as executive director of the cluster Auditory Valley, spanning Hannover and Oldenburg. In the ministry’s 2008 Spitzencluster competition, “Auditory Valley: Hören in Niedersachsen” reached the last twelve of 38 entries. Five winners, to be named in September, were each to receive 40 million euros. The bid joined HörTech, the university, the Hörzentrum and the Fachhochschule under the Haus des Hörens, with the ear, nose and throat clinic of Hannover Medical School and makers of hearing aids, cochlear implants and audio equipment. The stated aim was a regional centre for development and production of hearing systems of every kind. Spokesperson Kollmeier treated the final round as a major result. Thomas Lenarz, head of the Hannover clinic, pointed to the Audiologie-Initiative Niedersachsen, firms such as Sennheiser, and a Fraunhofer project group in Oldenburg from the Ilmenau institute. On 2 September 2008 the consortium was not funded. Albani, as managing director of HörTech, which coordinated the cluster, said the work would continue without the grant. Kollmeier, scientific director of HörTech, of medical physics and of the Fraunhofer group, restated a shift toward linking medical hearing devices with consumer audio.

Hearing4All and clinical posts

In June 2012 Oldenburg, Hannover Medical School and Leibniz University Hannover were approved under the federal and state Excellence Initiative. Hearing4all (“Hören für alle”), led from Oldenburg, received 28 million euros for five years and opened on 1 November 2012 before science minister Johanna Wanka. Kollmeier was spokesperson and Lenarz deputy. Partners named then included the Jade Hochschule, HörTech, the Fraunhofer project group for hearing, speech and audio technology, the hearing centres in Hannover and Oldenburg, the Laser Zentrum Hannover and the Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg in Delmenhorst, with Auditory Valley as the industry-facing network. The aim was individual diagnostics and matched aids or implants, above all better speech understanding in noise, plus assistive listening in telephones, televisions and car radios. Albani attended as managing director of HörTech and the Hörzentrum. His biography says that from 2012 to 2018 he led the cluster’s Translational Research Center, the transfer function tied to those companies. The university later noted a second award for Hearing4all, under the Excellence Strategy in 2018.

From 2008 to 2013 he was also Prokurist of the Medizinisches Versorgungszentrum am Evangelischen Krankenhaus Oldenburg, the hospital’s non-profit outpatient company. That signatory role ended as he entered parliament; the hearing-company directorships ran on, under the 2013 agreement, until the handover reported in February 2019. Criticism of that overlap with the mandate is treated separately.

Party career and Bundestag elections

Local CDU offices

Stephan Albani, who lives in Petersfehn in the municipality of Bad Zwischenahn, has held office in the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) in the district of Ammerland. At a district membership meeting reported on 10 April 2017, members confirmed Jens Nacke as Kreisvorsitzender and again elected Albani as one of three deputy chairs, with Lars Schmidt-Berg and Frauke Tammen. On 7 May 2024, at a members' assembly in Edewecht, the Kreisverband Ammerland once more chose Albani, listed as from Bad Zwischenahn, as a deputy chair; Nacke remained chairman, and the other deputies were Neele Hemmieoltmanns, Simon Ehlers and Schmidt-Berg.

The Bundestag constituency for which those associations nominate a candidate is wider than the Ammerland district party. Wahlkreis 27 Oldenburg – Ammerland consists of the independent city of Oldenburg and the whole of Landkreis Ammerland, and the CDU direct candidate is selected at a joint meeting of the Oldenburg city association and the Ammerland district association.

Candidacies and results, 2013–2025

Albani was nominated to succeed Thomas Kossendey, who had represented the constituency in the Bundestag since 1987, won it on the first vote in 2009, and had said he would leave at the end of that term. Six members sought the candidacy. A non-binding Ammerland pre-vote put Lars Schmidt-Berg of Westerstede first, with 120 of 310 votes, ahead of Torsten Wilters, Barbara Woltmann and Albani; Kossendey publicly supported Albani. On the evening of 6 July 2012, about 450 members, 125 of them from Oldenburg, met in the Weser-Ems-Halle. Albani led the first ballot with 143 votes to 130 for Schmidt-Berg, 87 for Woltmann, 54 for Wilters, 17 for Hergen Frerichs and 16 for Frank-Hinrich Plate, then beat Schmidt-Berg in the runoff by 226 votes to 198.

On 3 November 2012 the CDU in Lower Saxony adopted its state list for the election to the 18th Bundestag with Albani in sixth place, entered as the candidate for constituency 27, Oldenburg-Ammerland, and as resident in Bad Zwischenahn. At the federal election of 22 September 2013 the CDU received 59,525 first votes (36.8 percent) and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) 60,547 (37.4 percent), a margin of 1,022 votes, on a turnout of 74.2 percent. Dennis Rohde of the SPD won the direct mandate, and Albani entered on the state list. The 18th Bundestag constituted itself on 22 October 2013; the chamber's biography records Albani as a member since 2013.

The renomination for 2017 was also contested. On the evening of 19 August 2016, 263 members from Oldenburg and Ammerland, meeting at the Spohler Krug, chose Albani over the Bundestag member Barbara Woltmann by 144 votes to 117, with two invalid ballots. In the election of 24 September 2017 the CDU's first-vote total fell to 52,598 (30.2 percent), against 63,235 (36.3 percent) for the SPD; turnout was 77.8 percent. The Lower Saxony electoral administration recorded Rohde as the constituency member and Albani, again in sixth place on the CDU state list, as one of five CDU candidates elected from that list.

In March 2021 the Ammerland and Oldenburg-Stadt associations nominated Albani again, with 95.5 percent in a ballot after a digital assembly. On 26 September 2021 the CDU received 34,294 first votes (19.9 percent) and placed third. The SPD won the seat with 65,757 votes (38.2 percent), and Alliance 90/The Greens were second with 35,119 (20.4 percent); turnout was 76.0 percent of 228,705 eligible voters. In the Federal Returning Officer's final notice, Rohde is the elected constituency candidate for Oldenburg – Ammerland, and Albani is among the CDU members returned on the Lower Saxony list, at list place 11.

Holger Grond, an Oldenburg lawyer and state managing director of the VdK social association in Lower Saxony and Bremen, then challenged him. The joint meeting was set for 26 September 2024 at the restaurant Wöbken in Oldenburg, then with a federal election expected on 28 September 2025 unless the Bundestag was dissolved early. The Nordwest-Zeitung reported 171 members entitled to vote, a clear majority from Ammerland, and 139 votes for Albani, given as 77.2 percent, against 22.8 percent for Grond. For the election of the 21st Bundestag on 23 February 2025, the Lower Saxony CDU again placed him 11th.

On election day the CDU received 46,172 first votes (24.0 percent) and the SPD 66,280 (34.4 percent). Turnout was 84.6 percent of 229,344 eligible voters. The Federal Returning Officer lists Rohde as elected in constituency 027 with 34.4 percent, and Albani as elected on place 11 of the Lower Saxony CDU list, so that his mandate in the 21st Bundestag, as in the 18th, 19th and 20th, is a list seat rather than the direct seat.

Constituency work

Rohde has held the direct mandate since 2013, while Albani has sat as the CDU list member associated with the same constituency. The Bundestag biography lists two constituency offices, one in each part of the Wahlkreis: Oldenburg, Unterm Berg 20 (26123), and Bad Zwischenahn, Langenhof 2 (26160). Those offices are the local base attached to the list mandate; the constituency seat itself remains the SPD direct mandate.

Education, research and technology policy

Committee memberships

Since entering the Bundestag in 2013, Stephan Albani has worked on education and research for the CDU/CSU. In the 18th electoral term (2013–2017) he was an ordinary member of the Committee on Education, Research and Technology Assessment and a deputy member of the Health Committee. In the 19th term he was Obmann, the CDU/CSU coordinator on that committee, and an ordinary member of the Enquete Commission on Vocational Education in the Digital Working World, including three project groups. Constituted on 27 September 2018 to consider vocational education and digital work, the commission included seven Union members, Albani among them, with Stefan Kaufmann as chair.

He remained Obmann, and an ordinary member of the Subcommittee on Global Health, through the 20th term (2021–2025), when Thomas Jarzombek was the faction's spokesperson for education and research. After 2025 the portfolio was split: Albani is Obmann and an ordinary member of the Committee on Research, Technology, Space and Technology Assessment, an ordinary member of the Committee on Education, Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, and a deputy on the Health Committee. On 21 May 2025 the 30-member research committee elected Karl Lauterbach (SPD) as chair; the CDU/CSU holds ten seats, including Albani, Florian Müller and Joachim Ebmeyer. Müller is spokesperson and chair of the faction working group on research, technology and space; Albani is its deputy chair and its Obmann in committee.

Student support and academic employment

Albani has spoken for the CDU/CSU on student aid without authoring the governing bills. In the first reading of the 27th amendment to the Federal Training Assistance Act on 12 May 2022, he said rates had risen under CDU-led governments—by 43 percent at the maximum and 57 percent on average over 16 years, on figures he cited—and treated part of the drop in recipients as the result of wage growth from 2014 to 2018, because BAföG is a social benefit. Quoting the coalition promise of a "fundamentally reformed" BAföG, he said the draft fell short of it, that inflation he put at 7.4 percent in April 2022 would consume the increases, and that student bodies, the Studierendenwerke and the trade-union confederation had criticised it. Jarzombek spoke in the same debate. Disclosures list Albani on the board of trustees of the Deutsches Studierendenwerk and, from 6 December 2023, as an unpaid member of the further-education advisory board of the Deutscher Volkshochschul-Verband.

On fixed-term academic contracts he was not the Union lead. For the government's 2024 bill to amend the Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz (printed paper 20/11559) and a related Left motion, the committee named Lars Rohwer as CDU/CSU rapporteur, with Carolin Wagner for the SPD and one rapporteur from each other group. At the hearing on 13 November 2024 he asked Patrick Cramer of the Max Planck Society and Jan Wöpking of German U15 whether the act, which he called an earlier attempt to open careers, had become a set of special cases better treated as a "toolbox" for the institutions.

Research organizations and technology assessment

On 17 February 2022 the Bundestag elected Albani and Holger Becker (SPD) to the Senate of the Helmholtz Association, on a joint SPD–CDU/CSU proposal (printed paper 20/712) and with every group's votes. The association comprises 18 centres; the Senate recommends thematic and financial priorities to its funders. In a June 2022 Helmholtz interview he said politics should stay out of research as far as possible and preserve the diversity of the German system, and he called Helmholtz strong but structurally hard to coordinate. Disclosures also list an unpaid Senate seat at the Arbeitsgemeinschaft industrieller Forschungsvereinigungen „Otto von Guericke“ from 1 October 2023, a Senate seat at the Deutsche Industrieforschungsgemeinschaft Konrad Zuse from 23 September 2025, and a seat on the administrative board of OFFIS in Oldenburg, already recorded in the 19th term.

The measure he reported across two terms was the Besserstellungsverbot, which stops publicly supported bodies paying staff better than comparable federal employees. On 4 July 2023 the CDU/CSU moved (printed paper 20/7589) to extend the 2012 Science Freedom Act so that project-funded charitable institutes, unlike institutionally funded ones, could exceed those rates from non-public income, while public grants would cover personnel costs only up to the public-sector ceiling. Opening the first reading on 27 September 2023, he said institutes in the Zuse community—beside the Max Planck Society, Helmholtz, the Fraunhofer Society and the Leibniz Association—lost public grants if pay or benefits differed from the civil service, called the rule an "Andersstellungsverbot", and described the motion, which he aligned with a Bundesrat initiative, as cost-neutral for the funding ministries. The committee report of 30 January 2024, with Albani as CDU/CSU rapporteur beside Ye-One Rhie (SPD) and one rapporteur from each other group, recommended rejection; SPD, Greens and FDP were the majority, against the CDU/CSU, AfD and the Left.

In the 21st term the government brought its own bill (printed paper 21/4500), citing the CDU/CSU–SPD coalition agreement, to let project-funded charitable institutes pay scientists and related staff above federal rates from non-public money and to end case-by-case exemptions. The research committee, in a report by Albani, Ingo Hahn, Holger Mann, Ayse Asar and Sonja Lemke, recommended the bill as amended: on a coalition motion the list of named organisations grew from 11 to 15, and European Union funds may be used for the supplement where EU rules allow, while other public money still may not finance it. On 24 September 2026 the Bundestag passed that text with the CDU/CSU, AfD, SPD and the Greens, against the Left; the older exceptions had covered named bodies such as the German Research Foundation, Fraunhofer and the Max Planck Society.

That committee steers the Büro für Technikfolgen-Abschätzung at the Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. A rapporteur group of one member per faction prepares its decisions on the office; from 2025 the CDU/CSU seat is Reza Asghari's, while Albani's post is Obmann.

Health policy and global health

Health committee and the COVID-19 pandemic

Since entering the Bundestag in 2013, Stephan Albani (CDU/CSU) has been only a deputy member of the Committee on Health. Archived biographies record that status for the 18th term (2013–2017), the 19th (2017–2021) and the 20th (2021–2025), and the current biography lists it again for the 21st. In the 19th term he was also a deputy member of the Subcommittee on Global Health; in the 20th, an ordinary member. The Bundestag described the subcommittee as treating tuberculosis, antimicrobial resistance and migration-related health as parts of sustainable development.

In the 19th term the Health Committee created the Parliamentary Accompanying Body on the COVID-19 pandemic, with 21 members from the health committee and other committees. It was to examine virus research, digitalization and the international side of control; vaccine development, authorization and access, including ethical and legal questions; and the social effects of contact restrictions, through public hearings and government briefings. The Deutsches Ärzteblatt reported that Rudolf Henke was named chair and Albani one of seven Union members; his biography records ordinary membership from 2021. The body was deliberative and did not direct procurement. The Left criticized closed sittings, and the Greens voted against creating it, preferring a broader pandemic council.

On 15 March 2024 Albani opened the CDU/CSU speech on federal funding for basic research into Long COVID, myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome and post-vaccination syndrome (printed papers 20/8846 and 20/10544). He cited 2.5 to 3.3 million people affected, said that apart from a few analogy-based approaches only "best care" was available, and called up to €59.5 million from December 2021 to the third quarter of 2027 too small and vulnerable to a spending cut. That ceiling is also the figure in the Bundestag's account of six education-ministry funding lines. He asked for large programmes with universities, institutes and industry, not drug repurposing alone. SPD deputy Ruppert Stüwe cited about €60 million from the education ministry and €81 million from the health ministry, plus €52 million for rehabilitation of ill children and adolescents; Albani said the sums ran over six years. Stüwe said Albani had not sought more in the budget committee, and an FDP speaker said the speech had not done the subject justice.

Tuberculosis and antimicrobial resistance

His biography states that he has co-chaired the European TB Caucus, a parliamentary network against tuberculosis, since 2015. In June 2016 the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease reported that he and Georgian MP George Khechinashvili co-chaired a summit in Bratislava of 15 parliamentarians from 12 countries, and that the World Health Organization European Region then accounted for 25 percent of global multidrug-resistant tuberculosis. The participants urged Slovakia, then president of the Council of the European Union, to raise TB in the EU. The Global TB Caucus lists Albani as its co-chair for Europe. The Caucus says TB killed 1.23 million people in 2024 and that funding fell US$16.1 billion short of targets set at the 2023 United Nations High-Level Meeting on TB. Using 2023 figures, WHO puts the European Region at about 2.1 percent of global TB and about 21 percent of MDR-TB.

On 19 May 2015 Albani was the first signatory of a CDU/CSU–SPD motion (printed paper 18/4930) calling for more research on MDR-TB drugs and TB vaccines and for product-development partnerships on tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and malaria. On 27 March 2023 the Subcommittee on Global Health, of which he was an ordinary member, held a partly public sitting on multidrug-resistant tuberculosis before that year's UN meeting.

On 24 September 2025 the Parliamentary Circle against Antimicrobial Resistance was reconstituted. Disclosures list Albani as its chair from that date, under the German Network against Antimicrobial Resistance. The German Center for Infection Research, citing the network, reported a joint chair with Franziska Kersten (SPD). Albani said antibiotics make surgery and cancer treatment possible, that resistance continues even with careful use, and that new drugs and a federal decision were required. Jan Rybniker, of the center's tuberculosis research area, cited 9,600 deaths a year in the EU from resistance itself and about 46,000 associated with it. The meeting discussed pull incentives, reimbursement of reserve antibiotics, EU surveillance reporting and environmental standards for production.

Disclosures also list the advisory board of the German Foundation for World Population and, from 8 October 2025, the parliamentary advisory board of the German Network against Neglected Tropical Diseases. The foundation lists him as an ordinary member, not speaker, of its Parliamentary Advisory Board for Population and Development, begun in 2003 and focused on health, gender equality and research on neglected and poverty-related diseases; Sascha van Beek (CDU/CSU) is speaker. The disease network likewise names van Beek as speaker of its reconstituted parliamentary board.

Parliamentary diplomacy

Parlamentariergruppen of the Bundestag are cross-party associations, reconstituted each term by the Presidium, that keep contact with legislatures abroad through conferences, information visits and personal meetings; the Council of Elders sets their number, and chairs follow the strength of the parliamentary groups. Stephan Albani of the Christian Democratic Union chaired the German–Southeast European group in 2016–2017 and the German–Irish group from 2017 to 2021, and has chaired the German–Egyptian group since 2021.

Southeast Europe and Ireland

For 2016–2017 the Bundestag biography lists his Southeast European group as covering Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia—the name then used officially; the state is now North Macedonia—Montenegro and Serbia. In April 2017 he met Prime Minister Aleksandar Vučić in Belgrade. A Serbian government account reported by European Western Balkans said they discussed regional stability, Serbia's European Union path, the dialogue with Pristina and a Western Balkans customs union; Vučić noted that German firms then employed more than 35,000 people in Serbia. In July 2017 Albani said Germany would support the region, including through the Berlin Process begun under Chancellor Angela Merkel, but not by relaxing the accession criteria, and he named corruption, youth exchange and civil society as priorities.

From 2017 to 2021 he chaired the German–Irish parliamentary group. From 10 to 14 June 2019 he led Michael Schrodi (SPD), Martin Hebner (AfD), Ulla Ihnen (FDP), Lisa Paus (Greens) and Kerstin Vieregge (CDU/CSU) to Ireland while the date of the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the EU was still unsettled. They discussed port expansion in Cork, met the chairs of Dáil Éireann and the Seanad, Seán Ó Fearghaíl and Denis O'Donovan, in Dublin, and travelled to the border near Dundalk. Speaking there, Albani told the Irish Times that German support for Irish interests in the Brexit talks was non-negotiable and would not be traded against ties with Britain. He called a hard border with Northern Ireland unworkable and doubted "technical" fixes, warning that cameras could give way to police and then soldiers in a spiral "nobody wants". The group also met the Cross Border Orchestra of Ireland, a 1995 peace project from the run-up to the Good Friday Agreement; Albani later said that settlement had come to be treated as too secure.

Egypt

Albani's biography lists him as chair of the German–Egyptian parliamentary group; the directory for the 21st electoral term lists him first for that group, ahead of Bernd Schattner (AfD), Adis Ahmetović (SPD), Stefan Schmidt (Greens) and Heidi Reichinnek (The Left).

From 5 to 9 February 2024 he led Rita Hagl-Kehl (SPD), Stefan Schmidt, Ulrich Lechte (FDP) and Bernd Schattner to Cairo and Aswan; the Bundestag's account called it the first such delegation to Egypt in eight years. The programme included parliament speaker Hanafy Ali El Gebali, the president of the National Council for Human Rights, foundations and business, and a day with the Aswan governor, the dam and excavation sites. Albani said the war in Gaza dominated talks with the foreign-affairs committee and had strained the exchange: Egyptian interlocutors stressed Palestinian suffering and condemned Israel's offensive, while the German side affirmed Israel's right of self-defence and held Hamas responsible for the October 2023 attacks, before both spoke of a political settlement.

The report says the delegation raised Egypt's human-rights record with the government's human-rights commissioner, citing narrower guarantees of opinion, assembly and press freedom. Albani said the visitors stated their view openly and "without appearing missionary". Human Rights Watch, covering 2023, reported continued detention of peaceful critics and restrictions on expression and assembly, including prosecutions of protesters after October 2023. At the German-Egyptian chamber the delegation was told that firms wanted better private-sector conditions before new investment and that the military remained the largest investor; the Bundestag account put 2022 trade at about €5.5 billion and German development loans and grants at €1.6 billion. Stops also included Cairo universities, the Borromean school for girls from Christian-minority families, KfW-financed work at the Aswan Dam, and excavations with the German Archaeological Institute.

Outside income and controversies

Paid work alongside the mandate

After entering the Bundestag in 2013, Stephan Albani of the Christian Democratic Union remained managing director (Geschäftsführer) of two Oldenburg hearing firms he had co-founded in the 1990s, Hörzentrum Oldenburg GmbH and the non-profit HörTech gGmbH. The 19th-term biography records both as paid functions alongside the mandate, each at monthly disclosure level 1, until 30 November 2018. From the 18th Bundestag, outside income was published in ten bands: level 1 was 1,000 to 3,500 euro and level 2 up to 7,000 euro, as a one-off sum or a regular monthly figure.

A December 2016 list compiled by Transparency International Deutschland showed a different split for the 18th term: Hörzentrum at monthly level 1 and HörTech at monthly level 2. Albani told the Nordwest-Zeitung in August 2017 that the work was advisory, about three to four hours a week beside an 80-hour mandate, and that the posts brought exactly 41,992.78 euro gross in 2016, about the same in 2015 and somewhat more in 2014—well over 120,000 euro since 2013. He put the basic parliamentary salary at 9,541.74 euro a month, plus allowances. The paper reported that both organisations received public money and that the University of Oldenburg was involved.

He was a full member of the Committee on Education, Research and Technology Assessment and a deputy on the Health Committee, and rapporteur for printed paper 18/8233, which recommended a coalition motion to speed research transfer into health care. The managing-director entries end on 30 November 2018. In February 2019 the companies said the posts had passed, as agreed with the shareholders in 2013, to Sebastian Quirandt, until then an authorised signatory.

Criticism and Albani's response

Martin Reyher of abgeordnetenwatch.de told the Nordwest-Zeitung it was "pretty obvious" that a member helped decide on tax money from which he then benefited indirectly, and that the arrangement "smells". Christina Reckwirth of Lobbycontrol called it a clear case of bias: members should not sit on committees awarding funds from which they profit. The paper also reported that the Otto Brenner Foundation wanted such arrangements banned. Transparency Deutschland's study of 9 December 2016 put Albani on its list of potential conflicts because of the research-transfer brief, and found the rules too weak to exclude conflicts. About one sixth of members, it said, had potentially problematic side income; it criticised the wide bands and client anonymity and urged that conflicts be declared and that those members leave the relevant debate and vote.

Albani denied bias. He saw no problem, he said, while conceding a possible whiff of impropriety (Geschmäckle) and calling it a tightrope walk (Gratwanderung): members adopt the budget, but ministries carry it out. Outside jobs should remain allowed if transparent, and he could bring his experience into parliament. He pointed to federal funding in the millions for the University of Oldenburg and the Jade Hochschule, which he said he had followed from the start, including by reviewing a grant application. He left open whether the pay would continue, said the firms could run alone, and added that giving them up and then losing the mandate would leave him falling "into the void" (ins Bodenlose).

The BWA and allegations of foreign influence

The 19th-term disclosures list Albani as unpaid vice-president of the Bundesverband für Wirtschaftsförderung und Außenwirtschaft (BWA) until 7 May 2021. In January 2021 he attended the "Baltic Sea Region Strategic Dialogue", a mostly online conference on the environment and digitalisation in the Baltic, organised by a London public-relations firm and the BWA. The other Bundestag participants were Marcus Held of the Social Democratic Party, Stefan Keuter of the Alternative for Germany and Alexander Kulitz of the Free Democratic Party.

On 6 May 2021 the ARD magazine Kontraste and Die Zeit reported that several European intelligence services saw the conference as possible covert Russian influence, a reading shared by Jörg Forbrig of the German Marshall Fund, who called it a first contact that could later be exploited. The BWA, they reported, had ties to people and organisations close to Yevgeny Prigozhin, described as financier of a "troll factory" and linked to the Wagner Group. Emails named Julia Berg (née Afanasjewa), a BWA "senator" since October, as a figure in election-observation work in Africa through the Prigozhin-linked group AFRIC; the United States sanctioned her in mid-April 2021, and two senior BWA advisers had also observed elections for AFRIC. Chairman Michael Schumann wrote that the association learned of Berg's connections from the media and could not vet every member's Russia ties. Held, Keuter and Kulitz said they had not known of a Prigozhin link. Albani did not answer questions. The reports did not allege that he dealt with Prigozhin himself.

On 7 May 2021 he told the Nordwest-Zeitung he had resigned the deputy chair that morning, after talks with the BWA leadership he had demanded. He said his membership had already ended at the end of 2019. He cited the board's increasingly "Kremlin-friendly" repositioning, which he said Kontraste confirmed; its giving AfD members a platform, as at the January conference; and its line on sanctions. Like the CDU/CSU group, he said, he opposed easing sanctions until Russia ended what he called the illegal annexation of Crimea and made real progress toward détente with Ukraine. As a CDU member and personally, he said, he could not support that course.

Disclosures after 2018

Later filings show smaller payments and mostly unpaid offices. For 2020 the 19th-term record lists advice to HörTech at level 2—the band above 3,500 euro and up to 7,000, not marked as monthly—and a lecture for AstraZeneca GmbH in Wedel, on thoracic surgery and lung cancer, at level 1 (1,000 to 3,500 euro). The archived 20th-term biography lists the HörTech consultancy until November 2021, with no euro amount printed, and advice to Hörzentrum Oldenburg until March 2023 at 450 euro gross a month. Under benefits for political work it records 13,500 euro in 2024 from the Wilhelm and Else Heraeus Foundation, described as the deployment of a foundation stipend holder, and a supervisory-board seat at the Evangelisches Krankenhaus Oldenburg from 29 April 2024.

In the 21st term the two directorships, and a power of attorney at the hospital's Medizinisches Versorgungszentrum, are listed as pre-mandate work, with no current income. The hospital board seat shows 1,500 euro gross for 2025. The Heraeus item returns for 2025 and 2026, again at 13,500 euro for use of a stipend holder. Other offices, including the Helmholtz and AiF senates, the Deutsches Studierendenwerk and OFFIS in Oldenburg, are marked honorary or carry no published fee.

Political positions and reception

Votes and coalition politics

On 30 June 2017 the Bundestag voted without party discipline on opening marriage to same-sex couples ("Ehe für alle"), after Angela Merkel had called it a matter of conscience. Stephan Albani, then in the CDU/CSU, voted yes. The chamber divided 393 in favour, 226 against, 4 abstentions and 7 not voting; in the CDU/CSU the majority was opposed, 75 voting yes and 225 no, with 4 abstentions and 5 not voting.

He voted against the Cannabis Act on 23 February 2024 and, on 8 September 2023, against the Building Energy Act reform requiring new heating systems in new-build areas to use at least 65 percent renewable energy. On nuclear power he voted on 11 November 2022 against running Isar 2, Neckarwestheim 2 and Emsland only until 15 April 2023 — a government bill that passed, with most of the Union opposed — and on 31 March 2023 for a CDU/CSU motion to keep the three plants available until the end of 2024, which failed.

On the debt brake in the Basic Law he backed the 25 March 2020 suspension for the first coronavirus budget, opposed suspensions on 27 January 2022 and 15 December 2023, and on 18 March 2025 supported a CDU/CSU–SPD amendment in the outgoing Bundestag. Defence and related security spending were to count toward the brake only up to 1 percent of gross domestic product; a credit-financed fund of up to €500 billion was allowed for infrastructure and climate neutrality by 2045; and the Länder gained more room to borrow.

On 29 January 2025 he voted for the CDU/CSU five-point resolution on permanent border controls, turning back attempted illegal entries, and detaining people required to leave. It passed 348 to 344, with 10 abstentions; Antje Tillmann (CDU/CSU) voted no. On 31 January he voted for the Zustrombegrenzungsgesetz, which would have suspended family reunification for subsidiary protection; it failed, 349 to 338. Friedrich Merz was elected chancellor on 6 May 2025 by covered ballot, so Albani's vote was not published. Merz had 310 of 621 votes in the first round, short of 316, and 325 of 618 in a second round that day. Albani later voted to suspend that family reunification for two years (27 June 2025), to end naturalisation after three years (8 October 2025), for the December 2025 military-service law, and on 10 July 2026 to drop the 65 percent heating rule.

Published positions

On 7 February 2025 the Nordwest-Zeitung printed length-limited answers Albani gave to questions also put to the other direct candidates in Oldenburg–Ammerland. He called the dual insurance system a basis for innovation, and argued for less overcapacity, a stronger role for general practitioners, more medicines made in Europe, and better nursing ratios. On migration he said skilled immigration and help for people in need should continue, but that people with no claim should be turned back at the border and those required to leave, especially after convictions, returned quickly.

He argued that energy prices should fall by expanding supply rather than subsidising high prices, including biomass and existing plants, "also nuclear power stations." Climate neutrality in 2045, he said, should be reached through emissions trading, not detailed political direction, with room for hydrogen and for combustion engines using climate-neutral fuels; the heating law in its then form should go, and heat targets be met locally. He favoured a return to conscription inside a compulsory social year, with a contingent call-up until then. On pensions he called for a mandatory funded pillar, a "Frühstart-Rente" of €10 a month from age six, earlier retirement in physically hard jobs, and up to €2,000 a month tax-free for people who work longer. His Bundestag biography, from members' own disclosures, lists him since 2018 as an assessor on the federal board of the Mittelstands- und Wirtschaftsunion and as honorary deputy chair of the Wirtschaftsrat der CDU for Oldenburg–Wilhelmshaven.

Media coverage

On 15 August 2017 the Nordwest-Zeitung reported outside earnings of well over €120,000 since 2013 from the publicly funded Hörzentrum Oldenburg and HörTech while he sat on the research and health committees. Martin Reyher of Abgeordnetenwatch said it "smells"; Lobbycontrol called it a clear case of bias. Albani answered "I see no problem," while calling it a tightrope. That dispute, and the separate BWA allegations, are treated in the preceding section.

On 27 September 2024 the paper reported that a CDU meeting preferred him to Holger Grond with 77.2 percent. Its February 2025 series put the same questions to every direct candidate. The Ärztezeitung of 24 February 2025 added a short portrait, noting his physics degree, his time at the Hörzentrum, and deputy membership of the health committee and the global-health subcommittee.