# Tanja Machalet

# Tanja Machalet

Tanja Machalet (born 1 May 1974 in Dernbach, in the Westerwald) is a German politician of the [Social Democratic Party of Germany](/organizations/social-democratic-party-of-germany) (SPD) and a member of the Bundestag from Rhineland-Palatinate. She has sat in the Bundestag since the constitutive sitting of the 20th electoral term on 26 October 2021. Since 21 May 2025 she has chaired the Bundestag Committee on Health. The parliament’s account of that sitting describes her as representing the Montabaur constituency.

She passed the Abitur in 1993 at the Mons-Tabor-Gymnasium in Montabaur, trained as a bank clerk (Bankkauffrau) at Landesbank Hessen-Thüringen in Frankfurt from 1993 to 1995, and worked in 1995–96 at the bank’s subsidiary in Luxembourg. From 1996 to January 2002 she studied economics, with a focus on labour-market policy, at the universities of Frankfurt and Trier, then worked as a research associate at the University of Trier from 2002 to 2006 and received a doctorate in 2007. Her own account gives the dissertation the title “Bildungsabschlüsse am internationalen Arbeitsmarkt” (educational qualifications on the international labour market). From 2006 to 2011 she was a planning officer in the state chancellery of Rhineland-Palatinate in Mainz, in the department for government planning and coordination of ministries. The Bundestag notes that this biographical text rests on the member’s own statements.

In the 2011 state election she entered the Landtag of Rhineland-Palatinate on the SPD state list, as the nineteenth candidate returned from that list (list place 41). The Bundestag biography records her as a Landtag deputy until 18 May 2021. At the 2021 federal election she won the direct mandate in constituency 204 Montabaur. The official result for that constituency gave the SPD 31.5 percent of the first votes and the [Christian Democratic Union](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany) (CDU) 30.0 percent.

After the Federal President dissolved the 20th Bundestag, the election day for the next Bundestag was set for Sunday, 23 February 2025. In the renumbered constituency 203 Montabaur, [Harald Orthey](/people/harald-orthey) of the CDU won the seat with 35.7 percent of the first votes (61,574). Machalet received 23.4 percent (40,294 votes), ahead of [the Alternative](/organizations/the-alternative) for Germany on 20.5 percent, and turnout was 83.3 percent of 209,443 eligible voters. A state delegate meeting in Worms on 15 December 2024 had placed her first on the SPD list for Rhineland-Palatinate, with 93.7 percent of the votes. The state returning officer recorded her as elected on list place 1 when the final federal result was established on 14 March 2025.

In the 20th Bundestag she was a full member of the Committee on Labour and Social Affairs, rapporteur there for pensions and the Federal Employment Agency, and a deputy member of the health and finance committees. In the 21st term she is a full member of the Health Committee, a deputy member of the committees on labour and social affairs and on finance, and a deputy member of the enquiry commission on the coronavirus pandemic, and the Bundestag biography also lists her as speaker of the SPD working group on distributive justice and social integration and as deputy speaker of the SPD state group of Rhineland-Palatinate. On 30 August 2026 she and Klaus Lütkefedder of the CDU contested the runoff for Landrat of the Westerwaldkreis. Lütkefedder received 60.6 percent of the vote, and turnout was 31.0 percent.

## Early life and education

### Childhood and schooling

Tanja Machalet was born on 1 May 1974 in Dernbach, in the Westerwald of Rhineland-Palatinate; her birth name was Breuer. She grew up in Berod bei Wallmerod. In a 2025 interview she described that upbringing as life "in a social-democratic household, which was rather unusual there at the time."

She has described herself as the second of four children in a working-class household (*Arbeiterhaushalt*) and has written that holiday jobs in the region paid for her driving licence and her first car. In a profile for the Hans Böckler Foundation she said that her father had sat on a works council (*Betriebsrat*) and pointed to the fact that she was born on 1 May. She has also said that the difficulty, as she experienced it, for working-class children to reach a *Gymnasium* and then university shaped her conviction that access to education should not depend on social origin. She went to primary school (*Grundschule*) in Berod and in 1993 passed the Abitur, the school-leaving qualification for university, at the Mons-Tabor-Gymnasium in Montabaur.

### Apprenticeship and economics studies

From 1993 to 1995 Machalet trained as a bank clerk (*Bankkauffrau*) at Landesbank Hessen-Thüringen (Helaba) in Frankfurt. In 1995–96 she worked as a *Kommissionshändlerin*, a trader in the bank's commission business, at Landesbank Hessen-Thüringen S.A. in Luxembourg.

She studied economics (*Volkswirtschaftslehre*) from 1996 until January 2002 in Frankfurt and at the University of Trier, concentrating on labour-market policy, and qualified as a *Diplom-Volkswirtin*. Her diploma thesis was "Measures to combat youth unemployment in Europe — a comparison of the programmes in Germany, France and Britain" (*Maßnahmen zur Bekämpfung der Jugendarbeitslosigkeit in Europa*). During her studies she held a scholarship from the Hans Böckler Foundation (*Hans-Böckler-Stiftung*). The foundation describes itself as the co-determination, study and research institution of the German Trade Union Confederation (*Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund*, DGB) and states that, as the unions' talent-support scheme, it funds able young people who are engaged in trade-union or civic activity. Machalet has said that this support made her the first member of her family to attend university. She has later called the scholarship period formative for her public engagement, and the foundation lists her as an alumna.

### Doctorate

From 2002 to 2006 she was a research assistant (*wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin*) at the University of Trier while completing the doctorate. A project recorded under her name on Rhineland-Palatinate's research portal, attached to the university's business-administration unit and dated 1 March 2002 to 1 June 2005, was titled "Educational qualifications on the European labour market: an information-economic analysis." It asked whether firms that recruit across differently structured education systems systematically distinguish national qualifications which the European Union treats as equivalent, and what that would imply for competition between education systems. The outline started from the limited mobility of workers inside the EU after the single market, treated the lack of transparency of credentials as a frequently cited obstacle to international recruitment, and used [Michael Spence](/people/michael-spence)'s 1973 account of educational certificates as signals. It also reviewed transparency work by the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (Cedefop) and EU rules on recognition of qualifications. Luxembourg's banking and financial-services sector was the intended field, on the grounds that firms there had long dealt with different national qualifications and that multilingual recruitment reduced language as a separate barrier. The registered plan scheduled the survey for the second half of 2004 and the writing of the dissertation for the first half of 2005.

The final examination was held on 30 April 2007, and the thesis was released on 11 July 2007 by the University of Trier, Faculty IV (*Fachbereich IV*, economic sciences), with Dieter Sadowski named as advisor. The German title was *Bildungsabschlüsse am internationalen Arbeitsmarkt: ein theoretischer und empirischer Beitrag zur europäischen Transparenzstrategie* ("Educational degrees on an international labour market: a theoretical and empirical contribution to the European transparency strategy"); the repository records it under the URN `urn:nbn:de:hbz:385-4168`. Drawing on the theory of institutional, or systems, competition (*Systemwettbewerb*), the thesis concluded that harmonising higher-education degrees through the Bologna Process was not an instrument for stopping a race to the bottom in the EU, but rather limited what it described as a productive "race to the top." A written survey of firms in Luxembourg's highly international financial-services sector found no unrestricted preference for the Anglo-American bachelor's–master's system, and the firms questioned did not expect unification of qualifications to simplify hiring in any clear way. A four-page article under the same title appeared in November 2007 in the *Zeitschrift für Personalforschung* (*German Journal of Human Resource Management*), volume 21, issue 4, pages 376–379.

## Career before elected office

### Banking and university research

Machalet's first employment was a vocational traineeship (*Ausbildung*) as a bank clerk (*Bankkauffrau*) at Landesbank Hessen-Thüringen (Helaba) in Frankfurt, from 1993 to 1995. A state treaty of 10 March 1992 between Hesse and Thuringia renamed the Hessische Landesbank "Landesbank Hessen-Thüringen – Girozentrale," a legal entity under public law with registered offices in Frankfurt and Erfurt, and made it the joint Landesbank of the two states' savings-bank organisation.

From 1995 to 1996 she worked at Landesbank Hessen-Thüringen S.A. in Luxembourg as a commission trader (*Kommissionshändlerin*). The subsidiary, HELABA LUXEMBOURG Landesbank Hessen-Thüringen International S.A., was registered in Luxembourg as B 17.544. A board resolution published in the *Mémorial* of 2 March 1999, after she had left, records the company's registered office at 2, place de Paris, and the conversion of its share capital from Deutsche Mark into euro.

She then studied economics in Frankfurt and at the University of Trier until January 2002. From 2002 to 2006 she was a research associate (*wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin*) there. The state research portal lists a project in her name, attached to the university's business-administration unit (*Betriebswirtschaftslehre*), running from 1 March 2002 to 1 June 2005 and concerned with educational qualifications on the European labour market; its timetable placed the writing of the dissertation in the first half of 2005. The doctorate was awarded in 2007, after she had already moved into the state administration.

### State Chancellery

In March 2006 Machalet became a policy officer (*Referentin*) in the State Chancellery (*Staatskanzlei*) of Rhineland-Palatinate in Mainz, in the department for government planning and coordination of the ministries (*Abteilung Regierungsplanung und Ressortkoordination*).

The State Chancellery is [the centre](/organizations/the-centre) of the state government. It coordinates the work of the ministries, keeps in continuous contact with them so that the minister-president can be informed of their business, and settles large projects with the departments in advance through political planning. For day-to-day questions the minister-president has a liaison officer (*Spiegelreferentin* or *Spiegelreferent*) for each ministry, and the chancellery prepares the sittings of the Conference of Minister-Presidents (*Ministerpräsidentenkonferenz*). Published accounts of Machalet's post name the department but not a particular desk within it. Kurt Beck, minister-president from 1994 to 2013 and state chair of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) from 1993 to 2012, was in office for the whole of her appointment.

She remained a *Referentin* until she entered the Landtag of Rhineland-Palatinate. At the constitutive sitting of the 16th Landtag on 18 May 2011, in the Deutschhaus in Mainz, she answered the roll as a member of the SPD.

In the Bundestag's register of disclosable interests the chancellery post appears as her occupation before membership, with the notations *Rückkehrrecht* (right of return) and *Kündigungsschutz* (protection against dismissal) and with no figure for pay. Under the Members of the Bundestag Act (*Abgeordnetengesetz*), dismissal or discharge because a person acquires or exercises a mandate is unlawful; the protection starts when the candidate is nominated and lasts until one year after the mandate ends. For civil servants, and by analogy for salaried public employees, the rights and duties of the service relationship are suspended for the duration of membership. After the mandate they remain suspended for at most a further six months, and reinstatement follows an application made within three months.

## Party and local politics

### Jusos and party offices

Tanja Machalet joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 1991. In the Young Socialists in the SPD (Jusos) she chaired the Westerwald district organisation from 1995 to 1997 and was a deputy federal chair from 1999 to 2003, posts set out in the curriculum vitae attached to her 2009 application for Landrat and, for the federal role, repeated in her Bundestag biography.

Those accounts also place her on the SPD regional executive from 2002 and as deputy chair of the district SPD from 2006. In 2009 she described herself as chair, since 2007, of the SPD branch in the Verbandsgemeinde Wallmerod. Since 2017 she has sat on the SPD state executive in Rhineland-Palatinate; her own biography calls her speaker of its motions commission (Antragskommission). Papers for the state congress of 23 August 2025 listed her, under the Regionalverband Rheinland, as a proposed assessor (Beisitzerin) and as a proposed member of that commission.

### Westerwald district council and Wallmerod

Her Bundestag biography records her as chair of the SPD group on the district council (Kreistag) of the Westerwaldkreis from 2009 to 2017 and again from 2020. The chair was interrupted. In November 2020 Gabriele Greis resigned her seat and the chair to concentrate on a mayoral candidacy in the Verbandsgemeinde Hachenburg, and said the deputies Machalet and Thomas Mockenhaupt would lead the group until it chose a successor.

At the municipal election of 9 June 2024 the SPD won 18.6 percent and 9 of 50 Kreistag seats, down from 20.8 percent and 10 seats in 2019; the CDU took 38.3 percent and 20 seats, and turnout was 64.9 percent. On 26 June the nine-member SPD group, meeting in Hachenburg under district chair Hendrik Hering, unanimously confirmed Machalet and Mockenhaupt as chairs, Lisa Schmidt as deputy and Michael Birk as business manager and treasurer, according to a group statement carried in the local press. Machalet said the group had still pressed, against a majority of the CDU, a free-voters group (FWG) and the FDP, for joining the Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Mosel tariff association, climate and cycling plans, and better bus and rail service.

The same day she was returned to the Wallmerod council. Meeting on 13 June 2024, that council established a turnout of 70.8 percent (8,314 of 11,749 eligible voters) and gave the SPD 13.1 percent and 3 of 28 seats. Machalet led the SPD list with 3,852 votes and was elected; the CDU list, headed by the then mayor Klaus Lütkefedder, took 15 seats with 51.6 percent. Her parliamentary biography lists her as chair of the SPD group there.

### Campaigns for Landrat

Machalet has twice been the SPD candidate for Landrat, the directly elected head of the district administration, and lost both times to the CDU.

*Klaus Lütkefedder and Tanja Machalet on the evening of the 30 August 2026 runoff for Landrat of the Westerwaldkreis.*

On 29 March 2009 she applied to the district administration in Montabaur for the 7 June election, citing demographic change, climate policy and an administration that should act as an enabler in the Westerwald. Achim Schwickert of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) won with 60.3 percent on a turnout of 37.6 percent; Machalet was the other candidate, and later reporting put her share at about 40 percent. He remained Landrat until May 2026, when he became interior minister, and the vacancy brought a new election forward. Full-time Landräte in Rhineland-Palatinate serve eight years.

The SPD district executive proposed her on 16 June 2026, with formal nomination set for a delegates’ meeting on 27 June in Selters. The *Rhein-Zeitung* reported that 47 voting members elected her unanimously. District chair Hendrik Hering presented the candidacy as a way to avoid a runoff fought only between the CDU and the Alternative for Germany (AfD). Machalet, then a Bundestag member and chair of its health committee, said a win would mean leaving parliament. She spoke of health care, a more accessible administration, families and volunteering, and of making the district Germany’s most family-friendly region by 2040. The CDU nominated Lütkefedder, mayor of Wallmerod since 2010, with a reported 98.2 percent at its district congress.

On 16 August 2026 no one won an absolute majority. The state returning officer recorded Lütkefedder (CDU) on 29,148 votes (43.3 percent), Machalet (SPD) on 16,617 (24.7), Jan Nicola De Cotiis (AfD) on 11,046 (16.4), Lisa-Marie Jeckel ([Free Voters](/organizations/free-voters), Freie Wähler) on 5,439 (8.1), Merline Bratenstein ([Die Linke](/organizations/die-linke)) on 2,823 (4.2) and Johannes Eidt ([Volt Germany](/organizations/volt-germany)) on 2,184 (3.3). Turnout was 42.2 percent: 67,717 of 160,328 eligible voters, with 67,257 valid votes.

The 30 August runoff was between Lütkefedder and Machalet. The state election office published 29,300 votes (60.6 percent) for Lütkefedder, from 49,645 voters out of 160,168 (31.0 percent turnout) and 48,349 valid votes. SWR and the *WW-Kurier* reported Machalet’s share as 39.4 percent. The district had called the election committee (Kreiswahlausschuss) for 2 September to certify the preliminary figures. Afterwards it said the committee had fixed Lütkefedder’s share at 60.6 percent of valid votes and turnout at 30.9 percent, with formal appointment at the council sitting of 11 September.

Machalet congratulated him, called the share respectable given the starting position, and said the candidacy had been meant to offer the [democratic centre](/organizations/democratic-centre) a choice other than CDU against AfD. She added that she would again represent the Westerwald from Berlin.

## Member of the Landtag of Rhineland-Palatinate

### Elections and mandate

Tanja Machalet was a member of the Landtag of Rhineland-Palatinate in its 16th and 17th legislative periods, the parliaments elected on 27 March 2011 and 13 March 2016, and she left office on 18 May 2021. Both times she stood for the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in constituency 6, Montabaur, in the Westerwaldkreis. Gabriele Wieland of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) won the direct seat on each occasion, and Machalet entered on the SPD state list (Landesliste).

In 2011, 76,877 people were entitled to vote in Montabaur and turnout was 62.8 percent. Machalet received 14,125 constituency votes (Wahlkreisstimmen), 30.2 percent, against 20,619 votes and 44 percent for Wieland; [the Greens](/organizations/the-greens) took 15 percent, the Free Democratic Party 7.2 percent and [The Left](/organizations/the-left-slovenia) 3.6 percent. On the state vote (Landesstimme) there, the SPD polled 29.2 percent and the CDU 42.8 percent. Across Rhineland-Palatinate the SPD won 42 of 101 seats, 23 of them direct and 19 from the list, and the returning officer's roll of those elected places Machalet at list place 41, the last SPD candidate to receive a seat.

For 2016 the returning officer defined constituency 6 as the Verbandsgemeinden (collective municipalities) of Montabaur, Ransbach-Baumbach, Wallmerod and Wirges, and the results mark its constituency votes as only partly comparable with 2011 because the boundaries had changed. The *Frankfurter Neue Presse* reported that local SPD delegates backed Machalet, with Sebastian Stendebach as substitute, by 82 percent, and quoted Landtag member Hendrik Hering, who called her the group's labour-market spokesperson and chair of the committee on media and network policy.

Of 66,790 people eligible in the constituency, 72.3 percent voted on 13 March 2016. Machalet received 14,329 constituency votes, 30.8 percent, and Wieland 22,471, 48.3 percent; the FDP followed with 9.7 percent, the Greens with 5.7 percent and The Left with 5.4 percent. Of the state votes, the SPD took 30.1 percent and the CDU 40.6 percent; the Alternative for Germany, which recorded no constituency votes in Montabaur, took 10.7 percent. Statewide the SPD won 36.2 percent of the state vote and 39 seats, 27 direct and 12 from the list. Machalet was number 27 on the SPD state list, an economist from Meudt with Stendebach as substitute, and she answered the roll when the 17th Landtag met on 18 May 2016 in the Steinhalle of the Landesmuseum in Mainz.

In March 2020 the SPD executive in the Westerwaldkreis unanimously proposed her for the Bundestag constituency of Montabaur after Gabi Weber said she would not run again, and stated that Machalet would not be available for the Landtag election the following March. She did not contest the [2021 Rhineland-Palatinate state election](/facts/2021-rhineland-palatinate-state-election) of 14 March 2021, and her Landtag membership ended on 18 May 2021.

### Committees and budget policy

A Landtag compilation of offices dated 4 March 2015 lists her as parliamentary secretary (schriftführende Abgeordnete) number 1. She chaired the Committee for Media and Network Policy (Ausschuss für Medien und Netzpolitik), with the CDU's Marlies Kohnle-Gros as deputy chair, and she was an ordinary member of that committee and of the Committee for Social Affairs, Labour, Health and Demography, then a single committee chaired by the CDU's Peter Enders. She also sat on the Committee for Equality and the Advancement of Women and substituted on the interior committee, the committee for integration, family, children and youth, the economic-affairs committee and the petitions committee. In the renomination report, Hering called the media chair and the post of labour-market spokesperson (arbeitsmarktpolitische Sprecherin) unusual for a first-term member, and Machalet said she wanted to keep working on skilled labour, the working conditions of women and young people, and medical care and demographic change in rural areas.

The committees were reorganised for the 17th period. Drucksache 17/65 of 3 June 2016, the Landtag president's notice of the parliament's organisation, made her deputy chair and an ordinary member of the new Committee for Health, Care and Demography, and an ordinary member of the separate Committee for Social Affairs and Labour. She substituted on the interim committee (Zwischenausschuss), the interior committee, the committee for science, continuing education and culture, and the committee for society, integration and consumer protection, but she was not then on the Budget and Finance Committee (Haushalts- und Finanzausschuss) or its audit commission.

That allocation changed in March 2019. A Landtag notice of 21 March, recording an SPD letter of 18 March, named her a full member of the Budget and Finance Committee in place of Denis Alt and a member of the audit commission (Rechnungsprüfungskommission) in place of Anna Köbberling. By 9 March 2020 the Westerwaldkreis SPD, in a statement carried by *Blick aktuell*, described her as deputy chair of the health, care and demography committee and as the group's budget-policy spokesperson (haushaltspolitische Sprecherin); Hering said she had held the labour-market brief for eight years and had made her name in Mainz on health and the budget.

## Bundestag elections

### 2021 election in Montabaur

Constituency 204 Montabaur, in Rhineland-Palatinate, covered the whole Westerwaldkreis and parts of the Rhein-Lahn-Kreis: the collective municipalities (Verbandsgemeinden) of Aar-Einrich, Diez and Nastätten, and named municipalities in Bad Ems-Nassau, with the rest of that district in another constituency. In the 2017 federal election the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) won it with 43.3 percent of the first votes (Erststimmen), 68,727 ballots, against 29.8 percent (47,312) for the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD); turnout was 77.8 percent of 210,114 people eligible to vote. The CDU candidate, and the sitting member, was Andreas Nick, who was standing for a third time; the SPD's Gabi Weber, on just under 30 percent in 2017, did not run again.

In March 2021 delegates of the SPD associations in Rhein-Lahn and the Westerwald nominated Machalet, then a member of the Rhineland-Palatinate Landtag, for constituency 204, with 95.7 percent of the vote. On 5 June 2021 a state delegates' assembly in Gensingen placed Thomas Hitschler first on the SPD state list (Landesliste), with 184 of 194 votes, and Machalet second, so she stood both in the constituency and on the list. The Free Democratic Party (FDP) nominated Dennis Sturm and the Alternative for Germany (AfD) nominated Robin Classen; the AfD had fielded no constituency candidate in 2017 after its nomination papers were incomplete.

The election to the Bundestag was held on 26 September 2021. In the final result Machalet took the direct mandate with 50,975 first votes, 31.5 percent, 1.7 percentage points above the SPD's 2017 share. Nick, recorded as the runner-up, received 48,607 votes, 30.0 percent and 13.3 points below the CDU's 2017 result, a margin of 2,368 votes. The FDP polled 9.3 percent of first votes, Alliance 90/The Greens 8.8 percent, the AfD 8.7 percent, the Free Voters 5.5 percent and Die Linke 2.8 percent. On second votes the SPD led the constituency with 30.3 percent (49,346) to the CDU's 26.5 percent (43,125). Turnout was 77.9 percent: 164,165 voters out of 210,816 eligible.

Machalet therefore entered the 20th Bundestag as the directly elected member for Montabaur rather than through second place on the state list. The new parliament's term began with its constituent sitting on 26 October 2021, the latest day the Basic Law allows after an election.

### 2025 election and the state list

The 20th Bundestag did not serve out a normal term. On 27 December 2024 the Federal President, at the chancellor's request, dissolved it and set an early election for Sunday, 23 February 2025; a regular election had already been ordered for 28 September 2025.

For the early election the Montabaur seat was renumbered 203. Its area was the same as in 2021: the whole Westerwaldkreis and the same parts of the Rhein-Lahn-Kreis, the remainder of which was now assigned to constituency 198 rather than 199. The constituency contained 297 municipalities, covered 1,508.2 square kilometres and had about 280,600 inhabitants at the end of 2023.

Machalet again sought the constituency and, at an SPD list convention in Worms, was elected to first place on the Rhineland-Palatinate list. Südwestrundfunk reported on 15 December 2024 that she received 178 votes in favour and 10 against, given as 93.7 percent, succeeding Hitschler, who was not standing again. [Matthias Mieves](/people/matthias-mieves) was placed second and [Verena Hubertz](/people/verena-hubertz) third.

In the final result the direct mandate went to Harald Stefan Orthey of the CDU, with 61,574 first votes, 35.7 percent, 5.7 points above the CDU's 2021 share in the constituency. Machalet was the runner-up on 40,294 votes, 23.4 percent, down 8.1 points. The AfD rose to 20.5 percent (35,321 votes, up 11.8 points). Alliance 90/The Greens took 6.3 percent, Die Linke 5.1 percent, the Free Voters 3.4 percent and the FDP 3.2 percent. Turnout was 83.3 percent, 174,499 voters out of 209,443 eligible.

Second votes in the constituency put the CDU on 32.5 percent and the AfD on 21.0 percent, with the SPD on 18.1 percent (31,397 votes, down 12.2 points). Bündnis [Sahra Wagenknecht](/people/sahra-wagenknecht), which had no constituency candidate, received 4.3 percent of second votes. Across Rhineland-Palatinate the SPD's second-vote share was 18.6 percent, 462,705 votes and 10.7 points below 2021, on a statewide turnout of 83.0 percent. The federal returning officer lists Machalet as elected from place 1 on the Rhineland-Palatinate SPD list, while also having stood in constituency 203, and lists Orthey as elected in that constituency.

## Work in the Bundestag

### Labour and social affairs

At the constitutive sitting of the Committee on Labour and Social Affairs (*Ausschuss für Arbeit und Soziales*) in the 20th Bundestag, reported on 15 December 2021, Tanja Machalet was one of 14 full members from the Social Democratic Party (SPD). The committee then had 49 full members: 14 from the SPD, 13 from the CDU/CSU, eight from Alliance 90/The Greens, six from the Free Democratic Party, five from the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and three from Die Linke. Under Vice-President [Aydan Özoğuz](/people/aydan-ozoguz) (SPD), the members elected [Bernd Rützel](/people/bernd-rutzel) (SPD) chair by secret ballot, with 43 of 45 votes cast for him.

The Bundestag biography records that, until 2025, she was the committee’s rapporteur (*Berichterstatterin*) for pensions and for the Federal Employment Agency (*Bundesagentur für Arbeit*), and a deputy member of the Health Committee and the Finance Committee. The SPD parliamentary group identified her as its pension-policy spokesperson (*rentenpolitische Sprecherin*); an August 2022 group statement under that title rejected proposals to raise the statutory retirement age to 70.

On 14 October 2024 she took part, as a full member, in the committee’s 87th sitting, a public hearing in the Paul Löbe House chaired by Rützel. The agenda was the government bill to stabilise the pension level and build a generational capital stock (*Rentenniveaustabilisierungs- und Generationenkapitalgesetz*, printed paper 20/11898), plus motions from the AfD (20/11847) and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance group (20/10735). Machalet questioned Verena Bentele of the VdK and Ingo Schäfer of the German Trade Union Confederation, among others. Experts were divided over the plan to hold the standard pension at 48 percent of average earnings until at least 2039, with the contribution rate projected at 22.3 percent in 2045 and part of the cost met from an equity fund, the *Generationenkapital*.

In the 21st term the SPD group lists her as a full member of the labour committee only from 21 May to 4 June 2025, and as a deputy member from 4 June, with a deputy seat on the group’s labour and social affairs working group from the same day.

### Chair of the Health Committee

On 21 May 2025, in the constitutive sitting of the Health Committee chaired by Vice-President [Bodo Ramelow](/people/bodo-ramelow) (Die Linke), Machalet was designated chair.

The SPD held the right to propose the chair under an agreement of the Council of Elders (*Ältestenrat*) based on the strength of the groups. In the previous term the chair had stayed vacant: AfD candidates did not obtain a majority even though the AfD then had the right to propose the chair, a procedure the Federal [Constitutional Court](/organizations/constitutional-court) upheld, and sittings were conducted by deputy chair [Kirsten Kappert-Gonther](/people/kirsten-kappert-gonther) (Greens). The choice of deputy chairs for the new term was left to a later sitting.

The committee has 38 full members: 13 from the CDU/CSU, nine from the AfD, seven from the SPD, five from the Greens and four from Die Linke. The SPD full members named at the sitting were Machalet, Matthias Mieves, [Claudia Moll](/people/claudia-moll), [Christos Pantazis](/people/christos-pantazis), [Stefan Schwartze](/people/stefan-schwartze), [Lina Seitzl](/people/lina-seitzl) and [Serdar Yüksel](/people/serdar-yuksel). In the previous term the committee met 138 times, first on the [COVID-19 pandemic](/drivers/covid-19-pandemic) and later on hospital reform, long-term care and digitalisation. The SPD group lists her as a full member and as chair from 21 May 2025, and as a member of its health working group from the same date.

As chair she signed the agenda for the 3 November 2025 public hearing on a CDU/CSU–SPD amending motion to the government bill on powers and bureaucracy in long-term care (printed papers 21/1511 and 21/1935). On 3 December 2025 the committee heard evidence in the Paul Löbe House on a Die Linke motion against benefit cuts in long-term care (21/2216).

On 17 December 2025 she chaired a public hearing on the government bill adjusting the hospital reform (*Krankenhausreformanpassungsgesetz*, 21/2512), the Bundesrat’s opinion (21/3056), and a Die Linke motion to take hospital staff costs out of the case-based payments (21/2707). After a first reading on 12 November 2025 the bill, which proposed wider rural exceptions and a cut in service groups from 65 to 61, went to the Health Committee as the lead committee. From 1 to 6 February 2026 a delegation she led visited Norway and Finland to study primary care, cross-sector emergency care and air rescue.

### Other assignments

On 29 October 2021 the SPD state group (*Landesgruppe*) for Rhineland-Palatinate unanimously elected Machalet deputy speaker; Thomas Hitschler, speaker since 2019, was confirmed in that post. The group’s profile for the 21st term still lists her as deputy speaker. In April 2024 *Blick aktuell* reported her election as spokesperson of the group’s working group on distributive justice and social integration, a post her Bundestag biography still lists. The faction’s list of her 21st-term posts does not repeat that role; it names the health working group, the state-group deputy speakership, and deputy seats on the labour, finance and corona-enquiry working groups.

She is a deputy member of the Finance Committee from 21 May 2025, as she had been in the 20th term, and a deputy member of the faction’s finance working group from the same date. On 8 September 2025 Bundestag President [Julia Klöckner](/people/julia-klockner) constituted the enquiry commission (*Enquete-Kommission*) “Review of the corona pandemic and lessons for future pandemic events”, set up on a CDU/CSU and SPD motion (printed paper 21/805), with 14 members of the Bundestag and 14 experts and a final report due by 30 June 2027. Members elected Franziska Hoppermann (CDU) chair with all 25 votes cast; the SPD’s full members were [Jens Peick](/people/jens-peick), [Daniel Rinkert](/people/daniel-rinkert) and Lina Seitzl, while the AfD nominee for deputy chair, Claudia Weiss, received seven votes. Machalet is a deputy member of the commission and, from 9 September 2025, of the SPD working group attached to it.

Since 8 October 2025 she has been deputy chair of the German–Central Asian Parliamentary Group, which the Bundestag lists for relations with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. [Christian Görke](/people/christian-gorke) (Die Linke) is the group’s chair; he led a delegation to Mongolia and Kyrgyzstan from 28 June to 5 July 2026.

## Political positions

### Pensions and employment

On 27 September 2024 Machalet spoke for the Social Democratic Party of Germany at the first reading in the Bundestag of Pension Package II (*Rentenpaket II*). She grounded a stable old-age income in the social-state principle of Article 20 of the Basic Law. The bill would, she said, fix the minimum pre-tax pension level (*Sicherungsniveau*) at 48 percent for good; a trained nurse then aged 49 would, on her example, have about 1,100 euros more pension a year if retiring in 2040. Generational capital (*Generationenkapital*) was meant to steady the contribution rate from the mid-2030s without investing contribution money. She rejected tying the retirement age to life expectancy, and raising it to 70, ideas she attributed to parts of the Christian Democratic Union, because either would cut pensions for people in hard physical work. Labour-market policy was also pension policy, she said: prevention and rehabilitation should get people to retirement age in health before working longer was made more attractive.

The same sitting set out the counter-case. Stephan Stracke (CDU/CSU) said pensions would rise under existing law and that talk of cuts was “fake news,” while the package sped contribution rises onto working-age generations. [Kai Whittaker](/people/kai-whittaker) (CDU/CSU) treated the equity stake as debt used to skim a small return. Heidi Reichinnek of Die Linke called the bill the smallest common denominator—an equity pension for the Free Democratic Party and a level freeze for the SPD—and said old-age poverty would continue. Frank Bsirske of Alliance 90/The Greens, supporting the freeze, said the level would otherwise fall from 48.2 percent to 44.9 percent by 2045.

In November 2021 she called the basic pension (*Grundrente*) the SPD’s “first step” so that lifelong workers could live on their pension. By July 2026 she called a slower link to life expectancy “a compromise with a sense of proportion”: extra years of life split two-to-one between work and retirement, reaching 67.5 in 2042 and 70 only in 2092 on the projections she used, and only if life expectancy actually rose. She still wrote that an automatic rise would cut pensions in practice for lower-paid and physically burdened workers, and said the deduction-free pension after 45 years should be replaced by an earlier exit for long contributors who could no longer do their job.

### Health, hospitals and long-term care

At the first reading of the Hospital Reform Adjustment Act (*Krankenhausreformanpassungsgesetz*, printed paper 21/2512) on 12 November 2025, Machalet said recent insolvencies came from the 2024 reform not yet being in force, not from the reform itself. She thanked Karl Lauterbach for the basis of that law, and said shifting deadlines toward the CDU was not done “entirely without stomach ache,” with consultation still open on hospital cooperation and minimum nursing-staff levels. Moving about 2.5 billion euros a year from contributions to a special fund would, on her figures, relieve statutory health insurance by about 25 billion euros by 2035. An interjection from the Left said the previous majority had decided the opposite. Small hospitals such as Nastätten should gain a future, she said, and hospitals must not become a privilege.

*Deutsches Ärzteblatt* reported the sitting as unresolved. Health minister [Nina Warken](/people/nina-warken) (CDU) said the changes would make the reform “fit for everyday use” without dropping its aims. [Armin Grau](/people/armin-grau) (Greens) said the 2024 law had moved toward standby budgets (*Vorhaltebudgets*) instead of pure diagnosis-related group case rates, and that the adjustment bill delayed and diluted it. Claudia Weiss of the Alternative for Germany cited the German Hospital Federation to the effect that standby pay would not cover fixed costs of many small hospitals. The journal put full effect of a 60/40 split between an advance lump sum and case rates at 2030.

In a July 2026 interview with *BibliomedManager* she called the 2020 hospital nursing budget a “huge success,” because under case-rate payment hospitals had mainly saved on nursing, and she preferred annual averages or sample checks to detailed staffing proof. She did not expect an uncontrolled insolvency wave, citing an extra 550 million euros and the reform taking effect. In the Westerwald, another operator had taken over the hospital in Hachenburg after a German Red Cross operator failed; she was more concerned about outpatient care than about the district’s hospitals.

On the draft Care Reorganisation Act (*Pflegeneuordnungsgesetz*), she wrote in August 2026 that benefit recipients had risen from about 2.8 million in 2016 to about six million in 2025, and that most care is at home, so weakening it could cost more later. Respite care (*Verhinderungspflege*) helped only if heavy users, including families with rare conditions, were not left with less. Writing as the SPD group’s former pension-policy spokesperson, she called “particularly in need of examination” a plan to cut to 70 percent the pension contributions that long-term care insurance pays for family carers, which she said could raise old-age poverty, especially for women.

### Social security and rural services

In the 2026 hospital interview she described statutory health insurance’s strain as a problem of structures more than of income. Federal money had begun, she said, to pay contributions for people on basic income support; taxes on sugar-sweetened drinks and higher tobacco and alcohol taxes were coming in as steering taxes; and she would raise the earnings ceiling for compulsory insurance toward the pension-insurance threshold. Counties, she added, should take a larger part in reorganising care and in the public-health service. Asked in August 2025 whether contributors, rather than taxpayers generally, should fund cover for recipients of Bürgergeld, her published reply stated only that recipients are insured and that jobcentres generally pay the contributions.

In December 2025 she rejected a call by Chancellery minister [Thorsten Frei](/people/thorsten-frei) (CDU) to drop some benefits so the system would be cheaper. “Nobody gets healthier through benefit cuts,” she told the RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland, “especially when they are started by people who will never have to rely on the solidaristic system.” She called Germany last in Europe on prevention and pointed to a sugar tax and higher alcohol and tobacco taxes, plus hospital, emergency and primary-care reform, rather than a narrower benefits catalogue. Frei had said some services must go and that people would not become sicker for it.

On 21 June 2025 she criticised, on Deutschlandfunk, the handling of an investigation into mask purchases in the COVID-19 pandemic. Sending the report to the budget committee with passages blacked out had “destroyed a lot of trust,” she said. She did not want early blame: the review, including allegations that masks bought under then health minister Jens Spahn had been too expensive, was not about putting individuals in the pillory.

## Voluntary work and personal life

### Red Cross and local associations

Machalet chairs the Meudt local association of the German Red Cross (Deutsches Rotes Kreuz, DRK); the branch’s website names her as chair, with a deputy, a treasurer, a secretary and leaders for the operational unit (Bereitschaft), the youth Red Cross and social work. On Abgeordnetenwatch she writes that she has held the Meudt chair for more than ten years. An October 2024 notice in the *WW-Kurier* described her, as Vereinsvorsitzende, at the branch’s ceremony for long-serving blood donors.

The Bundestag register of members’ outside activities lists two unpaid roles at the DRK district association Westerwald (Kreisverband Westerwald e.V.) in Westerburg: vice-president and member of the board. Abgeordnetenwatch records the board membership from 25 October 2022 and the vice-presidency from 30 October 2024.

In a September 2025 interview with *Häusliche Pflege* she said that during the COVID-19 pandemic she had volunteered in a nursing home and had found the work both demanding and rewarding. An August 2021 notice from the local association of the Social Democratic Party of Germany in Höhr-Grenzhausen, carried by *Blick aktuell*, stated that in the hardest phase of the pandemic she had regularly worked without pay in a senior centre in the Westerwald. Neither account names the home or identifies it as a DRK facility.

The *Westerwälder Zeitung* reported in February 2025 that she had founded the Initiative für Alleinerziehende, a network for single parents in the Westerwaldkreis, and that it had used the Familienferiendorf Hübingen. At a summer gathering there on 6 July 2025, organisers said a July 2015 press release showed that the initiative was ten years old; quoted by the *WW-Kurier*, Machalet said she had started it as a member of the Landtag of Rhineland-Palatinate and referred to ALLIZE, an app for single parents in the district. A later notice names, among the bodies involved, the district equality office, Caritas Westerwald/Rhein-Lahn, Diakonie Westerwald, Donum Vitae, the job centre, the local employment agency, a Catholic family-education centre, the women’s helpline Notruf Frauen gegen Gewalt, the Hübingen village and the self-help contact point WeKISS.

On 1 March 2026, the Chorverband Westerwald reported, she took over that district association of amateur choirs at its Verbandstag in the Rothbachhalle in Hattert, succeeding Alfred Labonte, who was named honorary chair, with 78 delegates from 45 clubs present. The choral association of Rhineland-Palatinate lists her as chair. The *WW-Kurier* added that the statutes were changed on the board’s composition before the election, and that her first act was Labonte’s honorary appointment.

The Bundestag biography, which the parliament says rests on members’ own information, also lists membership of the services union ver.di, Frauen gegen Gewalt e.V., the Hospizverein Westerwald, the workers’ welfare organisation Arbeiterwohlfahrt (AWO), and the Verein der Ehemaligen, Freunde und Förderer (VEFF) of the state music grammar school in Montabaur, plus a former Hans Böckler Foundation scholarship. She writes that she joined a union soon after entering the party in 1991, and that the foundation’s support let her become the first in her family to study.

### Family

Abgeordnetenwatch gives her birth name as Breuer and her residence as Meudt. The Bundestag biography states that she was born on 1 May 1974 in Dernbach, is married and has two children; the parliament notes that such details are supplied by the member. In February 2025 the *Westerwälder Zeitung* reported that she lives in Meudt and grew up in Berod bei Wallmerod, in what she called a social-democratic household, unusual in the village at the time. In her Abgeordnetenwatch text she describes herself as the second of four children in a working-class family and says that, after university, she and her family returned and built their house in Meudt.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/tanja-machalet