# Thomas Bareiß

# Thomas Bareiß

Thomas Bareiß (born 15 February 1975 in Albstadt-Ebingen) is a German politician of the [Christian Democratic Union](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany) (CDU) from Baden-Württemberg and a member of the Bundestag for the constituency of Zollernalb–Sigmaringen. The Bundestag’s biography, based on his own statement, lists him as a graduate in business administration (Diplom-Betriebswirt (BA)), Protestant and married. He took the Abitur in 1994 at the commercial grammar school in Albstadt-Ebingen, served in the air force from 1994 to 1995, and studied business administration at the Berufsakademie Ravensburg from 1995 to 1998. He has been a member of the Bundestag since 2005.

In the 2025 federal election the federal returning officer recorded Bareiß as the directly elected member for constituency 295, Zollernalb–Sigmaringen, with 37.1 percent of the first votes (54,656), 7.0 percentage points above the CDU first-vote share there in 2021. Lukas Bruno von Berg of [the Alternative](/organizations/the-alternative) for Germany was runner-up with 26.2 percent, and turnout was 82.3 percent of 180,742 eligible voters. Bareiß has said that he has represented the constituency as its directly elected member since 2005.

He joined the Young Union (Junge Union) in 1990 and the CDU in 1994. That self-reported biography lists him as Junge Union district chair in Zollernalb from 1997 to 2003 and state chair in Baden-Württemberg from 2002 to 2006, as a member of the Meßstetten municipal council from 1999 to 2008 and of the Zollernalb district council from 2004 to 2013, as CDU district chair in Zollernalb from 2007 to 2012 and, from 2011, as chair of the CDU in Württemberg-Hohenzollern, as a member of the Baden-Württemberg CDU executive since 2002, and as a member of the CDU federal executive from 2018 to 2024.

From 2010 to 2014 he was energy-policy coordinator of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, and from 2014 to 2018 its energy-policy commissioner; from 2009 to 2025 he was an assessor on the group’s executive. On 14 March 2018, at the start of [Angela Merkel](/people/angela-merkel)’s fourth cabinet, he received his certificate as Parliamentary State Secretary from Economics Minister Peter Altmaier, with energy policy among his responsibilities at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. The Bundestag biography states that he held that state-secretary post, and the federal government’s briefs for tourism and for small and medium-sized enterprises, from March 2018 until 2021, and that in the 20th electoral term he was the CDU/CSU group’s transport-policy spokesperson.

On 12 July 2026 two cars collided on the B27 between Hechingen and Balingen. *[Der Spiegel](/organizations/der-spiegel)* reported that a 51-year-old driver whose car overturned was seriously injured and that the other driver and two passengers were also hurt, and that the Hechingen public prosecutor’s office was investigating Bareiß for suspected negligent endangerment of road traffic and negligent bodily harm after a blood analysis indicated a synthetic narcotic rather than alcohol; his parliamentary immunity had been lifted. *Der Tagesspiegel*, citing prosecutors, reported that the substance fell under the narcotics law, was not a medicine, and had been present in a “relevant quantity,” and that his driving licence had been surrendered. In early August 2026 he apologised, announced a pause, and said he would let the Württemberg-Hohenzollern CDU chair rest and would not stand for it again. On 1 October 2026 he told the Deutsche Presse-Agentur that he and CDU/CSU group chair [Thorsten Frei](/people/thorsten-frei) had decided he would leave the Bundestag Budget Committee. At the end of that month Nicole Hoffmeister-Kraut, the Zollernalb CDU chair and Baden-Württemberg economics minister, said that in her view he could not be the constituency candidate at the next federal election.

## Early life and education

### Upbringing in the Zollernalb

Thomas Bareiß was born on 15 February 1975 in Albstadt-Ebingen, in the Zollernalbkreis of Baden-Württemberg, and grew up in Meßstetten, about nine kilometres away on the high plateau of the Swabian Jura. The Bundestag biography, which the parliament states is based on members’ own information, and the Munzinger reference entry both record him as Protestant.

Albstadt was only weeks old as a city when he was born. On 1 January 1975 the towns of Ebingen and Tailfingen were united, with neighbouring communes, as the Große Kreisstadt Albstadt. The city describes that merger as bringing together nine districts—Ebingen, Tailfingen, Onstmettingen, Truchtelfingen, Pfeffingen, Lautlingen, Laufen an der Eyach, Margrethausen and Burgfelden—on the south-western Swabian Jura. Meßstetten, where Bareiß was raised, lies between 737 and 989 metres above sea level. In June 2024 the municipality counted 10,918 inhabitants across seven districts, 5,799 of them in the core settlement of Meßstetten. In a February 2025 profile in the regional press he called himself a “child of his home region” (*Kind der Heimat*).

### School, military service and business studies

From 1985 to 1991 he attended the Realschule in Meßstetten. After the intermediate certificate (Realschulabschluss) he transferred to the Wirtschaftsgymnasium in Albstadt-Ebingen and passed the Abitur, the university-entrance examination, there in 1994. A July 2026 profile on the regional site swp.de, drawing on his curriculum vitae, likewise reports the Realschule in Meßstetten and then the Wirtschaftsgymnasium in Albstadt-Ebingen.

He then performed military service with the Luftwaffe, the air arm of the Bundeswehr. Conscription was still in force: basic service (Grundwehrdienst) lasted twelve months until the Wehrrechtsänderungsgesetz shortened it to ten months on 1 January 1996. Bareiß’s service, from 1994 to 1995, was with the then Luftwaffenkommando Süd in Meßstetten and on the Heuberg training area.

From 1995 to 1998 he studied business administration (Betriebswirtschaftslehre) on a dual, work-integrated course at the Berufsakademie in Ravensburg and graduated as a Diplom-Betriebswirt (BA). The Ravensburg academy had opened on 1 October 1978, at first as a branch of the Berufsakademie Stuttgart with 43 students in industrial business studies and mechanical engineering, and had been independent since 1981; its published milestones list 964 students in 1994. Students alternated periods at the academy with periods in a partner firm, the arrangement the state of Baden-Württemberg had taken up from the early-1970s “Stuttgart model” developed with manufacturing companies. The Diplom (BA) was the qualification awarded before the Ravensburg courses were converted to bachelor’s programmes on 1 October 2006. In March 2009 the Berufsakademien became the Baden-Württemberg Cooperative State University (Duale Hochschule Baden-Württemberg).

## Career in business

### Placements abroad

Bareiß completed a cooperative course in business administration at the Berufsakademie in Ravensburg in 1998, graduating as a Diplom-Betriebswirt (BA). The Bundestag biography records the following year, 1998–99, as experience abroad in İzmir, Turkey, and in Phoenix, Arizona, in the United States, and does not name the employers. His own website describes that year as practical placements at a textile company in İzmir, an industrial company in Phoenix, and a tax-consulting and auditing firm in Stuttgart. None of these accounts names the firms. The Stuttgart placement was in Germany; the Bundestag entry does not mention it and limits 1998–99 to the two foreign postings.

### Work in the Swabian textile industry

From 1999 to 2005 Bareiß worked at SANETTA Textilwerk Gebr. Ammann GmbH + Co. KG in Meßstetten, Baden-Württemberg, the employer named in the Bundestag’s list of his occupation before he became a member. The biography describes him over those years as assistant to the management, head of controlling, and head of IT and organisation at a Mittelstand textile company. His website, which does not name the firm, gives the order for the Meßstetten company as assistant to the management first, then head of controlling and head of electronic data processing and organisation. Abgeordnetenwatch, reproducing the parliamentary disclosure, records the pre-membership post as head of controlling, IT and organisation at the Meßstetten company. In December 2020 the trade paper *TextilWirtschaft* stated that he had once been a controller at Sanetta.

Sanetta is the Ammann family’s textile works in Meßstetten, on the Swabian Jura. The *Schwäbische Zeitung* reports that the Ammann brothers founded it there in 1957 and that it makes children’s clothing and underwear, now under Kai and Steffen Ammann in the third generation. In November 2000, while Bareiß was employed there, *TextilWirtschaft* described Sanetta Textilwerk Gebrüder Ammann as a specialist in underwear, babywear and children’s fashion with about 600 employees on the Swabian Jura, with its own plants in Bulgaria, Romania, Greece and Turkey, and with Meßstetten and neighbouring Heinstetten kept as its competence and logistics centre. The firm is registered as Sanetta Gebrüder Ammann GmbH & Co. KG, formerly Sanetta Textilwerk Gebrüder Ammann GmbH & Co. KG, at Sanettastraße 1 (Amtsgericht Stuttgart, HRA 400552).

In February 2022 Bareiß wrote that his time at Sanetta had begun with the dual-study placement after military service and had come to about ten years in several jobs. The Bundestag dates the assistantship and the controlling and IT posts to 1999–2005, after the 1998–99 placements, so that later ten-year figure includes the cooperative-study period at the company as well as those salaried roles.

## Party career

### Junge Union

Thomas Bareiß joined the Junge Union (JU) in 1990, while he was still a pupil, and became a member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in 1994. From 1997 to 2003 he was chairman of the JU's district association in the Zollernalbkreis. In 2002 he became state chairman (Landesvorsitzender) of the JU in Baden-Württemberg, and he held that post until 2006, so that the district and state youth chairs overlapped in 2002 and 2003. The state office then changed hands. In November 2006 [Steffen Bilger](/people/steffen-bilger) was elected Landesvorsitzender of the Baden-Württemberg JU; the *Badische Zeitung* reported the election on 28 November 2006 in a piece also indexed under Bareiß's name, and Bilger has written that he led the organization until 2011.

### Local and district CDU offices

Local party and council offices ran alongside the youth posts. From 1999 to 2008 Bareiß sat on the municipal council of Meßstetten, and from 2004 to 2013 on the council of the Zollernalbkreis. He has stated that he was a member of the executive of the CDU Zollernalb from 2001 to 2005. From 2007 to 2012 he chaired that district association, an office given both in the Bundestag biography and in a 2013 profile in the *Schwäbische Zeitung*, and held while he was already a member of the Bundestag.

Above the district association, the CDU in Baden-Württemberg is divided into four regional associations (Bezirke). On 22 October 2011 a congress in Uhldingen-Mühlhofen elected Bareiß chairman of the Bezirk Württemberg-Hohenzollern. n-tv, citing the Deutsche Presse-Agentur, reported that 194 delegates preferred him, then aged 36, to Tanja Gönner, described there as a long-standing ally of former minister-president Stefan Mappus who had shortly before lost a contest for the leadership of the CDU group in the state parliament. He succeeded Andreas Schockenhoff, who, the same report said, had not stood because of problems with alcohol. Bareiß told the congress that there must never again be "Politik nach Gutsherrenart," which n-tv presented as a remark on Mappus's style of government.

Delegates renewed the regional chair more than once. The Bezirk association reported that on 22 October 2019, at a congress in Salem, he was re-elected with 93.6 percent of the vote, with Norbert Lins, Karl-Wilhelm Röhm and Susanne Schwaderer chosen as deputies. On 23 October 2021, at a congress in Lichtenstein, the *Schwäbische Zeitung* reported a lower share, 74.4 percent, against 93.8 percent at the previous election, which the paper dated to 2018. The ballot followed a debate in which several delegates called for changes in the CDU's program and its personnel. In early August 2026 he said he would let the office of Bezirksvorsitzender of the CDU Württemberg-Hohenzollern rest and would not stand for re-election.

### State and federal party bodies

The Bundestag biography, which is based on members' own information, lists Bareiß as a member of the state executive (Landesvorstand) of the CDU Baden-Württemberg from 2002. His own website describes that seat differently, as following from the Württemberg-Hohenzollern chairmanship he has held since 2011. At national level he was a Beisitzer, one of the additional elected members of the CDU federal executive (Bundesvorstand). On 7 December 2018 a federal party congress of the CDU in Germany elected 26 Beisitzer; of 873 valid votes, and with the required majority at 437, Bareiß received 647. The Bundestag biography dates his membership of the Bundesvorstand to 2018–2024.

## Bundestag elections

### Direct mandates, 2005–2021

Thomas Bareiß has sat in the Bundestag since 2005 as the directly elected member for Zollernalb – Sigmaringen, constituency 295 in Baden-Württemberg. The parliament's biography records continuous membership from that year and, in the 21st Bundestag, a constituency mandate there for the Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

In the federal election of 18 September 2005, Tagesschau, citing the Federal Statistical Office, reported that Bareiß won constituency 295 for the Union with 55.5 percent of the first votes. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) took 25.7 percent, Alliance 90/[The Greens](/organizations/the-greens) 5.8 percent, the Free Democratic Party (FDP) 5.5 percent and the Left 2.9 percent. On second votes the Union led with 47.5 percent, ahead of the SPD on 24.7 percent.

The Federal Returning Officer's final result for 27 September 2009 named Bareiß (CDU) as elected, with 62,858 first votes (49.4 percent), 5.9 percentage points below that office's comparison figure for 2005. The SPD followed on 17.1 percent, the FDP on 13.5 percent, the Greens on 9.3 percent and [Die Linke](/organizations/die-linke) on 6.5 percent. Of 185,890 people entitled to vote, 130,436 cast ballots, a turnout of 70.2 percent.

On 22 September 2013 the returning officer recorded the CDU as the party of the elected constituency candidate, with 78,966 first votes (60.7 percent), up 11.2 points from 2009, and the SPD second on 23,684 votes (18.2 percent). The Greens received 8.3 percent, Die Linke 4.2 percent and the FDP 2.4 percent. Turnout was 72.1 percent among 184,370 eligible voters, and the CDU took 52.8 percent of second votes. The *Schwäbische Zeitung* identified Bareiß as that CDU candidate and described the 60.7 percent first-vote share as a personal record.

For 24 September 2017 the returning officer named Bareiß as the elected candidate on 45.0 percent and Stiliani Kirgiane-Efremidou of the SPD as runner-up on 14.4 percent. The final table gives the CDU 61,694 first votes, down 15.7 points from 2013; the Alternative for Germany (AfD) took 13.6 percent, the Greens 12.7 percent and the FDP 9.3 percent. Turnout was 76.0 percent of 183,588 eligible voters. SWR later called 45 percent his weakest first-vote result to that date.

On 26 September 2021 the CDU held the seat with 41,106 first votes (30.1 percent), 14.8 points lower than in 2017. The SPD was second with 24,970 votes (18.3 percent), ahead of the Greens on 16.9 percent, the FDP on 13.7 percent and the AfD on 11.4 percent. Turnout was 75.6 percent of 182,648 eligible voters. The *Südkurier* and SWR named Bareiß as the winner, Robin Mesarosch as the SPD candidate and Johannes F. Kretschmann, son of the state minister-president, as the Green candidate.

### The Zollernalb–Sigmaringen constituency

Constituency 295 does not follow district boundaries. For the 2025 election the Federal Returning Officer assigned it 21 municipalities in the Sigmaringen district, including Sigmaringen, Bad Saulgau, Mengen and Meßkirch, and 19 in the Zollernalbkreis, including Albstadt, Balingen, Haigerloch and Meßstetten. Other municipalities of the Sigmaringen district lie in constituency 293, and those of the Zollernalbkreis in constituency 290.

On 31 December 2023 the constituency contained 40 municipalities, covered 1,656.3 square kilometres and had 254,300 inhabitants, or 153.5 people per square kilometre. Vegetation and water made up 87.8 percent of the area. SWR has reported that the direct mandate in Zollernalb–Sigmaringen has gone to the CDU at every Bundestag election since the founding of the Federal Republic. Published results use the number 295 for 2005, 2009, 2013, 2017, 2021 and 2025.

### The 2025 federal election

The election to the 21st Bundestag was held on 23 February 2025. In the final result for constituency 295, Bareiß (CDU) was elected with 54,656 first votes (37.1 percent), 7.0 points above the CDU share in 2021. Lukas Bruno von Berg of the AfD was runner-up with 38,498 votes (26.2 percent), a gain of 14.8 points, and the SPD received 28,895 first votes (19.6 percent). SWR identified the SPD candidate as Robin Mesarosch, who had also been the party's constituency candidate in 2021 and had entered the Bundestag on the state list. The Greens fell to 5.3 percent (down 11.6 points) and the FDP to 4.2 percent (down 9.5 points). Turnout rose to 82.3 percent, with 148,788 of 180,742 eligible voters casting ballots.

Second votes tracked the CDU and AfD first-vote shares, at 36.5 percent (54,044) and 26.2 percent (38,796). The SPD list took 11.0 percent (16,344), well below its constituency vote, and the BSW, with no constituency candidate, took 4.2 percent of second votes.

## Parliamentary work, 2005–2018

### Committees and the CDU/CSU group

Thomas Bareiß entered the Bundestag in 2005 as a directly elected member of the Christian Democratic Union for Zollernalb–Sigmaringen in Baden-Württemberg. In the 16th legislative term a membership list of the Committee on the Affairs of the European Union, archived from September 2008, names him as a full member for the CDU/CSU, and by May 2009 he was also a full member of the Committee on Labour and Social Affairs. The biography kept for the 18th term records that from 2005 he was a deputy chairman of the group's Baden-Württemberg *Landesgruppe*.

After the 2009 election he moved to the Committee on Economic Affairs and Technology. A 17th-term membership list preserved in a January 2014 snapshot names him a full member, with Veronika Bellmann as substitute. From 2009 he was an assessor (*Beisitzer*) on the CDU/CSU group's executive. The Bundestag's current biography, drawn from his own disclosures, dates his service as the group's energy-policy coordinator to 2010–2014 and as its energy-policy commissioner (*Beauftragter für Energiepolitik*) to 2014–2018; the 18th-term biography, updated in 2017, gives the coordinator post as 2010–2013 and the commissioner post from 2014. In the 18th Bundestag (2013–2017) he was an ordinary member of the Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy and a substitute on the Committee on the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety.

### Energy-policy coordination

As coordinator he spoke for the Union on the Energiewende after the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. On 10 May 2011 he told Deutschlandfunk that nuclear power still supplied about 25 percent of German electricity and would have to be replaced by renewables and by new gas- and coal-fired plants. Naming an exit year before storage and grids were settled, he said, would be *zu unseriös* ("too unserious"); an earlier exit would forgo revenue the 2010 lifetime extension had been meant to raise, and power would become more expensive. He still expected nuclear generation in 2020 and said the changeover had to stay economically workable. Angela Merkel's coalition nevertheless fixed an end date: on 30 June 2011 the Bundestag passed the thirteenth amendment to the Atomic Energy Act, ending commercial nuclear generation by the end of 2022, by 513 votes to 79 with eight abstentions, and Bareiß voted yes. In September 2013 he wrote that Fukushima had changed his view and that, as coordinator, he had since pressed renewables, storage and grids.

On the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) he argued for cost control and expansion matched to the grid. In the first reading on 8 May 2014 he said renewables supplied 24 percent of electricity, that household prices were about 28 cents per kilowatt-hour and industrial prices above 10 cents, and that Eurostat ranked German industrial power behind only Cyprus and Italy—an assertion Oliver Krischer of Alliance 90/The Greens interrupted as a *Märchen* ("fairy tale"). Bareiß said build-out, including photovoltaics, had to be slowed in places, that the EEG should become a market instrument rather than a market-introduction tool, and that security of supply and affordability should rank with climate protection. The draft, he said, would set a binding expansion path with both a floor and a ceiling. On 27 June 2014 the Bundestag adopted the reform, 454 to 123 with six abstentions, with capacity corridors and measures meant to slow the EEG surcharge. Krischer called the bill an *Abbruchveranstaltung für die Erneuerbaren* ("a demolition event for renewables"); Eva Bulling-Schröter of the Left called the day a "black Friday for renewables".

On natural gas, answering a constituent in July 2012 who wanted hydraulic fracturing banned, he wrote that flexible, lower-carbon gas plants were growing more important as wind and solar expanded and nuclear capacity fell. He put domestic production at about 14 percent of supply, Russia at about a third and Norway at about a quarter, and treated unconventional deposits as a way to limit imports. A general fracking ban, he wrote, was not justified, citing about 40 years of use in Lower Saxony, while saying concern about drinking water had to be taken seriously. Disclosures for the 18th term list an honorary seat on the advisory board of Zukunft ERDGAS, honorary membership of the council of Agora Energiewende, and a seat on the advisory board of the Federal Network Agency.

## Parliamentary State Secretary

### Appointment and portfolio

On 14 March 2018 Thomas Bareiß received his certificate of appointment as Parliamentary State Secretary from Economics Minister Peter Altmaier at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. The *Schwäbische Zeitung* reported that he would cover energy policy and economic innovation and represent the minister toward the Bundestag, the Bundesrat and the parliamentary groups. In the ministry statement he said that after 52 years the ministry was “finally” back in CDU hands.

The extra commissions did not start with that appointment. At Schloss Meseberg on 11 April 2018 the cabinet named him Federal Government Commissioner for Tourism, a post Angela Merkel had promised at the ITB opening, to coordinate policy and represent the government. On 1 April 2020, early in the [COVID-19 pandemic](/drivers/covid-19-pandemic), it made him Commissioner for the Mittelstand, the small and medium-sized enterprise sector, succeeding [Christian Hirte](/people/christian-hirte), who had resigned after remarks on [Thomas Kemmerich](/people/thomas-kemmerich)’s election as Thuringia’s minister-president. In September 2018 the federation and KfW also named him chair of the supervisory board of the Deutsche Energie-Agentur (dena), succeeding Iris Gleicke; Oliver Krischer took the chair when a new term began on 16 March 2022.

The Bundestag biography records the state secretaryship as March 2018 to 2021. It ended when [Olaf Scholz](/people/mig-olaf-scholz) was elected chancellor and the new cabinet was sworn in on 8 December 2021. On 5 January 2022 the next cabinet named [Michael Kellner](/people/michael-kellner) Mittelstand commissioner and Claudia Müller coordinator for the maritime economy and tourism, absorbing the tourism brief into that post.

### Energy policy under the fourth Merkel cabinet

In May 2018 Bareiß told *neue energie* that only a fraction of about 7,700 kilometres of decided power lines had been built, while renewables were ahead of plan—a gap he called a wake-up call for the federal government, the states and the municipalities.

Underground cables on major routes cost more, he said, but won acceptance and avoided long court cases; a project would “stand or fall on the ground, not in a smart office in Berlin.” At the *ZEIT* conference that September he tied the Energiewende to building grids in step with renewables, and to closing fossil plant only once supply from renewables inside Germany was secure, rather than improving the carbon accounts “at the expense of other European countries.” [Julia Verlinden](/people/julia-verlinden) of Alliance 90/The Greens called the ministry inactive and said studies showed the 2020 climate targets were still reachable by throttling old stations.

In July 2019 he told *taz* that climate protection had to stay affordable and not come “at the expense of the individual,” and he defended a tweet, which the interviewer said had been poorly received, that young protesters would “come to their senses” once they earned their own money. Emissions had fallen 4.5 percent, he said, renewable power was ahead of plan and coal would be left within about 20 years, but the 40 percent cut set for 2020 would be missed because nuclear lifetimes had been shortened after Fukushima. A carbon price was “in principle” sound and the EU Emissions Trading System a good tool for power; a transport levy at the €180 to €250 a tonne he said was needed to change behaviour, about 40 cents a litre, he rejected.

That May he told Anadolu Agency that ending nuclear power by 2022 and coal by 2038 would remove about half of electricity supply, and that “natural gas is a good option” because wind and solar are intermittent. A price then near €25 a tonne could favour gas over lignite, with new gas plants first and hydrogen and synthetic gases later. A Danish reroute would delay Nord Stream 2 but not stop it, he said, and Germany still backed transit through Ukraine.

### Tourism, the Mittelstand and COVID-19

On 30 April 2020, after the travel warning was extended to 14 June, Bareiß told Deutschlandfunk that hotels, restaurants, leisure parks and coach firms, in a sector of more than three million workers, had been hit first and would recover slowly. He advised families to concentrate on Germany that summer rather than Spain, Turkey or Greece while flights were cancelled, and tied reopening to masks, distancing and common rules with neighbouring countries.

As he was about to become Mittelstand commissioner he told *Handelsblatt* that rescue schemes alone would not suffice and that a liquidity crisis must not become a debt crisis, suggesting direct payments, tax relief and a later “fitness programme” on tax, red tape and energy costs.

On 4 November 2020 he told the Bundestag tourism committee that November lockdown losses should be compensated from the last week of the month. The “November aid,” about €10 billion and 75 percent of the comparable 2019 turnover, was in his words a “strong commitment,” covering closed hotels and restaurants and firms that regularly earned at least 80 percent of turnover from them. He told the *Schwäbische Zeitung* that advances of €5,000 or €10,000 should go out that month because many firms were running out of cash, and that letting restaurants, hotels and venues fail would be “much, much” more expensive.

On 21 November 2021, after Austria announced a vaccination mandate, he said a general requirement would sooner or later be unavoidable. It was no longer responsible, he said, that retailers, restaurants, clubs and cultural venues had spent 20 months in a state-ordered crisis while others “took the freedom not to get vaccinated”; historic sums had saved many firms but could not do so indefinitely.

## Opposition, transport and the 21st Bundestag

### Transport-policy spokesperson

After the 2021 federal election the CDU/CSU was in opposition, and in the 20th Bundestag Thomas Bareiß was the group's transport-policy spokesperson. That line in the Bundestag biography rests on his own information; Abgeordnetenwatch, drawing on parliamentary data, lists him for 2021–2025 as the CDU/CSU *Obmann* on the Transport Committee, and reporting of the 2025 coalition talks described the previous four years the same way.

In that role he carried the opposition's criticism of Deutsche Bahn. On 20 June 2023 the CDU/CSU introduced "Schiene in die Zukunft führen – Deutsche Bahn AG neu aufstellen" (printed paper 20/7350), which called unpunctuality routine and asked for infrastructure—DB Netz, stations and DB Energie—to be split from train operations and placed in a federally owned company under ministerial instruction. The Bundestag rejected the motion on 21 March 2024 with the votes of the then governing SPD, Greens and FDP; Bareiß was among those listed for the debate.

Before the 2025 talks he treated rail and road as complementary. In a statement reported by the *Schwäbische Zeitung* he said mobility should stay affordable, rejected what he called a "policy against the car", and called for more local public transport, cycle paths and roads, faster planning and construction, and a rapid improvement in rail quality and services.

### Committees and parliamentary groups after 2021

In the 21st Bundestag the biography current in early November 2026 lists him as a deputy member of the Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy and as deputy chair of the German-Turkish Parliamentary Group, and the committee roll confirms the economic-affairs seat.

The Budget Committee, constituted on 21 May 2025, included him among its 14 CDU/CSU members. On 1 October 2026 he told the Deutsche Presse-Agentur that he was leaving it for another, then unnamed, task in the CDU/CSU group. A CDU/CSU proposal of 25 June 2025 had named him to the body under section 3 of the Federal Debt Management Act, the Bundesfinanzierungsgremium. On 14 October 2026 the group, in a proposal signed by its chair Thorsten Frei, nominated [Lukas Krieger](/people/lukas-krieger) as his successor there.

For as long as he was an ordinary Budget Committee member, the Bundestag's rule—that the deputies of its Subcommittee on European Union Questions are those ordinary members—made him a deputy of the subcommittee rather than one of its ordinary members. He is not among the ordinary members of the Audit Committee, whose members are drawn from Budget Committee members and deputies. On 18 September 2025 the Bundestag adopted printed paper 21/1651 and elected him a full member of the advisory board of the Federal Network Agency, with [Tilman Kuban](/people/tilman-kuban) as alternate; Alliance 90/The Greens and [The Left](/organizations/the-left-slovenia) abstained.

### Coalition talks and the Nord Stream remarks

[Friedrich Merz](/people/friedrich-merz) put Bareiß on the CDU/CSU side of the working group on transport, infrastructure, building and housing in the coalition talks with the [Social Democratic Party of Germany](/organizations/social-democratic-party-of-germany). The CDU's roster lists him in that group, chaired for the party by [Ina Scharrenbach](/people/ina-scharrenbach).

During the talks he wrote on LinkedIn about reports that bringing Nord Stream 2 into service could be part of a US–Russian arrangement to end the war in Ukraine, possibly with an American investor. If peace returned, relations normalised and embargoes were later lifted, he wrote, "of course gas can flow again", perhaps through a pipeline under US control, and he called that a market decision. The pipeline, meant to carry gas from Russia under the Baltic, never entered service: certification was stopped after the 2022 invasion, and one pipe was destroyed in the September 2022 attacks that also hit Nord Stream 1.

Alliance 90/The Greens demanded that he be dropped from the negotiations. [Andreas Audretsch](/people/andreas-audretsch) told *Der Spiegel* that Merz should exclude him; [Konstantin von Notz](/people/konstantin-von-notz) told the Deutsche Presse-Agentur that anyone who had speculated about Russian gas imports should be withdrawn from the talks at once. *Spiegel* also quoted another Union negotiator, the CDU's Jan Heinisch, as saying that once a just and secure peace existed, buying Russian gas would have to be discussable again. A CDU spokesperson said such speculation was individual opinion, not the position of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany, which remained that Germany and Europe had to become independent of Russian gas. Mecklenburg-Vorpommern's SPD minister-president, [Manuela Schwesig](/people/manuela-schwesig), said she thought nothing of reopening Nord Stream 2 and that suspending certification had been, and remained, right while the war continued.

## Foreign contacts and transparency

### Azerbaijan

In May 2021 LobbyControl reported that Thomas Bareiß, then a parliamentary state secretary at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy for the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), had earlier contacts with figures in what it called the Azerbaijan connection than his filings showed. Minutes of a 4 December 2007 meeting of the German-Azerbaijani Forum, which the group said it held, record Otto Hauser stating that a board of trustees had been filled and naming Bareiß with Bundestag members Andreas Schockenhoff, Axel Fischer and Eduard Lintner. That circle had travelled to Azerbaijan in August 2007; Fischer told LobbyControl that Hauser initiated the trip. Bareiß listed no trusteeship until 2013. He said the 2007 appearance was only as a guest and that formal admission came in 2013. In July 2021 LobbyControl said the forum confirmed the 2007 appointment was not formally completed, though the board had believed it had made one.

*taz* reported that Bareiß acknowledged a 2012 trip paid for by an Azerbaijani lobbying firm. LobbyControl identified the payer as Lintner's Gesellschaft zur Förderung der deutsch-aserbaidschanischen Beziehungen and wrote that investigations had found Lintner received about four million euros from Azerbaijan and passed some on, while prosecutors investigated him and Fischer. The accounts did not allege payments to Bareiß. He told LobbyControl he had not known of Lintner's role or of Azerbaijani financing, and LobbyControl also described meetings with SOCAR. *taz* reported a January 2019 visit to Baku, including a reception by President [Ilham Aliyev](/people/ilham-aliyev).

In April 2020, during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, Bareiß telephoned Löwenstein Medical about an Azerbaijani order for about 150 ventilators. *Der Spiegel* and *taz*, citing the Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland, reported that staff felt pressed to supply Baku ahead of German hospitals. The ministry confirmed the call, made after an Azerbaijani official asked about dates, but said Bareiß never demanded priority delivery, applied pressure or warned of foreign-policy damage. Löwenstein told *Spiegel* it had not been pressured. Bareiß said he took no benefit from medical goods or from arranging contacts and signed a declaration to that effect by the CDU and [Christian Social Union](/organizations/christian-social-union-in-bavaria) group. *taz* noted no suspicion that money had reached him.

### Advisory posts and disclosed activities

The archived Bundestag biography for the 19th term lists two honorary posts that both ended on 13 March 2018, when Bareiß entered government: trustee of Deutsch-Aserbaidschanisches Forum e.V., and advisory-board member of Zukunft ERDGAS e.V. (later Zukunft Gas), a natural-gas industry association. Under the members' code, such posts are to be notified within three months. In 2024 *taz* quoted him saying that, without natural gas, a reliable, affordable and climate-friendly supply was not conceivable over the medium or long term, and cited LobbyControl's view that the board gave the industry direct access to ministries and parties.

In December 2019 Abgeordnetenwatch, using freedom-of-information files, reported that in August 2018 Bareiß had officials draft a three-page note, dated 14 August, on surcharge relief for new combined-heat-and-power plants. Martin Pätzold, a CDU Bundestag member until 2017 and then at Baker Tilly, forwarded the request; their 6 September 2018 call is in the government's lobbying list, printed paper 19/8553. A Stadtwerke Bonn subsidiary was the original inquirer and later said the approach was unsolicited and unassigned; Baker Tilly would not discuss clients. Bareiß told the *Zollern-Alb-Kurier* he had given only generally available information and that calling it a favour among party friends was unfair.

### Criticism and responses

In September 2021 reporting concerned the Munich firm Varex and unpaid 1990s bills for medical equipment sent to Ukraine. *t-online*, citing a government answer to Green member Manuel Sarrazin and a *Spiegel* investigation, reported four 2020 meetings of Varex with Bareiß and state secretary Marco Wanderwitz, involvement by minister Peter Altmaier, and notice to Kyiv of a February 2020 delegation under CDU members [Christian von Stetten](/people/christian-von-stetten) and Joachim Pfeiffer. Varex, an intermediary for Siemens equipment, put the debt near 40 million euros and, with 12 percent annual interest, above one billion; its lawyer denied payments to Ukrainian politicians. *Spiegel* reported that a 1991 central-bank "guarantee" on the ministry file named no sum, contract or Varex, and that the file had been shelved more than a decade earlier over legal doubts. Bareiß told the *Schwäbische Zeitung* the claims were assumptions and insinuations, that earlier governments of different parties had handled the file, and that supporting German firms abroad was his job.

None of these reports said Bareiß was charged or convicted.

## 2026 road collision

### The crash and the investigation

On Sunday, 12 July 2026, two cars collided on the B27 between Hechingen and Balingen, in Thomas Bareiß's home region in Baden-Württemberg. Police said a 51-year-old man driving in the left-hand lane struck a car in the right-hand lane. His vehicle overturned and he was seriously injured; the other driver, aged 50, and two female passengers, aged 40 and 47, were also hurt. Police did not name the driver of the overturned car. SWR reported that firefighters freed him and that a rescue helicopter took him to a clinic.

Bareiß, the 51-year-old Christian Democratic Union (CDU) member of the Bundestag for Zollernalb–Sigmaringen, told the *Schwäbische Zeitung* that he did not remember the crash, only a firefighter pulling him from the car while he was upside down.

On 31 July the Hechingen public prosecutor's office opened an investigation on initial suspicion of negligent endangerment of road traffic (*fahrlässige Straßenverkehrsgefährdung*) and negligent bodily harm (*fahrlässige Körperverletzung*). A spokesman said the suspicion rested above all on a blood analysis: that Bareiß had caused the collision while not under the influence of alcohol but under the influence of a synthetic narcotic. Prosecutors did not name the substance. *Der Tagesspiegel*, citing the prosecution, reported that it fell under the Narcotics Act (*Betäubungsmittelgesetz*), was unrelated to a medicine, and had been present in a "relevant quantity". His driving licence was withdrawn. On 3 October SWR said the investigation was still open. Two days later a spokesman told the *Schwäbische Zeitung* there was nothing new to announce and that the public would be informed when the proceedings ended. No indictment or conviction had been reported by the end of October.

### Immunity, party reaction and parliamentary consequences

*Der Spiegel*, citing the Deutsche Presse-Agentur, reported on 31 July that Bareiß's immunity as a Bundestag member had already been lifted. SWR noted that prosecutors could not open the case until that procedure had been completed.

In early August, in a statement SWR said it had seen, Bareiß apologised for decisions he deeply regretted. He said he would cooperate fully with the prosecution and use the Bundestag's summer recess as a pause to attend to his health. He would also let his chairmanship of the CDU district of Württemberg-Hohenzollern rest and not stand for it again. The Junge Union in Zollernalb said respect for voters required him to give up the Bundestag mandate as well. On 25 September it called resignation "without alternative" (*alternativlos*) and described his return to parliamentary work as "ruthless egocentrism" (*gnadenlose Egozentrik*).

In early October Bareiß told dpa that he and CDU/CSU parliamentary group leader Thorsten Frei had decided he would leave the Bundestag Budget Committee—the seat he held in that legislative period—for another, still unnamed, task in the group. Representing the constituency, as he had since 2005, remained his priority, he said. The *Schwäbische Zeitung* wrote that he would sit on the back benches and that he had rejected calls to resign the mandate.

At the Zollernalb CDU district congress in Balingen-Erzingen on 30 October, which Bareiß did not attend, district chair Nicole Hoffmeister-Kraut—the state's minister for economic affairs, crafts and tourism, and a member of the Landtag of Baden-Württemberg—said that in her view he could not be the Zollernalb–Sigmaringen candidate at the next federal election, "for the known reasons", and asked him to explain how he meant to use the rest of the term. Paul Haigis, chairman of the Zollernalb Junge Union, again demanded that he resign the mandate at once. The paper reported that the CDU in Sigmaringen had instead tied any earlier departure to whether he was convicted.

## Personal life

### Family

Thomas Bareiß was born on 15 February 1975 in Albstadt-Ebingen. In the biography he supplies to the Bundestag, he states that he is Protestant (*evangelisch*) and married. He grew up in Meßstetten and lives with his wife in Balingen.

On 17 September 2016 he married the lawyer Andrea Verpoorten in a civil ceremony at Meßstetten, conducted by Mayor Frank Schroft for a small family circle. They said they hoped to marry in church the next year and that Balingen was their home. The *Schwäbische Zeitung* reported that an earlier marriage of his had ended in divorce. Verpoorten, born on 17 August 1973 in Cologne, sat for the Christian Democratic Union in the Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia for Cologne I from 9 June 2010 to 14 March 2012, and was CDU treasurer in North Rhine-Westphalia from 2012 to 2014. In August 2025 the couple were moving within Balingen after 16 years in a rented flat the landlord had reclaimed.

### Religious and civic affiliations

That biography also names him president of the Kuratorium of the Deutsche Orient-Stiftung, a member of the administrative board of the Johanniter-Schwesternschaft e.V., and chairman of the friends of Beuron Archabbey. Side-activity filings list these posts, and a board seat at the Nah- und Mittelost-Verein (NUMOV), as unpaid.

The Johanniter-Schwesternschaft is a Protestant community in Berlin of more than 700 women in nursing and health care, a branch of the Order of Saint John (Bailiwick of Brandenburg) within the Evangelisches Werk für Diakonie und Entwicklung. Filings record Bareiß as an honorary Verwaltungsrat member from the 2013–2017 Bundestag term (entry of 29 May 2017).

A general meeting reported on 19 October 2017 made him chairman of the archabbey’s friends’ association, succeeding Tanja Gönner, who had resigned for professional reasons. The association supports the Benedictine monastery at Beuron—monks moved in 1862 into the former Augustinian buildings in the Upper Danube valley—in building work and in spiritual and cultural projects. It still lists Bareiß, of Balingen, as chairman; a filing of 26 January 2018 records the role as unpaid.

The Deutsche Orient-Stiftung, whose statutes the Hamburg Senate approved on 8 May 1960, maintains the Deutsches Orient-Institut, founded that year by NUMOV for German relations with the Near and Middle East. The institute lists Bareiß as Kuratorium president. Filings show him as an unpaid trustee from 19 December 2022, unpaid president from 10 March 2023, and unpaid NUMOV board member from 25 September 2024. Regional reporting has separately examined his economic-policy contacts with Azerbaijan.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/thomas-bareiss