Thomas Erndl

Thomas Maximilian Erndl (born 22 July 1974 in Osterhofen) is a German electrical engineer and politician of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria. He has represented the Deggendorf constituency in Lower Bavaria in the Bundestag since 24 October 2017, serving in the 19th, 20th and 21st electoral terms. In May 2025 the CDU/CSU parliamentary group elected him its defence-policy spokesperson, the office the Bundestag records for him in the 21st electoral term.

The Bundestag biography, drawn from the member's own account, records a Realschule leaving certificate at Osterhofen, an apprenticeship as an energy-electronics technician, a Fachabitur at the Fachoberschule in Passau, and a diploma in electrical engineering with a specialisation in microelectronics from the Fachhochschule Regensburg. The same account states that he completed compulsory military service in the Bundeswehr, later served as a short-service soldier, and trained as a reserve officer with Mountain Armoured Reconnaissance Battalion 8 in Freyung. In 1996 he deployed as a reserve lieutenant with the first German contingent of the Implementation Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Before his mandate he worked in the automotive semiconductor industry; the statutory disclosure names NXP Semiconductors Germany GmbH in Munich, where he was a sales engineer, and records a right of return and protection against dismissal.

Erndl joined the CSU and its youth organisation, the Junge Union, in 1991. He has sat on the municipal council of Künzing since 2002 and on the Deggendorf district council since 2020. At the 2017 federal election the district returning officer recorded 52,167 first votes for him (44.06 percent), ahead of Rita Hagl-Kehl of the SPD (20,612 votes, 17.41 percent) and Katrin Ebner-Steiner of the Alternative for Germany (20,438 votes, 17.26 percent). Turnout in the constituency, then numbered 227, was 71.7 percent. In 2021 the Federal Returning Officer recorded 37.4 percent of first votes (47,267) for the CSU there, 6.7 points below 2017, on a turnout of 76.5 percent, and Erndl remained the constituency member. In the 2025 election, in the renumbered constituency 226, he won 43.3 percent (58,347 votes). Petra Katharina Weileder of the AfD placed second with 27.0 percent (36,406 votes), and turnout was 82.0 percent.

In the 19th electoral term he chaired the Bundestag subcommittee on foreign cultural and education policy. In the 20th term he was deputy chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee and of the Afghanistan inquiry committee, spokesperson of the CSU Landesgruppe on international politics and security, and, from that term, chair of the CSU's East Bavaria round. In the 21st term he is an ordinary member of the Defence Committee and of the subcommittee on crisis prevention, strategic foresight, stabilisation and peace promotion, and a substitute member of the Committee on Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid. He sits in the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and the Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly, is deputy leader of the German delegation to the interparliamentary conference on the European Union's common foreign, security and defence policy, and is deputy chair of the parliamentary group for Ukraine. He is Roman Catholic, married and the father of three children; local reporting identifies his home as Künzing. From 2019 until 22 May 2025 he was honorary deputy president of the Association of Reservists of the German Bundeswehr.

Early life and education

Schooling and apprenticeship

Thomas Maximilian Erndl was born on 22 July 1974 in Osterhofen, a town in the Deggendorf district of Lower Bavaria, Germany. The Bundestag biography, which the parliament notes is based on the member’s own information, records him as Roman Catholic. His home town is the neighbouring municipality of Künzing, a small community on the Danube. A 2020 interview profile described Künzing as that Heimatort and reported that the house he shares with his family stands on property where his grandfather had lived. In a June 2023 portrait in Das Parlament, Erndl said politics was not a regular topic in the parental home in Künzing, though his parents were interested and voted for the Christian Social Union, as was common in a conservative area. Friends in his youth, he said, talked politics, first about local subjects and later about wider ones. At 15 he was already reading newspapers; at 16, in 1991, he joined the Young Union, the youth organisation of the CSU and the Christian Democratic Union.

In 1990 he obtained the Realschulabschluss, Bavaria’s intermediate secondary-school certificate, at the Landgraf-Leuchtenberg-Realschule (LLR) in Osterhofen. The school is the state Realschule in the town; the Bavarian Realschulabschluss is awarded at the end of year 10 after centrally set examinations and is a standard route into a dual apprenticeship. From 1990 to 1993 he trained as an Energieelektroniker, an energy-electronics technician. Published accounts do not name the firm where the apprenticeship was served. In 1993–94 he attended the Fachoberschule in Passau and gained the Fachabitur, the vocational qualification (Fachhochschulreife) that admits students to a university of applied sciences. Fachoberschulen and Berufsoberschulen in Bavaria are the routes to that Fachabitur or to the general Abitur. These dates appear in the biography archived from the 19th Bundestag (2017–2021) and in a curriculum vitae issued in connection with the Reservists’ Association; the current Bundestag text gives the same schools without the years. The 2023 Das Parlament profile repeats the sequence of Realschule, apprenticeship and Fachoberschule, but it places the later degree at a Fachhochschule in Passau rather than in Regensburg.

University studies

Higher education began only after military service. The 19th-term biography places that service, as a fixed-term soldier and in reserve-officer training, in 1994–96, and the degree course immediately afterwards. From 1996 to 2002 Erndl studied electrical engineering with a specialisation in microelectronics at the Fachhochschule Regensburg. The Reservists’ Association curriculum vitae records the award as Diplom-Ingenieur (Dipl.-Ing.) in electrical engineering. The CSU Landesgruppe lists the occupation as Dipl.-Ingenieur (FH) Elektrotechnik / Mikroelektronik, the Fachhochschule form of the title. The current Bundestag entry describes him as an electrical engineer and states that the course, with the microelectronics concentration, was taken at the FH Regensburg. The same page notes that such biographical details are supplied by the member.

The Fachhochschule Regensburg was later renamed the Ostbayerische Technische Hochschule Regensburg. In the university’s 2013 annual report, its president, Wolfgang Baier, wrote that the Bavarian cabinet had accepted a joint application with the Hochschule Amberg-Weiden for the title Technische Hochschule, that science minister Wolfgang Heubisch had conveyed the decision on 19 March 2013, and that the title was presented at a ceremony on 12 April. The name could be used officially from 1 October 2013. Erndl’s course, finished in 2002, therefore belongs entirely to the Fachhochschule period. The 2020 profile noted that the electrical-engineering degree, and later work in the automotive industry, took him widely abroad, while Künzing remained the place to which he returned.

Military service

Conscription, reserve officer training and IFOR

Born in 1974, Thomas Erndl performed conscription service (Wehrdienst) in the Bundeswehr after his Fachabitur. His Bundestag biography, which is based on members' own statements, records compulsory service, then a fixed-term enlistment and reserve-officer training with Gebirgspanzeraufklärungsbataillon 8 in Freyung. The same biography states that in 1996 he deployed with the first German contingent of IFOR in Bosnia and Herzegovina as a Leutnant der Reserve. A curriculum vitae issued by the reservists' association in November 2019 dates the fixed-term service and officer training to 1994–1996, and states that courses missed because of the deployment were completed in 1997 and 1998 as reserve exercises at the infantry school in Hammelburg and the army officer school.

The NATO-led Implementation Force was deployed in December 1995 to implement the military provisions of the Dayton Agreement and numbered about 60,000 troops for one year. On 23 June 2023, in a Bundestag debate on the later European Union mission EUFOR Althea, Erndl said that at 21 he had been part of that force. He described ruined facades, what he recalled as countless bullet holes, and freshly raised graves in villages, and he called the deployment—apart from earlier medical missions abroad—the start of the Bundeswehr as an army used for peacekeeping and stabilization. He then began electrical-engineering studies.

Reservists' association

On 8 and 9 November 2019 the Verband der Reservisten der Deutschen Bundeswehr elected a new presidium in Bonn: Patrick Sensburg, then a CDU member of the Bundestag, as president, and Erndl and Pascal Kober as his deputies; the association put membership above 115,000 and paid staff at nearly 300. Erndl's mandatory disclosure lists the deputy presidency as honorary, in Bonn, until 22 May 2025.

Business Insider described the association's stated role as looking after reservists who are not assigned to an active post. The paper reported in August 2024 that a still-confidential Bundesrechnungshof review had called annual subsidies of about €25 million from the Federal Ministry of Defence a waste of taxpayers' money, because the benefit to the Bundeswehr was unclear and the work could be done more cheaply inside the armed forces. According to that account, the auditors recommended phasing the grant out; a 2023 review by the Streitkräfteamt had reached a similar conclusion, while the ministry had justified the payments on political grounds and had kept funding civilian shooting sport that it said it did not want. A later report, based on a confidential 2024 budget plan, put personnel costs at €14.7 million for 232.5 posts and state support for the magazine loyal at €2.4 million; published 2022 accounts had shown €19.7 million in subsidies and more than €3.2 million in fees. The association, then led by Sensburg, rejected the criticism. In her 2024 report, Parliamentary Commissioner for the Armed Forces Eva Högl called the association's contribution indispensable, noted that further funding was under review because of the audit, and wrote that future support should match the Bundeswehr's need to strengthen the reserve after the Zeitenwende.

In March 2025 LobbyControl treated Erndl's two roles as a conflict of interest during coalition talks. He was deputy chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee and a negotiator on foreign and defence policy while remaining honorary deputy president of an association that campaigns for a return of conscription and a veterans' day and is paid from the defence budget the Bundestag approves. LobbyControl, citing the audit's finding of wasted tax money, questioned whether he could judge that funding independently and noted that his campaign positions matched the association's. He stated on his own website that he gave up the post when the CDU/CSU group made him its defence-policy spokesman.

Engineering career

Thomas Erndl's published occupation is Diplom-Ingenieur (FH) in electrical engineering, specializing in microelectronics. A November 2019 curriculum vitae on the website of the Association of Reservists of the German Armed Forces, issued while he was its deputy president, states that he took that degree at the Fachhochschule Regensburg—now the Ostbayerische Technische Hochschule Regensburg—between 1996 and 2002, and that from 2002 he worked in the semiconductor industry in several posts, some with global product responsibility. The CDU/CSU Bundestag group's profile still lists that degree as his occupation.

The Bundestag biography, which the parliament says rests on members' own statements, places the work in automotive technology and repeats the reference to several functions, partly with global product responsibility. In the 20th-period archive, his last post at a European technology group was responsibility for relations with a southern German automobile manufacturer; the 19th-period text said only "an automobile manufacturer" and named neither the firm nor any earlier employer.

The disclosures name the employer. For the 19th Bundestag (2017–2021) the pre-membership occupation is sales manager (Vertriebsmanager) at NXP Semiconductors Germany GmbH in Munich. From the 20th period the entry is sales engineer (Vertriebsingenieur) at the same company, with a right of return (Rückkehrrecht) and protection against dismissal (Kündigungsschutz). NXP describes its Munich site as covering research and development and sales, and its German operations as supplying semiconductors for markets that include automotive electronics. The filings do not name product lines or the manufacturer.

Section 45(1) no. 1 of the Members of the Bundestag Act (Abgeordnetengesetz) requires notice to the Bundestag President of the last occupation before the mandate and of any right of return afterward, or of dismissal protection under section 2(3). That subsection bars dismissal because of candidacy, acceptance or exercise of the mandate, otherwise allows termination only for good cause, and keeps the protection for one year after the mandate ends. The NXP line is published as "professional activity before membership," not as paid work beside the mandate. Abgeordnetenwatch's republication of the filings lists the sales-engineer entry, with the return right and dismissal protection, for the 2021–2025 and 2025–2029 terms and gives no income; it was entered on 18 July 2024 and last changed on 11 February 2026.

The 19th-period disclosures also list "Internet-Dienstleistungen" (internet services) under Dipl.-Ing. (FH) Thomas Erndl, Künzing, both before membership and as paid work alongside the mandate, without describing the services or stating a sum. That item is absent later. The 20th-period and current pages have no category for paid activities beside the mandate; Bundestag guidance publishes a category only when a notification exists. The current record therefore treats the NXP post as former employment with a declared right of return and dismissal protection, and it does not show a present paid private-sector sideline.

Party and local politics

Junge Union and the CSU

Erndl joined the Christian Social Union (CSU) and the Junge Union, the youth organization of the CSU and the Christian Democratic Union, in 1991. The CSU history archive lists him as chairman of the Junge Union branch Künzing-Forsthart from 1993 to 2009 and as deputy chairman of the Junge Union in the Deggendorf district from 2001 to 2009. The same register records him, from 2005, as chairman of the CSU local association Künzing-Forsthart and as leader of the CSU group on the Künzing municipal council, and from 2007 as a deputy chairman of the CSU district association. In the 2026 municipal campaign the local chairman was mayor Siegfried Lobmeier, while Erndl led the CSU list for the council and argued that holding seats at more than one level let local concerns be carried to Berlin.

At the CSU district assembly in Buchhofen on 17 May 2025, district administrator Bernd Sibler was confirmed as district chairman with 97.9 percent of the vote. Erndl was elected one of five deputy chairmen, with Mathias Berger, Sabrina Edmeier, Stefan Stieglbauer and Renate Wasmeier, and was also elected a delegate to the CSU party congress and to the Bezirk party congress.

Since the 20th electoral term he has chaired the CSU-Ostbayernrunde, an informal group of CSU members of the Bundestag from eastern Bavaria.

Thomas Erndl (left) and Karl Holmeier at the October 2021 handover of the chair of the CSU Ostbayernrunde in Berlin.

On the morning of 26 October 2021, an hour before the constitutive sitting of the 20th Bundestag, ten CSU members from the Upper Palatinate, Lower Bavaria and the Altötting constituency met in Berlin and chose Erndl to succeed Karl Holmeier, who had chaired the round for eight years and was leaving parliament. The Ostbayern-Kurier reported that election as unanimous. Holmeier said the round had, for about forty years, pressed the region's case in the Bundestag on matters such as power lines, roads and regional economic support. Erndl named small and medium-sized firms, agriculture, tourism, and digital and transport infrastructure as priorities, and said a possible coalition of the Social Democratic Party, the Greens and the Free Democrats would give less weight to rural eastern Bavaria.

Municipal and district offices

Erndl has sat on the municipal council of Künzing since 2002 and on the district council of Deggendorf since 2020. In the Bundestag's register of members' interests both seats are listed as unpaid.

At the district election of 15 March 2020 the CSU received 1,165,711 valid votes and 25 of the 60 seats. Erndl, then already a member of the Bundestag, received 37,386 personal votes and was fourth among the CSU candidates elected.

Both mandates were renewed on 8 March 2026. In Künzing there was no mayoral ballot, because Siegfried Lobmeier had been confirmed in 2024; the CSU took 8,013 votes, 29.6 percent, and five council seats, two fewer than it had held. The municipal website lists a council of 16: five CSU members, including Erndl, four for the SPD, three for the Freie Wähler Gemeinschaft, two for the Alternative for Germany and two for a separate Junge Union list. The AfD was standing in Künzing for the first time and received 2,626 votes, 9.7 percent. In the district election the same day the CSU received 1,106,122 valid votes and 21 seats, four fewer than in 2020; Erndl's 37,082 personal votes were the third-highest total on the CSU list.

At the new council's constitutive meeting on the evening of 11 May 2026, after the election of the second and third mayors, Erndl accused the SPD and the Freie Wähler of having at least tolerated AfD votes in the choice of second mayor, and called that a "scandal and a disgrace." Both groups rejected the accusation sharply. In a further statement he said the SPD councillors had "betrayed everything" the party ought to stand for, that the four of them could no longer represent the SPD, and that Bernhard Feuerecker was no longer acceptable as the SPD's group leader on the district council; he asked the SPD's district and state executives to draw consequences.

Bundestag elections

2017 succession to Bartholomäus Kalb

Bartholomäus Kalb of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU) held the direct mandate in Deggendorf from 1987, winning that year and seven times afterward, each time with well above half of the first votes. In 2016 he told the Deggendorfer Zeitung that he would not stand again, saying a generational change was needed; he was about to turn 68, and the Bundestag described the seat as running from the Danube valley to the border with the Czech Republic.

On 23 July 2016 about 160 CSU delegates from the district of Deggendorf, Freyung-Grafenau and part of the district of Passau met at the Gasthaus Kerber in Fürstenstein, with Landrat Christian Bernreiter in the chair. The candidates were Thomas Erndl, then 42, an electrical engineer and CSU chairman in Künzing; Paul Linsmaier, 33, CSU group leader on Deggendorf city council and chair of the Young Union in Lower Bavaria; and Jürgen Roith, mayor of Winzer. The first ballot gave Erndl 60 votes, Linsmaier 56 and Roith 44; in the runoff Erndl beat Linsmaier by 96 to 63, with one invalid ballot.

At the federal election of 24 September 2017 the constituency was numbered 227. The Federal Returning Officer's final count gave the CSU 52,167 first votes, 44.1 percent, 17.3 percentage points below 2013, on a turnout of 71.7 percent among 166,659 eligible voters. Erndl was the CSU candidate. Rita Hagl-Kehl of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) was second with 20,612 votes (17.4 percent), and Katrin Ebner-Steiner of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) took 20,438 (17.3 percent). The Free Voters of Bavaria received 5.5 percent, Alliance 90/The Greens 4.5 percent, Die Linke 4.2 percent, the Free Democratic Party 4.0 percent and the Bavaria Party 3.0 percent. Second votes were 40.6 percent for the CSU, 19.2 percent for the AfD and 14.2 percent for the SPD. The Bundestag elected that day held its first sitting on 24 October 2017.

2021 and 2025 results

On 26 September 2021 Erndl again won constituency 227, with 47,267 first votes (37.4 percent), 6.7 points below 2017, and turnout of 76.5 percent among 166,186 eligible voters. The runner-up was the Free Voters on 19,718 votes (15.6 percent); their candidate was Martin Werner Behringer, mayor of Thurmansbang. Hagl-Kehl, then a parliamentary state secretary, was third on 19,527 (15.4 percent), and the AfD candidate, the physician Hans Fellner, took 17,432 (13.8 percent). The Greens had 5.4 percent, the FDP 5.0 percent, the Bavaria Party 2.1 percent, and Die Linke and dieBasis 1.5 percent each. Second votes put the CSU at 33.3 percent, the SPD at 15.7 percent, the Free Voters at 14.4 percent and the AfD at 14.1 percent.

The election of 23 February 2025 used the same territory, renumbered 226. The final official table names Thomas Maximilian Erndl (CSU) as elected with 58,347 first votes, 43.3 percent (up 5.9 points), and Petra Katharina Weileder (AfD) as runner-up with 36,406, 27.0 percent (up 13.2 points). Turnout was 82.0 percent of 165,283 eligible voters. Behind them, the district returning officer lists Hagl-Kehl (SPD) on 12,156 votes (9.0 percent), Florian Mies (Free Voters) on 11,370 (8.4 percent), Sebastian Damm (Greens) on 6,354 (4.7 percent) and Muhanad Al-Halak (FDP) on 5,188 (3.8 percent). Second votes were 38.4 percent for the CSU and 29.3 percent for the AfD, up 15.1 points, then the SPD on 8.1 percent, the Free Voters on 7.8, the Greens on 5.1 and the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht on 3.0.

The AfD's first-vote share in the seat fell from 17.3 percent in 2017 to 13.8 percent in 2021 before rising to 27.0 percent in 2025. On provisional figures, the Münchner Merkur reported that no constituency in western Germany gave the AfD a higher second-vote share than Deggendorf, then put at 29.2 percent, ahead of Schwandorf (28.2) and Straubing (27.7); nationally those results ranked only in the forties, with Görlitz at 46.7 percent.

The Deggendorf constituency

In 2017, 2021 and 2025 the seat comprised all of the districts of Deggendorf and Freyung-Grafenau and, from Passau, the municipalities of Aicha vorm Wald, Eging am See, Fürstenstein and Hofkirchen. Only the number changed, from 227 to 226.

At 31 December 2023 the 2025 boundaries contained 55 municipalities, 1,941.0 square kilometres and 213,400 inhabitants (110 per square kilometre); at the end of 2022, vegetation and water covered 88.6 percent of the land. Manufacturing accounted for 41.5 percent of social-insurance employment in mid-2023, and the unemployment rate at the end of November 2024 was 3.2 percent.

Grafenau, in the Bavarian Forest, lies inside the seat, which runs from the Danube valley to the Czech border. The Bavarian Forest National Park, founded in 1970, lies in eastern Lower Bavaria on that border. In the June 2013 flood the Federal Institute of Hydrology recorded major dike breaches on the Danube at Deggendorf and on the lower Isar at the Schwaig-Isar sluice. The 69-kilometre Danube stretch from Straubing to Vilshofen, which passes the seat, had been disputed for years; on 27 February 2013 the Bavarian cabinet chose a "gentle" improvement, with river works on 54 kilometres under variant A and the reach between the Isar mouth and the Mühlhamer Schleife left aside.

Foreign affairs in the Bundestag

Foreign Affairs Committee and cultural policy

Erndl entered the Bundestag in 2017 as a full member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs. On 17 May 2018 its subcommittee on foreign cultural and education policy was constituted. The Alternative for Germany, which claimed the chair under the usual allocation, nominated Petr Bystron. At the request of Die Linke member Diether Dehm the vote was secret: one in favour, seven against and one abstention. The chair was left vacant and referred toward the Bundestag president and the Council of Elders. The subcommittee elected Erndl, of the Christian Social Union (CSU), deputy chair; the Bundestag biography, drawn from members' own information, lists him as its head for that term. From 16 to 20 September 2019 he led a cross-party delegation to Brazil to judge whether cultural cuts under President Jair Bolsonaro were affecting German intermediary organisations, and to discuss a German-French cultural institute planned for Rio de Janeiro.

In the 20th term the committee was constituted on 15 December 2021, when Michael Roth of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) was elected chair. Erndl sat for the CDU/CSU on the 46-member committee, whose other seats were held by the SPD, Alliance 90/The Greens, the Free Democratic Party, the AfD and Die Linke. The deputy chair was the first item on 12 January 2022, and the Bundestag's 2023 guide to the committee names Erndl in that post beside Roth. The committee generally meets in private and leads when the Bundestag authorises Bundeswehr missions abroad.

Afghanistan inquiry

On 8 July 2022 the Bundestag set up the first committee of inquiry of the 20th term. The governing parties and the CDU/CSU supported the motion; the AfD voted against and Die Linke abstained. The mandate ran from the Doha agreement of 29 February 2020, between the United States under President Donald Trump and the Taliban, to 30 September 2021. It was to establish what federal authorities knew and decided about the withdrawal, the evacuation from Afghanistan of embassy staff, German nationals and local employees, and any German say in the American pull-out. Ralf Stegner (SPD) chaired and Erndl was deputy chair. The committee had twelve full members; Die Linke left after it lost its status as a parliamentary group.

The committee heard 111 witnesses, including former chancellor Angela Merkel, and on 18 February 2025 Stegner gave Vice President Aydan Özoğuz a report of more than 1,400 pages (1,410 in the taz account). It records the evidence, including 6,843 files, and then each group's assessment rather than one verdict.

The SPD, CDU/CSU, Greens and FDP largely agreed. The United States had negotiated Doha alone, and an unconditional withdrawal date had, in the SPD's words, made the Taliban a "government in waiting". Later attempts by Merkel and the Foreign Office to add conditions failed and delayed crisis planning. The Bundeswehr's departure was described as orderly; cooperation in Berlin was not, because there was no single situation picture. The SPD blamed the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) for missing how fast events moved. The CDU/CSU and FDP said the BND had foreseen the direction and that the SPD-led Foreign Office then carried more of the picture. The Greens wrote that political leaders had taken "shockingly" too little interest. On local staff, the Greens spoke of "organised irresponsibility", the SPD said evacuation had never been planned, the CDU/CSU conceded that the Union-led interior ministry became pragmatic only once crisis required it, and the FDP said the decision came "far too late". The FDP and CDU/CSU proposed a national security council; the SPD a joint situation centre.

On 30 January 2025 Erndl told the Bundestag, as deputy chair and then "as a member of the Union group", that the Foreign Office had been "the central switching point of Afghanistan policy" and the BND only "one source among several". He called Doha "the original fault", while saying it was too simple to blame only the Americans, who had borne the main burden. Wishful thinking and events on the ground had "drifted apart". The BND, made the scapegoat for 15 August, had "predicted the development correctly: with probabilities and with tipping points". On 18 February he said the agreement "sealed the Taliban's seizure of power; everything else was wishful thinking". He treated as justified the caution of interior minister Horst Seehofer about admitting local staff faster, and described the BND as rehabilitated overall. Stegner said the ministries had preferred bureaucracy to humanity, "as in a land registry". taz reported that deportations to Afghanistan were stopped only on 11 August 2021, four days before Kabul fell, while Seehofer's ministry sought to limit arrivals before the federal election.

Criticism was not confined to one party or to the government of the day. FDP member Ann-Veruschka Jurisch pointed to a 6 August 2021 cable from ambassador Emily Haber, read in the defence ministry only on 9 August, and said: "The world does not stop at the weekend." The FDP and the AfD both accused Merkel and foreign minister Heiko Maas of wishful thinking. Green member Sara Nanni called the failure one of "political attention", not of committees. The AfD wrote that the others had shown no "real will to investigate the fiasco on the Hindu Kush" and called the local-staff scheme a "migration measure". Stefan Keuter accused Merkel and Maas of lying and said Stegner had turned the inquiry into "a witness-protection programme"; the other groups rejected the charge.

CSU spokesperson on international politics

On the evening of 27 January 2022 the CSU Landesgruppe, the party's group in the CDU/CSU caucus, elected Erndl its spokesperson for international affairs and security (Internationales und Sicherheit). The Bundestag biography for the 20th term pairs that brief with the two deputy chairmanships. In the 30 January debate he used that brief for the Union line on the Foreign Office and on a national security council. The post ended with the term. From the 21st Bundestag the same biography lists him as defence-policy spokesperson of the CDU/CSU group as a whole.

Defense policy

Spokesperson and the Defence Committee

On 14 May 2025 the regional newspaper idowa reported that the CDU/CSU group in the Bundestag had elected Thomas Erndl, of the Christian Social Union, as its defence-policy spokesperson. The Bundestag biography lists that role for the 21st electoral term, with ordinary membership of the Defence Committee and of the subcommittee on crisis prevention, strategic foresight, stabilization and peace promotion. His first speech in the spokesperson role, the same day, was in the debate on Chancellor Friedrich Merz's government statement on defence.

He had been unpaid deputy president of the Association of Reservists of the German Bundeswehr from 2019 until 22 May 2025, the end date in his side-activity disclosure. On 26 March 2025, during coalition talks, LobbyControl named him among Union negotiators it said were too close to defence interests: he was then deputy president of a reservist association that calls for conscription to return and receives a double-digit million-euro sum each year from the defence budget. Business Insider had reported in 2024 that a confidential Bundesrechnungshof paper urged Defence Minister Boris Pistorius to end subsidies of about €25 million a year, which the auditors treated as uneconomic. After the election the association said a by-election was required because Erndl had resigned: the new post took considerable time, and he wanted to forestall possible conflicts of interest.

Bundeswehr personnel, conscription and the reserve

The coalition's service bill was meant to enlarge the Bundeswehr after Russia's attack on Ukraine. Conscription had been suspended in 2011. Active strength was about 183,000, against a target near 260,000 and a larger reserve. Pistorius's draft kept service voluntary, with a binding questionnaire and a return of medical examinations for young men; the Union and the SPD disagreed on how binding that voluntarism should be. Norbert Röttgen, backing a draw if too few men volunteered, said the draft had not answered how to choose fairly among several hundred thousand men. In the first reading, Alliance 90/The Greens called the process a mess, Die Linke deputy Desiree Becker said the government was stirring fear among young people, and Alternative for Germany politician Rüdiger Lucassen called a lottery the "peak of injustice".

In early November, with the bill delayed, Erndl told Bild that the coalition needed "no symbolic debates about mustering, but an army with full equipment", and that it was negligent to talk of a state of tension or defence "when there is zero materiel for a buildup". Mustering was "no ideological question", he said, but deterrence came from personnel and equipment rather than "filing examination forms", and he wanted a steeper growth path, working weapons on time, and more training capacity.

Union and SPD leaders, including group chairs Jens Spahn and Matthias Miersch with Pistorius, then agreed that service would stay voluntary at first, that every 18-year-old would receive a questionnaire mandatory for men, and that mustering of men born on or after 1 January 2008 would be compulsory and widened as capacity allowed. A binding growth path would be written into law, and the Bundestag could later legislate a "needs-based conscription" if security or personnel required it; a draw was only a last resort if a cohort exceeded demand, with no automatic return of conscription. Spahn spoke of "more bindingness within voluntarism"; Miersch said voluntarism still had priority.

On 5 December 2025 the Bundestag passed the Wehrdienstmodernisierungsgesetz by 323 votes to 272, with one abstention; Bundesrat consent was set for 19 December, and the law was to apply from January 2026. The stated aim was 255,000 to 270,000 active soldiers by 2035, from a little over 184,000 at the end of October, plus 200,000 reservists. Erndl called the professional army part of a "defensible society" and the bill voluntary service rather than conscription, dismissing a lottery "into the trenches" as "the cheapest polemic" and "in the end a lie". Pistorius called the law a decisive step and said that if volunteers were not enough "we will not get around a partial conscription". Green politician Sara Nanni said it did not answer total defence or include all generations and genders; Becker said young people had other plans than "holding their heads for the capital of the rich in Merz's regiment".

Equipment, spending and support for Ukraine

In the 9 July 2025 first reading, the 2025 draft put defence spending at about €86.49 billion: €62.43 billion in the core budget and €24.06 billion from the Bundeswehr special fund. Erndl called the arms industry and medium-sized firms an "integral component" of Germany's ability to defend itself, cited drone shortfalls shown by the war in Ukraine, and welcomed money for 10,000 extra military posts. Lucassen answered that only conscription would close the personnel gap, that more money was not enough, and that his party backed national rearmament but not arming other states.

On 26 November 2025 Erndl said the 2026 draft put €108 billion, 2.5 percent of gross domestic product, into deterrence: €48 billion for procurement, €7.5 billion to maintain equipment, €9.5 billion for ammunition and €1.6 billion for research and testing, plus €11.3 billion for barracks and almost €25 billion for personnel. He described Vladimir Putin's Russia as waging war in Europe and committing "the most brutal war crimes" in Ukraine daily, credited the March exemption of defence spending from the debt brake, and dismissed some AfD and Left talk of a "lottery and the Ukraine front" as reckless.

In a May 2021 Spiegel interview, before the full-scale invasion, he said weapons deliveries "must not be a taboo" and that Ukraine's navy and air defence were inadequate, while adding that the crisis could be solved only politically, from strength. On 6 December 2024, on a Free Democratic Party motion to supply Taurus KEPD 350 cruise missiles, he called Chancellor Olaf Scholz "no chancellor of peace" but "a chancellor of fear" and "in the end a security risk for Germany". Scholz had refused the missile, range about 500 kilometres, since May 2023; SPD deputy Ralf Stegner said his group would not supply weapons reaching deep into Russian territory or requiring German soldiers for targeting, as with Taurus. AfD deputy Stefan Keuter said the war was "not our war", and Die Linke's Gregor Gysi called a Ukrainian military victory a "consequential illusion" and urged ceasefire talks with Putin.

International parliamentary work

In the 21st Bundestag, Thomas Erndl is an ordinary member of the German delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, an ordinary member of the Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly, deputy head of the delegation to the Interparliamentary Conference on the Common Foreign and Security Policy and the Common Security and Defence Policy, deputy chair of the German–Ukrainian parliamentary group, and a substitute member of the Committee on Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid.

NATO Parliamentary Assembly

Founded in 1955 and institutionally separate from NATO, the Assembly brings together about 280 parliamentarians from the Alliance’s 32 member states for debate, hearings and parliamentary diplomacy. It does not direct NATO; its work is meant to inform national parliaments and support oversight of Euro-Atlantic security. Germany has 18 seats, 12 filled by the Bundestag and six by the Bundesrat. In the 21st term the Bundestag delegation is led by Marja-Liisa Völlers of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, with Jürgen Hardt of the CDU/CSU as deputy. Erndl is an ordinary member and has been listed by the Assembly since 2022 on the Defence and Security Committee and the Political Committee, and on the sub-committees coded DSC/FC, DSC/TC, PC/NP and PC/TR.

The delegation’s report on the 71st annual session, in Ljubljana, Slovenia, from 10 to 13 October 2025, names him among the Bundestag members present. The agenda covered the war in Ukraine, the Hague summit decisions, democratic resilience against foreign interference, the transatlantic economic partnership and uncrewed warfare; the United States delegation was absent because of a federal funding lapse. Resolutions adopted included one urging allies to treat foreign interference as a strategic threat. He also attended the spring session in Vilnius, Lithuania, from 29 May to 1 June 2026, centred on long-term support for Ukraine, deterrence, burden-sharing, critical infrastructure, the European role in NATO and security in the Baltic and North Seas. With members of the Standing Committee, the German delegation visited Panzerbrigade 45 at Pabradė. The Assembly adopted a declaration calling for a stronger European contribution within NATO and continued support for Ukraine. Neither report attributes a separate speech or text to him.

Franco-German and CFSP/CSDP conferences

The Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly has 50 members from the Bundestag and 50 from the French National Assembly. The parliamentary agreement of March 2019, prepared after a joint resolution on the 55th anniversary of the Élysée Treaty, provides that it meet in public at least twice a year, generally alternating between Germany and France, under the speakers of the two chambers. It monitors the Élysée Treaty and the Treaty on Franco-German Cooperation and Integration of 22 January 2019, the Aachen Treaty; follows the Franco-German ministerial councils and the Franco-German Defence and Security Council; and takes up shared European questions, especially common foreign, security and defence policy, including proposals on convergence of German and French law. Erndl is an ordinary member. In the current term the plenary presidents are Julia Klöckner and Yaël Braun-Pivet, and Yannick Bury is the German co-chair of the bureau.

The Interparliamentary Conference on CFSP/CSDP was established in 2012 so that national parliaments and the European Parliament could exchange views on policies that remain intergovernmental. It has no decision-making power of its own. It has 184 seats and meets every six months in the country holding the presidency of the Council of the European Union; the Bundestag sends six members and six substitutes. In the 21st term Nancy Faeser leads the delegation and Erndl is both deputy head and an ordinary member. The other ordinary members are Roderich Kiesewetter (CDU/CSU), Gerold Otten (AfD), Sara Nanni (Alliance 90/The Greens) and Desiree Becker (The Left).

German–Ukrainian parliamentary group and other ties

On 30 June 2022 Ruslan Stefanchuk, Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada, received in Kyiv a German delegation led by Erndl, then deputy chairman of the Bundestag’s Committee on Foreign Affairs. Stefanchuk said parliament would address comments from the European Commission and the European Council and devote plenary time to European-integration bills. Erndl said Germany supported Ukraine’s aim of full European Union membership and was ready to offer expert assessment of the legislative changes required.

In the 21st term Erndl is deputy chair of the German–Ukrainian parliamentary group. The Bundestag’s bilateral and multilateral parliamentary groups—47 in this term, covering about 180 countries—are reconstituted after each election, draw members from across the House, and are used for continuing dialogue rather than for legislation. A faction that does not hold a group’s chair may name a deputy chair. Robin Wagener of Alliance 90/The Greens retained the chair of the Ukrainian group after the 2025 election.

In May 2021, under Libereco’s #WeStandBYyou campaign, Erndl took a symbolic godparenthood for Mikita Litvinenka, detained in Minsk on 13 September 2020 under Article 293 of the Belarusian Criminal Code. He demanded the immediate release of Litvinenka and of all political prisoners in Belarus. That sponsorship is separate from his later substitute membership of the Committee on Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid.

Personal life

Thomas Erndl was born on 22 July 1974 in Osterhofen, in Lower Bavaria. The biography published by the German Bundestag, which the parliament states rests on members' own information, records that he is Roman Catholic, married, and has three children; it does not name his spouse or his children. The biography of the Christian Social Union (CSU) Landesgruppe in the Bundestag gives the same family details. The municipality of Künzing, in the district of Deggendorf, lists him at Wallerdorfer Straße 6, 94550 Künzing. His parliamentary biography states that he has been a member of the Künzing municipal council since 2002 and of the Deggendorf district council since 2020; the disclosure of outside positions marks both seats as unpaid.

Under the Bundestag's rules of conduct, members publish specified posts held outside Parliament. Erndl's disclosure lists membership of the foundation council (Stiftungsrat) of the Deutsche Härtefallstiftung in Bonn from 18 September 2025. On that day the Bundestag, without debate, accepted a joint nomination by the CDU/CSU, Social Democratic Party and Alternative for Germany groups (Drucksache 21/1671) that included him; Alliance 90/The Greens and The Left abstained. The parliament describes the foundation as supporting serving and former members of the Bundeswehr, former members of the National People's Army, and their relatives and survivors in exceptional hardship that may have arisen from official duties. He is also listed as a member of the board of trustees (Kuratorium) of the Stiftung Verbundenheit mit den Deutschen im Ausland, which the disclosure places in Bayreuth. On 18 December 2023 the foundation announced that it had appointed such a board for the first time and named Erndl among the members. The same disclosure records that he was honorary deputy president of the Verband der Reservisten der Deutschen Bundeswehr until 22 May 2025.

Neither the Bundestag disclosure nor the side-activity register compiled by Abgeordnetenwatch from those filings lists a paid activity alongside the mandate. The only occupational entry is his work before entering Parliament as a sales engineer at NXP Semiconductors Germany GmbH in Munich, recorded with a right to return and protection against dismissal. The foundation posts are published without a remuneration figure. His Bundestag office is at Platz der Republik 1, 11011 Berlin, and constituency offices are listed at Bahnhofstraße 88 in Deggendorf and Stadtplatz 1 in Freyung.