Thomas Gebhart

Thomas Gebhart (born 20 December 1971 in Kandel) is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and a member of the Bundestag. He has sat in parliament since October 2009 and, in the 21st electoral term, holds the direct mandate for Südpfalz (Wahlkreis 210) in Rhineland-Palatinate. He is the CDU/CSU group's Obmann on the Committee on the Environment, Climate Action, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, and a member of the board of the German-French Parliamentary Assembly. The Bundestag biography, drawn from the member's own information, records that he is Roman Catholic, married and the father of two children.

Gebhart passed the Abitur in 1991 at the Europa-Gymnasium in Wörth am Rhein and then did civilian service at the St. Vincentius Hospital in Karlsruhe. From 1992 to 1998 he studied political science and business administration at the University of Mannheim and in Birmingham, graduating with a Magister Artium, and in 2002 he received a doctorate (Dr. rer. pol.) from Mannheim. In 1998 he worked as an assistant to the CDU member of the Bundestag Heiner Geißler, and from 2002 to 2003 he was employed by BASF in its environment, safety and energy division.

From 2003 to 2009 he was a member of the Landtag of Rhineland-Palatinate, serving from 2006 to 2009 as the CDU parliamentary group's spokesman on environmental policy, before moving to the Bundestag in October 2009. He held the Südpfalz direct mandate going into the 2021 federal election. In 2017 the CDU had carried that constituency with 40.3 percent of the first votes. At the 2021 election the Social Democratic Party candidate Thomas Hitschler defeated him by 41 votes, after a provisional count had put the margin at 49. The Federal Returning Officer's final constituency figures were 47,901 first votes (28.2 percent) for the SPD and 47,860 (28.2 percent) for the CDU, with turnout of 78.9 percent among 217,000 eligible voters in Germersheim, the Südliche Weinstraße and Landau. Gebhart remained a member of the Bundestag and, from 2022 to 2025, was the CDU/CSU Obmann on the Committee on Climate Action and Energy.

On 15 March 2018 Jens Spahn, the federal minister of health, presented Gebhart with his certificate as Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Health. Sabine Weiss was appointed a parliamentary state secretary the same morning, and Lutz Stroppe continued as the ministry's civil-servant state secretary. Gebhart held the office from 2018 until 2021.

The election to the 21st Bundestag was held on 23 February 2025. Gebhart regained the Südpfalz direct mandate with 68,124 first votes (38.2 percent). Bernd Hans Schattner of the Alternative for Germany placed second with 20.0 percent, and the SPD took 19.2 percent. Turnout was 83.3 percent of 215,995 eligible voters.

Early life and education

Childhood and schooling

Thomas Gebhart was born on 20 December 1971 in Kandel. The Bundestag biography, which the parliament states is based on information supplied by members themselves, records him as Roman Catholic. On his own website he writes that he grew up in Jockgrim.

Interior of the Europa-Gymnasium in Wörth am Rhein, with open galleries and classroom doors.

In 1991 he passed the Abitur at the Europa-Gymnasium in Wörth am Rhein. The school stands on the Dorschberg in Wörth am Rhein, in the district of Germersheim in Rhineland-Palatinate. Wörth is a small town near Karlsruhe, and the Dorschberg neighborhood was laid out from the 1960s. The school was built in two phases, in 1968 and in 1974–75, to designs by the Ludwigshafen architect Egon Seidel, as a Hallenschule: a multi-storey central hall with classrooms arranged around it in a horseshoe. The four-storey main block mixes clinker and concrete; the extension is in exposed concrete, with a sculptural staircase.

From 1991 to 1992 he performed civilian alternative service (Zivildienst) at St. Vincentius Hospital in Karlsruhe. Until general conscription, and with it the Zivildienst, was suspended on 1 July 2011, men recognized as refusing armed service had to complete that substitute service in an institution serving public welfare, such as a hospital or other health-care setting.

University studies and doctorate

From 1992 to 1998 Gebhart studied political science and business administration in Mannheim and in Birmingham, and took a Magister Artium. The Bundestag entry names those two cities but does not identify a particular university in Birmingham. In 2002 the University of Mannheim awarded him the degree of Dr. rer. pol.

The dissertation, Direkte Demokratie und Umweltpolitik, was accepted at Mannheim in 2002 and published that October by Deutscher Universitäts-Verlag in Wiesbaden, then a firm in the BertelsmannSpringer group, in its Sozialwissenschaft series. The book has IX plus 202 pages and one illustration (ISBN 978-3-8244-4505-9); a 2013 e-book edition carries the DOI 10.1007/978-3-322-81285-8. In the preface Gebhart names Peter Graf Kielmansegg as his supervisor (Doktorvater) and Beate Kohler-Koch as second examiner. The publisher's note on the author places the doctorate under Kielmansegg at Mannheim's chair of political science. Gebhart also thanks Wolf Linder for a research stay at the Institute of Political Science of the University of Bern, and records interviews with Swiss politicians, civil servants and association representatives. A doctoral grant from the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung supported the project for three years, and the book is dedicated to his parents.

The study asks whether, and how, different procedures of direct democracy affect law-making, using Switzerland as the case and environmental policy as the policy field. Environmental regulation was chosen because, in Germany and elsewhere, calls to expand direct democracy have often come from ecologically oriented groups and parties. The book treats the optional referendum, the mandatory referendum and the popular initiative separately, and for each distinguishes anticipatory, immediate and reactive effects, before comparing the instruments and asking how far the Swiss findings travel. Its stated conclusion is that the procedures differ sharply not only in the form of their effects but also in their direction. In a 2006 review for the Portal für Politikwissenschaft, Silke Becker reported the more specific finding that popular initiatives could secure stricter rules, whereas the main effect of referendums was anticipatory: political actors, expecting a possible challenge, changed policy only hesitantly, which in environmental policy meant only a slight tightening of the standards under discussion.

Early professional career

Parliamentary assistant

The biography published by the Bundestag states that in 1998 Thomas Gebhart worked as an assistant (Assistent) to Heiner Geißler, then a member of parliament for the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). The Bundestag notes that these career summaries rest on the members’ own statements. The entry dates the assistantship only to 1998, the year Gebhart completed a Magister Artium, and lists no further employment until 2002, when he received a doctorate from the University of Mannheim.

Geißler was at that point the directly elected member for the Südpfalz constituency in the southern Palatinate. He had won the seat in 1980 and remained in the Bundestag until 2002. Before that long stretch in parliament he had been the CDU’s general secretary from 1977 to 1989, the longest tenure in the office, and federal minister for youth, family and health from 1982 to 1985. The published record does not describe Gebhart’s duties in Geißler’s office.

Employment at BASF

From 2002 to 2003 the same self-reported biography lists Gebhart as an employee of BASF AG in the area of environment, safety and energy. BASF AG was headquartered at Ludwigshafen am Rhein, in Rhineland-Palatinate, and its 2002 annual report called the Ludwigshafen works the group’s largest and most important site and the core of the integrated production network BASF calls the Verbund; the report placed environment, safety and energy in a board portfolio that also covered the site, and described a Responsible Care competence center, created in 2001, as coordinating environment, safety and health work under the chemical industry’s voluntary initiative of that name.

In April 2002 the newspaper taz described BASF, with about 38,000 employees, as the region’s largest employer, and Ludwigshafen as a city whose public finances moved with the plant. A 2006 Financial Times account of the Ludwigshafen Verbund said BASF had built similar complexes elsewhere, “but none as big.” Neither the company report nor these articles states what Gebhart did inside the division, and none draws a connection between the posting and his later environmental work in parliament.

The BASF employment ended when he entered the Landtag of Rhineland-Palatinate in 2003. The CDU deputy Manfred Kramer left the state parliament that year; Die Rheinpfalz later reported that Kramer had chosen Gebhart as his substitute candidate so that Gebhart could take the seat and serve about two years before the next election. A CDU motion dated 12 September 2003 already referred to Gebhart as a member of the Landtag and proposed him for the Upper Rhine Council in place of Kramer, who had departed.

Party offices and state politics

Junge Union and the CDU in Germersheim

Gebhart joined the Junge Union in 1989 and, on the biography published for the 19th Bundestag, remained a member until 2006. He joined the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in 1996. The Bundestag notes that these summaries are the members’ own information.

From 2002 to 2020 he chaired the CDU district association in Germersheim. In August 2020, as parliamentary state secretary to federal health minister Jens Spahn, he said the federal post left less time for the district and that younger members should take responsibility. The executive nominated Thorsten Rheude of Germersheim; delegates were to elect the chairman on 3 September 2020 in Kandel. Die Rheinpfalz reported the next day that Rheude had succeeded him after 18 years.

The current Bundestag biography lists him as deputy chairman of the CDU Bezirksverband Rheinhessen-Pfalz from 2007 to 2021. On 17 August 2019 a Bezirksparteitag re-elected him, 160 votes to nil; he spoke of the next two years. The Pfalz-Express described Rheinhessen-Pfalz as the largest of the CDU’s three Bezirksverbände in Rhineland-Palatinate.

District council

He sat on the Kreistag of the Germersheim district from 1999 to 2019 and again from 2024. The interests note archived with the 19th-Bundestag biography ends the earlier term on 25 May 2019, and the current register lists the seat as honorary (ehrenamtlich).

The district election committee certified the 2024 result on 13 June. The CDU took 36.4 percent and 17 seats. Gebhart, second on its list after Martin Brandl, received 33,800 votes. Turnout was 63.7 percent of 99,548 eligible voters, and the new council was to be sworn in on 2 September 2024.

Landtag of Rhineland-Palatinate

Gebhart did not win a Landtag seat at an election in 2003. The house then sitting was the 14th Landtag of Rhineland-Palatinate, returned in 2001, and his own Bundestag biography dates his membership from 14 July 2003. Die Rheinpfalz reported that Manfred Kramer, a CDU deputy since 1981 who left in 2003, had picked Gebhart as his substitute candidate (B-Kandidat) so that Gebhart could move up and serve about two years before contesting an election himself.

A CDU motion of 12 September 2003 already treated Kramer as departed and proposed Gebhart, named as a member, for Kramer’s place on the Upper Rhine Council (Oberrheinrat). Sitting in the Deutschhaus in Mainz on 9 October 2003, the Landtag elected him unanimously. The later Bundestag biography carries that council membership from 2003 to 2009.

At the Landtag election of 26 March 2006 he won the direct mandate in the Germersheim constituency. The state returning officer’s final result gave the CDU 16,392 constituency votes, 42.8 percent, ahead of the Social Democratic Party on 14,368 votes (37.5 percent). Turnout was 57.8 percent of 68,033 eligible voters. On the state-list vote there the SPD led, 45.6 percent to the CDU’s 34.6 percent.

From 2006 to 2009 he was environmental-policy spokesman of the CDU Landtag group, and the archived biography also names him, for 2008, as its speaker in the enquiry commission on the consequences of climate change. On 27 September 2007, debating a CDU motion on climate change in the state, he argued for a “double strategy”: a state contribution to climate protection through an energy supply that was reliable and both economically and ecologically workable, and preparation for consequences he called unavoidable. He said the CDU had initiated the enquiry so that, with outside experts, it could spend a year on those consequences.

He ranked saving and efficiency first, including a model role for the state and work in schools, and treated research as the way to a lead in environmental technology. He wanted German nuclear plants kept running, if safe, until renewables replaced them, calling nuclear power a bridge; an immediate shutdown, he said, would miss the 2020 climate targets. For renewables he stressed the state’s own advantages, above all geothermal energy: after the CDU environment working group visited a plant then being built in Landau, he said it was expected to supply about 6,000 households with electricity and 300 with heat, and that the Upper Rhine Graben was especially suited to it. He also pressed for more hydropower and, for wind turbines, minimum distances from housing of 1,000 metres or ten times the hub height, citing local acceptance as older machines were replaced by taller ones.

The biography ends the Landtag membership in 2009, the year he entered the Bundestag in October.

Bundestag elections

Thomas Gebhart of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has sat in the Bundestag continuously since the 17th electoral term, taking his seat on 27 October 2009. He has stood each time in Südpfalz, a Rhineland-Palatinate constituency of the independent city of Landau in der Pfalz and the districts of Germersheim and Südliche Weinstraße. Its number moved from 212 in 2009 and 2013 to 211 in 2017 and 2021 and to 210 in 2025; in 2013, number 211 was Pirmasens. Voters cast a first vote (Erststimme) for a constituency candidate, with the plurality winner taking the direct mandate, and a second vote (Zweitstimme) for a party list, which sets the parties’ seat totals. A defeated district candidate can still enter from a state list (Landesliste).

Direct mandates, 2009–2017

At the 2009 German federal election on 27 September, the Federal Returning Officer recorded the CDU as the winning party in constituency 212: 61,994 first votes, 40.7 percent of 152,430 valid ballots. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) followed with 42,287 (27.7 percent) and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) with 19,431 (12.7 percent); Alliance 90/The Greens had 8.3 percent and Die Linke 7.2 percent. Turnout was 72.9 percent of 214,215 eligible voters. Second votes went 34.3 percent to the CDU (52,517), 22.7 percent to the SPD and 17.1 percent to the FDP. Abgeordnetenwatch identifies Gebhart as that CDU candidate, 11th on the state list, and records a constituency mandate.

In the 2013 German federal election the CDU took 75,748 first votes (48.8 percent) in constituency 212, 8.2 points above the 2009 comparison in the official table. The SPD had 43,385 (28.0 percent), the Greens 7.1 percent, Die Linke 4.1 percent and the FDP 4.0 percent. Turnout was 73.4 percent of 216,137 eligible voters; second votes were 42.7 percent CDU and 26.0 percent SPD. Abgeordnetenwatch again assigns the direct mandate to Gebhart, then eighth on the state list.

At the 2017 German federal election, in renumbered constituency 211, the CDU won 68,588 first votes (40.3 percent), down 8.5 points on the official comparison with 2013. The SPD was second on 44,224 (26.0 percent) and Alternative for Germany (AfD) third on 20,932 (12.3 percent), ahead of the Greens (7.9 percent) and the FDP (6.0 percent). Turnout was 79.2 percent of 217,633 eligible voters. Second votes were 34.8 percent CDU, 21.9 percent SPD and 13.6 percent AfD. Abgeordnetenwatch gives Gebhart fourth place on the state list and a direct mandate, consistent with the CDU share.

Defeat by 41 votes in 2021

At the 2021 German federal election on 26 September, the direct mandate in constituency 211 changed hands. The final count gave the SPD 47,901 first votes and the CDU 47,860, both 28.2 percent, a gap of 41. The Rheinpfalz reported that the constituency electoral committee certified that result, after a provisional lead of 49 votes, and that Thomas Hitschler (SPD) had defeated Gebhart, the sitting direct member. The Greens received 19,058 first votes (11.2 percent), the FDP 17,011 (10.0 percent) and the AfD 16,658 (9.8 percent). Turnout was 78.9 percent: 171,259 of 217,000 eligible voters in Germersheim, Südliche Weinstraße and Landau. Second votes were led by the SPD on 47,028 (27.7 percent), then the CDU on 39,421 (23.2 percent), the Greens (13.5 percent), the FDP (12.4 percent) and the AfD (10.4 percent).

Gebhart stayed in parliament on the state list. A CDU congress had placed Julia Klöckner first and Gebhart third, with 91 percent of delegates’ votes for him, still subject to postal confirmation. SWR later reported that third place was enough and that he was the second CDU member from the state elected via the list, after Klöckner. The Rhineland-Palatinate CDU returned nine members, seven of them directly.

The 2025 federal election

Hitschler told the Rheinpfalz in 2023 that he would not stand again in Südpfalz, calling professional politics time-limited and saying he would leave at the end of 2025 while serving out the term. At the 2025 German federal election on 23 February, the SPD candidate was Yildiz Härtel of Edesheim, formerly on his constituency staff; SWR described her as his successor in that role.

In constituency 210 the Federal Returning Officer lists Dr. Thomas Gebhart (CDU) as elected with 68,124 first votes (38.2 percent), 10.0 points above the CDU share in 2021. Bernd Schattner (AfD) was runner-up with 35,587 (20.0 percent), up 10.2 points. The SPD’s 34,274 votes (19.2 percent) were third; SWR identifies that result with Härtel. The Greens took 7.7 percent, Die Linke 4.0 percent, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance 3.0 percent and the FDP 2.6 percent. Turnout was 83.3 percent (179,902 of 215,995 eligible voters). Second votes were 30.8 percent for the CDU (55,079), 21.2 percent for the AfD, 17.2 percent for the SPD and 11.1 percent for the Greens. For the 21st term the Bundestag lists his mandate as the constituency seat for Wahlkreis 210; Abgeordnetenwatch also places him third on the CDU state list.

Environment, climate and energy policy

Environment and energy have been a standing part of Thomas Gebhart's work in the Bundestag. In the 18th electoral term he was a full member of the Committee on the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety, and by 2016 the Christian Democratic Union/CSU rapporteur on the circular economy. From 2022 to 2025 he was CDU/CSU Obmann on the Committee on Climate Action and Energy. Since 2025 he has been a full member and Obmann of the Committee on the Environment, Climate Action, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, and deputy chair of the matching CDU/CSU working group under Mark Helfrich.

Circular economy and packaging

In early 2016 Gebhart, as circular-economy rapporteur, urged retailers to agree a voluntary charge for plastic carrier bags with the government quickly instead of waiting for a law. He told the Süddeutsche Zeitung that 170 companies meant to sign, under a draft that would charge for about 60 percent of roughly six billion bags a year and for 80 percent by 2018. The agreement between the environment ministry and trade bodies took effect on 1 July 2016: participating firms were to charge for at least 80 percent of their plastic bags by 2018, at a price they set, while very light self-service bags were exempt. The German Environment Agency put use then at about 70 bags per person a year, against an EU cap of 40 by 2025. Its 2017 report on 2015 packaging waste, drawing on a Gesellschaft für Verpackungsmarktforschung survey of signatories and non-signatories, put consumption after the initiative at 45 carrier bags per inhabitant a year, excluding self-service bags.

The Packaging Act (Verpackungsgesetz) replaced the Packaging Ordinance on a Bundestag vote of 30 March 2017. The ministry cast it as tighter extended producer responsibility: recycling of licensed plastic packaging was to rise from 36 percent to 63 percent by 2022, and of metals, paper and glass to 90 percent. Fees were to favour recyclable design, an industry-funded central agency would register producers, towns could opt into a joint recyclables bin, and shops had to mark reusable and single-use drinks. Gebhart, for the CDU/CSU, called this a balance after years of talks and an incentive to use less packaging. The reusable target, he said, belonged with life-cycle assessments; a wine-bottle deposit would be disproportionate; and a wider Wertstoffgesetz had not failed because of the Union.

Alliance 90/The Greens disagreed in the same debate. Britta Haßelmann asked who else had blocked a Wertstoffgesetz, and Oliver Krischer noted that the reusable quota had no sanctions. The Left's Ralph Lenkert said industry had shaped the central agency and wanted a state office, municipal collection and an 80 percent reusable quota. Environmental Action Germany asked the Länder to open mediation: the law would not prevent waste, the 70 percent reusable figure was only an appeal after follow-up rules were deleted, and one shop sign could replace a label on each bottle. It put packaging waste at 218 kilograms a person a year, which it called Europe's highest.

Climate policy and the energy transition

On 27 January 2023 Gebhart and Andreas Jung posted a 14-point paper, "Mit dem C zur Klimaneutralität", on Gebhart's site. It is a party-political essay, not a Bundestag or CDU decision. It calls climate protection a Christian-democratic duty, sets climate neutrality in 2045 as Germany's share of the Paris Agreement, and rejects deindustrialisation as the route. Four pillars are named: efficiency, renewables including bioenergy, hydrogen, and CO2 capture. Green hydrogen is the goal, but a fast build-up, the text says, also needs blue hydrogen from natural gas with capture. It asks for rules on storing and using CO2, for emissions trading as the main tool, including a link between Germany's fuel-emissions trade and the EU system planned for transport and heat from 2027, and for CO2-based vehicle taxes rather than one prescribed heating technology. Coal and nuclear exits should stand, with "all options" used briefly in the energy crisis. Der Spiegel read the paper as a bid to make the CDU a climate party, and noted that on renewables and transport the authors broke with conservative views in their own ranks.

Those tools were contested outside the party. On 29 August 2023 BUND, Deutsche Umwelthilfe and Greenpeace, commenting on the government's carbon-management strategy, opposed a large carbon capture and storage network while coal, oil and gas were still burned, citing a fossil lock-in, and rejected subsidies for hydrogen from natural gas. They said electrification with renewables, and green hydrogen, had to come first.

As climate-and-energy Obmann, Gebhart attacked the 2023 reform of the Buildings Energy Act, known as the heating law. On 28 June 2023 he told n-tv that the coalition had argued for months while Parliament still lacked a text before a hearing. He called the procedure a "völliges Unding" and said that alone left no room to vote yes. Heat planning for municipalities, he said, was arriving after the act — "the second step before the first" — and the rules for towns under 10,000 people, and for household grants, were still unclear.

Nuclear power and nuclear safety

On 1 February 2022, asked on Abgeordnetenwatch about EU plans to label nuclear power "sustainable" in the taxonomy, Gebhart wrote that it was not sustainable precisely because final disposal of radioactive waste remained unsolved. Climate goals still had to be met with affordable, secure energy, and each member state should choose its own mix. During the 2022 energy crisis after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Die Rheinpfalz ran an interview headlined "Thomas Gebhart: 'Laufzeit für drei Atomkraftwerke verlängern'" — a call to extend three reactors. The January 2023 paper said the CDU would keep the coal and nuclear exits, faulted the government for closing the last three plants in the crisis, and treated nuclear fusion and "next-generation" nuclear concepts as research, not as a case for new conventional stations.

The government changed the Atomic Energy Act so Emsland, Isar 2 and Neckarwestheim 2 could run in stretch-out mode, on fuel already loaded, until mid-April 2023. It said this shifted output in time and added no high-level waste. The three plants stopped on 15 April 2023, which Berlin called the end of nuclear generation in Germany; further running, it said, was ruled out on legal, technical and economic grounds.

Parliamentary State Secretary for Health

Appointment in the fourth Merkel cabinet

On 14 March 2018, Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier appointed Jens Spahn federal minister of health in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s fourth cabinet, succeeding Hermann Gröhe. The next morning, 15 March, Spahn took over the Federal Ministry of Health and handed appointment certificates to the new parliamentary state secretaries, Sabine Weiss and Dr Thomas Gebhart, both of the Christian Democratic Union. The permanent state secretary, Lutz Stroppe, stayed on.

Gebhart did not come from health politics. The ministry noted that the Bundestag member, in parliament since 2009, sat on the environment committee and had studied business administration and political science. His Bundestag biography, which the parliament says rests on members’ own information, records that he was environment spokesman of the CDU group in the Landtag of Rhineland-Palatinate from 2006 to 2009, and dates the health post from 2018 to 2021. With Weiss, he was one of the two parliamentary state secretaries under Spahn for the rest of that cabinet.

Before the pandemic, a documented part of the work was international. On 4 October 2018 he led the German delegation to the G20 health ministers’ meeting in Argentina, on antimicrobial resistance, health systems and health-crisis management, themes the ministry said continued the 2017 Berlin meeting.

The COVID-19 pandemic

During the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany, Gebhart spoke for the ministry in parliament and visited local authorities, while Spahn remained minister. On 21 October 2020 Spahn tested positive and, the ministry told Der Spiegel, went into home isolation with cold symptoms; the cabinet did not have to quarantine. Gebhart’s constituency office told Die Rheinpfalz that, in the Bundestag week that followed, he had represented Spahn at a special session of the Health Committee and would also do so at that Wednesday’s cabinet meeting.

He also went to services in his home region. On 21 April 2020 he visited the disaster-response staff of the district of Germersheim, watched a largely telephone briefing, and spoke with District Administrator Fritz Brechtel and district fire inspector Mike Schönlaub, praising, the Pfalz-Express reported, weeks of committed work. On 25 March 2021, the Day of the Public Health Offices, he spent several hours at the district public-health office, joined a digital morning meeting on case investigation, and discussed contact tracing and digitalisation; 34 district employees were then on case investigation, with nine soldiers in support. He said he was taking suggestions to Berlin and pointed to a federal pact under which, he said, about four billion euros would strengthen health offices in staff and technology beyond the pandemic.

In parliament he defended the government’s line. At the Petitions Committee on 7 December 2020, answering a call for a commission split between supporters and critics of the lockdown, he said ministers were advised by many experts, that critical views were expressly heard and that there were “no deficits”; any such commission, he said, was for the Bundestag, not the ministry. On 14 April 2021 he told the plenary that intensive-care occupancy was rising, that the B.1.1.7 variant was deadlier than the original virus, and that vaccination would be the way out, with a better situation expected over the summer. Whether someone was vaccinated was, he said, a private matter, though he would not hesitate once it was his turn. On a Paul Ehrlich Institute safety report he said 407 deaths had occurred at a temporal distance from vaccination and rejected treating that as proof the vaccines had caused them. A week later, before the Health Committee, he warned of overload without a nationwide “emergency brake”, cited a positive-test share just over 12 per cent and a reproduction number above 1, and said about 21 million people had received at least one dose.

Later debate over pandemic policy

The post ended with the change of government. On 8 December 2021, after the new federal government had been appointed, Spahn handed the ministry to Karl Lauterbach; Sabine Dittmar and Edgar Franke were presented as the new parliamentary state secretaries. Gebhart’s Bundestag biography dates his tenure to 2018–2021; he remained a member of parliament.

The ministry’s early-pandemic mask purchases later became a central controversy, focused in published audits on Spahn and the ministry rather than on a finding that Gebhart ordered the contracts. In an advisory report of 28 March 2024, the Bundesrechnungshof said the ministry had bought 5.7 billion protective masks worth 5.9 billion euros, far above its own urgent three-month import need of 75 million filtering half-masks and 200 million surgical masks, and without quantity control. More than two-thirds were never used, more than half had been destroyed or were due to be destroyed, the benefit for fighting the pandemic was correspondingly small, and a critical review inside the ministry was still lacking.

Gebhart had nevertheless answered for the purchases in the Bundestag, as one of the two parliamentary state secretaries in the ministry’s political leadership. On 14 April 2021 he distinguished direct buying from an “open house” procedure in which, he said, any firm willing to deliver a set quantity by a set date at a defined maximum price received a contract. In July 2025 Tagesschau reported that Margaretha Sudhof, a special investigator appointed by the ministry, had accused Spahn of intervening personally in the purchases, of favouring people close to him and of setting aside needs assessments; Spahn rejected the accusations. The same account cited a later audit note on “massive over-procurement”: about 5.9 billion euros for 5.8 billion masks, of which 1.7 billion were distributed in Germany. The reports name Spahn and the ministry, not Gebhart.

On 15 January 2024 Die Rheinpfalz quoted him, as the former state secretary, calling for mistakes during the pandemic to be reviewed: “There is a loss of trust in politics that I have never experienced like this.” The paper reported that concern for democracy preoccupied him.

On 10 July 2025 the Bundestag voted for an enquete commission of 14 members and 14 experts to review the pandemic and the state’s measures and to report, with recommendations, by the end of June 2027. In December 2025 Tagesschau reported that the Bundesrechnungshof had told the commission the ministry still did not accept the over-procurement criticism.

Cross-border and European parliamentary work

Gebhart represents Südpfalz in Rhineland-Palatinate, on the border with Alsace in France and across the Rhine from Baden-Württemberg. Europa-Union Deutschland lists him, for the CDU/CSU, in its parliamentary group in the 21st Bundestag. In June 2016, commenting on the referendum that began Brexit, regional reporting identified him as a member of the German-British parliamentary friendship group. He said the British vote had to be accepted, and that the European Union needed citizens' consent and subsidiarity rather than a further shift of core powers to Brussels. Neither that group nor the German-French parliamentary friendship group appears on his current Bundestag biography.

The German-French Parliamentary Assembly

The Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly was created by an agreement between the Bundestag and the French National Assembly, not by an operative article of the Aachen Treaty. The treaty, signed in Aachen on 22 January 2019 by Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Emmanuel Macron, notes in its preamble the "central role" of cooperation between the two parliaments, "in particular through a parliamentary agreement." The agreement was signed in Paris on 25 March 2019 by Bundestag president Wolfgang Schäuble and National Assembly president Richard Ferrand, and the assembly was constituted the same day.

The constitutive sitting of the Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly in the Salle Lamartine of the National Assembly in Paris on 25 March 2019.

It has 50 members from each house, named at the start of each legislature with regard to party strength, and meets in public at least twice a year, normally alternating between the two countries. A bureau drawn equally from both parliaments proposes the agenda. The assembly monitors the 1963 Élysée Treaty and the Aachen Treaty, follows the joint ministerial and defence councils, and may adopt deliberations and propose joint resolutions.

The Pfalz-Express reported on 17 February 2022 that Gebhart had been named a member. The biography for the 20th Bundestag lists him as an ordinary member; the biography for the 21st lists him as a member of the bureau. The Bundestag announced the 13th plenary for 22 June 2026 in Paris. On 24 June Die Rheinpfalz, citing his office, reported that election in Paris, membership since 2022, and his reference to the South Palatinate's border with Alsace.

At the 12th plenary, in Berlin on 1 December 2025, he spoke for the CDU/CSU on draft deliberation P/V.2025.13, on a global agreement against plastic pollution. He called preservation of the natural basis of life a shared German and French interest and asked the assembly to make that demand together. It adopted a call for both governments to seek resumed talks, including goals on cutting global plastic production, chemicals of concern, and limits on single-use plastics where no reliable alternative exists.

Upper Rhine cooperation

From 2003 to 2009, as a member of the Landtag of Rhineland-Palatinate, Gebhart also sat on the Upper Rhine Council (Oberrheinrat; Conseil Rhénan), as his 19th-Bundestag biography, drawn from his own information, records. The Landtag describes the council, dating from 1997, as the trinational parliament of the Upper Rhine, coordinating elected members, encouraging cross-border initiatives and following the Upper Rhine Conference of regional executives. It has 71 members: 26 from Alsace, 26 from Baden, 11 from north-western Switzerland and eight from the southern and south-western Palatinate, five of them Landtag deputies and three municipal members. Two plenaries a year are prepared by a board and four commissions, and the presidency rotates annually. The council dates its founding agreement to 16 December 1997 in Baden-Baden and its first sitting to April 1998 in Strasbourg; resolutions go to local, regional, cantonal and national authorities and to the European Union. The accounts name no resolution or speech of his. The seat ended with the Landtag mandate in 2009.

Constituency and regional infrastructure

The Südpfalz constituency

Thomas Gebhart represents the Bundestag constituency of Südpfalz in Rhineland-Palatinate. It was numbered 210 for the 2025 federal election, 211 in 2017 and 2021, and 212 in 2013. The area comprises the independent city of Landau in der Pfalz and the districts of Germersheim and Südliche Weinstraße.

As of 31 December 2023 the Federal Returning Officer recorded 107 municipalities, 1,186.2 square kilometres and 293,000 inhabitants (247 per square kilometre), 12.0 percent of them foreign nationals. On 30 June 2023 there were 356.3 socially insured jobs per 1,000 inhabitants, 32.3 percent in manufacturing; unemployment at the end of November 2024 was 4.8 percent.

His constituency office is at Max-Planck-Straße 6, 76829 Landau/Pfalz. In March 2016 Die Rheinpfalz reported that he had started “Mit dem Ohr vor Ort” stands at bakeries, markets and supermarkets outside campaigns.

The second Rhine bridge at Wörth

The main road scheme linked to the seat is a second crossing of the Rhine between Wörth am Rhein, in the Germersheim district, and Karlsruhe in Baden-Württemberg. Federal road B 293 is planned about 1.4 kilometres north of the B 10 bridge at Maxau, opened in 1966. The Karlsruhe regional council calls that bridge the only Rhine crossing between the B 500 at Iffezheim, about 27 kilometres south, and the B 35 at Germersheim, about 22 kilometres north. It was designed for a forecast of 32,000 vehicles a day; the council says a permanent counter now records about 80,000 vehicles in 24 hours. The project is in the highest category, “vordringlicher Bedarf” (priority need), of the federal trunk-road requirement plan.

A feasibility study in 1998–99 was followed by line determination in 2006–08 and planning-approval applications in 2011. Decisions were issued on 15 September 2017 in Baden-Württemberg and on 21 December 2017 in Rhineland-Palatinate. On 6 November 2019 the Higher Administrative Court in Koblenz largely rejected a BUND challenge, but held the Palatine approval unlawful and unenforceable where it allowed piers as well as a free span and deferred the pier sites. Baden-Württemberg cases by BUND and Karlsruhe were settled on 25 June 2020, and Philippsburg’s on 15 June 2021. On the Palatine bank the road would meet the B 9 near Jockgrim, cross part of the Daimler Truck works, and span the channel on a bridge about 650 metres long.

The Karlsruhe regional council said those procedures were still in preparation. The ministry estimated about €475 million for the whole scheme, €149 million of it for the bridge, all federally funded, and said the benefit still justified the cost; Baden-Württemberg’s share was given as €130 million. Rhineland-Palatinate’s mobility authority says a construction date requires enforceable consent for the entire project.

Gebhart has questioned the federal government on the timetable. In Bundestag printed paper 20/14639 of 24 January 2025 he asked when the traffic forecast needed for further design would be released, and why it had not come sooner. After the September 2026 approval, Die Rheinpfalz reported a statement by him and two local CDU members of the state parliament that procedures from the first plans to a possible start of works take many years, while district administrator Martin Brandl called daily queues on the B 10 a burden on commuters and business. Karlsruhe’s chamber of industry and commerce described the crossing as central to the economic region.

Alliance 90/The Greens politicians, including Bundestag members Zoe Mayer and Matthias Gastel, called it a “project of the last millennium”. Badische Neueste Nachrichten reported loading of about 70,000 vehicles a day since 2005, against an earlier forecast of 98,500 for 2025, and the Greens’ view that another bridge would feed Karlsruhe’s streets rather than end the queues. They argued that the sum should go to rail and to bridges already in service.

Personal life

Family and residence

The biography published by the Bundestag, which the parliament states is based on information supplied by members themselves, describes him as Roman Catholic, married, and the father of two children. That entry does not name his wife or the children. In a portrait of Südpfalz candidates before the 2025 federal election, the Wochenblatt Reporter reported that he lives with his wife and two children in Jockgrim.

Civic commitments

Since 2023 Gebhart has been an unpaid member of the board of Lebenshilfe für Menschen mit Behinderungen e.V., Kreisvereinigung Germersheim, a district association of Lebenshilfe. The national organization was founded in Marburg on 23 November 1958, under the name Lebenshilfe für das geistig behinderte Kind e.V., by parents and specialists who wanted children with intellectual disabilities supported without being separated from their families in residential institutions; local and district associations were then formed on that model. The Germersheim association describes its board as honorary and lists Dr. Thomas Gebhart as a Beisitzer; its office is at Marktstraße 12 in Wörth am Rhein. In the Bundestag register of disclosable interests he is entered as a co-opted member of that board (kooptiertes Mitglied des Vorstandes), again marked unpaid, with the association’s seat given as Wörth am Rhein.

Die Rheinpfalz reported that a change to the statutes brought Gebhart, of the CDU, and Ina Schrenk onto the board at the annual general meeting in September 2023. At that meeting Thomas Makies was elected chairman in succession to Uwe Schwind, who had held the office for 23 years, and the paper described an association of more than 300 members.

Notices under the rules of conduct for Bundestag members (Verhaltensregeln, §§ 45 ff. of the Members of the Bundestag Act) must be filed within three months of taking a seat, and changes during a parliamentary term within three months of their arising; they are published after a check of whether publication is required. Gebhart’s published return lists his occupation before he entered the Bundestag as membership of the Landtag of Rhineland-Palatinate in Mainz. The functions recorded with that earlier post are both marked honorary: a seat on the Kreistag of the district of Germersheim, and the co-opted place on the Lebenshilfe board. No paid secondary employment is listed.

On 22 May 2015 Die Rheinpfalz reported that Gebhart and the CDU member Xaver Jung had, the day before, attended the founding in the Jakob-Kaiser-Haus in Berlin of the cross-party club “Fraktion der Roten Teufel – 1. FC Kaiserslautern im Deutschen Bundestag.” The paper attributed the initiative to Thomas Hitschler of the SPD and described the group as a supporters’ club for 1. FC Kaiserslautern. The report places Gebhart at that founding meeting. Separately, the click-TT competition database for the 2026/27 season lists Dr. Thomas Gebhart as a player for TTV Römerbad Jockgrim, on the club’s second adult team in Kreisklasse A Süd-Ost.