# Thomas Jarzombek

# Thomas Jarzombek

Thomas Jarzombek (born 28 April 1973 in Düsseldorf) is a German politician of the [Christian Democratic Union](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany) (CDU) and a member of the Bundestag for the Düsseldorf I constituency. He has held the seat as a directly elected member since 2009, winning it again in 2013, 2017, 2021 and 2025. In the 2025 federal election he took 36.1 percent of the first votes in constituency 105, ahead of Zanda Martens of the SPD on 21.2 percent. Since 6 May 2025 he has been Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister for Digital Transformation and Government Modernisation, Karsten Wildberger, in the cabinet of Chancellor [Friedrich Merz](/people/friedrich-merz).

The Bundestag lists his occupation as IT consultant. He passed the Abitur at the Goethe-Gymnasium in Düsseldorf in 1992, then did military service in Lübeck, Hilden and Düsseldorf. From 1993 he studied economics at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, completing the intermediate diploma (Vordiplom) in 1996 and leaving without a full degree. That year he founded an IT consultancy in Düsseldorf, which he managed as a partner until 2013 and in which he remained a shareholder until the end of 2017.

Before the Bundestag he sat on the Düsseldorf city council from 1999 to 2005 and, from 2005 to 2009, held a direct mandate in the Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia, where he was media-policy spokesperson of the CDU group and speaker of its Young Group. In the CDU/CSU Bundestag group he was spokesperson for the digital agenda from 2013 to 2018 and for education and research from 2021 to 2025. From 2018 to 2021 he was the federal government's coordinator for aerospace, and from 2019 to 2021 commissioner for the digital economy and start-ups at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs.

Inside the CDU he chaired the Düsseldorf branch of the Junge Union from 1994 to 2001 and has chaired the CDU district association in Düsseldorf since 2014. He sat on the CDU state executive in North Rhine-Westphalia from 2007 to 2023 and has been a member of the party's federal executive since 2022.

## Early life and education

Thomas Jarzombek was born on 28 April 1973 in Düsseldorf, the capital of North Rhine-Westphalia. Local reporting places his childhood in the eastern district of Grafenberg. In an August 2021 candidate portrait, the *Rheinische Post* wrote that he was born in Düsseldorf and grew up at Staufenplatz; a profile on 24RHEIN stated that he grew up in Grafenberg. The *Rheinische Post* has identified Staufenplatz as a square in Düsseldorf-Grafenberg.

### Schooling and military service

He passed the Abitur, the university-entrance certificate of a Gymnasium, in 1992. His Bundestag biography, which the parliament states is based on members' own information, names the school as the Goethe-Gymnasium and says that he then completed "Wehrdienst und SaM" in Lübeck, Hilden and Düsseldorf. The biography does not expand the abbreviation SaM and does not record a unit, a rank or the length of the service. The same wording appears on the Bundestag's youth site mitmischen.de, which reproduces the parliamentary biography. The *Rheinische Post* and 24RHEIN recount the 1992 Abitur and the later university course, but neither describes the military posting.

### University studies

In 1993 he began a course in *Wirtschaftswissenschaften* (economics and business studies) at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. In 1996 he passed the *Vordiplom*, the intermediate examination of the then-standard Diplom programme, and left without a full degree. The *Rheinische Post* states that he broke off the *Wirtschaftswissenschaften* course at the university in 1996 and became self-employed in information technology; its 2021 profile said he had studied *Betriebswirtschaftslehre* (business administration) and left higher education after the *Vordiplom* in order to set up on his own. 24RHEIN likewise reported that he ended the business-administration course in 1996 after the *Vordiplom*, without a degree, having already gone into business while still a student.

Asked on Abgeordnetenwatch in 2011 whether he had finished a degree in six semesters and had no vocational training, Jarzombek replied in February 2012 that, after the *Vordiplom* in *Betriebswirtschaftslehre* at Heinrich Heine University, he had decided to build his own firm for IT services, which he described as a medium-sized company in Düsseldorf. The short curriculum vitae of the CDU in North Rhine-Westphalia pairs that 1996 examination with the founding, in the same year, of an IT consultancy based in the city. The Bundestag lists his occupation as *IT-Berater* (IT consultant) and records the examination and the founding in one biographical sentence.

## Business career

### Founding and management of releon

After the 1996 intermediate diploma (Vordiplom) in economics at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Thomas Jarzombek founded an IT consulting firm in Düsseldorf. The Bundestag lists his occupation as IT consultant (IT-Berater) and records, as work before he became a member, IT consulting at Releon GmbH & Co. KG and self-employed IT consulting; he was managing partner until 2013 and a partner until the end of 2017. The limited partnership was entered at the Amtsgericht Düsseldorf on 2 January 2008 as HRA 19768, to provide IT services and to trade in and rent computer hardware and software. The general partner was releon Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH (HRB 57869), then at Oststraße 156; the firm was later listed at Goethestraße 75 and remained active, with 2024 accounts filed on 16 January 2026.

After he entered the Bundestag in 2009, a disclosure current on 1 March 2010 still listed paid directorships of the partnership and of releon Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH, plus a stake in the partnership. By 19 August 2014 the managing-partner role was said to have ended in 2013; the stake was still disclosed, and the directorships were no longer among paid sidelines. In February 2020, while he was the economics ministry’s start-up commissioner, t3n wrote that in a podcast he described founding an IT firm and sobering attempts to raise venture capital for a start-up in Germany; the introduction called this his own failed start-up founding. The Bundestag disclosures do not describe releon in those terms.

### Later advisory and board roles

As of 30 October 2026, under the members’ code of conduct, the company roles are listed as unpaid: the council of Agora Digitale Transformation gGmbH, Essen, until 6 June 2025; the advisory board of CBS University of Applied Sciences, Cologne, from 1 August 2026; chair of the supervisory board of DigitalService GmbH des Bundes, Berlin, from 30 June 2026, ex officio; the “Politik & Public Affairs” advisory board of Quadriga Hochschule Berlin GmbH until 1 May 2025; and the club advisory board of Rotonda Business Club GmbH & Co. KG, Cologne, until 23 June 2025. Stiftung Mercator founded Agora in 2022 as a think tank on digitalisation and democracy, with about €8.6 million pledged over five years. DigitalService, a wholly owned federal subsidiary, named him supervisory-board chair on 29 October 2026.

Also listed, and marked unpaid where a note appears, are the steering circle of the Deutsch-Französisches Zukunftswerk in Potsdam; the advisory board of Between The Lines e.V. in Solingen until 10 June 2025; at cnetz – Verein für Netzpolitik e.V. in Berlin, speaker and board member until 23 June 2025 and advisory-board chair from 29 November 2025; a co-opted senate seat at the Deutsche Industrieforschungsgemeinschaft Konrad Zuse until 15 May 2025; the board of trustees of the Fraunhofer Society centre IMW in Leipzig until 31 March 2025; the advisory board of #SheTransformsIT; and the board of trustees of Stiftung Lesen in Mainz until 15 May 2025. In April 2024 the Fraunhofer executive board decided, subject to senate approval, on a partial closure ending IMW’s independence, planned for 31 March 2025, when his trusteeship is recorded as ending.

## Local politics and party offices

### Junge Union and the city council

Accounts of when Thomas Jarzombek joined the Christian Democratic Union of Germany differ by a year. Bundestag biographies archived in 2010 and 2013, a 2021 profile in the membership magazine of the CDU in North Rhine-Westphalia, his page at the Mittelstands- und Wirtschaftsunion, and the *Rheinische Post* all date the entry to 1991, when he was still a pupil in Düsseldorf. The curriculum vitae on the website of the Federal Ministry for Digital Transformation and Government Modernisation, issued after his appointment in 2025, instead says that he has been a member since 1990.

In the Junge Union, the CDU's youth organisation, the early Bundestag biographies and the *Rheinische Post* describe him as district chairman in Düsseldorf from 1995 to 2001. Biographies later published by the Bundestag and the digital ministry give 1994 as the start. From 2000 to 2006 he was deputy state chairman of the Junge Union in North Rhine-Westphalia. The 2010 parliamentary biography also listed him as that organisation's lead candidate for the 2005 state election.

Before the city council, those biographies record membership of borough council (Bezirksvertretung) 7 from 1994 to 1999, the body for Grafenberg, Gerresheim and Hubbelrath. He sat on the council of Düsseldorf from 1999 to 2005, and the 2010 and 2013 parliamentary biographies say that by the end of the term he was the CDU group's spokesperson on school policy. After winning a seat in the Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia in 2005, he resigned the council mandate.

### CDU Düsseldorf and higher party offices

The 2010 Bundestag biography dates his membership of the CDU Düsseldorf district executive from 1995. In 2007 he was elected to the state executive of the CDU in North Rhine-Westphalia. Delegates returned him on 23 October 2021 as one of 31 additional members of that board. He was not among the 31 additional members chosen at the 45th state party congress in Hürth on 29 October 2023, and the current Bundestag biography ends the state-executive tenure in 2023.

On 30 January 2014 a district congress at Düsseldorf's chamber of crafts elected him district chairman, succeeding Klaus-Heiner Lehne, who gave up the post after eleven years on moving to the European Court of Auditors. Jarzombek received 65 percent of 318 votes; the Landtag member Peter Preuß received 35 percent. Delegates re-elected him in 2017 and again in 2019, each time with 82.5 percent of the votes cast—in 2019, 227 of 275 delegates, with 44 against. At a district congress reported on 2 October 2024, with no opposing candidate and after ten years in office, he received 87.2 percent of the valid votes.

At regional level, the 28th congress of the CDU association for the Bergisches Land on 13 November 2015 elected a new executive, again chaired by Herbert Reul, that included Jarzombek. His Bundestag biography dates a deputy chairmanship of that association from 2015 to 2025. On 20 January 2025 the association re-elected four deputies—Kerstin Terhardt, [Jürgen Hardt](/people/jurgen-hardt), Mathias Heidtmann and Jan Heinisch—and chose Jarzombek as one of twelve ordinary board members.

In the Mittelstands- und Wirtschaftsunion, the CDU/CSU business association, he lost the contest for federal chair on 11 December 2021 to [Gitta Connemann](/people/gitta-connemann), who won 252 votes (59 percent) to his 175 (41 percent). The association's 2023 candidate brochure nevertheless listed him as an ordinary member of its federal executive and as co-chair of its digital commission. An earlier MIT profile, still describing his role as aerospace coordinator, called him chairman of that commission, and the ministry curriculum vitae calls him its head. The Bundestag biography limits his membership of the MIT federal executive to 2021–2025.

At the CDU federal congress in January 2022 he was elected to one of 26 seats on the federal executive, with 62.12 percent in a ballot of 1,001 delegates. The North Rhine-Westphalia association had nominated him to succeed Reul, who had proposed him. The board list published by the CDU still includes him.

## North Rhine-Westphalia Landtag

### Election and mandate

In the North Rhine-Westphalia state election of 22 May 2005, Thomas Jarzombek won a direct mandate for the Christian Democratic Union in Wahlkreis 42, Düsseldorf III, covering Stadtbezirke 3 and 4 of Düsseldorf. Of 99,938 eligible voters, 65,623 cast ballots, a turnout of 65.7 percent; 681 votes were invalid and 64,942 valid. Jarzombek received 26,300 votes, 40.5 percent, ahead of Ralf Thomas Krüger of the Social Democratic Party with 23,173 (35.7 percent), Norbert Czerwinski of Alliance 90/[The Greens](/organizations/the-greens) with 6,303 (9.7 percent) and Laura Görtz of the Free Democratic Party with 5,187 (8.0 percent). The 14th Landtag opened in Düsseldorf on 8 June 2005.

He laid the mandate down at the end of 18 November 2009. That was the year he was first elected to the Bundestag. The state returning officer named Marie-Theres Ley, from the CDU state reserve list, as his successor from 19 November 2009.

### Media policy and the Young Group

By the end of the term he was media-policy spokesperson of the CDU group and speaker of its Junge Gruppe. In November 2006 the games press still called him the group’s commissioner for new media. Days after the Emsdetten school shooting he rejected a ban on so-called Killerspiele, arguing that the titles were mostly copied or downloaded, that a ban would not have stopped the attacker, and that the debate obscured causes such as social isolation. He called instead for media competence among young people and parents.

In a 2008 current-affairs hour on a study headlined “Die PISA-Verlierer – Opfer ihres Medienkonsums”, he treated heavy television and console use as harmful to schoolwork, and computer and internet access as linked by PISA to better mathematics and reading results. He cited an inter-factional Kinder- und Jugendmedienschutz initiative and a pilot on learning games in class.

On 13 March 2008 he opened a CDU and FDP motion, headed around gamescom, on the games fair’s move to Cologne. He described the Games Convention, until then held in Leipzig, as a lead fair coming to the state, and credited youth-protection work, including by minister Armin Laschet, with beating Munich for it. It passed on CDU and FDP votes; the SPD, the Greens and independent member Rüdiger Sagel abstained.

On 16 May 2008, in the debate on the 12th Rundfunkänderungsstaatsvertrag, he opposed public broadcasters publishing on the internet without a tie to their own programmes, arguing that this Sendungsbezogenheit was needed to limit fee-funded competition with private media and pressure on the licence fee assessed through the KEF. On 23 October 2008, on the 11th amending treaty, he said the Federal [Constitutional Court](/organizations/constitutional-court) judgment of 11 September 2007 left the Landtag unable to change the €17.98 fee, called the sitting “reiner Zuschauersport”, and argued that the fee should not outpace wages and inflation. He also criticised GEZ fee inspectors.

On 28 January 2009 he spoke for the CDU on the media chapter of the budget, defending NRW.BANK film finance that he said had doubled support to €20 million, a €30 million equity fund for the creative industries, rural broadband, and a planned state media law easing some newspaper-concentration rules. SPD politician Marc Jan Eumann called it Jarzombek’s last speech as media spokesperson and tied that to his Bundestag candidacy against Michael Müller.

## Bundestag membership and elections

### Constituency and election results

Thomas Jarzombek of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has been a member of the Bundestag since 2009, winning the direct mandate in Düsseldorf I at the federal elections of 2009, 2013, 2017, 2021 and 2025. For 2013, 2017, 2021 and 2025 the Federal Returning Officer defines that constituency as Stadtbezirke 1, 2, 4, 5, 6 and 7 of the North Rhine-Westphalia capital, with the remaining boroughs in Düsseldorf II. The number, not that borough list, changed: the state returning officer published the 2009 result for constituency 107 Düsseldorf I, the seat was number 106 from 2013 through 2021, and it is number 105 for 2025. The 2013 table’s column for 2009 repeats the earlier first-vote totals exactly, including 68,749 CDU votes, the figure recorded for constituency 107. The Bundestag lists his constituency office at Wasserstraße 5, 40213 Düsseldorf.

On 27 September 2009 he received those 68,749 first votes, 43.5 percent of valid ballots, with turnout at 73.1 percent of 218,215 people eligible to vote. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) took 28.6 percent, down from 40.6 percent in the same constituency in 2005; the Free Democratic Party (FDP) took 10.4 percent, Alliance 90/The Greens 10.1 percent and [Die Linke](/organizations/die-linke) 6.5 percent. The CDU’s second-vote share was 33.3 percent. The *Westdeutsche Zeitung* reported the SPD candidate in the north as Michael Müller, who lost almost 12 points on his 2005 first-vote share.

On 22 September 2013, in constituency 106, he took 78,206 first votes, 47.9 percent, the highest share of the five contests, on a turnout of 75.4 percent. The SPD’s Philipp Tacer received 29.2 percent (47,731 votes), and Mona Neubaur of the Greens 8.2 percent. Die Linke took 5.3 percent, the FDP 3.6 percent and [the Alternative](/organizations/the-alternative) for Germany (AfD) 3.1 percent; the CDU’s second-vote share was 40.3 percent. On 24 September 2017 he held constituency 106 with 69,273 first votes, 40.4 percent, as turnout rose to 78.3 percent of 220,764 eligible voters. The SPD, again with Tacer as its candidate, took 24.4 percent. The FDP’s [Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann](/people/marie-agnes-strack-zimmermann) stood for the constituency vote, and the party received 12.8 percent; Paula Elsholz stood for the Greens, whose first-vote share was 8.4 percent, with Die Linke at 7.4 percent and the AfD at 6.4 percent. The CDU’s second-vote share was 32.0 percent.

The narrowest result was on 26 September 2021. In constituency 106 he received 54,158 first votes, 31.1 percent, with turnout at 79.3 percent. The *Westdeutsche Zeitung* named Zanda Martens as the SPD opponent; the SPD’s first-vote share was 22.4 percent (38,955) and the Greens’ 21.2 percent (36,926). The FDP took 13.9 percent, the AfD 4.0 percent and Die Linke 2.9 percent. On second votes the CDU had 25.8 percent and the Greens 22.6 percent, ahead of the SPD on 21.9 percent. The same report said Martens was nevertheless expected to enter the Bundestag on the SPD state list.

On 23 February 2025, in constituency 105, he won 67,108 first votes, 36.1 percent, against 21.2 percent (39,356) for Dr. Zanda Martens of the SPD. Turnout was 83.3 percent of 224,445 eligible voters. The Greens took 17.4 percent, the AfD 9.8 percent, Die Linke 7.2 percent and the FDP 5.3 percent; the CDU’s second-vote share was 30.3 percent. The Bundestag dates his membership of the 21st electoral term from 25 March 2025.

### Committees and group roles

The archived biography for the 18th electoral term states that from 2009 to 2013 he sat on the Committee on Transport, Building and Urban Development and the Committee on Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, on the subcommittee on new media (Unterausschuss „Neue Medien“), and on the study commission “Internet and digital society” (Enquete-Kommission „Internet und digitale Gesellschaft“). In the 18th Bundestag he was an ordinary member of the Committee on the Digital Agenda and of the Committee on Transport and Digital Infrastructure, and a substitute member of the Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy. From 2013 to 2018 he was the CDU/CSU parliamentary group’s spokesperson for the digital agenda.

In the 19th term the archived biography lists one ordinary committee seat, on the Committee on Transport and Digital Infrastructure. In the 20th term he was an ordinary member of the Committee on Education, Research and Technology Assessment and of the Committee on Digital Affairs (Ausschuss für Digitales), and from 2021 to 2025 the CDU/CSU group’s spokesperson for education and research. In May 2025 he was appointed a parliamentary state secretary. From that point the biography records the appointment and no longer lists ordinary committee memberships.

## Digital policy and the start-up portfolio

### Digital Agenda and cnetz

From 2013 to 2018 Thomas Jarzombek was spokesperson for the Digital Agenda in the CDU/CSU Bundestag group and chaired its working group of that name. On 29 March 2012 a founding meeting elected him and the CDU MP [Peter Tauber](/people/peter-tauber) speakers and board members of cnetz – Verein für Netzpolitik. The circle also included Peter Altmaier, the CSU MPs Dorothee Bär and Dagmar Wöhrl, and Erika Steinbach.

*[Der Spiegel](/organizations/der-spiegel)* described the association as a conservative counterpart to the Social Democrat-linked group D64 and as a response to the [Pirate Party](/organizations/pirate-party-germany). Its statement called for "bürgerliche und verantwortungsvolle" internet policy "mit Maß und Mitte" rather than "Ideologie und Irrationalität", and named net neutrality and copyright as the first subjects for proposals. Heise online quoted its appeal to a Christian image of the person and the Basic Law. Jarzombek stayed an honorary speaker and board member until 23 June 2025, and the Bundestag's register of interests lists him as honorary chair of the cnetz advisory board from 29 November 2025.

After the July 2015 European deal, Ulrich Lange welcomed specialised services for uses such as connected cars. Jarzombek said the best-effort internet must not be cut back and specialised services must not replace ordinary access, but that discrimination inside service classes must not favour large firms over the Mittelstand and founders, a risk he assigned to the Federal Network Agency. Netzpolitik.org called that line pragmatic and noted the objection that specialised services would prefer some traffic. He left the spokespersonship in 2018, the year the biography dates his separate appointment as aerospace coordinator.

### Commissioner for the digital economy and start-ups

On 31 July 2019 Altmaier appointed the Düsseldorf MP commissioner of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy for the digital economy and start-ups. The post was honorary and unpaid, and sat alongside the aerospace role; its brief was dialogue with digital firms and start-ups. Jarzombek said he wanted to open the market to start-ups and the Mittelstand by changing finance, regulation and the state's role as a buyer of technology.

Public contracts soon became a dispute. In May 2020 he told *Tagesspiegel Background* that the state should use start-ups on prestige projects rather than "always" large firms such as Siemens and [Deutsche Telekom](/organizations/deutsche-telekom). He cited the Corona-Warn-App, then being built by SAP and Telekom: a start-up group had shown Health Minister Jens Spahn a nearly finished app, and he said he had pressed for those firms to be included, calling that only a first step.

In January 2020 he called plans by the Berlin SPD to tie start-up subsidies to collective agreements and works councils a "Startup-Verhinderungsplan". Co-determination was a German strength, he said, but the state should not compel works councils or make them a funding condition during the founding phase. Bitkom president Achim Berg argued similarly; Berlin SPD deputy chair Ina Czyborra later said the party did not expect a four-person start-up to install a works council or a collective agreement at once, without stating what criteria would apply.

On women founders he was critical of programmes in his own ministry. *Business Insider* reported in July 2020 that about 16 percent of founders in Germany, and the same share of EXIST founder-stipend teams, were women. Jarzombek said there were too few women founders, convened a roundtable and floated an "Exist-Female" track with an all-women panel and a childcare supplement, citing what he called bias in male-dominated juries; EXIST research stipends, he said, had already risen from 27 percent women in 2018 to 40 percent.

In February 2020 he discussed with t3n the tax treatment of employee shares, federal funding and his own difficulty raising venture capital in Germany. The draft Fondsstandortgesetz before the Finance Committee in March 2021 proposed lifting the tax-free allowance for employee capital participation from €360 to €720 and adding a further start-up rule. In December 2020, as plans emerged for a €10 billion Zukunftsfonds — including a €1 billion KfW Capital fund of funds, a deep-tech fund and more money for KfW, the European Investment Fund and the High-Tech Gründerfonds — he called it a "Riesen-Schlag" and hoped private investors would add €20 billion. When [Olaf Scholz](/people/mig-olaf-scholz) and Altmaier launched it on 24 March 2021, they said the federal €10 billion should, with other partners, mobilise at least €30 billion of venture capital. In the 2021 campaign he told *Handelsblatt* a second fund of about €100 billion was needed, able to invest abroad and raised by bonds while rates were low.

In May 2021 the ministry council "Junge Digitale Wirtschaft" sent Jarzombek and the ministry a listings paper calling for the press to cover small flotations and for "discipline" toward "sachlicher, richtiger und vollständiger" reporting, with a duty of prompt correction. Officials wrote that those press duties should be rejected, yet the text was published on the ministry site. After a *Handelsblatt* enquiry and criticism from the Deutscher Journalisten-Verband, Altmaier said he had known neither the paper nor its posting and ordered it removed; the council said a wrong draft had been sent.

By March 2022 Anna Christmann of Alliance 90/The Greens held the start-up brief in Robert Habeck's ministry and opened talks on the coalition's start-up strategy, including a further rise in the employee-equity allowance whose amount the treaty left unspecified. In June 2025 a spokesperson for Economics Minister Katherina Reiche said that, because the coalition agreement cut the number of commissioners, there would for the time being be none for start-ups under Chancellor Friedrich Merz. The German Start-ups Association noted the decision, said a cross-departmental contact would still help, and argued that policy substance mattered more than the title.

## Aerospace coordination

### Appointment and remit

On 11 April 2018, during a cabinet retreat at Meseberg, the federal cabinet appointed Thomas Jarzombek, the Christian Democratic Union member of the Bundestag for Düsseldorf, Coordinator of the Federal Government for German Aerospace (*Koordinator der Bundesregierung für die Luft- und Raumfahrt*). He succeeded Brigitte Zypries. The post sat in the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy; its task was to bundle and coordinate measures to strengthen the international competitiveness of German aeronautics and space in research and development.

He remained an ordinary member of parliament. On 31 July 2019 Economics Minister Peter Altmaier also named him commissioner for the digital economy and start-ups, a further task the ministry said would be honorary and without an expense allowance. The same notice listed the aerospace office’s emphases as digitalisation of the industry, the start-up and “New Space” economy, and more eco-efficient technologies, and recorded that from 2013 to 2018 he had chaired the CDU/CSU working group on the digital agenda. After the change of government, a spokesman said at the federal press conference on 5 January 2022 that Bundestag member Anna Christmann would become coordinator for German aerospace.

### Industry and research priorities

On 13 May 2020 the cabinet adopted an action plan on unmanned aircraft systems and innovative aviation concepts, which Transport Minister [Andreas Scheuer](/people/andreas-scheuer) and Jarzombek presented in Berlin the same day. It aimed to make Germany a lead market and a participant in international standards on safety, data protection and the environment; to bring automated, connected flight into routine use through simpler nationwide permits; and to protect personal data, privacy and the environment. The government counted about 500,000 drones in Germany, about 19,000 of them commercial, and nearly 400 firms employing about 10,000 people, mainly in surveying, inspection and imaging.

The Association for Unmanned Aviation, backed by the Bundesverband der Deutschen Luftverkehrswirtschaft (BDL) and the Bundesverband der Deutschen Luft- und Raumfahrtindustrie (BDLI), called the plan a step toward commercial operations, while insisting on safe integration into the airspace. Jarzombek used the event to stress employment and investment on the commercial side of the market.

At the European Space Agency ministerial council Space19+ in Seville on 27–28 November 2019, Jarzombek led the German delegation with Walther Pelzer of the German Aerospace Center. Twenty-two member states subscribed just under €14.4 billion. Germany’s €3.3 billion, 22.9 percent, made it the largest contributor, ahead of France, Italy and the United Kingdom. Jarzombek said funding in programmes for small and medium-sized space firms had been doubled, Earth observation raised to €720 million and €55 million committed to a European lunar mission. About €1 billion covered mandatory activities, including science and the Kourou spaceport, and about €2.3 billion optional programmes, among them roughly 23 percent of Ariane 6 development costs.

German subscriptions from that conference also financed a €25 million microlauncher competition run by the German Space Agency at DLR. HyImpulse Technologies, Isar Aerospace Technologies and Rocket Factory Augsburg, all founded in 2018, each received a €500,000 ESA contract in November 2020. On 30 April 2021 Altmaier named Isar Aerospace winner of the round. A jury chaired by Jarzombek had chosen it for €11 million from ESA’s BOOST! commercial-launch programme, for qualification of the Spectrum rocket and two demonstration flights, then aimed at 2022–23, with up to 150 kilograms of institutional payload carried free. Jarzombek argued that European launch procurement should be opened so the newcomers could compete with established providers.

## Education and research policy

### Spokesperson for education and research

In the 20th Bundestag (2021–2025), with the Christian Democratic Union and the [Christian Social Union](/organizations/christian-social-union-in-bavaria) in opposition to the Scholz cabinet, Thomas Jarzombek was the CDU/CSU group's spokesperson for the Committee on Education, Research and Technology Assessment and a member of the Committee on Digital Affairs.

In July 2023 he told *Der Spiegel* he had "no understanding" of the "endlessly long manoeuvring" of education minister [Bettina Stark-Watzinger](/people/bettina-stark-watzinger) (Free Democratic Party) over a successor to the Digitalpakt Schule. A ministry answer to a Union question had raised the fear that no Digitalpakt 2.0, though promised in the coalition agreement, would follow the 2019 pact.

On 13 June 2024 he attacked a planned freeze in BAföG need rates, despite inflation, and higher student repayments. Coalition MPs had partly corrected the bill, he said, but three revisions still lifted rates by 10.75 percent, against 18 percent inflation on his figures and by less than Bürgergeld.

At the first reading on 16 October 2024 of changes to the Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz on fixed-term academic contracts, he said it came 30 months after the evaluation and would take effect only six months after promulgation. The coalition, he argued, was split on the postdoctoral limit; ending the ban on collective agreements risked the fragmentation the Bundesrat had warned of; and favouring qualification-based contracts over third-party-funded ones threatened non-professorial staff at universities of applied sciences. He called instead for a strategy for non-professorial staff and for fewer very short grants.

### The research-funding dispute

On 8 May 2024 university teachers in Berlin published a statement on the police clearance, ordered by the Free University of Berlin, of a pro-Palestinian protest camp. *Tagesschau* reported that the signatories did not endorse the students' demands but invoked freedom of expression and assembly. Stark-Watzinger said on 16 June that she was appalled by the letter's silence on Hamas terrorism, while insisting that academic freedom required funding by scientific criteria, not political outlook.

On 11 June the ARD programme *Panorama* published emails asking whether signatories' grants could be revoked and whether the letter was criminally relevant; staff wrote of "great unease" at names marked on lists. Stark-Watzinger said she had neither ordered nor wanted that review. The ministry said state secretary Sabine Döring had initiated the underlying order and called her wording misleading, and the minister asked Chancellor Olaf Scholz to place Döring in temporary retirement. It later said a working-level list of signatories linked to the ministry, made for press questions, had neither reached her nor left the specialist units.

At the education committee on 26 June, Jarzombek accused her of not answering questions; the CDU/CSU also put 100 written questions. At a special sitting on 10 September he said files were still withheld, that official secrecy had muzzled Döring, and that Wire chats the minister called private were a "system of shadow communication". FDP spokesperson Ria Schröder accused him of throwing dirt "without a claim to truth"; Stark-Watzinger spoke of speculation; SPD member [Oliver Kaczmarek](/people/oliver-kaczmarek) said the committee was "just as wise as before". Döring told reporters she read the Minden ruling as the ministry's own denial that she had ordered the review, and hoped to learn who had.

Days earlier the Administrative Court in Minden had refused her urgent bid to suppress the press statement and to be allowed to testify. On 19 November 2024 the Higher Administrative Court for North Rhine-Westphalia (1 B 911/24) dismissed what remained of the complaint—the injunction only—in a final decision. It held there was no false fact: an unbiased reader would not think the release said Döring herself had asked for a funding-law review, only that one had been requested and that she had started the underlying order by telephone on 13 May. A request of 10 May was only a list of funded signatories for the press, and her email of 14 June, admitting a misleading formulation, was attributable to her.

After the coalition collapsed, [Cem Özdemir](/people/cem-ozdemir) of Alliance 90/The Greens, then also leading the ministry, told the committee on 29 January 2025 that an internal audit ordered on 6 December 2024 and dated 20 January had found no administrative misconduct. The order, he said, had lasted only a few hours, no grants had been cut on a legally doubtful basis, and responsibility for handling it—and a serious loss of trust—lay with Stark-Watzinger. FDP member Stephan Seiter said this did not contradict her account. Jarzombek called the list of named researchers unprecedented, while agreeing the affair concerned the leadership rather than staff who had "shown resilience"; Nicole Gohlke of the Left said the case remained unsolved.

## Parliamentary state secretary

### The ministry and the appointment

On 6 May 2025 an organisational decree by Chancellor Friedrich Merz created the Federal Ministry for Digital Transformation and Government Modernisation (*Bundesministerium für Digitales und Staatsmodernisierung*, BMDS) in the new CDU/CSU–SPD government. Thomas Jarzombek was sworn in that day as parliamentary state secretary (*Parlamentarischer Staatssekretär*), with fellow CDU member [Philipp Amthor](/people/philipp-amthor), in a short ceremony in the Bundestag library. In late April’s cabinet talks he and Amthor had already been named to flank minister Karsten Wildberger, who had led Ceconomy, owner of MediaMarkt and Saturn, since 2021.

He was not the ministry’s only lead. Netzpolitik.org assigned him digitalisation and Amthor state modernisation and bureaucracy reduction, with Markus Richter—until then federal chief information officer at the interior ministry—as career state secretary. The house took digital administration and the Online Access Act, federal IT and administrative networks from the interior ministry, except the security authorities’ own network needs; ITZBund and a “sovereign cloud” from finance; digital and data policy and fibre and mobile networks from transport; and the bureaucracy-reduction office, better regulation and the National Regulatory Control Council from justice. Strategic foresight came from the chancellery, with a veto over major IT spending by the direct federal administration, except security tasks and taxation. The interior ministry kept passports, identity cards and identity management even as the BMDS claimed the digital-identity wallet, and aerospace work Jarzombek had coordinated from 2018 to 2021 went to the research ministry.

### Portfolio and priorities

On the chart of 15 August 2026 Jarzombek is assigned DS (Deutschland-Stack: shared administrative IT and federal IT purchasing), DI (Digitale Infrastrukturen: telecommunications, broadband and mobile networks) and DW (Digitalpolitik und Wirtschaft: digital policy, the data economy, artificial intelligence and computing). Richter’s oversight includes those directorates; Gitta Connemann held the service and state-modernisation directorates earlier linked to Amthor.

On 4 June 2025, in a closed sitting of the Bundestag committee for digital affairs and state modernisation, he reported on the European Digital Identity Wallet under eIDAS. Germany, he said, had to offer an interoperable wallet by 2027 and was building a platform, not one exclusive app, after a competition run through SPRIND; the aim was daily use, unlike the little-used online function of the identity card. Federal Office for Information Security president Claudia Plattner had shown the product at re:publica the week before. An AfD member asked who would police data-protection compliance; Jarzombek named the federal data-protection commissioner. SPD member [Parsa Marvi](/people/parsa-marvi) said EU implementing acts had been criticised for conflicting with eIDAS rules on encryption, pseudonyms and privacy. Tagesschau reported on 5 July 2025 that a smartphone wallet for an identity card, driving licence, insurance proofs and payments was aimed at early 2027, and quoted Markus Beckedahl that much of it had been decided in April 2024.

Register modernisation, a compulsory citizen account and “digital only” access were coalition targets for the ministry. The Deutschland-Stack was later described as reusable blocks for federal, state and local services, including the National Once-Only Technical System and the EUDI wallet. A Bundesrechnungshof report published by netzpolitik.org on 6 August 2026 found standards still missing, including for generative AI and IT security, doubted whether existing components would fit, and said late planning risked missing a start at the beginning of 2028, even as the ministry built the Spark AI project and funded agentic-AI pilots.

In a *Handelsblatt* commentary on 18 November 2025, Jarzombek wrote that politics was already at full stretch and that German industry had to lead on AI and cloud technology. *heise online* reported on 17 March 2026 a data-centre strategy, presented by Wildberger with economy minister Katherina Reiche and due in cabinet that week: at least double data-centre capacity, and quadruple AI computing capacity, by 2030, measured by connection load. In September 2025 Berlin data-protection commissioner Meike Kamp, with other state authorities, said a BMDS draft giving market surveillance of certain high-risk AI systems—including in policing and border control—to the Federal Network Agency would seriously weaken fundamental rights, because the EU AI Act already assigned that role to data-protection authorities.

## Reception, disputes and personal life

### Local controversies

In the summer of 2015 the Düsseldorf district association of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany, about 3,200 members and in opposition after losing the mayoralty in 2014, split over chair Thomas Jarzombek. *[Die Welt](/organizations/die-welt)* reported that he and district manager Bernhard Herzog had signed, at the end of January, the dismissal of a clerk anonymised as Hannelore B., after more than 30 years in the district office. She sued at the Düsseldorf labour court. In mid-June the case was still pending; Herzog said a claim of dismissal without grounds was incorrect and declined to comment on the open proceedings. Former district manager Gerd Ozimek said he had told Jarzombek, "Thomas, schäm dich," because the treatment of a long-serving employee harmed the party. It also reported that a young man with paraplegia who had done the office's IT work was no longer there: Herzog denied a dismissal, while the court file was said to show that he had been released and that dismissal was intended.

Deputies Sylvia Pantel, a Bundestag member, and Peter Preuß, a member of the Landtag of North Rhine-Westphalia, criticised that leadership and backed Heidrun Leinenbach, a project manager at the municipal utilities, at the district convention on 22 June 2015. She said the association was not fit to campaign and felt like two parties in one. Jarzombek cited nearly 270 local appointments in twelve months, said personal criticism came largely from the two deputies, and insisted that internal disputes stay internal. *Die Welt* described a quarrel over conduct rather than programme, including his "red card" for anyone who criticised colleagues in the press. Delegates re-elected him with 77.3 percent of the votes cast; Pantel and Preuß then did not stand again as deputies.

In November 2016 the Christmas tree in front of the city hall caused a further row. After Lillehammer ended a decades-long gift of a large fir, a citizens' group proposed a planted tree. Norbert Czerwinski, council leader of Alliance 90/The Greens, called the idea appealing, said the pedestrian-zone site would not suit a living tree, and asked whether a freshly felled fir was still timely. The CDU council group wanted the tradition kept. A tabloid line, "Grüne wollen Rathaus-Tanne abschaffen," was read as a ban, which Czerwinski denied. Jarzombek, internet-policy spokesman of the CDU/CSU Bundestag group, posted on Facebook, "Laut einem Pressebericht wollen Die Grünen der Stadt Düsseldorf den Weihnachtsbaum vorm Rathaus verbieten." Czerwinski said the post was left up after the wording was disputed and was used against the Greens. He reported insults, hate mail and a threat to hang him from the tree and shred him, and said Austrian right-wing populists used the false report in their presidential campaign. Jarzombek said sharpening was part of opposition politics. He regretted the threats, which he said he knew himself, but did not believe his post had caused them. The Rheinische Post noted that the internet spokesman had shared the false quotation, and that CDU councillors Andreas Hartnigk, Olaf Lehne and Giuseppe Saitta briefly shared, then deleted, a repetition of it on the far-right site Halle Leaks.

### Personal life

In 2021 Jarzombek was reported to have grown up at Staufenplatz in Grafenberg and to live in Golzheim, a different Düsseldorf district. His son Niklas Maximilian was born on 19 December 2014 at the Charité in Berlin to his then fiancée, the lawyer Marja von Oppenkowski; a wedding was then expected in 2015. They married in January 2018 in the closest family circle, with a larger celebration planned for his 45th birthday on 28 April 2018. He told the paper they had married simply for love. In 2021 he was still described as married, with a son about to start school. The paper's topic page later states that he is in divorce proceedings and has one child.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

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