# Tilman Kuban

# Tilman Kuban

Tilman Moritz Kuban (born 26 May 1987 in Langenhagen, Lower Saxony) is a German lawyer and a politician of the [Christian Democratic Union](/organizations/christian-democratic-union-of-germany) (CDU). He has been a member of the Bundestag since the [2021 German federal election](/facts/2021-german-federal-election) and returned for the 21st Bundestag after the 2025 election. In the 21st Bundestag he is a full member of the Committee on European Union Affairs and the Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy, and a deputy member of the Committee on [Foreign Affairs](/organizations/foreign-affairs), sitting with the CDU/CSU group.

Kuban took his Abitur in 2006 at the Europaschule Gymnasium Bad Nenndorf, spent 2006–2007 in New Zealand, and studied law at Osnabrück University from 2007 to 2013, passing the first state examination in law. He completed his legal clerkship at the Higher Regional Court of Celle from 2014 to 2016 and passed the second state examination. From 2016 until he entered parliament in 2021 he was an in-house counsel and head of legal affairs and sustainability at the Unternehmerverbände Niedersachsen, the umbrella association of employers in Lower Saxony, and he has continued to be listed as a lawyer in Barsinghausen. He joined the CDU’s local structures in the Hanover region and has served on the town council of Barsinghausen.

From 2014 to 2019 he chaired the Lower Saxony branch of the Junge Union, the joint youth organisation of the CDU and the [Christian Social Union](/organizations/christian-social-union-in-bavaria). On 16 March 2019 a special Deutschlandtag in Berlin elected him federal chairman with 200 of 319 valid votes (62.7 percent), ahead of Stefan Gruhner of Thuringia, after [Paul Ziemiak](/people/paul-ziemiak) had become CDU general secretary. *Der Spiegel* described him beforehand as the underdog and as a critic of Chancellor [Angela Merkel](/people/angela-merkel)’s migration policy who argued for a strong state and consistent deportations. He held the federal chair, and with it a seat on the CDU federal executive, until 2022.

In the 2021 election he was the CDU candidate in Hannover-Land II and received 25.5 percent of the first votes, behind the Social Democratic Party incumbent [Matthias Miersch](/people/matthias-miersch) on 40.7 percent. He nevertheless sat in the 20th Bundestag. On 23 February 2025 the same constituency was closer: the Federal Returning Officer recorded 59,010 first votes (30.0 percent) for Kuban and 62,406 (31.8 percent) for Miersch, with the CDU ahead of the SPD on second votes in the district (27.4 percent to 24.1 percent). In October 2025 the Bundestag lifted his parliamentary immunity so that the public prosecutor’s office in Konstanz could investigate a complaint connected, according to contemporary reports, with his separation from his wife, the lawyer Dominique Emerich; Kuban denied the allegations. On 27 January 2026 the Konstanz prosecutor’s office discontinued the investigation, stating that there was no sufficient suspicion of an offence.

## Early life and education

### Childhood and schooling

Tilman Kuban was born on 26 May 1987 in Langenhagen, a town in the Hanover Region of Lower Saxony, not in the city of Hanover. He grew up in Barsinghausen, southwest of the state capital. A 2021 *Focus* profile reported that the household was not strongly political: his parents belonged to no party and, the magazine wrote, would not have described themselves as conservative. On his own website he says voluntary work was a family habit, with his mother active in the Mariengemeinde and his father at the multi-sport club TSV Kirchdorf.

The Bundestag biography, which the parliament states is drawn from members' own disclosures, records that he is evangelical Lutheran. It gives his school-leaving qualification as the Abitur in 2006 at the Europaschule Gymnasium Bad Nenndorf, followed by a stay in New Zealand from 2006 to 2007. The *Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung* later summarized the same sequence, writing that after the Abitur he spent a year in New Zealand before beginning his law studies. Published biographies do not name a primary school or describe what he did during the year abroad.

### University and legal training

From 2007 to 2013 Kuban studied law at Osnabrück University and passed the first state examination in law (*Erstes Juristisches Staatsexamen*). He restated that chronology in a written answer on Abgeordnetenwatch in November 2025. The practical traineeship (*Referendariat*) ran from 2014 to 2016 at the Higher Regional Court (Oberlandesgericht) in Celle. He passed the second state examination in 2016 and, on his own account, thereby qualified as a *Volljurist*, the German designation for a fully trained lawyer. Public biographies do not report examination grades, a doctoral thesis, or the individual stages of the traineeship beyond the Celle court.

The *Hannoversche Allgemeine* placed one further step on that path: after the Osnabrück degree he worked for Burkhard Balz, then a member of the [European Parliament](/organizations/european-parliament) for the Christian Democratic Union, before the in-house legal post at the employers' associations of Lower Saxony that he held until entering the Bundestag.

### Football

Kuban has said that he started playing football at the age of five. A 2021 portrait in *Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin*, in the series "Sagen Sie jetzt nichts", called him "der Tille" at home in Lower Saxony and described him as only moderately successful as a player for TSV Kirchdorf in Barsinghausen, and more successful as a coach and later as a scout for Hannover 96. In January 2025 the *Hannoversche Allgemeine* reported that he had been involved since his youth as a coach, a referee and in the youth leadership of TSV Kirchdorf, and for a time as a youth scout for Hannover 96. He told the paper that little pleased him more than spending free time on football, whether following a match in the stadium or on an amateur ground in the region.

*Bild* reported in December 2023 that, before his rise in party politics, he had been a district-selection coach (*Kreisauswahltrainer*) and a youth scout for Hannover 96's under-10 to under-14 sides. He told the paper that the scouting was only a mini-job while he was a legal trainee, and that he nevertheless drove about 10,000 kilometres in a season from pitch to pitch. At the neighbourhood club TSV Limmer he identified Charles Herrmann, who then played in the Hannover 96 youth teams from 2016 to 2020 and later appeared for Germany's under-17 side. The Bundestag biography lists later unpaid football roles: member of the commission for social responsibility of the Lower Saxony Football Association, and member of the board of trustees of the Egidius Braun Foundation of the German Football Association.

## Professional career

### Unternehmerverbände Niedersachsen

From 2016 to 2021 Tilman Kuban worked in Hanover as in-house counsel (Syndikusrechtsanwalt) and head of legal affairs and sustainability at the Unternehmerverbände Niedersachsen (UVN). The Bundestag biography, which states that such texts rest on members' own information, gives that account and records that he entered parliament in October 2021.

The UVN entry in the Bundestag lobby register describes an employers' association that is the umbrella for more than 100 employer and business associations in Lower Saxony, the state body of the Bundesvereinigung der Deutschen Arbeitgeberverbände, and the state representation of the Bundesverband der Deutschen Industrie and the ZVEI. It listed 101 organizational members on 31 December 2025, at the Haus der Industrie, Schiffgraben 36, Hanover.

The mandatory disclosure of pre-mandate employment does not name the UVN. It lists him as Syndikusrechtsanwalt at the Institut der Norddeutschen Wirtschaft e.V. in Hanover, with a right to return, and, for the 20th electoral period, as Justiziar of the Dienstleistungsgesellschaft der Norddeutschen Wirtschaft e.V. The Institut, a professional association, reported 773 members at the end of 2025, uses the same Schiffgraben address, and names the UVN among its memberships. Dr. Andreas Jäger is UVN president and chair of the Institut's board. The Institut calls the arrangement a personal union with the UVN in the presidency and the chief executive's office.

### Practice and board seats

Kuban has practiced as a lawyer (Rechtsanwalt) in Barsinghausen. The 20th-period disclosure places that practice among his occupations before the mandate, and both that filing and the current one list it as paid work alongside the mandate. No separate gross sum is published for it.

He is an honorary member of the supervisory board of Stadtwerke Barsinghausen GmbH, with no payment published. In January 2022 con-nect reported that, after the constitutive meeting of the Barsinghausen council, Kuban was among the councillors sent to the utility's nine-member supervisory board, on which the mayor sits ex officio.

HAUS & GRUNDEIGENTUM Hannover, an association for private owners of houses, apartments and land in the Hanover region, says it has more than 12,000 members and lists Kuban on its executive board. Bundestag filings report 3,000 euros gross a year for that seat, plus irregular payments of 200 euros in 2022, 400 euros in 2023 and 1,200 euros in 2024. From 3 September 2024 the 20th-period disclosure named him honorary chair of the supervisory boards of HAUS & GRUNDEIGENTUM Medien GmbH and HAUS & GRUNDEIGENTUM Service GmbH. The current entry still lists him as honorary chair of the Medien company, with 1,500 euros gross for 2025, and as an honorary member of the Service company's board, with 3,000 euros gross for 2025.

At neoshare AG the 20th-period filing records an honorary supervisory-board seat at Neoloan AG in Munich until 31 August 2023, then an advisory-board seat at neoshare AG (formerly Neoloan AG) from 30 September 2023 to 13 December 2024. Since 11 July 2025 he is deputy chair of neoshare's supervisory board, with 40,000 euros gross reported for 2026. Finanz-Szene reported in October 2026 that the Munich firm, founded in 2019 as Pecunia AG, had the CDU parliamentarian as vice-chair. Several of Germany's largest savings banks took stakes at the end of 2024 alongside Volksbanken, which later withdrew, for a shared platform for commercial real-estate finance. The company told about 40 percent of roughly 230 employees that their jobs were ending, a cut people around the firm attributed to rapid change in artificial intelligence.

## Local politics

### Party offices

In 2005, when he was 17, Kuban joined the Junge Union, the youth organization of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) and the Christian Social Union. A later profile reported that his parents were not party members and that he came to the CDU through sport: with friends from his football club, one of them the Junge Union chairman in Barsinghausen, he had campaigned for a night train from Hanover to the town, and he decided that year to join the youth organization. The service was introduced in 2018, by which time he was state chairman of the Junge Union in Lower Saxony. His Bundestag biography, drawn from his own disclosures, dates that state chairmanship to 2014–2019 and the federal Junge Union chairmanship to 2019–2022, and lists him separately as a member of the CDU Kreisvorstand Hannover-Land and of the CDU Bezirksvorstand Hannover.

On the published board of the CDU Bezirksverband Hannover he sits as a *freier Beisitzer* under § 5 g of the association's rules, an at-large seat rather than one tied to a particular Kreisverband. The same page names [Hendrik Hoppenstedt](/people/hendrik-hoppenstedt) as Bezirksvorsitzender. The CDU Stadtverband Barsinghausen lists a local executive chaired by Michael Kowalski, with two deputy chairs, a treasurer, a secretary, several Beisitzer and Kowalski again as Mitgliederbeauftragter; Kuban is not among those officers. The page names him only under Abgeordnete, as the Stadtverband's Bundestag member, alongside the local chairmen of the Ortsverbände.

### Barsinghausen council

The town's council information system records Kuban as a CDU member of the Rat der Stadt Barsinghausen from 8 November 2007, with no end date entered. The same register lists him as a CDU deputy on the committee for climate protection, planning, building and the environment from 15 November 2006 to 31 October 2011, a start date earlier than his recorded council membership.

From 1 November 2016 to 5 April 2019 the register shows him, with the function Beigeordneter, as a substitute on the Verwaltungsausschuss, and over the same dates as a deputy on the operating committee of the municipal drainage utility and on the committee for social affairs, youth and citizen services. From 15 July 2021 he was a member of the committee for the fire service, sport, culture, road traffic and public order, and from 1 November 2021 until 31 December 2024 its chairman. In that term he was also a full member of the drainage utility's operating committee and a deputy on the school committee, the social-affairs committee and the finance committee. From 2 January 2025 he has been a member of the successor committee for the fire service, public order and road-traffic matters, and a deputy on the committees for schools, sport and culture and for building.

After the constitutive meeting of the council elected in 2021, the town sent Kuban, with other councillors, to the nine-member supervisory board of Stadtwerke Barsinghausen GmbH. Local reporting in January 2022 named him among the members; Maximilian Schneider, a member of the board since November 2016, was elected chairman on 15 December 2021. The Bundestag's register of disclosable positions still lists an honorary seat on that supervisory board.

In the council election of 12 September 2021 the town's overall result recorded him as directly elected in Wahlbereich 1 with 915 votes, one of 11 CDU councillors on the list of those returned. For the election of 13 September 2026 the Barsinghausen CDU nominated him in first place on Liste 1. The town's preliminary list of elected councillors records him as directly elected in Wahlbereich I with 1,440 votes, one of nine CDU names on that list; turnout in the council election was 66 percent.

## Leadership of the Junge Union

### Lower Saxony chairmanship

Tilman Kuban chaired the Lower Saxony branch of the Junge Union, the joint youth organization of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Christian Social Union (CSU), from 2014 to 2019. At the state organization's 48th Niedersachsentag in Osnabrück, 190 delegates elected the Barsinghausen city councillor with 94.2 percent. He asked the CDU to pick its 2017 candidate for minister-president in a membership ballot and to back more young candidates in the 2016 local elections; former minister-president David McAllister was the main guest. He kept the state post while, from 2016, working as in-house counsel and head of legal affairs and sustainability at the Lower Saxony employers' associations, and he still held it when he sought the federal chair.

### Election as federal chairman

The federal chair fell vacant after Paul Ziemiak became CDU general secretary in December 2018. An extraordinary Deutschlandtag on 16 March 2019, at the Congress Center on Alexanderplatz in Berlin, filled it in a contest between two state chairs.

Kuban, then 31, a lawyer and a candidate for the European Parliament, faced Stefan Gruhner, 34, chair in Thuringia and a member of that state's parliament, whom reporting had treated as the favorite. Kuban's speech drew standing applause and chants of his name. He said anyone unwilling to obey German law was not welcome; mocked school toilets "from the third to the 312th gender"; and, of Defence Minister [Ursula von der Leyen](/people/energy-ursula-von-der-leyen), said it could not be that she had more children than aircraft able to fly. He told Juso chair [Kevin Kühnert](/people/kevin-kuhnert) to finish his degree if he wanted his own flat; Kühnert answered that one could become CDU general secretary without a degree, a jab at Ziemiak. Of 319 valid votes Kuban took 200, or 62.7 percent, and Gruhner 119. Kuban then urged unity: there was only one Junge Union, which had to move in one direction "because the political opponent is standing out there and is not sitting in here." CDU chair [Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer](/people/annegret-kramp-karrenbauer), in her first speech as party leader to the youth wing, said the [Fridays for Future](/organizations/fridays-for-future) strikes would convince her more if they were held in pupils' free time.

### Tenure, 2019–2022

As federal chair, Kuban sat on the CDU federal executive from 2019 to 2022, and *Der Spiegel* reported that his first board meeting, with Chancellor Angela Merkel, was set for the Monday after Berlin. Days later he told *[Die Welt](/organizations/die-welt)* that many in the CDU felt ill at ease because the party's course had undergone a "Gleichschaltung," a term usually reserved for the Nazi suppression of independent institutions. He said a silent majority had not backed the 2015 refugee policy, that a membership survey would have differed from a party congress, and that Merkel should have stopped earlier because the legal basis of opening the border was never fully examined. He called the rapid nuclear exit a mistake for lacking a European frame, and said he respected Merkel but that she had not been an idol of his. On Facebook he then called the wording "inappropriate," while insisting dissent must not be tabooed from above. SPD general secretary [Lars Klingbeil](/people/lars-klingbeil) called it a right-wing habit of breaking a taboo and retreating; Green MP Sven Kindler said it relativized National Socialism. CDU deputy chair Julia Klöckner wrote that Gleichschaltung belonged to systems democrats did not live in, and Lower Saxony CDU leader Bernd Althusmann called the word unacceptable in a [democratic people's party](/organizations/democratic-people-s-party) while noting Kuban's clarification.

On 29 November 2020, during the [COVID-19 pandemic](/drivers/covid-19-pandemic), a fully digital Deutschlandtag returned him unopposed for two years, with 243 of 290 votes, or 83.8 percent. The Junge Union called the online vote for its 22-member executive pioneering; women rose from 23 to 41 percent of the board. The program came from a studio in the CSU headquarters in Munich, where Markus Söder appeared in person and called the organization a political pacemaker, while Kramp-Karrenbauer criticized a deputy team with only one woman and what she saw as a narrow social base. Kuban had pressed for a CDU leadership election in January; Kramp-Karrenbauer said the federal executive would decide on 14 December to hold the congress, without fixing whether it would be in person, split, or digital.

In a *Spiegel* discussion in January 2022, before Russia's full-scale invasion, he said the government was not speaking with one voice on Ukraine and placed himself nearer [Annalena Baerbock](/people/annalena-baerbock) than Social Democratic talk of a "talked-up" conflict. He called the row over Nord Stream 2 somewhat beside the point, arguing Germany already used Russian gas and could not complete the energy transition without it as a bridge fuel. He did not want to fuel a war, he said, but if Ukraine were attacked on a large scale Germany would have to stand with it, "if necessary also with weapons deliveries."

### Departure and succession

Kuban did not stand at the Deutschlandtag in Fulda on 18 November 2022. Then 35, he left after nearly four years for reasons of age and was sent off with a standing ovation. [Johannes Winkel](/people/johannes-winkel), 31, chair of the Junge Union in North Rhine-Westphalia and the only candidate, received 86.96 percent and told delegates to "go full throttle together," warning of deindustrialization and attacking the climate group Last Generation while arguing the Union should lead in making Germany a climate-neutral industrial country. Kuban said the CDU had to "learn to walk again" and described the youth wing as the party's "fitness coach." He spoke of young Ukrainians at the front; ambassador Oleksii Makeiev thanked Germany for weapons while saying many Russian missiles still got through, and Kyiv mayor [Vitali Klitschko](/people/vitali-klitschko) appeared by video.

## Candidacies and elections

### 2019 European election

Kuban was a candidate of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) in the [2019 European Parliament election in Germany](/facts/2019-european-parliament-election-in-germany) on 26 May 2019. In Lower Saxony the CDU stood with a state list. The Federal Returning Officer's final compilation lists him, described there as a company lawyer and attorney, in fourth place, and as the first person in line to succeed if a Lower Saxony CDU seat fell vacant. The three seats from that list went to [David McAllister](/people/david-mcallister) (place 1), Jens Gieseke (place 2) and Lena Düpont (place 3).

The same publication records 1,119,352 CDU votes in Lower Saxony, 29.9 percent of the valid vote, and three seats, one fewer than in 2014. Across Germany the CDU fell from 30.0 percent and 29 seats in 2014 to 22.6 percent and 23 of the 96 German seats. In March 2019, shortly after Kuban became federal chair of the Young Union, the *Süddeutsche Zeitung* wrote that his list place was good enough for election to be regarded as certain, and that he would be the first holder of that office to sit in the European Parliament. The result left him outside it.

### 2021 federal election

At the 2021 German federal election on 26 September 2021, Kuban was the CDU direct candidate in constituency 47, Hannover-Land II. The Federal Returning Officer assigns the constituency twelve municipalities in the Hanover region: the towns of Barsinghausen, where Kuban lived, Gehrden, Hemmingen, Laatzen, Lehrte, Pattensen, Ronnenberg, Seelze, Sehnde and Springe, plus Uetze and Wennigsen (Deister). The rest of the region falls in constituencies 41, 42 and 43.

*Map of Bundestag constituency 47, Hannover-Land II, in the Hanover region of Lower Saxony.*

Of 238,323 eligible voters, 181,202 voted, a turnout of 76.0 percent. On first votes, Matthias Miersch of the [Social Democratic Party of Germany](/organizations/social-democratic-party-of-germany) (SPD) won the direct mandate with 73,088 votes (40.7 percent), 3.7 points above the SPD's 2017 share in the district. Kuban was second with 45,721 votes (25.5 percent), 9.8 points below the CDU result of 2017. Alliance 90/[The Greens](/organizations/the-greens) received 12.4 percent of first votes, [the Alternative](/organizations/the-alternative) for Germany 7.5 percent and the Free Democratic Party 6.6 percent. Second votes in the constituency were led by the SPD on 34.6 percent, with the CDU on 22.7 percent.

The Lower Saxony returning officer's notice of admitted state lists, dated 3 August 2021, put Kuban seventh on the CDU list, after Anne Janssen and before Carsten Müller. He did not take the constituency seat. Because the direct mandate went to Miersch, his entry into the Bundestag, which records him as a member from October 2021, was through the state list on which he held place 7.

### 2025 federal election

Kuban stood again in Hannover-Land II at the 2025 German federal election on 23 February 2025. The *Braunschweiger Zeitung* reported that the CDU state list had been fixed at a delegates' assembly in Visselhövede at the end of November, and printed him sixth, after [Fritz Güntzler](/people/fritz-guntzler) and before Mareike Lotte Wulf. The Federal Returning Officer's list of those elected from state lists gives the same place: Kuban, list place 6.

Turnout was 84.5 percent of 234,055 eligible voters. Miersch, by then SPD general secretary, again received the most first votes: 62,406 (31.8 percent), against 59,010 (30.0 percent) for Kuban. A dpa report published by the *Süddeutsche Zeitung* described the result as Miersch's sixth successive win in a district he had held since 2005. The AfD took 17.2 percent of first votes, the Greens 8.9 percent, [Die Linke](/organizations/die-linke) 5.5 percent and the FDP 2.5 percent. The Federal Returning Officer names Miersch as elected in the constituency and Kuban as the runner-up.

Second votes in the district put the CDU first, with 53,988 votes (27.4 percent), ahead of the SPD on 24.1 percent, the AfD on 17.5 percent, the Greens on 12.2 percent, Die Linke on 7.4 percent, the FDP on 4.0 percent and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance on 3.8 percent. Kuban did not receive the direct mandate. NDR, listing the Lower Saxony members as the new Bundestag met, counted him among six CDU deputies who entered through the state list, at place 6 for constituency 47. The Bundestag biography states that the seat is held via the Lower Saxony list, with the additional candidacy in Hannover-Land II.

## Work in the Bundestag

### Committees and rapporteurships

Tilman Kuban took his seat in the Bundestag on 26 October 2021 for the Christian Democratic Union, elected on the state list of Lower Saxony. The parliament's member master data close that 20th-term mandate on 25 March 2025, the day the 21st Bundestag was constituted, and open a new mandate the same day, again via the Lower Saxony list.

In the 20th term he was an ordinary member of two committees, both constituted on 15 December 2021. The Committee on Economic Affairs, with 34 ordinary members, elected Michael Grosse-Brömer of the CDU/Christian Social Union as chair; Kuban was one of nine CDU/CSU members. The Committee on European Union Affairs, with 40 ordinary members, elected Anton Hofreiter of Alliance 90/The Greens as chair; Kuban was one of eleven CDU/CSU members. The archived biography, based on members' own statements, records those two full memberships and calls him deputy chairman of the Parlamentskreis Mittelstand. It does not list a Foreign Affairs seat.

For the 21st term the master data, in the edition of 29 April 2026, record three roles from 21 May 2025: ordinary member of the Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy, ordinary member of the Committee on European Union Affairs, and deputy member of the Foreign Affairs Committee. The EU committee, cut to 34 members, again chose Hofreiter as chair and named Kuban among eleven CDU/CSU members. The economic and energy committee, with 42 members, elected Christian Freiherr von Stetten (CDU/CSU) as chair, by 41 votes to one; Kuban was one of fourteen CDU/CSU members. Neither those records nor the biography current in October 2026 assign him a standing rapporteurship, including on the European Union and Ukraine. Bill rapporteurs are named inside committee proceedings; no such title for him appears in the published membership lists.

On 5 June 2025 the Bundestag adopted Drucksache 21/339 and elected him a substitute in the German delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the [Council of Europe](/organizations/council-of-europe). The master data date that deputyship from the day of the vote, and the October 2026 biography still lists it with the two full seats and the foreign-affairs deputyship.

### Economic and Mittelstand roles

The Parlamentskreis Mittelstand is a group inside the CDU/CSU caucus, not a Bundestag committee. A caucus leaflet of July 2022 called it the largest of six such groups, with 144 of the then 197 caucus members, and linked its work to the social market economy and the Mittelstand. It placed Kuban, then federal chairman of the Young Union, in the presidium as first deputy chairman, with von Stetten as chairman. Biographies for both terms still describe him as a deputy chairman. From 3 June 2025 his statutory disclosure also records him as deputy chairman of the association that supports the circle.

The master data add a regulatory seat from 18 September 2025: deputy member of the advisory board of the Federal Network Agency for electricity, gas, telecommunications, post and railways. A *heute im bundestag* note the day before named him among the CDU/CSU substitutes in Drucksache 21/1651, for a board of 16 Bundestag members and 16 Bundesrat members.

On 22 May 2025, in the seventh sitting, he spoke for the CDU/CSU on a Green motion on energy security and ruling out a return to the Nord Stream pipelines. He criticised the previous government's energy record. Asked by [Agnieszka Brugger](/people/agnieszka-brugger) whether he would promise that no Russian gas would again flow through the pipelines, he quoted earlier Green statements on Russian gas and referred to a position already set out by Andreas Lenz, rather than answering yes or no.

### European and foreign affairs

On 13 May 2025 the CDU/CSU caucus elected new working-group chairs and listed Kuban for affairs of the European Union. [Patricia Lips](/people/patricia-lips) became a deputy caucus chair for European policy, coordination in Europe, the Brussels office and the [European People's Party](/organizations/european-people-s-party) group, a leadership portfolio distinct from the working-group chair. The caucus website pairs his chairmanship with the title of European-policy spokesperson and later again listed him in both roles.

In October 2025 he suspended the chairmanship. The *Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung* reported on 22 October that a caucus spokesman said Kuban was, until the matter was clarified, no longer chair of the EU working group, that his deputy would exercise the post, and that the committee on electoral scrutiny, immunity and the rules of procedure had been informed. At the start of the legislative period the Bundestag had lifted members' immunity in general for the opening of investigations. NDR later reported that he had left the office dormant while an investigation was pending. That investigation lies outside this account of the offices.

The foreign-affairs role from 21 May 2025 is a deputy seat, not an ordinary one. In the 22 May pipeline debate, contributions around his speech tied the energy question to the Russian war against Ukraine. The published membership records still do not name him rapporteur for the EU–Ukraine relationship.

## Political positions

### Migration and internal security

Kuban's migration line was already set when he became federal chairman of the Junge Union in March 2019. *Der Spiegel* reported on 16 March that he had long criticised Chancellor Angela Merkel's migration policy and argued that the CDU had opened flanks on internal security and the rule of law. He stood for a strong state and for consistent deportations of foreign offenders and rejected asylum seekers. In a *Welt* interview reported a week later he said a silent majority in the CDU had not carried the 2015 course, that Merkel should have given a stop signal much earlier, and that the legality of opening the border had never really been examined. He spoke of a "Gleichschaltung" inside the party, a term associated with the suppression of dissent under National Socialism, then called the word "unpassend" while holding to the substance.

In the Bundestag he treated the policy of Chancellor [Friedrich Merz](/people/friedrich-merz) as that correction. In September 2025 he wrote that the arrival of more than a million refugees had overstretched internal security, and listed limits on family reunification, safe countries of origin, faster returns and rejections at the border under Merz and Interior Minister [Alexander Dobrindt](/people/alexander-dobrindt). Asylum applications in August 2025 were, he said, almost 60 percent lower than a year earlier. In June 2026 he argued that the Basic Law protects people fleeing war but is not a licence for illegal entry: anyone without a protection claim, especially a serious offender, should not remain. He backed tighter controls, faster procedures and fewer incentives to come irregularly.

### Economy, energy and climate

In February 2025 he defended the debt brake against SPD, Green and Left demands to abolish it, citing federal interest costs of 4 billion euro in 2019 and 37 billion in 2025. Investment, he wrote, should be financed by growth — one percent bringing 12 billion euro a year in extra revenue — not by new debt. He opposed a wealth tax and a higher inheritance tax as burdens on family firms, and a higher top rate of income tax, because many owners are taxed as individuals rather than through corporation tax. Bürgergeld, he said, should be replaced by a benefit tied more closely to taking work. After the March 2025 talks he welcomed plans to abolish Bürgergeld. On *Hart aber fair* he said the state should do more for people who cannot work, but was not there for those who can and will not.

He then voted to loosen the brake he had defended. On 2 April 2025 he told n-tv the change caused "große Bauchschmerzen". In March 2026 he said he had opposed the special fund for infrastructure and climate protection, backed it only because the SPD and Greens tied it to defence spending, and now wanted it corrected because money without prior reforms was misspent. In July 2026 he sought to stop a higher "Reichensteuer", arguing that about 80 percent of firms pay income tax rather than corporation tax. The German Economic Institute put the extra annual cost at 2 billion euro.

In March 2019 he had called the rapid nuclear phase-out a mistake for closing safer German plants outside a European arrangement. In *Welt* in late September 2025 he argued that full climate neutrality by 2045 should be eased toward an 80 percent cut, because the last share was disproportionately costly for industry. Free industrial allowances should remain, and 80 percent of fleets should be decarbonised instead of a ban on combustion engines. Shifting production abroad, he said, would not help the climate and would drive workers toward the populist right: 80 percent climate protection with prosperity was better than 100 percent with empty halls. Union deputy leader Andreas Jung replied that the 2045 goal, restated in the election programme and the coalition agreement, still stood. Green deputy leader [Julia Verlinden](/people/julia-verlinden) called the proposal irresponsible and indifferent to international agreements.

### Foreign and European policy

On 19 January 2022 Kuban told *Spiegel* that if Russia attacked Ukraine on a large scale, Germany should stand with Kyiv, if necessary with arms, but not with troops. He placed himself nearer Annalena Baerbock than [Gerhard Schröder](/people/gerhard-schroder), yet said the energy transition still needed Russian gas. On 3 April 2022 he reversed the import line: hard coal and oil from Russia should stop at once so the war would not be financed, with gas to follow if [Vladimir Putin](/people/vladimir-putin) refused talks or if the starvation of Mariupol, massacres such as Bucha, or weapons of mass destruction were confirmed.

In September 2026 he wrote that Taurus, whose range of about 500 kilometres the CDU had in 2024 treated as a missing Ukrainian capability, was no longer the priority. Ukraine had other long-range arms, and Germany was helping it build its own. That, he said, was not acceptance of Putin's red lines; a Russian success would later put German soldiers on NATO's eastern flank. On enlargement he welcomed the European Union decision of 14 December 2023 to open talks with Ukraine and favoured staged entry — programmes, association in foreign policy without a vote, and gradual single-market access — while reforms continued. In May 2025 he extended that model to the Western Balkans and Moldova, writing that decades of waiting would leave the region to other powers and that candidates still had to reform. In June 2026, on a German-French enlargement proposal, he said Europe could not afford "satellite states of Moscow or Beijing" in the Western Balkans. The following February he told Moldova's prime minister that he saw "a lot of progress" and would go on supporting the government where support was needed.

## Personal life and legal proceedings

### Family

The Bundestag biography of Tilman Kuban lists him as evangelical Lutheran, married, and the father of one child. Abgeordnetenwatch records his place of residence as Barsinghausen, in the Hanover Region of Lower Saxony. He married the lawyer Dominique Christine Emerich, whom the Freiburg Bar Association lists as Dominique Christine Kuban, LL.M., with an office in Reichenau in the district of Konstanz.

The *Südkurier* reported on 22 November 2022 that the couple had married in a civil ceremony in Barsinghausen that September, that a church wedding was planned for the following year at Lake Constance, and that their first child, a son, had just been born. A Facebook message by Kuban quoted in that report welcomed the boy by the name Leonard. On 2 September 2023 they married at the minster in Mittelzell on Reichenau Island and had their son baptized there. The paper's account of the service described a Catholic wedding and baptism, recorded the second name Pirmin, and quoted Kuban, identified there as Protestant, as saying that a year after the civil ceremony in Lower Saxony his Catholic wife had prevailed on the question of denomination.

Emerich practices on the island, including on questions involving waterfront property; later reporting also described the firm as specialized in environmental and real-estate law. She has sat on the CDU state executive in Baden-Württemberg and has been deputy chair of the CDU district association in Konstanz. In October 2025 Kuban wrote to political colleagues that he and his wife had separated some months earlier, which places the separation in 2025, while the Bundestag biography still listed him as married.

### Immunity waiver and investigation

In October 2025 the public prosecution office in Konstanz investigated Kuban, a member of the Bundestag and former federal chairman of the Young Union, after a criminal complaint by Emerich connected with the separation. What was alleged was not made public. An investigation, and a decision allowing prosecutors to proceed against a member of parliament, is not a conviction, and the presumption of innocence applied.

News organizations reported that his parliamentary immunity had been lifted so the investigation could proceed. A Deutsche Presse-Agentur dispatch carried by the *Süddeutsche Zeitung* on 22 October 2025 added the procedural detail: under a standing authorization, preliminary criminal inquiries against members may go ahead once the President of the Bundestag has been informed, while an indictment or a search still requires the plenary to give permission in public session, without the case details being stated. According to the CDU/CSU group, the responsible Bundestag committee learned of the allegations on 9 October, and on 10 October it was agreed that Kuban would suspend his chairmanship of the group's working group on European Union affairs until the allegations were clarified. A group spokesperson said the leadership took the allegations seriously but would not assess them legally or factually, because only the investigating authority could do so.

Kuban declined to comment publicly, citing privacy. In a message to colleagues he wrote that he and his wife had separated, that he vehemently denied what was being alleged, and that they were in a highly contentious custody proceeding concerning contact with their son.

On 27 January 2026 *Der Spiegel* reported that a spokesperson for the Konstanz prosecution had confirmed the investigation was discontinued under section 170(2) of the Strafprozessordnung because the office saw no sufficient suspicion (*kein hinreichender Tatverdacht*), and that it was still open whether a complaint against the discontinuation would be filed. Senior public prosecutor Andreas Mathy told the *Südkurier* that the case had been a statement-against-statement situation with no objective evidence, and that the office would not be more specific because the matter concerned the most private sphere of life. He said word of the discontinuation had left the authority in mid-January and that prosecutors then knew of no complaint, although the complainant could still lodge one. NDR Niedersachsen reported the same finding of insufficient suspicion. The *Südkurier* wrote that Kuban was still suspending the European-affairs chairmanship and that he had denied the allegations. The discontinuation was a decision not to charge him; no court had convicted him.

## Public reception

### Media profile

[Der Spiegel](/organizations/der-spiegel) reported on 16 March 2019 that Tilman Kuban, then the Junge Union chairman in Lower Saxony, had been elected federal chairman of the youth organisation of the CDU and the CSU. Stefan Gruhner of Thuringia had been the favourite; Kuban won 200 votes to 119 after a combative speech interrupted by applause and chants of his name. Spiegel also presented him as a critic of Chancellor Angela Merkel's migration policy who had campaigned for a strong state and consistent deportations.

After the 2021 federal election the Süddeutsche Zeitung, in an unedited dpa dispatch, reported that he had missed the direct mandate in Hannover-Land II: 25.5 percent of first votes, against 40.7 percent for the SPD deputy Matthias Miersch. The Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung headlined his move into parliament "Aus Hannover in den Bundestag: Wahlverlierer Tilman Kuban bleibt angriffslustig." On *Hart aber fair* the next evening he said, "Wir haben die Wahl verloren. Punkt," and tied the Union's loss to the choice of chancellor candidate Armin Laschet.

In a 30 September 2025 interview, *Die Welt* presented the former youth chairman, by then the CDU/CSU group's spokesman on European affairs, answering Chancellor Friedrich Merz's warning that climate policy threatened industry. Kuban argued for an 80 percent emissions cut by 2045 rather than full neutrality, for keeping free industrial certificates, and against a rigid ban on combustion-engine cars. He told the *Tagesspiegel* he would also try to block a higher top income-tax rate for Mittelstand firms taxed as partnerships.

### Intra-party standing and criticism

A week after the 2019 election, his remark to *Die Welt* that the CDU under Merkel had undergone a "Gleichschaltung" drew sharp criticism. SPD general secretary Lars Klingbeil called it a "rechte Masche" meant to shift the Union right; Sven Kindler of the Greens said the Nazi-era word relativised National Socialism. In the CDU, Lower Saxony chairman Bernd Althusmann called it unacceptable, and deputy leader [Julia Klöckner](/people/julia-klockner) said Gleichschaltung belonged to systems democrats did not inhabit. Kuban called the word "unpassend" the same day, while defending open dissent.

The 2025 climate comments met the same pattern. Union deputy floor leader Andreas Jung told *t-online* that neutrality by 2045, written into the election programme and the coalition agreement, still stood. Julia Verlinden, a deputy Greens leader in the Bundestag, called the proposal ignorant of international agreements and harmful to the economy.

In October 2025 Die Zeit reported that the Bundestag had lifted Kuban's immunity and that the CDU/CSU group had agreed he would pause as chair of its European-affairs working group until allegations from a private dispute were clarified. The leadership said it took them seriously without judging them. The case, treated under personal life and legal proceedings, was later dropped: the [Norddeutscher Rundfunk](/organizations/norddeutscher-rundfunk) reported that prosecutors in Konstanz found no sufficient suspicion.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/tilman-kuban