Conservative MP elected president of the German Bundestag! Who is Julia Klockner?

On Tuesday (March 25, 2025), the new Bundestag in Berlin elected Julia Klöckner as its new president. A senior politician in the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Klöckner is considered a confidant of the party's leader and new chancellor, Friedrich Merz. When he announced Klöckner's nomination, Merz said: "Parliament is the heart of our democracy and the president's task will be to protect this heart." Klöckner is only the fourth woman to hold the office since 1949.

"I have firmly decided to always fulfill my duties impartially, calmly and without fear, to remain clear on this issue while connecting with others, " Klöckner said in her acceptance speech. 

Klöckner, 52, is known as a bold conservative who likes to engage in a wide range of public debates. In January this year, ahead of national elections, she caused a stir by posting a combative statement on Instagram: "You don't have to vote AfD for what you want. There is a democratic alternative: the CDU." This was seen by critics as a trivialization of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and an admission that the CDU had adopted her extreme anti-refugee stance.

It wasn’t the first time Klöckner had taken a populist line: In 2015, when refugees came to Germany in large numbers from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, Klöckner called for them to be legally obliged to integrate into society. In 2023, she also reposted a false claim on social media that dental care for asylum seekers had cost the German state 690 million euros ($746 million) last year.

Her appointment to the new Bundestag role has not been without some controversy either: Klöckner stepped down from her position as CDU treasurer after the NGO Lobbycontrol pointed out that, as Bundestag president, she would be tasked with overseeing the party's donations. She said she had planned to step down from the post anyway before taking up the new role.

A career path that is not always straightforward

Klöckner is the daughter of a winemaker from the western state of Rhineland-Palatinate. Among her early prestigious roles was as German Wine Queen in 1995, an office that includes more than 200 public appointments a year.

Trained as a journalist, Klöckner led the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in her state from 2010 to 2022, during which time she spent four years, from 2018 to 2021, as Federal Minister of Agriculture under Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Environmental organizations criticized Klöckner for ineffective policymaking and an alleged closeness to the food industry - especially Nestlé: In 2019, she was accused of openly advertising for the international food processing giant by posting a video on social media in which she appeared alongside Nestle's Germany boss and praised him for reducing the amount of sugar in Germany for a long-running sugar-in-food campaign.

Klöckner has also had her share of political setbacks: in state elections in 2011 and 2016, she failed in her bid to head the Rhineland-Palatinate government.

The president of the Bundestag is officially the second-highest position in the German state – after the federal president, but above the chancellor. And while there is no formal regulation stipulating this, the position is always held by the largest parliamentary group, in this case, the CDU/CSU.

The president usually chairs plenary sessions of the Bundestag and oversees the laws governing the parliament. He or she also represents the parliament as a whole, speaking at memorial ceremonies such as the one held each year on January 27 to mark the Holocaust. The president also sometimes speaks during state visits by foreign heads of government or heads of state.

The president is obliged to respect the rights of all parties, so the position is often held by someone with extensive parliamentary experience who is highly regarded by all parliamentary groups and parties. This was particularly the case with Wolfgang Schäuble, a CDU veteran with several cabinet posts who was president of the Bundestag from 2017 to 2021. Klöckner, by comparison, is a less experienced and, some would say, more divisive figure./ DW