Steffen BilgerFederal Minister for Transport

Bundestag career

Seventeen years, five direct mandates

Steffen Bilger entered the German Bundestag in 2009 by winning the Ludwigsburg constituency outright, and has won it at every federal election since. This page follows that record term by term: the votes, the committees, and how his responsibilities moved from backbench transport work to the leadership of the largest parliamentary group and, in 2026, to the cabinet.

2009First elected, aged 30, for constituency 265 Ludwigsburg
5Consecutive direct mandates: 2009, 2013, 2017, 2021, 2025
50.4%Best first-vote share, at the 2013 election
17th–21stLegislative terms (Wahlperioden) served

Electoral history

Five elections in one constituency

First-vote (Erststimme) shares in Wahlkreis 265 Ludwigsburg. The terracotta bar is Bilger (CDU); the slate bar is the candidate who came second. The dashed line marks 50%.

Sources: Die Bundeswahlleiterin (2013, 2017, 2021, 2025 results pages); 2009 runner-up from the Wikipedia constituency table. 2013 shares rounded to one decimal place.

What the curve shows

The line runs high in 2013, the election in which the CDU/CSU under Angela Merkel came close to an absolute majority nationally, and low in 2021, when the CDU/CSU recorded its weakest federal result to that point and lost the chancellorship. In Ludwigsburg Bilger's first-vote share fell by 8.8 points that year, to 29.5% and 50,297 votes, but he still finished more than nine points ahead of the Green candidate. In 2025 he recovered by 7.0 points to 36.5%, or 65,326 votes, on a turnout of 84.7%.

What changed around it

The identity of the runner-up tells its own story. In 2009, 2013 and 2017 his nearest challenger was a Social Democrat. In 2021 it was the Greens, and in 2025 the AfD. Bilger held the seat throughout, but the competition he faced was spread across more parties. National trends explain part of the movement. His own vote also ran ahead of his party's second-vote share in the constituency: in 2025, for example, the CDU took 32.1% of second votes in Ludwigsburg, against 36.5% of first votes for Bilger.

Section B — how a direct mandate works

Two votes, one seat

Every voter in a German federal election has two votes. Bilger's career rests on the first.

The Erststimme (first vote) is cast for a named candidate in one of 299 constituencies (Wahlkreise). The candidate with the most first votes wins the constituency; no absolute majority is needed. The Zweitstimme (second vote) is cast for a party's list in each Land, and it decides how many seats each party gets in the Bundestag overall.

A candidate who wins a constituency holds a direct mandate (Direktmandat). Politically, it gives an MP a local base that does not depend on a place on the party list, and it ties him or her to a defined area with its own offices, associations and voters. Bilger has never needed his list place. In 2021 the CDU in Baden-Württemberg also placed him fourth on its state list, but he won the constituency in any case.

Since the electoral reform of 2023 the link between the two votes has become tighter. The Bundestag now has a fixed 630 seats, and a constituency winner only takes the seat if it is covered by the party's second-vote result in that Land (Zweitstimmendeckung). At the February 2025 election, 23 constituency winners did not enter the Bundestag for this reason; 15 of them were CDU candidates. Bilger's Ludwigsburg seat was covered, so he kept his direct mandate.

Schematic ballot paper: the left column holds the first vote for a constituency candidate, the right column the second vote for a party list. Erststimme Zweitstimme person · constituency party · Land list
The two halves of a federal ballot. A cross on the left elects a constituency MP; a cross on the right decides the parties' share of seats.

Term by term

From the transport committee to the cabinet table

Bilger arrived in Berlin in October 2009 at the start of the 17th Wahlperiode (legislative term) as one of the younger members of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group. He took over a seat that his party had held without interruption since 1976, when Matthias Wissmann first won it; Wissmann, later a federal transport minister, was elected in Ludwigsburg at every election up to 2005. Bilger had led the Junge Union in Baden-Württemberg since 2006.

17th term, 2009–2013: the specialist years begin

His committee portfolio was set early. He became a full member of the Committee on Transport, Building and Urban Development, a deputy member of the health and environment committees, and a member of the Parliamentary Advisory Council on Sustainable Development. From 2011 he also sat on the Enquete Commission on "Growth, Prosperity, Quality of Life", a cross-party body of MPs and experts that examined how economic progress could be measured beyond gross domestic product. Inside the parliamentary group he was deputy chair of the Junge Gruppe, the caucus of the parliamentary group's younger MPs.

18th term, 2013–2017: transport, digital infrastructure and the institutions

After his strongest result in 2013, Bilger stayed on the transport committee, which in this term became the Committee on Transport and Digital Infrastructure, mirroring the renamed ministry. He also took on functions that are less visible but say something about trust within a parliamentary group. He sat on the Joint Committee (Gemeinsamer Ausschuss), the emergency body of Bundestag and Bundesrat members that would act as a parliament in a state of defence. He chaired the Kuratorium (board of trustees) of the Federal Agency for Civic Education (Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, bpb), the board of MPs that oversees the agency's political balance. He was also a member of the Eisenbahninfrastrukturbeirat, the advisory council on rail infrastructure at the Federal Network Agency. In 2014 he became chair of the Junge Gruppe and held that post until early 2018.

Towards the end of the term he joined the Mediation Committee (Vermittlungsausschuss), the joint body of Bundestag and Bundesrat that negotiates compromises when the two chambers disagree on legislation. The Bundestag's own biography gives his membership as 2017 to March 2018; his personal website and Wikipedia date it to 2016. This site therefore says "from 2016/2017".

19th term, 2017–2021: into the ministry

Re-elected with 38.3% in 2017, Bilger returned briefly to the transport committee, the Joint Committee and the Mediation Committee. On 14 March 2018, when the fourth Merkel government took office, he left all three and became Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister of Transport and Digital Infrastructure, Andreas Scheuer. He remained an MP throughout, as Parliamentary State Secretaries must be. In April 2018 the cabinet also made him the Federal Government's Coordinator for Freight Transport and Logistics.

20th term, 2021–2025: opposition and group leadership

The 2021 election put the CDU/CSU into opposition. In December 2021 Bilger was elected a deputy chair of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, responsible not for transport but for environment, nature conservation, nuclear safety and consumer protection, and for food and agriculture. He sat as a deputy member of the agriculture and environment committees. In spring 2025 he led the CDU/CSU's negotiating group on rural areas, agriculture, food and the environment in the coalition talks with the SPD.

21st term, from 2025: managing the majority, then the ministry

On 5 May 2025 the group elected him First Parliamentary Secretary (Erster Parlamentarischer Geschäftsführer) with 93.5% of the vote. For the next fifteen months he organised the coalition's votes in the plenary and negotiated the Bundestag's agenda with the other groups. His Bundestag profile lists him as a full member of the Wahlausschuss, the committee that proposes candidates for the Federal Constitutional Court. On 29 July 2026 Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier appointed him Federal Minister for Transport, and he took the oath before the Bundestag on 8 September 2026. He keeps his seat as MP for Ludwigsburg.

Evolution of responsibilities

Three kinds of parliamentary work

Bilger's seventeen years fall into three phases, each with a different relationship to the Bundestag's work.

2009–2018 · specialist

Committee member

Nearly nine years as a transport specialist on the committee that scrutinises the transport ministry's bills and budget, alongside institutional seats on the Joint Committee, the Mediation Committee and the bpb Kuratorium.

2018–2021 · executive

On the government bench

As Parliamentary State Secretary he represented the ministry in the Bundestag and its committees, speaking for the government rather than questioning it.

2021–2026 · leadership

Running the group

First as a deputy chair in opposition, then as First Parliamentary Secretary in government, his work shifted from policy fields to procedure, agenda and majorities.

Significance

What the record adds up to

Two features stand out. The first is continuity in one place. Five wins in a row in the same constituency, including in 2021, the CDU/CSU's weakest federal election to that point, meant that his seat never depended on a list place. The second is the range of jobs he has held inside the institution. He has moved from a specialist committee to the executive, then to opposition leadership, then to managing a governing majority, and finally to the cabinet.

The record does not show him as a prolific legislator in his own name; in the German system bills are mostly drafted by ministries and parliamentary groups rather than individual MPs. His work is more visible in committee seats, group offices and procedural roles. Those are described in more detail on the pages on committee work, parliamentary work and debates. The local side of the mandate is covered on the constituency and Ludwigsburg pages.

On the sourcesThe Bundestag's biographical entries are based on information supplied by the MPs themselves. Where they differ from his personal website, as on the start of his Mediation Committee membership or the end of his Junge Gruppe chairmanship (February 2018 in the Bundestag text, January 2018 on Wikipedia), this page follows the Bundestag and notes the difference.

Sources

  1. Deutscher Bundestag — Biography of Steffen Bilger, 21st legislative term (modified 29 Sep 2026)
  2. Deutscher Bundestag — Biography archive, 19th legislative term
  3. Deutscher Bundestag — Biography archive, 20th legislative term
  4. Steffen Bilger — Politische Stationen
  5. Die Bundeswahlleiterin — Result 2025, Wahlkreis 265 Ludwigsburg
  6. Die Bundeswahlleiterin — Result 2021, Wahlkreis 265 Ludwigsburg
  7. Die Bundeswahlleiterin — Result 2017, Wahlkreis 265 Ludwigsburg
  8. Die Bundeswahlleiterin — Result 2013, Wahlkreis 265 Ludwigsburg
  9. Wikipedia — Bundestagswahlkreis Ludwigsburg (2009 results, history, 2025 second votes)
  10. Wikipedia — Steffen Bilger (17th-term memberships, 2021 list place)
  11. CDU/CSU-Fraktion via presseportal — election of the group leadership (5 May 2025)
  12. Deutscher Bundestag — Constituencies without a directly elected member (2025)
  13. ZDFheute — Wahlkreis gewonnen, trotzdem kein Mandat (2025)
  14. Deutscher Bundestag — Wahlausschuss
  15. Bundespräsident — Dismissals and appointments of federal ministers (29 Jul 2026)
  16. Wikimedia Commons — Steffen Bilger (photo by Olaf Kosinsky, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE)