Steffen BilgerFederal Minister for Transport

Parliamentary leadership

Leading the group: opposition, then government

Between December 2021 and July 2026 Steffen Bilger held two different posts in the leadership of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group. As a deputy chair in opposition he spoke for the group on environment and agriculture. As First Parliamentary Secretary in government he managed its votes and its business in the plenary. This page explains both roles and what the record shows about how he filled them.

Subject
CDU/CSU Fraktion leadership
Period
Dec 2021 – Jul 2026
Roles
Deputy chair · First Parliamentary Secretary
Status
Ended on appointment as minister, 29 Jul 2026

How a parliamentary group is run

Chair, deputies, managers

In the Bundestag the real work of politics is organised by the parliamentary groups (Fraktionen). Each group elects a leadership that divides the work between policy and procedure.

The chair speaks for the group and, in a governing coalition, is one of the most important figures alongside the chancellor. The deputy chairs each take a portfolio of policy fields. They coordinate the group's working groups, which shadow the Bundestag's committees, settle internal disagreements and represent the group's line in debates and in the media. In opposition, they are in effect the group's lead critics of the ministers in their fields.

The parliamentary secretaries (Parlamentarische Geschäftsführer) look after procedure. The first among them, the Erster Parlamentarischer Geschäftsführer, negotiates with the other groups' managers over the plenary agenda and speaking times, allocates speaking slots inside the group, and in government makes sure that the coalition's majority is present and votes as agreed. The Bundestag describes the managers of all groups as members of its Ältestenrat (Council of Elders), the body that agrees the sitting calendar and the agenda; their preliminary agreements feed into its decisions.

Together these offices form the group executive (Fraktionsvorstand), which meets in sitting weeks before the full group assembles.

Section A — deputy chair, December 2021 to May 2025

Opposition years: environment and agriculture

After the 2021 election the CDU/CSU went into opposition to Olaf Scholz's coalition of SPD, Greens and FDP. In December 2021 Bilger was elected one of the deputy chairs under the group chair Ralph Brinkhaus, and continued in the post after Friedrich Merz took over the chair in 2022.

His portfolio was not transport. According to his own website and to the group's press release of May 2025, he was responsible for environment, nature conservation, nuclear safety and consumer protection, and for food and agriculture. Economy, climate and energy belonged to another deputy chair, Jens Spahn. He also sat as a deputy member of the Bundestag's committees on agriculture and on the environment.

Steffen Bilger in conversation with a man in glasses, both standing among other members of parliament
Bilger in conversation among fellow parliamentarians. Much of a group leader's work happens in such conversations rather than at the lectern.

12 January 2022 · The new coalition’s environment policy

Documented position

In a Bundestag debate on the environmental policy plans of the new coalition, Bilger attacked the new government's decision to move responsibility for climate policy from the environment ministry to the economics ministry. According to the Bundestag's report he called it the Verzwergung eines einst stolzen Hauses ("the dwarfing of a once proud ministry", translation), driven by grüner Machtarithmetik ("Green power arithmetic"), with structures willkürlich zerschlagen ("arbitrarily broken up").

Policy context

The Scholz government had transferred climate protection to the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, led by the Green vice-chancellor Robert Habeck. The environment ministry, also Green-led, kept nature conservation, nuclear safety and consumer protection. Replying in the same debate, Environment Minister Steffi Lemke argued that the subject was now spread across several ministries, and the SPD’s Carsten Träger said the cross-departmental approach did justice to the importance of climate change.

15 February 2023 · Criticism of the agriculture minister

Documented position

In an interview with the farming journal top agrar, Bilger criticised Agriculture Minister Cem Özdemir (Greens) in sharp terms: Ich habe selten einen Bundeslandwirtschaftsminister erlebt, der so wenig ambitioniert an seine Aufgabe herangeht ("I have rarely seen a federal agriculture minister approach his task with so little ambition", translation). On Özdemir's work in Brussels he said the minister was auf europäischer Ebene … letztlich ein Totalausfall ("at European level … ultimately a complete write-off").

Policy context

The interview's headline accused the minister of leaving livestock farmers in the lurch. Disputes over animal-welfare labelling, the funding of barn conversions and EU rules were central to agricultural politics at the time. Criticism of this kind is the ordinary work of an opposition spokesman; the ministry's response is not recorded in the source.

19 April 2023 · The end of nuclear power

Documented position

Four days after Germany's last three nuclear power stations were switched off, Bilger opened for the CDU/CSU in an Aktuelle Stunde (topical debate) it had requested. He called the shutdown a Sieg der ideologischen Sturheit über die praktische Vernunft ("a victory of ideological stubbornness over practical reason", translation), described it as irresponsible and demanded that the plants be brought back into operation until at least the end of 2024.

Policy context

The phase-out had been fixed in law in 2011 by Angela Merkel's CDU-led government after Fukushima; the Scholz coalition extended the last plants' operation by three and a half months during the energy crisis. In the debate, the Greens’ Julia Verlinden argued that the phase-out strengthened independence from Russian nuclear fuel, and the FDP dismissed the Union’s proposals as “heiße Luft” (hot air). Bilger also warned of 30 million tonnes of additional CO₂ emissions. One of the three plants, Neckarwestheim 2, stands in Baden-Württemberg.

Spring 2025: negotiating the coalition

After the February 2025 election Bilger led the CDU/CSU side of the coalition working group on rural areas, agriculture, food and the environment in the talks with the SPD. The farming press called him the Union's chief negotiator for the sector. When the agreement was presented on 11 April 2025 he told top agrar:

Es waren sehr harte Verhandlungen mit den Sozialdemokraten.

"These were very tough negotiations with the Social Democrats." (translation)

Steffen Bilger to top agrar, 11 April 2025

Section B — First Parliamentary Secretary, May 2025 to July 2026

Government years: managing the majority

On 5 May 2025, the day before Friedrich Merz was to be elected chancellor, the CDU/CSU group elected Jens Spahn as its chair and Bilger as First Parliamentary Secretary, succeeding Thorsten Frei, who moved to the Federal Chancellery. Bilger received 93.5% of the vote. The move took him from a policy portfolio to the procedural heart of the governing majority.

The coalition of CDU, CSU and SPD held 328 of the Bundestag's 630 seats, only twelve more than the 316 needed for an absolute majority of members (the so-called chancellor majority). Bilger himself later put the margin in the same terms: in an interview reported in February 2026 he said that at most about twelve coalition MPs could defect without the coalition losing that majority. Managing such a margin became his main task.

Three episodes shaped his time in the role: the postponed election of three constitutional judges in July 2025, the dispute over the pensions package in late 2025, and the everyday negotiation of the Bundestag's agenda with the opposition. They are covered in detail on the First Parliamentary Secretary page. In July 2026 the CDU, according to the Schwäbische Zeitung, praised his solid management of the group when he was chosen as transport minister.

Government and parliament

In Germany's parliamentary system the government depends on the confidence of a Bundestag majority, and that majority is organised by the governing groups' leaderships. Most bills are drafted in ministries, agreed in cabinet and then passed through the Bundestag, where the coalition groups can and often do amend them. Group leaders sit in the coalition committee with the party leaders and the chancellor, and the parliamentary secretaries translate those decisions into a timetable: which bill is read when, which committee reports by which date, how long each debate runs. A minister who has done that job knows the parliamentary side of law-making from the inside. Whether that experience helps Bilger as transport minister is a question his record in office will answer; it is not yet documented.

Two roles compared

Same group, different jobs

The two posts drew on different skills. The comparison below is this site's summary of the documented record.

2021–2025 · deputy chair

Public critic

  • Policy fields: environment, nature, nuclear safety, consumers, agriculture, food
  • Main audience: the plenary, the farming and environmental press
  • Typical instrument: debate speeches, topical debates, interviews
  • Opponent: the Scholz government's Green-led ministries
2025–2026 · First Parliamentary Secretary

Internal organiser

  • Field: the whole of the coalition's legislative programme
  • Main audience: his own MPs, the SPD group and the other groups' managers
  • Typical instrument: agenda negotiations, procedural motions, vote counting
  • Measure of success: majorities delivered on time

Sources

  1. CDU/CSU-Fraktion via presseportal — Spahn and Bilger elected; responsibilities in the 20th term (5 May 2025)
  2. Steffen Bilger — Politische Stationen
  3. Deutscher Bundestag — Biography archive, 20th term
  4. Deutscher Bundestag — Debate on the coalition’s environmental policy (12 Jan 2022)
  5. top agrar — Bilger: Özdemir lässt die Tierhalter gerade im Stich (15 Feb 2023)
  6. Deutscher Bundestag — Aktuelle Stunde on nuclear power (19 Apr 2023)
  7. top agrar — CDU-Mann Bilger: Politikwechsel kommt auch im Agrarsektor (11 Apr 2025)
  8. Lebensmittel Zeitung — Interview with Steffen Bilger (25 Apr 2025)
  9. Deutscher Bundestag — Ältestenrat
  10. Apollo News — report on a Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung interview with Bilger (21 Feb 2026; secondary source)
  11. t-online — Rentenpaket vote (5 Dec 2025)
  12. Schwäbische Zeitung — Bilger löst Schnieder ab (Jul 2026)