Röttgen joined the CDU in 1982 while he was still a high-school student. From 1992 until 1996, he served as the chair of the Junge Union, the youth organisation of CDU, in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.
Röttgen was elected to the Bundestag in 1994. From 2002 until 2005 he served as the legal policy spokesman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group.[1] During the First Merkel cabinet (2005–2009), a grand coalition of the CDU/CSU and SPD, he served as the Chief Parliamentary Secretary of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the Bundestag until 2009.[1] In this capacity, he worked closely with the SPD parliamentary floor manager Olaf Scholz to manage and defend the coalition government in parliament.[3] He also served as member of the Parliamentary Oversight Panel (PKGr), which provides parliamentary oversight of Germany's intelligence services—BND, MAD and BfV.
Federal Minister for Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, 2009–2011
Following the 2009 federal election, Röttgen was part of the CDU/CSU team in the negotiations with the FDP on a coalition agreement; he joined the working group on economic affairs and energy policy, led by Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg (CSU) and Rainer Brüderle (FDP).
From 28 October 2009, Röttgen was the Federal Minister for Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety in the Second Merkel cabinet.[4] He also served as a member of the Board of Supervisory Directors at KfW from 28 October 2009 to 22 May 2012. From November 2010, he was one of the four deputy chairs of the CDU in Germany.[1] Also, in November 2010 he was formally elected as party chair of the CDU in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia after he had successfully bet Armin Laschet in a membership ballot.[5] At the time, he was often mentioned as a potential successor to Merkel as chancellor.[6]
In May 2011, Röttgen announced his government's plans to shut all of the nation's nuclear power plants by 2022. The decision was based on recommendations of an expert commission appointed after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.[7] Later that year, he teamed up with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in launching the Bonn Challenge, calling for 150 million hectares of forest – an area four times larger than Germany – to be reforested by 2020; the Bonn Challenge was later endorsed at the 2014 UN Climate Summit and supplemented by the New York Declaration on Forests, which calls for an end to deforestation by 2030.
North Rhine-Westphalia state election and dismissal
Following the dissolution of the state's Landtag on 14 March 2012, Röttgen confirmed his intention to run in the subsequent election as the CDU's candidate for the office of Minister-President against the incumbent, Hannelore Kraft of the SPD.[8] Röttgen ran against the debt-financed spending supported by Kraft, and even described the vote as a referendum on Merkel's Europe policies.[9] However, he was widely seen as having failed to commit himself whole-heartedly to state politics, refusing to promise that if he lost the election he would nonetheless lead the opposition in North Rhine-Westphalia;[10] 59 percent of respondents to an FG Wahlen poll said his refusal to commit to the state "damaged the CDU."[11]
Following the election defeat of the CDU in North Rhine-Westphalia by a margin almost three times more than was predicted in polls,[12] Röttgen resigned his position as head of the CDU in North Rhine-Westphalia. On 16 May 2012, Chancellor Merkel dismissed him under Article 64 of the German Basic Law as Minister for Environment.[13] Merkel fired Röttgen because she had insisted he would lead the opposition in North Rhine-Westphalia.[14]
The dismissal was seen as unceremonious and highly unusual; ministers are normally given the courtesy of resigning by themselves even after scandals; an example for this was Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg one year prior. This was the last and overall second time a minister was actively dismissed on a federal level, the other occasion being in 2002, when Chancellor Schröder fired Minister of DefenceRudolf Scharping ahead of the 2002 elections after various scandals.[15] In both cases, the Minister was unwilling to resign on his own. When Röttgen ran for the leadership of the CDU in 2021, some observers speculated he was partly motivated by the dismissal.[16]
Since 2014, Röttgen has been the chairman of the Bundestag's Committee on Foreign Affairs. In addition to his committee assignments, he is a member of the German-Swiss Parliamentary Friendship Group.[19]
In February 2014, Röttgen accompanied German President Joachim Gauck on a state visit to India – where they met with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi, among others – and Myanmar.[20] Shortly after the referendum on the status of Crimea held on 16 March 2014, he and his counterparts of the Weimar Triangle parliaments – Elisabeth Guigou of France and Grzegorz Schetyna of Poland – visited Kyiv to express their countries' firm support of the territorial integrity and the European integration of Ukraine.[21] This was the first time that parliamentarians of the Weimar Triangle had ever made a joint trip to a third country.[22]
In 2011, Röttgen called for the direct elections of the President of the European Commission, a bicameral political system for the EU, and simultaneous parliamentary elections across the EU.[28]
Following the 2016 referendum on European Union membership in the United Kingdom, Röttgen co-authored a paper with Jean Pisani-Ferry, André Sapir, Paul Tucker and Guntram Wolff which lays out a proposal of a "continental partnership" between the EU and the UK.[29] According to the paper, such a partnership would grant Britain some control over labor mobility while preserving free movement of capital, goods and services.[30]
Relations with Russia
Röttgen is considered as an advocate of a more assertive German foreign policy. In an editorial for the Financial Times in March 2014, he argued that the only people who seemed not to realize that Germany was at the center of the Crimean crisis were "the Germans themselves."[31] When Russian state-run energy group Gazprom conducted an asset swap with its long-term German partner BASF, under which it increased its stake in Wingas, Röttgen raised concerns about the deal.[32] In his opinion, expanding Gazprom activities in Germany are "deepening our dependence on Russia."[32] In late 2015, Röttgen called for a review of the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline, saying it was a "highly-political subject which carried the risk of splitting Europe" and may "contradict the aims of the agreed European energy policy."[33]
Röttgen supported the European Union leaders' decision to impose sanctions on 21 individuals after the referendum in Crimea that paved the way for Putin to annex the region from Ukraine.[34] By August 2014, he demanded that Europe respond to the escalation of violence in Ukraine by agreeing to further sanctions against Russia, saying that "[a]ny hesitation would be seen by [Russian President Vladimir] Putin as European weakness that would encourage him to keep going."[35] However, he ruled out a U.S. proposal to arm Ukraine against Russia, calling it a "grave mistake" which "not only would [give] Putin a pretext to expand the war beyond eastern Ukraine, it would also serve his other goal to divide the West wherever he can."[36]
Relations with the Middle East
Amid the debate on sending military assistance to the Iraqi government following a dramatic push by Islamic State militants through northern Iraq in mid-2014, Röttgen told newspaper Die Welt that delivering weapons would violate the government's arms export guidelines.
In 2016, Röttgen was quoted by Der Spiegel as saying that Germany might end its unconditional support for Israel due to increasing frustration with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's policies. "Israel's current policies are not contributing to the country remaining Jewish and democratic," Röttgen was quoted as saying. "We must express this concern more clearly to Israel."[37]
In 2019, Röttgen warned that Germany would alienate its European partners if it continued to insist on maintaining a temporary moratorium on arms deliveries to Saudi Arabia.[38]
Following the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference, Röttgen sharply criticized both U.S. President Barack Obama and China's leadership when he said: "China doesn't want to lead, and the U.S. cannot lead."[41] Writing in the Financial Times in 2010, he joined British Energy Minister Chris Huhne and French Ecology Minister Jean-Louis Borloo in urging the European Union to slash greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent from the originally established 20 percent target by 2020.[42]
Both Angela Merkel and Röttgen, the chief architects of the government's energy transition plan, are thought to have pushed for a rapid nuclear phase-out with a view to raising the prospects for a possible future national coalition with the Green Party.[43][44] In 2012, Roettgen's plan to cut subsidies for solar power drew fire from opposition parties and the photovoltaic industry, which said the move threatened thousands of jobs in what was then the world's biggest solar market by installed capacity.[12]
Relations with the African continent
Röttgen has in the past voted in favor of German participation in United Nations peacekeeping missions as well as in United Nations-mandated European Union peacekeeping missions on the African continent, such as in Somalia – both Operation Atalanta and EUTM Somalia – (2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015), Darfur/Sudan (2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014), South Sudan (2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014), Mali (2013 and 2014), the Central African Republic (2014) and Liberia (2015). He abstained from the votes on extending the mandates for Operation Atalanta in 2009 and 2010 as well as on EUTM Somalia in 2016.
Relations with China
After European ambassadors wrote an open letter, praising 45 years of Sino-European relations, they found that China Daily, which is a state-controlled media outlet, refused to publish unless it was significantly changed (in particular, that references to the origins of Coronavirus disease 2019 in China be removed). The Europeans obediently capitulated to this request. As the head of the German parliament's foreign affairs committee, Röttgen criticised the European back-pedalling:
I am shocked not once but twice: First the EU ambassadors generously adopt Chinese narratives and then on top of that the EU representation accepts Chinese censorship of the joint op-ed. Speaking with one voice is important, but it has to reflect our shared European values and interests.[45]
In a joint letter initiated by Röttgen and Anthony Gonzalez ahead of the 47th G7 summit in 2021, some 70 legislators from Europe and the US called upon their leaders to take a tough stance on China and to "avoid becoming dependent" on the country for technology including artificial intelligence and 5G.[46]
Other activities
Corporate boards
KfW, Ex-Officio Member of the Board of Supervisory Directors (2009–2012)[47][48]
Non-profit organisations
Club of Three, President of the Steering Group (since 2019)[49]
