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. 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. 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. At the time, he was often mentioned as a potential successor to Merkel as chancellor. Röttgen, in his capacity as environment minister, led the German delegations to the
2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, the
2010 United Nations Climate Change Conference in
Cancún and the
2011 United Nations Climate Change Conference in
Durban, respectively. 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. 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. Röttgen ran against the debt-financed spending supported by Kraft, and even described the vote as a referendum on Merkel's Europe policies. 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; 59 percent of respondents to an FG Wahlen poll said his refusal to commit to the state "damaged the CDU." Following the
election defeat of the CDU in North Rhine-Westphalia by a margin almost three times more than was predicted in polls, 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. Merkel fired Röttgen because she had insisted he would lead the opposition in North Rhine-Westphalia. 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 Defence Rudolf Scharping ahead of the
2002 elections after various scandals. 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.
Peter Altmaier replaced him, while
Armin Laschet took the post of party head in the land.
Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, 2014-2021 From 2014 to 2021, Röttgen was 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. 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. 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. This was the first time that parliamentarians of the Weimar Triangle had ever made a joint trip to a third country. Together with
President of the Bundestag Wolfgang Schäuble, Röttgen represented Germany at the funeral of
U.S. Senator John McCain in 2018. In the negotiations to form a
coalition government under the leadership of
Chancellor Angela Merkel following the
2017 federal elections, Röttgen was part of the working group on foreign policy, led by
Ursula von der Leyen,
Gerd Müller and
Sigmar Gabriel. In 2020, following the resignation of CDU chairwoman
Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, Röttgen announced his candidacy for the party leadership; this made him the first official contender in the election. After losing the election to Armin Laschet in January 2021, Röttgen announced his candidacy for the
Christian Democratic Union leadership a second time on 12 November 2021. His opponents were
Helge Braun and
Friedrich Merz. Röttgen finished second in the race after Friedrich Merz,
who would win the first round of an online membership ballot by 62.1%.
Deputy Chair of the CDU/CSU Group, 2025–present Since 2025, Röttgen has again been serving as deputy chair of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, this time under the leadership of chairman
Jens Spahn. In this capacity, he oversees the group's legislative activity on foreign policy, defence, human rights and the
Council of Europe. ==Political views==