Personnel reshuffle: Dos Santos-Wintz takes on key role in Union parliamentary group

She is one of the young female parliamentarians in the German Bundestag - and is making a remarkable career. At the age of 27, CDU politician Catarina dos Santos-Wintz entered the Bundestag in 2021. Five years later, at the age of 32, she is set to take over the influential position of First Parliamentary Manager of the Union faction - at the suggestion of the also new faction leader Thorsten Frei (CDU).

The position became vacant after Chancellor Friedrich Merz's personnel reshuffle, in which the previous incumbent Steffen Bilger (CDU) became Minister of Transport.

Power position in the faction

The job of parliamentary manager, often abbreviated as "PGF", is not entirely new to the lawyer with Portuguese roots. Since 2025, dos Santos-Wintz has been one of three parliamentary managers of the CDU in the joint faction with the CSU - and thus, according to her own words, "right in the midst of the engine room of our faction".

As "First PGF", she will now have the second most important office after the faction chair and will become a key player in the Bundestag's operations. She will steer the daily work of the governing faction, negotiate speaking times, procedures, majorities, and parliamentary tactics.

She has no doubt that she is up to the influential task.

Two European cultures

Born in Lisbon in 1994 and raised in Eschweiler near Aachen, dos Santos-Wintz is relatively unknown to the general public. She joined the CDU in 2014, took on several positions, and became involved in local politics. She studied law in Cologne with a focus on tax law, completed her legal traineeship until early 2020, and worked as a lawyer in a firm specializing in business succession until 2023. She once said that it was important to her to have completed a professional training before taking on a political mandate.

In the 2025 federal election, dos Santos-Wintz clearly won her constituency Aachen II, which includes the Aachen region except for the city of Aachen, as a direct candidate with 40.1 percent against SPD politician Claudia Moll.

In her North Rhine-Westphalian home, dos Santos-Wintz holds political offices in the Aachen region's council, in the council of the city of Eschweiler, and as a member of the CDU NRW state board. There, she deals with structural change, semiconductors, military bases, clubs, monument protection, and regional identity.

Hard work at the grassroots

A documentary by ZDF, "Inside CDU", about the political operations of the Union from the collapse of the traffic light coalition at the end of 2024 to the federal election in February 2025, provided an impression of her work on the ground in the Aachen constituency. Dos Santos-Wintz allowed herself to be filmed as she, as the youngest member of the Union faction, fought for the direct mandate she needed to re-enter the Bundestag.

"I'm not trying to look at the polls every day. I think that would drive you crazy," the young CDU politician said at the time. With laughter, warmth, and humor, she stuck posters on streetlights at night.

As the First Parliamentary Manager, the lawyer who grew up with two languages and cultures will probably not stand in the bright Berlin spotlight in the future either. The faction manager's motto: "Knowing where you come from makes it easier to say where you want to go."