Personalrochade: Dos Santos-Wintz übernimmt Schlüsselrolle in Unionsfraktion

Catarina dos Santos-Wintz, a young female politician in the Bundestag, is making a remarkable career. At 27 years old, she entered the Bundestag in 2021. Five years later, at the age of 32, it is expected that she will take on the influential role of the First Parliamentary Business Manager of the Union Faction, proposed by the new faction leader, Thorsten Frei (CDU).

This position became vacant after the former incumbent, Steffen Bilger (CDU), was appointed as Transport Minister in a personnel reshuffle by Chancellor Friedrich Merz. The role of Business Manager, often shortened to "PGF," is entirely new for the Portuguese-origin jurist. Dos Santos-Wintz, who has been a Parliamentary Business Manager since 2025, describes herself as "right in the thick of the machinery" of her faction.

As the "First PGF," she now holds the second-most important position after the faction leader and will act as a strippeher in Bundestag operations. She manages the daily work of the government faction, negotiates speaking times, routines, majorities, and parliamentary tactics. Her confident stance on this significant responsibility is not a question for dos Santos-Wintz.

Born in Lisbon in 1994 and raised in Eschweiler near Aachen, dos Santos-Wintz is less known to the general public. She joined the CDU in 2014, held several positions, and engaged in municipal politics. She studied law in Cologne, focusing on tax law, completed her legal internship at the beginning of 2020, and worked as a law consultant in a law firm specializing in corporate succession until 2023.

Dos Santos-Wintz emphasized the importance of completing a professional education before entering a political mandate. In the 2025 Bundestag election, she won her constituency, Aachen II, which covers the Aachen region excluding the city of Aachen, as a direct candidate with 40.1% against SPD politician Claudia Moll. In her North-Rhine Westphalian home, dos Santos-Wintz held political positions in the Aachen Region Council, the Eschweiler City Council, and as a member of the CDU NRW state executive.

Her work focuses on structural change, semiconductors, Bundeswehr sites, associations, monument protection, and regional identity. Her hard work at the grassroots level is evident in the ZDF documentary "Inside CDU", which follows her political operation in the Union faction from the break of the coalition at the end of 2024 to the Bundestag election in February 2025.

The documentary shows dos Santos-Wintz filming herself as the youngest member of the Union faction fighting for the direct mandate she needed to re-enter the Bundestag. "I don't look at the polls every day. I believe one gets lost there," she said at the time. With laughter, warmth, and humor, she stuck political posters on street lamp posts at night.

As the First Parliamentary Business Manager, the jurist with two languages and cultures is unlikely to stand in the glaring Berlin nightlife in the future. The motto of the faction manager is: "Knowing where you come from makes it easier to say where you want to go."