Norbert Barthle

Professional career

Between 1992 and 1998, Barthle worked as press spokesperson at the State Ministry for Education, Youth and Sports of Baden-Württemberg, under the leadership of successive ministers Marianne Schultz-Hector and Annette Schavan.

Political career

Barthle has been a member of the German Bundestag since the 1998 national elections. He served on the Budget Committee and its Sub-Committee on the European Union from 2002 until 2015. In addition, he was a member of the Audit Committee from 2002 until 2005. Between 2013 and 2015, he was a member of the so-called Confidential Committee (Vertrauensgremium) of the Budget Committee, which provides budgetary supervision for Germany’s three intelligence services, BND, BfV and MAD.

Within his CDU/CSU parliamentary group, Barthle served as spokesperson on budgetary affairs between 2009 and 2015. He is also the deputy chairman of the Bundestag group of CDU parliamentarians from Baden-Württemberg, one of the largest delegations within the CDU/CSU parliamentary group.

In the negotiations to form a Grand Coalition of the Christian Democrats (CDU together with the Bavarian CSU) and the Social Democrats (SPD) following the 2013 federal elections, Barthle was part of the CDU/CSU delegation in the working group on financial policies and the national budget, led by Wolfgang Schäuble and Olaf Scholz.

Since late 2015, Barthle has been serving as Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure (BMVI) under minister Alexander Dobrindt, in the third cabinet of Chancellor Angela Merkel. He succeeded Katherina Reiche. As Parliamentary Secretary, he oversees the ministry’s budget and its activities on aviation policy.

Other activities

Political positions

During his time on the Budget Committee, Barthle was a proponent of the Merkel government’s policy to refrain from any net new borrowing and instead focus all efforts on achieving a structurally balanced budget.