Till Steffen

Till Steffen
Member of the Bundestag
Incumbent
Assumed office 2021
State Minister of Justice of Hamburg
In office 2015–2020
Personal details
Born	(1973-07-22) 22 July 1973 (age 51) Wiesbaden, West Germany
Political party	Alliance '90/The Greens
Alma mater	Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, University of Hamburg

Till Steffen (born 22 July 1973) is a German lawyer and politician of Alliance 90/The Greens who has been serving as a member of the German Bundestag since the 2021 elections, representing the Hamburg-Eimsbüttel district.^[1]

From 2015 until 2020, Steffen served as Senator of Justice of the city state of Hamburg in the Senate Scholz II^[2] and again in the Senate Tschentscher. Already from 2008 to 2010 he held this office in the Senate von Beust III and Senate Ahlhaus.

Early life and career

Till Steffen was born in Wiesbaden. He studied law at the universities of Mainz, Hamburg, and Aberdeen. He obtained his doctorate in the field of European nature conservation law. In 1997 he came to Hamburg and worked as a lawyer with a focus on administrative law first in the law firm von Harten and since 2008 as a partner in the law firm elblaw Rechtsanwälte.^[3]

Political career

Career in state politics

Steffen has been a member of the Greens since 1990. Prior to his time in Hamburg, he worked from 1993 to 1997 as a city councilor in Wiesbaden. In 1994, he co-founded the Green Youth and was a member of the first federal executive. From 1999 to 2000 he was a member of the regional executive committee of the GAL Hamburg, the Hamburg section of Alliance 90/The Greens. Between 2001 and 2004 he was a group chairman of the GAL in the Eimsbüttel district meeting.

From 17 March 2004 Steffen was a member of the Hamburgische Bürgerschaft. In the 18th electoral term he was a member of the Committee on Internal Affairs, the Legal Committee, the Constitutional Committee and the Special Committee on Administrative Reform. In addition, he was in the supervisory committee "constitutional protection" and the parliamentary committee of inquiry "information dissemination".

As one of the state's representatives at the Bundesrat, Steffen was a member of the Committee on Legal Affairs from 2015 until 2020.

Member of the German Parliament, 2021–present

In 2020, Steffen announced his intention to run for a seat in the German Parliament in the 2021 German federal election.^[4]

In parliament, Steffen has since been serving on the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Committee on the Scrutiny of Elections, Immunity and the Rules of Procedure.^[5] Since 2022, he has also been serving on the parliamentary body in charge of appointing judges to the Highest Courts of Justice, namely the Federal Court of Justice (BGH), the Federal Administrative Court (BVerwG), the Federal Fiscal Court (BFH), the Federal Labour Court (BAG), and the Federal Social Court (BSG).^[6] That same year, he joined the Commission for the Reform of the Electoral Law and the Modernization of Parliamentary Work, co-chaired by Johannes Fechner and Nina Warken.^[7]

In addition to his committee assignments, Steffen has been a member of the German delegation to the Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly since 2022.^[8]

Other activities

• Stiftung Forum Recht, Member of the Board of Trustees (since 2022)^[9]

Political positions

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany, Steffen joined forces with six other parliamentarians – Dirk Wiese, Heike Baehrens, Dagmar Schmidt, Janosch Dahmen, Katrin Helling-Plahr and Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann – on a cross-party initiative in 2022 to support legislation that would have required all adults to be vaccinated.^[10][11]

References

1. Reiner Burger and Rüdiger Soldt (27 September 2021), 16 Direktmandate: Siegreich im grünen Kernmilieu Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
2. "Scholz mit großer Mehrheit wiedergewält". NDR. 15 April 2015. Archived from the original on 17 April 2015. Retrieved 15 April 2015.
3. Sozietät elblaw
4. Peter Ulrich Meyer (30 May 2020), Grüner Paukenschlag: Anna Gallina wird Hamburgs neue Justizsenatorin Hamburger Abendblatt.
5. Till Steffen Bundestag.
6. Mitglieder mehrerer Gremien gewählt Bundestag, 27 January 2022.
7. Fechner und Warken leiten Kommission zur Reform des Wahlrechts Bundestag, press release of 7 April 2022.
8. Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly Bundestag.
9. Board of Trustees Stiftung Forum Recht.
10. Gesetzentwurf angekündigt – Ampel-Abgeordnete wollen Impfpflicht ab 18 ZDF, 21 January 2022.
11. Riham Alkousaa (26 January 2022), German lawmakers debate compulsory COVID shots as infections surge Reuters.