Political leadership

Dobrindt has repeatedly used deliberately pointed formulations — the “anti-deportation industry” (2018), the “conservative revolution of the citizens” (2018), the warning against a “climate RAF” (2022). He has rarely retracted such statements. As minister he has framed his agenda in short triads, such as “clarity, consistency and control” on taking office.

Across two decades the constants are infrastructure and the user-pays principle (2013–2017), and since 2015 above all migration and internal security. As interior minister his first act was to tighten border controls; most of the laws he has introduced concern asylum, citizenship and police powers.

He was part of the CSU’s negotiating teams in the 2017 Jamaica exploratory talks (which the FDP left on 19 November 2017), in the 2018 grand coalition negotiations and, alongside Markus Söder, in the 2025 talks with the SPD. The 2025 coalition agreement adopted rejections at the border “in coordination with” neighbouring countries — a formulation that left room for interpretation.

He is a frequent guest on political talk shows and gives interviews mainly to large-circulation outlets such as Bild am Sonntag, where several of his best-known statements first appeared. The term “Anti-Abschiebe-Industrie” was chosen as Germany’s Unwort des Jahres 2018.

He has never chaired the CSU or held office in the Bavarian government. On 1 July 2018 he publicly refused to accept party chairman Horst Seehofer’s resignation offer. In July 2026, after Jens Spahn resigned as leader of the Union parliamentary group, Dobrindt was mentioned as a possible successor; the group elected Thorsten Frei on 29 July 2026, and Dobrindt remained interior minister.

As first deputy chairman of the CDU/CSU group from 2017 to 2025 he served under three group chairmen — Volker Kauder, Ralph Brinkhaus and Friedrich Merz. In January 2025 he was among the Union leaders who brought a migration motion to the vote that passed with AfD support.

In May 2025 he said he did not believe the AfD could simply be banned out of existence; it had to be “governed away”. As minister he presented domestic intelligence reports showing a sharp rise in right-wing extremist potential (up 17 per cent to 58,700 people in the 2025 report), and in 2026 his ministry ordered an in-depth review after a court provisionally barred the domestic intelligence service from labelling the AfD as confirmed right-wing extremist.