Thomas Rachel


Thomas Rachel is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union who has been serving as a member of the Bundestag from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia since 1994. He has been serving as Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Education and Research in the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel since her first election in 2005.

Early career

From 1986 until 1987, Rachel worked as parliamentary assistant to Matthias Wissmann.

Political career

Rachel first became a member of the Bundestag in the 1994 German federal election. From 1994 until 2005, he served on the Committee for Education, Research and Technology Assessment. In addition to his committee assignments, he also served as deputy chaiman of the German-Greek Parliamentary Friendship Group from 1997 until 2005.
Since 2003, Rachel has been chairing the Evangelical Working Group of the CDU/CSU.
Since the 2005 elections, Rachel has been serving as Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Education and Research in the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel, under the leadership of successive ministers Annette Schavan and Anja Karliczek .
In the negotiations to form a "grand coalition" of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats following the 2013 federal elections, Rachel was part of the CDU/CSU delegation in the working group on education and research policy. In similar negotiations following the 2017 federal elections, he was again part of the working group on education policy.

Other activities

In June 2017, Rachel voted against Germany’s introduction of same-sex marriage.
In 2019, Rachel joined 14 members of his parliamentary group who, in an open letter, called for the party to rally around Merkel and party chairwoman Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer amid criticism voiced by conservatives Friedrich Merz and Roland Koch.