Sybille Benning

Sybille Benning (born 8 January 1961) is a German landscape designer and politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). In the 2013 federal election she was elected to the German Bundestag.

Sybille Benning
Member of the Bundestag
Assumed office
2013
Preceded byRuprecht Polenz
Personal details
Born (1961-01-08) 8 January 1961
Münster, West Germany
(now Germany)
CitizenshipGerman
NationalityGermany
Political partyCDU
Children4
Alma mater
OccupationLandscape designer

Early life and career

Benning was born in Münster, where she graduated from the Marienschule episcopal high school, Benning completed an apprenticeship in gardening and landscaping and then studied landscape conservation at the Weihenstephan-Triesdorf University of Applied Science. Afterwards she graduated as a geographer (landscape ecology) from Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster.

Benning works freelance as a landscape designer.[1]

Political career

Benning became a member of the CDU in 2001. She has been active in local politics since 2002 and was a directly elected member of the city council of Münster from 2004 to 2013. From 2004 to 2012 she was Deputy Chair of the CDU faction in the Münster Council, from 2008 to 2013 planning spokeswoman for the CDU Council faction.[1]

In the 2013 elections, Benning ran for the direct mandate in the constituency of Münster, which she won with 38.8% of the first votes. In the Bundestag, she is a member of the Committee on Education, Research and Technology Assessment and a deputy member of the Committee on the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety. On the Committee on Education, Research and Technology Assessment, she serves as her parliamentary group’s rapporteur on STEM education and the Deutschlandstipendium scholarship scheme. She is also a member of the Parliamentary Advisory Council on Sustainable Development.

In addition to her committee assignments, Benning has been a deputy member of the German delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) since 2014.[1] In this capacity, she serves on the Committee on Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development (since 2014); the Sub-Committee on Media and Information Society (since 2016); and the Sub-Committee on the Europe Prize (since 2018). In 2019, she was the Assembly’s rapporteur on sustainable urban development.[2]

Benning is also a member of the German-French Parliamentary Friendship Group and the non-partisan Europa-Union Deutschland, which is committed to a federal Europe and the European unification process.[3]

Within the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, Benning belongs to the Münsterland Circle (Münsterlandrunde) which brings together all parliamentarians from the eponymous region in Westphalia; it also includes Anja Karliczek and Jens Spahn, among others.

In September 2020, Benning announced that she would not stand in the 2021 federal elections but instead resign from active politics by the end of the parliamentary term.[4]

Other activities

Political positions

In June 2017, Benning voted against her parliamentary group’s majority and in favor of Germany’s introduction of same-sex marriage.[6]

Ahead of the Christian Democrats’ leadership election in 2018, Benning publicly endorsed Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer to succeed Angela Merkel as the party’s chair.[7] In 2019, she joined 14 members of her parliamentary group who, in an open letter, called for the party to rally around Merkel and Kramp-Karrenbauer amid criticism voiced by conservatives Friedrich Merz and Roland Koch.[8]

Personal life

Benning is married and has two daughters and two sons. From 1990 until 1993, the family lived in Paris. In 2008, she survived cancer.[9]

In her free time, Benning is a beekeeper.[10]

References
  1. Sybille Benning, CDU/CSU, Bundestag.de
  2. Sustainable urban development fostering social inclusion Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), press release of May 24, 2019.
  3. Sybille Benning, Europa-Union Deutschland, retrieved 11 January 2018
  4. Erklärung der CDU-Bundestagsabgeordneten: Sybille Benning tritt nicht mehr an Münstersche Zeitung, September 28, 2020.
  5. Board of Trustees Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine.
  6. Diese Unionsabgeordneten stimmten für die Ehe für alle Die Welt, June 30, 2017.
  7. Ralf Repöhler (December 6, 2018), Benning wählt „AKK“, ihr Stellvertreter Jens Spahn Westfälische Nachrichten.
  8. Jens Schneider (October 30, 2019), Machtkampf in der CDU: Abgeordnete nennen parteiinterne Kritik "extrem schädlich" Süddeutsche Zeitung.
  9. Dirk Anger (November 13, 2012), Sybille Benning macht sich auf den Weg: CDU hat erstmals Bundestagskandidatin Westfälische Nachrichten.
  10. Klaus Baumeister (September 15, 2017), Bundestagskandidaten und ihr Lieblingsfoto: Sybille Benning liebt die Imkerei Westfälische Nachrichten.
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