Detlef Seif

European Affairs

On 17 July 2015, Seif voted against his party's line and rejected the Merkel government’s proposal to negotiate a third bailout for Greece.^[8][9]

As the EU deputy spokesperson for the CDU/CSU parliamentary group and rapporteur for affairs in Great Britain, Seif is outspoken on the topic of Brexit. Before the Brexit referendum in June 2016, Seif stated that if Prime Minister Cameron wanted Britain to stay in the EU, he would have to convince his fellow Britons of the advantages of EU membership. Seif compared Cameron to a “butterfly,” and declared that “Britain does not need a butterfly but a lion.”^[10]

Regarding Brexit negotiations, Seif has taken a rigid stance and views the Brexit as a “catastrophe” that “damages economic development and the development of the EU.”^[11]

Upon Prime Minister Theresa May's activation of Article 50 of the Treaty of Lisbon beginning formal Brexit proceedings and her remark that a failure to reach an agreement on Brexit would weaken UK-EU cooperation in the fight against crime and terrorism, Seif was one of many German members of parliament who did not take kindly to May's statement, deeming it “an extraordinarily primitive attempt at blackmailing us.”^[12]

Seif blamed a leak to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung of an unflattering description of the first meeting between UK and EU negotiation teams in May 2017 on a “babbling idiot,” seeing both sides at fault for “the fact that the atmosphere is becoming poisoned.”^[13]

Seif believes the Brexit will do significant damage to both Great Britain and the EU and is quoted as saying “a win-win settlement is excluded and it’s appropriate to speak about a lose-lose result.”^[14]

In a 26 September 2025 interview with the Kölnische Rundschau, Seif called for a fundamental paradigm shift in EU asylum policy, arguing that strengthening Frontex, expanding physical external-border controls and introducing the EU Entry/Exit System would improve security but would not change the obligation to admit asylum applicants at the EU's external border, who would thereby gain a de facto right of residence. He said the EU's protection categories could apply to around 300 million people and, citing migration researcher Ruud Koopmans, urged a far-reaching overhaul of the Common European Asylum System—beyond the planned reform—toward admissions and procedures in third countries.^[15]

Domestic Affairs

Within his party, Seif belongs to the conservative wing.

During the Böhmermann affair in 2016, Seif read the Böhmermann's "smear poem" in the German Bundestag to demonstrate that it is an insult of the Turkish president, which caused the outrage of other MPs.^[16]

In June 2017, Seif voted against Germany's introduction of same-sex marriage.^[17] Following the party's result in the 2017 elections, he held that voters had abandoned the CDU because, under Angela Merkel, it had moved too far to the left.^[18]

Following Germany's September 2017 federal elections, Seif identified points of contention between the CDU, CSU, and SPD, telling Reuters that pensions, Europe and asylum and migration policy were all “areas where there are explosives built into the coalition agreement."^[19]

In April 2018, Seif was the first member of the German Bundestag to delete his Facebook account as a result of the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal. He wrote an open letter to Facebook's Managing Director in Central Europe in which he stated he could not recommend Facebook to anyone, so long as Facebook continued to handle user data in a sloppy fashion.^[20]

Ahead of the Christian Democrats’ leadership election, Seif publicly opposed in 2020 Friedrich Merz's candidacy to succeed Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer as the party's chair.^[21]

Seif is Protestant, married and has one daughter.^[2]