Otte joined the CDU in 1994 and has belonged since 1999 to the board of the CDU district association in Celle. Since 2006 he has been a member of the board of the European People's Party (EVP) and since 2007 deputy chairman of the CDU District Association of Northeast Lower Saxony.
Member of Parliament,2005–2025
In the 2005 elections,Otte first became a member of parliament in the German Bundestag,where he was on the state list for Lower Saxony. In 2009 he was given the direct mandate for the constituency of Celle –Uelzen with 44.2% of first votes,defeating Kirsten Lühmann of the Social Democratic Party who has since entered the Bundestag on the Lower Saxon state list.
In parliament,Otte was a member of the Defence Committee and deputy member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs. He also served as the CDU/CSU group's spokesperson on defence policy.
In addition to his committee assignments,Otte served as a member of the German delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly from 2014 to 2025,where he was part of the Defence and Security Committee. [2] Between 2009 and 2013,he was also part of the Parliamentary Friendship Group for Relations with the Baltic States as well as of the Parliamentary Friendship Group for Relations with the States of South America. From 2019,he was a member of the German delegation to the Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly. [3]
In the negotiations to form a coalition government following the 2013 federal elections,Otte was part of the CDU/CSU delegation in the working group on foreign affairs,defense policy and development cooperation,led by Thomas de Maizière and Frank-Walter Steinmeier. In the coalition talks following the 2017 federal elections,he was again appointed to the working group on foreign policy,defense and development,this time led by Ursula von der Leyen,Gerd Müller and Sigmar Gabriel.
In his capacity as member of the Defence Committee,Otte traveled extensively to visit Bundeswehr troops on their missions abroad,including in Kabul (2012),Mazar-i-Sharif (2012,2013) and Gao (2016) and at the Incirlik Air Base (2016). In 2015,he accompanied German Minister of Defence Ursula von der Leyen to meetings with King Abdullah II of Jordan and President Beji Caid Essebsi of Tunisia,among others. [4]
