In 1983 she was elected to the German Bundestag and in the first electoral term in which the Greens were represented in Parliament she was one of the spokespersons of the parliamentary group, together with Petra Kelly and Otto Schily.

[citation needed] From 2002, she was also State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, led by Renate Schmidt.

In this capacity, she initiated a campaign against a planned headscarf ban for Muslim teachers, convening politicians from across the party spectrum, scientists and leaders from the church and media, including Rita Süssmuth, Renate Künast, Claudia Roth, Katja Riemann and Renan Demirkan.

[6] In 2012, Beck became a member of the German delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, where she has since served on the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights.

"[7] Despite having been member of the Putin-friendly government under Gerhard Schröder between 1998 and 2005, she was among the few diplomats and lawmakers who lobbied for Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky’s release[8] and was once described by news magazine Der Spiegel as "a woman despised by the Kremlin.

[10] As a consequence Andrej Hiro, the Belarusian ambassador to Germany, was summoned to the Federal Foreign Office and told that the German government did not understand the reason for the visa denials.

[14] In 2017, Beck co-founded the Zentrum Liberale Moderne, a think-tank focusing on defending the open society and liberal democracy against anti-liberal revolt in Germany, European Union and abroad.