From 2013 to 2021 Roth also served as Minister of State for Europe at the German Federal Foreign Office in the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel.

After completing non-military national service, he began studying political science, public law, sociology, and German language and literature at the Johann Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main in 1991.

[3] On 2 July 2019, Roth announced that he would be standing for election as SPD Chairperson in tandem with fellow party member Christina Kampmann.

they called for, among other things, an end to the balanced budget policy, more gender equality, a fundamental reform of the party, security in the digital transformation and the United States of Europe.

[6] Roth became a member of the German Bundestag for the first time in 1998, entering as the directly elected representative of the Hersfeld constituency with 51.7 percent of the first vote.

In the ensuing negotiations to form a coalition government he was a member of the joint CDU, CSU and SPD working group on foreign affairs, defence and development cooperation, led by Thomas de Maizière and Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

In April 2017, Roth was elected chairman of the Party of European Socialists’ GAC Ministers network, succeeding Harlem Désir.

[15] In this capacity, he visited Ukraine shortly after the 2022 Russian invasion with Anton Hofreiter and Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, the chairs of parliament's European affairs and defense committees respectively.

[23] On the sidelines of an informal U.N. General Assembly meeting on the rising threat of antisemitism in January 2015, Roth joined his French counterpart Harlem Désir in appealing for U.N. member states to work together on an international legal framework that would make social network providers share responsibility for the use of their platforms to spread messages promoting violence; the French call for a radical shift in the way governments treat social networking companies such as Facebook and Twitter came two weeks after the Charlie Hebdo shooting in Paris.

[26] On the occasion of the first visit to the country by a German minister after Greeks elected the radical left-wing government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras in early 2015, Roth publicly warned the new government of risking its isolation in the European Union by threatening to break ranks on the EU sanctions against Russia over the Russo-Ukrainian war and ditch its bailout deal.