11 Facts About Axel Voss

Later that year, Axel Voss became the Citizens' adviser of the European Commission at the regional Commission Representation in Bonn.

Axel Voss joined the German CDU in 1996 and chaired the Bonn affiliation from 2004 to 2009.

Axel Voss has been a Member of the European Parliament for this constituency since the 2009 European elections.

Axel Voss has been the rapporteur or shadow rapporteur for the center-right European People's Party group on the General Data Protection Regulation, Passenger Name Record, Eurojust regulation, EU-US Privacy Shield, Digital Content Directive, reform of the EU copyright law, ePrivacy Regulation, the European Parliament's legislative own-initiative report on a civil liability regime for Artificial Intelligence and the special report of the AIDA-committee.

In 2014, when Edward Snowden testified before the European Parliament, Axel Voss inquired why Snowden had chosen to go public with his information, if he had considered the potential risks for the lives of innocents and for the global efforts against terrorism, and about possible connections to Russian intelligence agencies.

However, Axel Voss stated that the clandestine access of third countries to European data is illegal.

Since the GDPR was adopted in 2016, Axel Voss repeatedly criticized the vast number of derogations, the inconsistent interpretation of the law among member states and the missing exemptions for small and medium-sized enterprises, organizations, clubs and societies as well as private users.

In early 2020, media reported on Axel Voss' warning that Europe would become a "digital colony of the USA or China" if the member states could not agree on radical countermeasures and are not willing to expand the Digital Single Market massively.

Axel Voss later published a 19-page digital manifesto with a series of concrete proposals to the European institutions in order to strengthen Europe's digital sovereignty and geopolitical competitiveness.

In 2019, Axel Voss was the recipient of the Digital Single Market Award at The Parliament Magazine's annual MEP Awards.

Axel Voss was the recipient of the Digital Strategy and Single Marker Award at 2022 MEP Awards ceremony.