Axel Voss


Axel Voss is a German politician and member of the European Parliament from Germany. He is a member of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany, part of the European People's Party.

Education and early career

From 1983 to 1990 Voss studied law at the Universities of Trier, Munich, Freiburg and Paris. In 1990 he took his first Staatsexamen, specialising in European and international law. After a traineeship at the Supreme Provincial Court of Appeal in Koblenz, he finished his second Staatsexamen, specialising in European law and international relations.
Beginning in 1994 Voss worked as a lawyer and was Citizens' adviser of the European Commission at the regional Commission Representation in Bonn. From 2000 to 2009 he taught European affairs at the RheinAhrCampus in Remagen of the University of Applied Sciences Koblenz.

Political career

Voss is a member of the German CDU and was chair of the Bonn affiliation from 2004 to 2009. Since 2005 he has been deputy district chair of the CDU in the Middle Rhine area.
Voss has been a Member of the European Parliament since the 2009 European elections. He has since been serving as member of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs, the Delegation to the EU-Chile Joint Parliamentary Committee and the Delegation to the Euro-Latin American Parliamentary Assembly. In 2020, he also joined the Special Committee on Artificial Intelligence in a Digital Age.
In addition, Voss is a substitute to the Committee on Budgets, the Committee on Petitions and the Delegation for relations with the Mercosur countries. He also serves as a member of the European Parliament Intergroup on the Digital Agenda; the European Parliament Intergroup on Sports; and the European Parliament Intergroup on Biodiversity, Countryside, Hunting and Recreational Fisheries.
On the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs, Voss is the European People's Party Group’s coordinator. He has been serving as his group’s rapporteur or shadow rapporteur] for the center-right European People’s Party on a directive on the use of passenger name record data for the prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of terrorist offences and serious crime; digital consumer rules; and on copyright reform. In 2014, when Edward Snowden testified before the European Parliament, Voss implied that Snowden had endangered innocents' lives and potentially collaborated with terrorists as well as the Russian and Chinese intelligence agencies. Voss was also a key figure in drafting Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market in 2018.
Voss is an avid supporter of article 13 of the European Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market, saying "This directive is an important step towards correcting a situation which has allowed a few companies to earn huge sums of money without properly remunerating the thousands of creatives and journalists whose work they depend on".

Other activities

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

Personal life

Voss is married and has two daughters.