Axel Voss re-elected as MEP for the 2024-29 legislative

After a stressful election campaign, the CDU candidate for the European Parliament from NRW (Germany) keeps his mandate and while continuing to focus on digital policy and legal topics.

The Congrats Axel Voss for being re-elected as MEP for the 2024-29 legislative term. You can be very proud of your achievements over the past years as you have heavily shaped the EU's digital policy and restlessly pushed for major reforms. Even though genuine changes are only arriving in baby steps, one can rightful say that without parliamentarians like yourself, our Union would already be a goner.

On top of that, you are one of the few leading decision-makers in the European Parliament that is also a very nice human-being and an incredible supportive boss. One person that, at an event, will always prefer to talk with the nice security or service personnel over small talks with some famous policy figure. One person, who wants only the best for his team. Thank you for everything!

💡 Find a provisional list of all elected MEPs from Germany here.

So, what will Axel Voss do over the next five years? As always, his ambitions are high and his to-do-list is already very long. The initiatives, where I will try to support him, can be summarised under the following five items:

➡ Making sure that the AIAct is - despite all its legal flaws - implemented in the right way. We will try to support the creation of an effective AI governance ecosystem that allows the development and deployment of trustworthy AI. This means in particular that we will scrutinise each and every step of the AI Office. #watchdog

➡ Waiting for the 'Alternative Impact Assessment' of the European Parliamentary Research Service on the AILD. In case our colleagues are identifying a legal gap in the liability framework of the EU, we will start working on our draft report in the legal committee.

➡ Continuing to work on the GDPR enforcement proposal and assess what else can be done to improve the effectiveness of data protection rules, while relieving the regulatory burden for SMEs and organisations. 

➡ Pushing for stronger centralisation when it comes to digital governance, for instance by discussion the creation of a 'digital enforcement agency' or the establishment of an EU version of the Digital Regulation Cooperation Forum (DRCF).

➡ Waiting for the European Commission to release their study as well as their legislative proposal that responds to our 2022 INL on Third-Party Litigation Funding so that we can finally establish minimum safeguards that protect claimants and consumers from a few greedy players.