Andrea Astrid Voßhoff

Andrea Astrid Voßhoff (born 31 July 1958) is a German former lawyer who switched to full-time politics in mid-career (CDU). She served as a member of the Bundestag between 1998 and 2013 when, as a "party list" candidate, she narrowly failed to secure re-election in the Brandenburg-Potsam electoral district.

At the end of 2013, it was announced that Voßhoff was appointed to serve as Germany's data protection commissioner in succession to Peter Schaar, with effect from 6 January 2014. The appointment drew widespread criticism from those who saw it as a consolation prize for a politician who had served her party loyally in the Bundestag for fifteen years. Opponents pointed to a parliamentary voting record that showed no great affection for the right to personal privacy. She had, indeed, supported a number of controversial proposals and pieces of government legislation in respect of matters such as data retention, online data access involving (in particular) child abuse, government access to citizen's computers using undisclosed spying software and the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. She nevertheless served out a full five-year term as national data protection commissioner: while the criticism was not completely stilled, notably in respect of her alleged failure to give data protection issues a more prominent public profile, there were those who paid tribute to a succession of robust and legally sound data protection judgements handed down during her incumbency, and the expansion of the data-protection office under her watch.

She attended secondary school in Meppen, passing the "Abitur" (school final exams) in 1977, which opened the way to university-level education. Between 1977 and 1979 she studied Jurisprudence at the University of Münster. This was followed by a year as a foreign (non-Swiss) student at the University of Lausanne. She was now qualified to work as a fully qualified lawyer in her own practice, which she did between 1988 and 1991. Between 1997 and 2007 she served as deputy chair for the local party in Havelland.

Between 1996 and 2000 she was, in addition, chair of the Brandenburg section of the party's "Mittelstands- und Wirtschaftsunion" (MIT), a highly influential organisation representing the interests of "Mittelstand" entrepreneurs, the self-employed and freelancers within the party, dedicated both to eulogising the free-market liberalism attributed to the "Wirtschaftswunder chancellor", Ludwig Erhard, and to advancing the current agenda of members within the party.

Stadtverordnetenversammlung Between 2003 and 2013, Voßhoff was a member of the "Stadtverordnetenversammlung" (town council) of Rathenow. She was a member of the council committee for finance and budgeting which, from November 2003, she chaired. Between 2008 and 2010 she was also a member of the Havelland district council.

Bundestag (National Parliament) In 1998, Voßhoff was elected for the first time to the Bundestag (the directly elected "lower" house of Germany's bicameral parliament) as a member for electoral district 275, corresponding to a region in the western part of the state of Brandenburg. The party put her name forward for direct election: she was also included as a list candidate, in position 2 on the party's list for the state of Brandenburg. Electoral district 275 was traditionally one in which the SPD candidate tended to come first, and it was only as a list candidate that Voßhoff secured her own election. As a Bundestag member, she was appointed by the party to serve on the Bundestag Law Committee between 1998 and 2013. She was also one of the twelve members of the Bundestag "Wahlausschuss" (Committee), which at that time was empowered to appoint directly half of the judges on Germany's Supreme Constitutionality Court.

Commissioner for Data Protection and Information Freedom On 19 December 2013, a Bundestag vote confirmed Voßhoff's appointment as Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information in succession to Peter Schaar whose retirement had taken effect, formally, three days earlier, following a ten-year incumbency. Voßhoff was installed in her new role by Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière on 4 February 2014.

The appointment was criticised by the powerful (in Germany) data protection lobby. As a member of the Bundestag between 1998 and 2013 Voßhoff had voted in support of several contentious pieces of government legislation in respect of matters such as data retention, online data access involving (in particular) child abuse, government access to citizen's computers using undisclosed spying software and the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. More generally ventilated was a suspicion that Voßhoff had been given the job as a consolation prize following her unexpected failure to secure re-election to the Bundestag because of an unforeseen quirk in the psephological arithmetic.

In 2016 Andre Meister felt able to provide a less one-sided assessment: "This critique [which the Data Protection Protectioner had just authored, and which had then been leaked] could hardly be clearer. The otherwise rather insipid Andrea Voßhoff gives the intelligence services and the chancellry one legal ear-bashing after another". Two years after that, however, reflecting on the ending of Voßhoff's five year term, Kurz remained robustly unimpressed: "Data Protection and Information Freedom both require a return to a much stronger public profile".

Critics and supporters alike could agree on the way in which data protection challenges grew during the first part of the twenty-first century. In the course of Voßhoff's five year incumbency the number of people working at the Data Protection Commisariat more than doubled.

Between 2014 and 2018 Voßhoff was a member of the German government's - thus far largely inconsequential - Data Ethics Commission.

Voßhoff's term as data protection commissioner ended at the beginning of 2019. In a review of Voßhoff's term, Constanze Kurz renewed her criticism on netzpolitik.org, attesting to the outgoing federal data protection commissioner's lack of visibility in public debates, even though events relevant to data protection law, such as the entry into force of the DSGVO or the controversy over the state Trojan, fell during Voßhoff's term. His successor is SPD politician Ulrich Kelber.