Voss joined the German
CDU in 1996 and chaired the
Bonn affiliation from 2004 to 2009. Since 2011 he has been the district chair of the CDU in the
Middle Rhine area. Voss has also been a
Member of the European Parliament for this constituency (which includes
Bonn,
Cologne,
Leverkusen, Rhein-Sieg- and Rhein-Erft-Kreis) since the
2009 European elections. In his third parliamentary term from 2019 to 2024, he serves as member of the
Committee on Legal Affairs (JURI), deputy member of the
Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE), member of the Special Committee on Artificial Intelligence in a Digital Age (AIDA), deputy chairman of the delegation for Australia and New Zealand (DANZ) and substitute member of the delegation for South Asia (DSAS). In 2014, when
Edward Snowden testified before the European Parliament, 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, Voss also stated that the clandestine access of third countries to European data is illegal. As rapporteur, Voss was an avid supporter of
Article 13 of the European
Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market, saying that "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." Since the
GDPR was adopted in 2016, 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. Considering 'consent' as the “death of privacy”, Voss strongly argues in favor of new technical approaches to simplify the processing of (personal) data, accelerate data sharing across Europe and to enable the full use of emerging technologies such as AI while protecting the personal data of citizens more effectively. Using similar arguments, he also rejects the proposal for a new
ePrivacy regulation, especially since it would partially replace the GDPR provisions as
lex specialis. Others, such as
European Digital Rights, contradict his views and emphasis the massive improvements for the privacy of European citizens. In early 2020, media reported on 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. "Europe must pursue a third - a European - path of digitalization, which is based on our values in data protection and data sovereignty" Voss said at the
DLD conference in Munich. He 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 2025, Voss proposed together with
Emil Radev and
Angelika Niebler the deletion of safeguards to protect workers rights in the EU proposal for a new legal framework for start-ups, known as the
28th regime. ==Other activities==