Marcel Kolaja

Marcel Kolaja (born 29 June 1980 in Moravská Třebová) is a Czech software engineer, activist and a Czech Pirate Party politician who serves as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) and a Vice-President of the European Parliament since the 2019 election. He is a member of the Greens–European Free Alliance parliamentary group along with three other European Pirate Party MEPs.
His political agenda focuses on technological competitiveness of the EU on the world market, corporate lobbying in the EU and corporate tax avoidance, digital rights, censorship, environmental protection and consumer protection. As an activist he has also promoted free software and copyright reform.
Activism and Czech Pirate Party beginnings (2003–2018).
Kolaja worked as an activist against the adoption of software patent legislation in the European Union (EU) from 2003 and joined the Czech Pirate Party in 2010. Kolaja acted as a co-chairman of the Pirate Parties International (PPI) from March to November 2011.
Kolaja was the second candidate of the Czech Pirate Party in the 2014 European Parliament election but was not elected. Kolaja has worked as a technical product manager in Red Hat Czech, a research and development arm of Red Hat, Inc., which itself became a subsidiary of IBM on 9 July 2019.
European Parliament (2019–present).
Election.
Kolaja was the party's leading candidate for the 2019 European Parliament election in the Czech Republic and was elected MEP along with Markéta Gregorová and Mikuláš Peksa. His political agenda focuses on digital rights and prevention of increasing Internet censorship; environmental protection such as fossil fuel phase-out and minimizing waste pollution; consumer protection, addressing technological competitiveness of the EU on the world market and limiting corporate lobbying in the EU. Among his priorities is also addressing tax avoidance by multinational corporations that offshore profits via tax havens.
Tenure.
In June, Kolaja joined the Greens–European Free Alliance political group of the European Parliament along with three other European Pirate Party MEPs.
On 3 July, he was elected one of fourteen Vice-Presidents of the European Parliament. Kolaja also serves as a vice-chair of the parliamentary Working Group on ICT Innovation Strategy, as a member of the Bureau of the European Parliament and the European Parliament Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection.
Committee assignments.
As a Vice-President of the European Parliament, Kolaja is responsible for:
Kolaja is a member of the follwing Committees of the European Parliament: