Biography
Paul NEMITZ, born 1962 in Bonn, a German national, is the Principal
Advisor in the Directorate General for Justice and Consumers of the
European Commission. He was appointed in April 2017, following a 6-
year appointment as Director for Fundamental Rights and Citizen’s
Rights in the same Directorate General. As Director, Nemitz led the
reform of Data Protection legislation in the EU (GDPR), the negotiations
of the EU – US Privacy Shield and the negotiations with major US
Internet Companies of the EU Code of Conduct against incitement to
violence and hate speech on the Internet.
Nemitz is a visiting Professor of Law at the College of Europe, Bruges,
and a Honorary Fellow at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB).
Nemitz is the convener of the interdisciplinary Transatlantic Reflection
Group on Democracy and the Rule of Law in the age of Artificial
intelligence and a regular speaker at the Athens AI Roundtable. He was
a Member of the German Government Data Ethics Commission until it
delivered its consensus report in 2019. He is a Member of the
Commission for Media and Internet Policy of the Social Democratic
Party of Germany (SPD), Berlin, a Member of the Board of the Verein
Gegen Vergessen – Für Demokratie e.V., Berlin and a Trustee of the Leo
Baeck Institute, New York. He chairs the Board of Trustees of the Arthur
Langerman Foundation at the Technical University of Berlin (TU Berlin).
He is a Member of the Global Council on Extended Intelligence of the
IEEE and the MIT in Boston and a Member of the Boston Global Forum
of the Michael Dukakis Institute. He is also on the Advisory Board of
the Trustless Computer Association, Zurich, and the Association for
Accountability and Internet Democracy, Paris.
Nemitz studied Law at Hamburg University. He passed the state
examinations for the judiciary and for a short time was a teaching
assistant for Constitutional Law and the Law of the Sea at Hamburg
University. He obtained a Master of Comparative Law (M.C.L.) from
George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C., where
he was a Fulbright grantee. He also passed the first and second cycle of
the Strasbourg Faculty for Comparative Law.
Follow Paul Nemitz on Twitter: @PaulNemitz . He has been rated the #1
EU Technology Influencer in the annual Twitter #EUInfluencer ranking of
the Brussels based ZN Public Relations Consulting agency. Nemitz lives
in Brussels.