Axel Schäfer

Following the 1994 elections, Schäfer served as a one-term Member of the European Parliament. During his time in parliament, he was a member of the Committee on Institutional Affairs and the parliament's delegation to the EU-Poland Joint Parliamentary Committee.[1]

Schäfer first became a member of the Bundestag in the 2002 German federal election.[2] He is a member of the Committee on European Union Affairs.[3]

Schäfer led the Bundestag group of SPD parliamentarians from North Rhine-Westphalia, the largest delegation within the party's parliamentary group from 2005 until 2013. From 2010 until 2017, he served as deputy chairman of the SPD parliamentary group under the leadership of successive chairpersons Frank-Walter Steinmeier (2010-2013), Thomas Oppermann (2013-2017) and Andrea Nahles (2017).

In the negotiations to form a Grand Coalition of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU together with the Bavarian CSU) and the SPD following the 2013 German elections, Schäfer was part of the SPD delegation in the working group on banking regulation and the Eurozone, led by Herbert Reul and Martin Schulz.

In addition to his committee assignments, Schäfer has been chairing the German-Italian Parliamentary Friendship Group since 2018. Also in 2018, he joined the German delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).[4] In the Assembly, he serves on the Committee on the Honouring of Obligations and Commitments by Member States of the Council of Europe (Monitoring Committee); the Committee on Culture, Science, Education and Media; and the Sub-Committee on Conflicts between Council of Europe Member States.