Photo: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pirati/, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons¹⁸

Marcel Kolaja

Czech computer specialist, activist and politician (born 1980)

Marcel Kolaja (born 29 June 1980) is a Czech software engineer, Internet freedom and digital rights activist and a former Czech Pirate Party politician who served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from 2019 to 2024 and Quaestor of the European Parliament from 2022 to 2024. He was a member of the Greens–European Free Alliance parliamentary group along with three other European Pirate Party MEPs.²

From Wikipedia’s article on Marcel Kolaja (this version), CC BY-SA 4.0.

Born Jun 29, 1980.¹

About

In 2025, he joined Access Now as their Policy and Advocacy Director for Europe.

Kolaja was a member of the Czech Pirate Party from 2010 to 2024 and the Vice-President of the Czech Pirate Party from 2022 to 2024. From 2019 to 2022, he served as Vice-President of the European Parliament. He served as Quaestor of the Parliament from 2022 to 2024, being responsible for overseeing the administrative and financial matters of the institution. Kolaja graduated from the Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University.

Apart from being a Bureau member in the European Parliament, Kolaja was a member of the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO), the Committee on Culture and Education (CULT), and the Special Committee of Inquiry to investigate the use of Pegasus (PEGA), as well as in the delegations for relations with the United States (D-US) and with India (D-IN).

Topics related to the functioning of society in the digital age are his main focus. Marcel Kolaja stands for open technologies, freedom on the Internet, independence of media, transparency, and a united Europe.

From Wikipedia’s article on Marcel Kolaja, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.²

Companies

Otevřená městaBoard member 2016 to 2021¹⁷

Early life and education

Date not recordedMasaryk University³

Career

Occupation: software engineer, politician.⁷

2019 to 2022Vice President of the European Parliament^{5 6}
Since 2019Member of the European Parliament⁵
2016 to 2021Board member, Otevřená města⁴

Personal life

BornJun 29, 1980, Moravská Třebová^{8 9}
CitizenshipCzech Republic¹⁰
ResidenceLanškroun, Brno^{11 12}

Politics

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. He became 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.

Independent politician (2024–present)

After November 2024 leadership election Kolaja announced his departure from the party, due to different views on politics.