Max Mosley debates press freedoms for Intelligence Squared

Max Mosley

Former president of the FIA who has brought a case against the UK's privacy laws in the European Court of Human Rights

Max Mosley was president from 1993 to 2009 of the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), based in Paris and consisting of the national motoring clubs of 132 countries. He was educated in France and Germany and is fluent in French and German. He read physics at Oxford and graduated in 1961. He was called to the English Bar in 1964 and practised as a barrister for five years in London. He was a successful amateur racing driver and in 1969, he co-founded March Engineering, which quickly became one of the world's leading racing car manufacturers.

In 1993, after many years’ involvement with world motor sport, he was elected President of the FIA. He was re-elected unopposed in 1997, again in 2001 and for a fourth four-year term in October 2005. He did not stand in 2009.

Max Mosley’s other activities in recent years include initiating a carbon sequestration forestry project in Mexico run by Edinburgh University which removed from the atmosphere all CO2 produced by the Formula One and World Rally Championships each year, making them environmentally neutral; and setting up the FIA Foundation, a UK charity which spends its annual income of several million Euros on road safety and motor sport safety world-wide.

He is currently asking the European Court of Human Rights to rule that the British government has failed to provide an effective remedy for breach of privacy, notwithstanding its obligation to do so under European law and the Human Rights Act.

He is 69 years old and married with two grown-up sons (one deceased). His hobbies are snow-boarding and walking.