Education
Born in Opole, Upper Silesia, Zeller attended the Humboldt University of Berlin.
Born in Opole, Upper Silesia, Zeller attended the Humboldt University of Berlin.
From 1977 to 1992, he was employed at the university library as a research associate. From 1996 to 2006, he served as mayor of the Berlin borough of Mitte. In his first term between 2009 and 2014, he served on the Committee on Regional Development.
In 2014, he also joined the delegation to the American College of Physicians–European Union Joint Parliamentary Assembly.
Zeller regularly monitors elections on behalf of the European Parliament. He also took part in the following monitoring mission during the Ukrainian parliamentary elections in 2014, this time led by Andrej Plenković.
During the Azerbaijani presidential elections in 2013, Zeller participated in the official election observation mission by the European Parliament, led by Pino Arlacchi. The resulting report on the election was subsequently criticized as markedly kinder than the verdict of the Organization for Security and Company-operation in Europe, which found significant problems with every stage of the campaign, including intimidation of candidates and voters, the stuffing of ballot boxes, and intimidation of journalists.
In April 2012, Zeller was one of 28 European Parliament politicians who voted against a move to restrict the export of spy gear and censorship tools to autocratic regimes.
Zeller has been a Member of the European Parliament since the 2009 European elections. Since 2014, he has been a member of the Committee on Budgetary Control. Since 2009, Zeller has been a member of the parliament’s delegation to the European Union-Russia Parliamentary Cooperation Committee.
He was a member of the parliament’s 15-member monitoring mission for Ukrainian parliamentary elections in 2012, led by Pawel Kowal.