[4] Following the 2017 German federal election, the CDU/CSU parliamentary group decided against including Fischer in its list of nominees for Germany's new 18 person-strong delegation to PACE; the decision has been linked in media reports to his alleged role in limiting PACE's efforts to hold the Azerbaijan government under Ilham Aliyev accountable for human rights abuses as well as possible corruption.

[14] In 2017, the Union parliamentary group withdrew Fischer's appointment to the new Bundestag delegation at the Council of Europe because of his implication in the "Caviar Diplomacy" corruption scandal in PACE.

[16] On March 4, 2021, following a request from the Munich Public Prosecutor's Office, the German Bundestag lifted Fischer's parliamentary immunity.

In January 2024 German prosecutors brought bribery and corruption charges against Axel Fischer and Eduard Lintner (another CDU member implicated in the Azerbaijani laundromat).

His father is the former President of the University of Applied Sciences in Karlsruhe Werner Fischer and one of his brothers is the swiss politician and pastor Lutz Fischer-Lamprecht