Baroness Catherine Ashton: Reflections on the challenges of foreign policy
08 December 2015, 12:00 am

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8 December 2015 +++This event is fully booked+++
Join the
UCL Global Governance Institute and the European Institute for a lecture by Baroness Ashton, the European Union's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, and First Vice President of the European Commission, from 2009 to 2014. She will reflect on the challenges of foreign policy.
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Baroness Ashton is a British Labour politician whose political career began in 1999 when she was created a Life Peer as Baroness Ashton of Upholland, of St Albans, in the County of Hertfordshire by Tony Blair's Labour Government. She became the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department for Education and Skills in 2001 and subsequently in the Ministry of Justice in 2004. She was appointed a Privy Councillor in May 2006.
Baroness Ashton became Leader of the House of Lords and Lord President of the Council in Gordon Brown's first Cabinet in June 2007. She was instrumental in steering
the EU's Treaty of Lisbon through the UK Parliament's second chamber. In 2008, she was appointed as the British European Commissioner and became the Commissioner for Trade in the European Commission.
In December 2009, she became the inaugural High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy that was created by the Treaty of Lisbon. As High Representative, Ashton served as the EU's foreign policy chief. Baroness Ashton won praise for her work as a negotiator in difficult international situations, in particular for her role in bringing Serbia and Kosovo to an agreement in April 2013 that normalised their ties, and in the talks with Iran which led to the November 2013 Geneva interim agreement on Iranian nuclear program.
The event is chaired by Dame Nicola Brewer, UCL's Vice-Provost International.


