About Edward

Edward McMillan-Scott was first elected as MEP in 1984 and has served since then in the European Parliament. He was reelected as head of the list in the Yorkshire & Humber Region in June 2009.

In the European Parliament he was elected Vice-President since 2004 and re-elected in 2006.

< Edward chairs a voting session in the Strasbourg Chamber; he holds the record for speed in voting.

He had topped the poll in the EPP-ED Group during the selection process and was elected fourth of 14 Vice-Presidents.

His responsibilities as Vice-President included relations with the Arab world and in particular, the Euro Mediterranean Parliamentary Assembly, comprised of 260 MPs and MEPs from the EU and Mediterranean.

< With Palestine President Abu Mazen

Representing the EP in the Bundestag as Angela Merkel addresses MPs from across Europe >

He represented the European Parliament at meetings with the 27 national parliaments within the EU as part of the COSAC process. He attended almost all scheduled meetings during his Vice-Presidency.

Political background

Edward joined the Conservative Party in 1967 and the European Movement in 1973. From September 1997 – December 2001 Edward was Leader of the Conservatives in the European Parliament. He was one of the architects of the Conservative MEPs' association with the EPP-ED Group in 1999.

He has also served on the Conservative Party Board and the Shadow Cabinet Europe Committee. He recently sat on the Conservative Party's Election Strategy Committee and is a member of the Candidates Committee.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the European Democracy Initiative which he founded has assisted the transformation of the ex-Soviet bloc. By 1997, some 1200 grassroots projects were being funded. Today, the fund has grown to €140 per year, and finances all the EU's election observation missions.

He was the European Parliament's rapporteur on the EU's China Strategy and was the first politician to visit Tibet after a political embargo. In May 2006 he returned to China. All those with whom he had contcat were arrested, imprisoned - and in some cases tortured.

He is a founding member of the Washington-based International Movement of Parliamentarians for Democracy.

He was the European Parliament’s first tourism spokesman, and the European Year of Tourism was his project. His campaign for improved cross-frontier property and timeshare rights won wide support, and led to both EU and national consumer laws.

Family background

Edward McMillan-Scott - a relative of T E Lawrence (of Arabia) - was born in Cambridge in 1949. He was first elected to the European Parliament in 1984 and re-elected in 1989, 1994, 1999, 2004 and 2009 for Yorkshire & The Humber, UK. He was educated privately by the Catholic Dominican friars. He was a tour manager for a US company in Europe, Africa, Scandinavia and the USSR and then a parliamentary and government affairs consultant in London, founding his own company. He is a Patron of the BBC World Service Trust, Member of Court of University of Bradford and the Liaison Committee of the National Coal Mining Museum for England. He speaks French, Italian, some Spanish and German. Since 2008 he has been a vegetarian.

He comes from a farming and professional background and is married to Henrietta (centre), a lawyer. They have two daughters, Lucy (right, born 1973) and Arabella (born 1976) and two grand-daughters.