Vice-President of the European Parliament
In the European Parliament he was Conservative spokesman on Foreign Affairs & Security for many years. He also served as Economics and Transport spokesman. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, his "European Democracy Initiative" has spent £80M each year developing democracy and civil society worldwide, but especially in the ex-Soviet empire and Islamic world. Several thousand projects have been financed, from grass-roots activity to pan-European programmes.
He is a founding member of the International Movement of Parliamentarians for Democracy. He was singled out by Dutch 'whistleblower' Paul van Buitenen for his role in the 1999 mass resignation of the EU Commission for maladministration.
Mcmillan-Scott - working for Yorkshire and the Humber
Tourism is a major employer in his region and Edward was the European Parliament's first tourism spokesman, from 1984-91: the European Year of Tourism (1990) was his project. His campaign against timeshare and Costa villa fraud and malpractice - based on constituency postbag cases - won wide support, and led to both EU and national consumer laws. He has successfully pursued a number of cross-frontier child abduction cases for constituents.
He formed the 1992 Club to prepare Yorkshire business for the Single Market and he is now working to complete the Single Market and extend it to other European countries and beyond.
He also maintains good links with the farming, fishing and other sectors affected by EU policies.
Edward McMillan-Scott was one of the two Conservatives among six MEPs (2 Conservative, 2 Labour, 1 Liberal Democrat and 1 UKIP) elected in the Yorkshire & Humber Region under Proportional Representation in 2004.
He was elected Vice-President of the European Parliament in July 2004, and has a special responsibility for relations with national parliaments and with the Arab world.
He is chairman of the European Parliament's largest -ever election observer mission covering the Palestinian presidential election in January 2005 and parliamentary election in January 2006.
From September 1997 - December 2001 he was Leader of the Conservatives in the European Parliament, and oversaw the 1999 European Election which saw a doubling of their number to 36.
Edward was a member of the Conservative Party Board and sat on the Shadow Cabinet Europe Committee. Born in Cambridge in 1949, he joined the Conservative Party in 1967, the European Movement in 1973 and was first elected as an MEP in 1984.
