Diana Wallis - Biography

On 18 January 2007, Diana was elected Vice President of the European Parliament. She is the first Liberal Democrat and the first British female of any political persuasion to be elected to such a post in twenty years.

Diana Wallis was re-elected to the European Parliament in June 2004. She is one of six Members of the European Parliament from the region of Yorkshire & the Humber but the only Liberal Democrat. She was first elected to the European Parliament in 1999.

Although she stood as a candidate for the 1989 European elections in North-east Essex, Diana's roots in Yorkshire politics began in 1994 when she became a councillor on Humberside County Council. In 1995 she was elected to the East Riding Unitary Council and became Deputy Leader of the Council soon after. She sat on the Leaders' group on the Yorkshire and Humberside Regional Assembly and has always had an interest in regional matters.

Born in 1954 in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, Diana qualified as a solicitor in 1983, specialising in European commercial litigation. Her law studies took her to Belgium, Germany and Switzerland, which added to her interest in European issues and only heightened her desire to enter European politics. She is fluent in French and German.

Re-elected Leader of the 12-strong Liberal Democrat European Parliamentary Party (LDEPP) in June 2006, Diana stood down from the post after becoming a Vice- President of the European Parliament in January 2007. LDEPP is the largest national delegation in the 'Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe' (ALDE) which allows LDEPP a significant role in policy formulation.

Diana is ALDE spokesperson on the Legal Affairs committee and a substitute member of the Internal Market committee. Diana has been intrinsically involved in all aspects of her Committee's work and has authored a number of Committee reports including choice of law rules on non contractual obligations (Rome II), maintenance obligations, European contract law and greater access to justice for consumers/businesses in the area of civil claims.

Diana is also a full member of the Petitions Committee, in which she has successfully pushed for citizen-friendly improvements to EU legislation such as citizens' summaries for all EU legislative acts which are currently being implemented by the European Commission. As Rapporteur to the Committee of Inquiry into the Equitable Life affair, she authored a high-profile report which found a broad consensus in the Parliament.

Diana has always had an interest in the Nordic region and in September 2004 was elected President of the EP Delegation to Iceland, Norway & Switzerland and the EEA Joint Parliamentary Committee, a post she held until September 2007. She remains an ordinary member of the Delegation. She meets regularly with her counterparts from the national parliaments of these countries. Diana is the author (along with Stewart Arnold and Ben Idris Jones) of the book 'Forgotten Enlargement: Future EU Relations with Iceland, Switzerland and Norway'. She represents the EP in meetings of the Nordic Council, the Baltic Sea Parliamentarians Conference and the Standing Committee of Arctic Parliamentarians, where parliamentarians from Canada, Europe, Russia and the USA discuss such sensitive subjects as the environment & regional security matters. She has visited the Arctic on several occasions over the past few years.

Diana Wallis has a particular interest in issues of direct democracy and in November 2002 Diana co-launched the Initiatives and Referendums Institute - Europe (IRI- Europe) report in the European Parliament. In March 2006, she hosted an IRI-Europe conference in Brussels to discuss different approaches across Europe towards the issue of direct democracy and in particular the campaign for introducing a citizens' initiative at the European level. She is a Board Member of the Initiative & Referendum Institute Europe. This is a think-tank that has a particular interest in all things relating to direct democracy.