Andrew Duff

Andrew Duff 2014

Andrew Duff (born December 25, 1950 in Birkenhead ) is a British politician of the Liberal Democrats . He has been a Member of the European Parliament for the East of England constituency of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland since 1999 . Andrew Duff is one of the best known representatives of European federalism and was President of the Union of European Federalists .

Career

Andrew Duff studied at Cambridge University and graduated with a Masters in 1978 . From 1993 to 1997 he was director of the Federal Trust for Education & Research , a British think tank with a special interest in federalism .

He began his political career in 1982 as a member of the Cambridge City Council (until 1990). From 1994 to 1997 he served as deputy chairman of the Liberal Democrats .

Andrew Duff ran for the European Parliament in the 1984 , 1989 and 1994 European elections , but was unable to win his constituency under the majority vote . It was only with the introduction of proportional representation that he won a mandate for the Liberal Democratic Party in the 1999 European elections , which he defended in the 2004 and 2009 European elections .

In parliament he was the liberal group ALDE on. He was a member of the Committee on Constitutional Affairs (AFCO) and deputy chairman of the delegation to the EU-Turkey Joint Parliamentary Committee. In the European Convention , which drafted the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe from 2002 to 2003 , he was chairman of the liberal wing. He was also one of the three representatives of the European Parliament in the Intergovernmental Conference in 2007, which drafted the Lisbon Treaty .

From 2008 to 2013 Andrew Duff was President of the Union of European Federalists . In September 2010 he was involved in the founding of the Spinelli Group , which advocates European federalism .

Political positions

In the European Parliament, Duff campaigned for various initiatives in the spirit of European federalism . In 2008 he brought as European Parliament rapporteur on electoral reform, a proposal one, after at European elections a part of deputies should be chosen not on national, but on Europe-wide lists. In 2011, in a letter to the President of Parliament, Jerzy Buzek , he suggested that future reforms of the EU Treaty should no longer be adopted unanimously by all member states, but rather with a four-fifths majority. However, both of these proposals would only be possible by amending the treaty and would therefore have to be ratified by all EU member states in accordance with the current legal situation.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ EurActiv , 13 October 2008: MEP: “Comprehensive” electoral reform by 2014 “urgently needed” ; See also draft of a report on a proposal to change the direct election file ( memento of the original from September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , July 5, 2010. 
2. ↑ EurActiv , March 7, 2011: Federalists want to improve the Lisbon Treaty .

Web links

• Homepage of Andrew Duff
• Entry for Andrew Duff in the European Parliament 's database of MEPs
• VoteWatch.eu: Andrew Duff's voting behavior in the European Parliament