AUK Talks with Baroness Catherine Ashton _ November 30, 2023

The AUK Talks topic: "The Winding Path to EU Accession and the Road to Victory for Ukraine: The European Strategy for Winning the War and Securing the Peace
About AUK Talks speaker:
Baroness Catherine Ashton is one of the most distinguished British diplomats of recent times. She has made notable and lasting contributions to global peace and security.
From the start of her career, she was an internationalist in outlook, working as Administration Secretary and subsequently Vice-Chair, of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
She was Director of Business in the Community in the 1980s and worked to advance equality of opportunity in employment. She established the Windsor Fellowship to help young people from diverse ethnic backgrounds make the most of their talents. Baroness Ashton also set up Opportunity Now, Business in the Community’s gender equality campaign, and the Employers Forum on Disability.
In 2001 she was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department for Education and Skills, where she became minister responsible for the Sure Start programme for the health and educational development of under-fives, one of the most popular and successful social policies.
Baroness Ashton was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary in the Department for Constitutional Affairs in 2004 and then at the Ministry of Justice in 2007. In that year, the new Prime Minister appointed her to the Cabinet as Leader of the House of Lords and Lord President of the Council.
In 2008, Baroness Ashton became a European Commissioner for Trade in the Barroso Commission (the first woman to serve as trade commissioner) and the first woman sent to the EU as a Commissioner by the UK. She has experience of negotiating high-level trade deals that few others in the UK can claim.
In 2009, she was appointed the first High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. She established the European External Action Service in late 2010. Baroness Ashton played a vital role in normalizing ties between Serbia and Kosovo, for which she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Perhaps her most important diplomatic achievement was to play a pivotal role in the first agreement reached between the Permanent Members of the UN Security Council and Germany and the government of Iran to roll back the Iranian nuclear programme in exchange for cutting economic sanctions. As the chosen representative of the world’s six most powerful countries, including America and China, Lady Ashton was at the center of the Iran talks.
In addition to being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, Baroness Ashton was made a Dame Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George in the 2015 New Year Honours List for services to the European Common Foreign and Security Policy and has received the highest diplomatic honors awarded by the government of the Federal Republic of Germany and the King of Jordan.
In 2017 Ashton became the first female chancellor of the University of Warwick.