Political groups

1989-1993: Socialist Group
1993-2004: Group of the Party of European Socialists
2004-2009: Socialist Group in the European Parliament
2009-2014: Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament

National parties

1989-2014: Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands

Biography

Dagmar Roth-Behrendt was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. After finishing school in 1971 in Friedberg, Hessen, she studied Law at Philipps-Universität Marburg. She worked as an advisor in the Senate of the Mayor of Berlin and was a member of the Spandau district council from 1985 to 1989.
 
Dagmar Roth-Behrendt was a Member of the European Parliament from 1989 to 2014. From 2004 to 2007 and from 2009 to 2012, she served as one of the 14 Vice-Presidents of the European Parliament, under the Presidencies of Josep Borrell and, later, Jerzy Buzek. During her time in Parliament, she was the Socialist Group's spokesperson for Environment, Consumer and Health policy (1989 to 2004) and served on the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety. In 1997, she chaired the temporary committee of inquiry into the European Commission's dealing with a Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) outbreak. She was also Vice-Chair of the Committee on Women's Rights from 1989 to 1992 and a member/substitute of the latter from 1992 to 1999, as well as a substitute member of the Committee on Budgets (1992-1999), the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection (2004-2009), and the Committee on Legal Affairs (1999-2014). She served as rapporteur on the EU Medical Device Regulation. In addition to her committee assignments, Dagmar Roth-Behrendt was a member or substitute of the Parliament's Delegation for relations with Australia and New Zealand from 1994 until 2004 (Vice-Chair from 1999 until 2004), the Delegation for relations with Japan (1992 to 1994), the Delegation for relations with the United States (1992 and 2009 to 2014), the Delegation for relations with Canada (2004 to 2009), and the Delegation for relations with Switzerland, Iceland and Norway and to the European Economic Area (EEA) Joint Parliamentary Committee (2004 to 2009). From 2007 to 2009, she chaired the Working Party on Parliamentary Reform set up by the European Parliament's Conference of Presidents.

Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety Workshop: A European Initiative on Alzheimer's Disease and Other Dementias. Dagmar Roth-Behrendt (L), Marisa Matias (R) © European Union 2010 - European Parliament

In November 2014, Dagmar Roth-Behrendt was appointed Special Adviser to the European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, Vytenis Andriukaitis. In 2016, she was also appointed to the Commission's Independent Ethical Committee.
 
On 23 April 2009, she was awarded the First Class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

For more information on her time as an MEP, click here. 

What’s in the archives?

The archive consists mainly of legislative documents associated with parliamentary procedures (reports, draft reports, amendments, working documents, etc.). In the archives deposited, the work most represented in the legislative section concerns her tasks as:

• Member of the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety from 1989 to 2014;
• Chair of the Temporary Committee on the follow-up to the BSE crisis in 1997.

The filing plan for this section is composed of five series: food safety, animal interests, health systems, officials and budget, vocational training and access to employment. Legislative procedure files are arranged in chronological order within these series. The files are made up of different types of documents, which have been categorised and ordered as follows: documents from the legislative procedures, documents from committee meetings or hearings, supporting analyses, communication and media coverage aspects, and work and exchanges with interest groups.

Finally, these documents contain a wealth of information on the genesis and development of European legislation, through: 

• details of the different stages of the legislative pathway;
• inter-group negotiations, in particular as regards the definition and voting of amendments;
• inter-institutional negotiations, in particular during trilogues;
• the weight of interest groups on issues affecting them.

In addition to her legislative activities, Dagmar Roth-Behrendt was appointed Vice-President of the European Parliament twice. This distinction also allowed her to fulfil functions of a political nature. The archive set aside is a witness, particularly in the documents relating to her activity as Chair of the Working Party on the Institutional Reform of the European Parliament. The types of document are resultingly more exchanges of correspondence and working documents prior to the production of final recommendations. This part of the fonds is interesting for understanding the functioning of the European Parliament and the evolution of relations with the other institutions. 

It should be noted that there is a lack of information on her activities as a member of delegations of the European Parliament.