Political groups

2005-2014: Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe

National parties

2005-2014: Liberal Democrats

Biography

Sharon Margaret Bowles, Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted, was born in Oxford, United Kingdom. She was educated at the University of Reading, where she studied Chemical Physics and Mathematics, and Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, where she undertook research into semiconductors. Before joining the European Parliament, Bowles qualified as and worked as a European patent attorney and established a patent law practice in 1981, which became the Bowles Horton partnership.

Bowles contested the 1992 and 1997 general elections for the Aylesbury constituency for the Liberal Democrats party. From 1997 to 2005, she served on the Federal Executive of the Liberal Democrats, its Finance and Administration Committee and chaired their International Relations Committee. In addition, she was a Vice-President of Liberal International and became Vice-President of the European Liberal Democrat and Reform party.

British Liberal Democrats Delegation. L-R: Phil Bennion, Bill Newton Dunn, Fiona Hall, Sarah Ludford, Andrew Duff, Catherine Bearder, Graham Watson, George Lyon, Sharon Bowles, Edward McMillan-Scott, Chris Davies © European Union 2012 - European Parliament

She was nominated for a life peerage in the 2015 Dissolution Honours and was titled Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted, of Bourne End in the County of Hertfordshire, on 23 October 2015. 

Life in the European Parliament

Bowles was a Member of the European Parliament for the South East England region of the United Kingdom from 2005 to 2014 as an elected candidate of the Liberal Democrat party. She sat in the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) grouping and was a member of the ALDE Bureau from 2009 to 2014.

She replaced MEP Chris Huhne in the European Parliament after he was elected to the House of Commons in the 2005 general election. On 10 November 2007 she was selected as the first placed prospective candidate on the Liberal Democrat list for the 2009 election in the South East England European constituency, and was re-elected to the European Parliament on 4 June 2009. She served alongside Catherine Bearder as MEP for South East England.

Initially coming to the European Parliament a year into its 6th sitting, Bowles sat on the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs and became a substitute member of the Committee on Legal Affairs. She was also a member of the European Parliament's Delegation for relations with the countries of South East Asia and ASEAN. In 2008, she was nominated to serve as the European Parliament's representative on the European Statistical Advisory Committee.

Hearing of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs. Sharon Bowles, Committee Chair (L), and Mario Draghi, ECB President & ESRB Chair (R) © European Union 2014 - European Parliament

Bowles was re-elected in the 2009 European Parliament election, and took up her seat on 14 July. Shortly thereafter, she was elected Chairwoman of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, becoming the first Liberal Democrat and first Briton to hold this position. She would be re-elected as Chairwoman in January 2012 and served in this role until the end of the parliamentary term in 2014.

In early 2012, she announced her intention not to stand for election in 2014.

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

What's in the Archives

The fonds cover the period from 2005, when Sharon Bowles became a Member of the European Parliament during the 6th parliamentary term, to May 2014, the period corresponding to the end of the 7th parliamentary term.

Parliamentary Work

The organisation is based on the various parliamentary committees which Sharon Bowles took part in during her two terms under the 6th and 7th parliamentary terms. The legislative part is the most represented in the fonds: the archive is made up mainly of legislative documents associated with parliamentary procedures such as reports, draft reports, amendments, basic documents, etc.

Most of the dossiers reflect her work as Chair of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs and as alternate member of the Committee on Legal Affairs and the Special Committee on the Financial, Economic and Social Crisis. The content of the dossiers is of interest mainly depending on her position in the follow-up to the legislative procedure (committee member, rapporteur or shadow rapporteur for her political group).

Since the topics are important (markets for financial instruments, anti-trust standards, damages for breaches of Community rules, European market infrastructures, capital requirements, prudential checks on credit institutions, etc.), the documents are sorted by committee and then by subject matter. Files related to legislative procedures are organised chronologically.

The series contains the following types of documents:

• Pure legislative procedures (including reports, draft reports, opinions, draft opinions, associated amendments, handwritten notes, working documents and notes, compromise texts)
• Contents of trilogues, working meetings or seminars (including draft agendas, handwritten notes from Sharon Bowles, working letters, compromise texts)

The documentation contains extensive information on the genesis and development of European legislation:

• Details of the different stages of the legislative pathway
• Inter-institutional negotiations, in particular during trilogues

These trilogue files demonstrate the framework of the ordinary legislative procedure which gives equal weight to the European Parliament and the Council of the Union on a wide range of areas in the EU decision-making system.

Political Activity

This group of series is smaller than the previous one. Bowles kept a collection of handwritten notes of all the meetings in which she participated as a member of the Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE), the Chair of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs and finally as a substitute member of the Committee on Legal Affairs. In addition to these, there are two handwritten notes relating to her participation in meetings with Members of the European Parliament, Members of the Commission, representatives of undertakings or associations. These various handwritten notes clearly reflect Bowles' functions and activities within her political group and in parliamentary committees. The documents resulting from her political activity are divided into three sub-sets of documents: correspondence, meeting books and speeches from 2005 to 2014.