Peter Sutherland

From Free net encyclopedia

Peter Denis Sutherland (born 1946) is an Irish businessman and former politician, associated with the Fine Gael party. He is a barrister by profession, and is also Senior Counsel.

A graduate of University College Dublin, Sutherland was appointed Attorney General of Ireland in the governments of Garret FitzGerald, and as a European Commissioner when he was a member of the first Delors Commission. Subsequently he was Director General of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (now the World Trade Organisation). During his second term as Attorney General, he advised the FitzGerald government on the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland which introduced a constitutional ban on abortion.

He has also served as Chairman of BP and Goldman Sachs International (a registered U.K. broker-dealer, a subsidiary of Goldman Sachs), as well as on the board of ABB. Sutherland is currently a non-executive director of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group.

He is on the steering committee of the Bilderberg Group, a chairman of the Trilateral Commission and a member of the European Round Table of Industrialists.

He is an Honorary President of the European Movement Ireland.

In 2005, he was appointed as Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Industrial Development Organization.

As a European Commissioner Sutherland performed the remarkable feat of earning the respect of both Margaret Thatcher and then Commission President, Jacques Delors, who both loathed each other and disagreed fundamentally about the future development of the European Communities (now European Union).

Despite his wide respect, he was not reappointed to the Commission by the Irish government, which had by then changed to the Fianna Fail Party. When Delors stepped down as Commission President he was widely reported to favour Sutherland as his successor, however he did not have a vote, only the member states did. The British government, after briefly sponsoring the candidacy of its own Leon Brittan, suggested Sutherland, but the candidacy would have needed the sponsorship of the Irish government to prosper, and Fianna Fail was still in power in Dublin.

In 2005 the blogger Quentin Langley suggested Sutherland as a possible successor to Kofi Annan as Secretary General of the UN.

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