Roger Helmer
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Roger Helmer (born 1944) is a British politician and an Independent Conservative Member of the European Parliament for the East Midlands region. He has described himself as a eurosceptic.
He was first elected to the European Parliament in 1999 as a Conservative Party MEP, and re-elected in 2004. He was subsequently suspended from the party on 26 May, 2005 after voting against party instructions on a motion to censure the European Commission and openly criticising his party leader, Timothy Kirkhope, in a parliamentary debate [1].
Mr Helmer currently sits on three European Parliamentary committees (Environment, Unemployment and Petitions), and is a member of the delegation to South East Asian countries and a substitute member of the delegation to Korea.
Biography
Born in 1944, Mr Helmer attended King Edward VI Grammar School in Southampton (1955-62), and then won a State Scholarship to Churchill College, Cambridge, where he read mathematics, graduating in 1965.
He started his business career in 1965 with Procter & Gamble in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, going on to hold senior marketing and general management appointments in a range of companies, including Readers Digest, National Semiconductor, Coats Viyella and the whisky firm United Distillers, now part of the drinks conglomerate Diageo. During the course of his business career he lived and worked in Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia and Korea, and ran businesses in the Philippines, Vietnam, Guam and Saipan.
Mr Helmer has developed close relationships with conservative political groups in the USA, and has been a regular speaker at American conferences. He was recently appointed Adam Smith Scholar by the American Legislative Exchange Council.
As a eurosceptic, he has earned a reputation for his forthright approach to the question of the UK's relationship with the European Union. He is adamantly opposed to further UK-EU integration and advocates the Conservative policy of renegotiating the EU treaties so as to return powers to member states.
In December 2005, on the close of negotiations between Member States heads of government for the European Union's budget, which lead to a sizeable reduction in the British rebate won by Margaret Thatcher, Mr Helmer encountered heated exchanges with the British Prime Minister Tony Blair in the European Parliament chamber. He said that the deal was "treachery" and that the Prime Minister was "giving away a huge sum of money simply as a fig leaf for your failure."
Roger has published two books on European issues, "Straight Talking on Europe" in 2000, and "A Declaration of Independence" in 2002.