Pat Cox, MEP for Munster, has been elected Chairman of the Liberal group (ELDR), following a ballot during their conference in Venice. Pat Cox has been an MEP for nine years. He had been acting chairman since the appointment of former leader Gijs de Vries as a deputy minister in the Dutch government.
Pat Cox becomes the first Irish MEP to lead a political group in the European Parliament. The ELDR group, which has 41 members, is the third-largest in the European Parliament. Mr Cox is a former current affairs presenter on RTE television and general secretary of the Progressive Democrats. He was previously lecturer in economics at the Institute of Public Administration and the University of Limerick. He is particularly active in Parliament's Economic Committee and takes a close interest in economic and monetary union.