Vice Presidency of the European Parliament
On 18 January 2007, Diana was elected Vice President of the European Parliament. She is the first Liberal Democrat and the first British female of any political persuasion to be elected to such a post in twenty years.
Diana's tasks include chairing debate and votes in the Plenary, and participation in the Bureau of Parliament. She also has specific tasks which are:
Transparency and Access to Documents
Question Time (shared with Mr Dos Santos MEP)
What is the European Parliament's "Bureau"?
The Bureau is made up of the President of the European Parliament, the Vice-Presidents and the Quaestors, with observer status, elected by the assembly for a renewable period of two and a half years. The Bureau is the body that lays down rules for Parliament. It draws up Parliament's preliminary draft budget and decides all administrative, staff and organisational matters. The Bureau generally meets twice a month.
- Click here to see who else sits on the Bureau
- Relevant extracts from the Rules of Procedure
Reforming the European Parliament
Between October 2007 and December 2008, Diana Wallis represented her political group in the high-level task force set up to make the Parliament fit for purpose in 2009 and beyond. The task force first examined the running of plenary, then went on to look at inter-institutional relations and better law-making, and finally proposed a fundamental reform of Parliament's committees and external activities. Ms. Wallis played an active role throughout the process, from implementing key changes which she herself had long argued for in the Legal Affairs Committee and as rapporteur of the Committee of Inquiry into the crisis of Equitable Life in relation to better law-making, to reforming Question Time to make it more interactive, to examining the future role played by national Parliaments under the Treaty of Lisbon.
Diana also drafted a code of conduct which will make legislative negotiations more transparent in the Parliament, and the rapporteur more accountable to his or her respective committee, in particular in the run up to an agreement at first reading which is often reached hastily and under intense pressure.
"The Reforms on the table were the result of many hours of informed cross-party discussions and form a coherent whole - now the ball is in the court of the political groups to give their green light to the proposals. It is a great shame for the Parliament that these reforms are now being picked apart and some postponed until the next mandate, or even indefinitely."