Peter Denis Sutherland (25 April 1946 – 7 January 2018) was an Irish businessman, barrister and Fine Gael politician who served as UN Special Representative for International Migration from 2006 to 2017. He was known for serving in various international organisations, political and business roles.
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Sutherland was appointed Attorney General of Ireland in June 1981, serving until March 1982. He retook the post from December 1982 to December 1984.[8]
European Commissioner
Sutherland was appointed to the European Commission (EC) in 1985 and had responsibility for competition policy and, initially for 1985 only, also for education. He said that he was especially pleased to have proposed the establishment of the Erasmus Programme that allows European university students to study in other member states.[9]
He was chairman of the Committee that produced the Sutherland Report on the completion of the Internal Market of the European Economic Community (EEC), commissioned by the EC and presented to the European Council at its Edinburgh meeting in 1992.[10]
Sutherland was the youngest ever European Commissioner. He served in the first Delors Commission, where he played a crucial role in opening up European competition, particularly in the airline, telecoms, and energy sectors. He also played a major role in reinforcing state aid control, notably through the high-profile Boussac case.[11]
GATT/WTO
In 1993, he became Director-General of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (now the World Trade Organization). Later Mickey Kantor, the United States Trade Representative, credited him with being the father of globalisation and said that without him there would have been no WTO.[12] The Uruguay round of global trade talks, concluded in December 1993 with Sutherland as chair of GATT, produced a "comprehensive, rules-based and global trade regime"[13] which was the biggest trade agreement in history and established the WTO. His integral role in the successful conclusion of these negotiations has been cited as "indispensable".[14]: 69 Chairing the Uruguay Round, Sutherland "employed tactics the likes of which had never been seen before in GATT…he worked to create the sense of unstoppable momentum" by mobilising the press and media and instigating "a more aggressive public relations than the staid GATT had ever before seen".[14]: 70
A 2013 book by Craig VanGrasstek of the Harvard Kennedy School, published by the WTO, The History and Future of the World Trade Organization,[14] details Sutherland's role in the formation and establishment of the body.
On the elevation of the role of director-general, VanGrasstek writes, "The office is shaped to a great degree by the person who occupies it, and Director-General Peter Sutherland – who served both as the last GATT director-general and the first WTO director-general – redefined the role and the links between that office and the leadership in the members in a way that gave him and his successors additional options for the conduct of negotiations".[14]: 46 Sutherland was instrumental in elevating the office of director-general to one that dealt directly with presidents and prime ministers, not just ministers, a key factor in the success of negotiations and the political esteem of the body going forward.[14]: 85 He served as Chairman of the Advisory Council to the Director-General, which produced the report on the future of the WTO, published in 2005.[15]
In January 2006, he was appointed by UN secretary-general Kofi Annan as his Special Representative for Migration. In this position, he was responsible for promoting the establishment of a Global Forum on Migration and Development, a state-led effort open to all UN members to help governments better understand how migration can benefit their development goals. UN member states acclaimed the Global Forum at the UN High-Level Dialogue on International Migration and Development in September 2006, and would be launched in Brussels in July 2007.[needs update]
Sutherland was also co-chairman of the High Level Group appointed by the governments of Germany, the United Kingdom, Indonesia and Turkey to report on the conclusion of the Doha Round and the future of multilateral trade negotiations. Its report was issued in May 2011.[33]
In May 2012, Sutherland was named Honorary President of the European Policy Centre,[34] a Brussels-based independent think tank.[35]
Later years
In an interview with The Irish Times in early 2010,[36] Sutherland revealed that in summer 2009, during a holiday, one of his children noticed a swelling on his throat while they sat on a beach. He was back home in London within a week, undergoing a major operation. Sutherland had an operation for throat cancer in August 2009, and following the procedure, he underwent chemotherapy and radiotherapy.[36]
For Sutherland, a Europhile, the worst part about his illness was missing the "mortal combat" of fighting for the Yes vote in the second Lisbon referendum.[36]
Sutherland visited Fianna Fáil politician Brian Lenihan to tell him what a great job he thought he was doing and to say that Lenihan had the potential to be one of the great taoisigh of the 21st century. Lenihan was taken aback, he said. Sutherland believed Ireland failed in economic terms over most of the past four decades except for a "sparkling period" from 1994 to 2002 when the state took advantage of European Union (EU) changes freeing up the movement of goods, capital and services across Europe.[36]
In November 2010, he renewed his involvement in trade issues when he was appointed co-chair of an Experts Group created by the heads of government of Germany, Great Britain, Indonesia and Turkey to report on the priority actions to combat protectionism and to boost global trade. The Trade Experts Group's interim report was launched at Davos on 28 January 2011.[37]
Kofi Annan twice offered him the job of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, a fact, he said, that he had never disclosed publicly before, but he declined both times due to other commitments. He cited his work at GATT and the introduction of the Erasmus student exchange programme when he briefly held the education portfolio at the Commission in 1986 as his two most rewarding achievements.[36]
Death
In September 2016, Sutherland suffered a heart attack while attending mass at a Catholic church in London.[38] Six months later, he resigned from his post as UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General for International Migration because of poor health.[citation needed] After a long illness, Sutherland died in Dublin on 7 January 2018, of complications from an infection, aged 71.[39]
Immigration policy
Sutherland strongly advocated unrestricted immigration into the EU. Sutherland gave his opinion to the UK's House of Lords Home Affairs Committee on 21 June 2012 as being
(a) that "at the most basic level individuals should have freedom of choice" about working and studying in other countries and that EU states should stop targeting "highly skilled" migrants (and, conversely, placing restrictions on low-skilled migrants). Sutherland also argued (b) that migration is a "crucial dynamic for economic growth" and that this is the case "however difficult it may be to explain this to the citizens of those states". Sutherland's stated opinions on policy were (a) that "it was fundamentally important for states to cooperate on migration policy rather than developing their own policies in isolation as 'no state is or can be an island'"[40]
(b) that multiculturalism is both inevitable and desirable: "It's impossible to consider that the degree of homogeneity which is implied by the other argument can survive because states have to become more open states, in terms of the people who inhabit them" and also
(c) that "the European Union, in my view, should be doing its best to undermine" any "sense of our homogeneity and difference from others". An ageing or declining native population in countries like Germany or southern EU states was the "key argument and, I hesitate to the use word because people have attacked it, for the development of multicultural states", he added.[41]
Sutherland restated his view in the syndicated article co-authored with Cecilia Malmström titled "Europe's Immigration Challenge", the opening paragraph of which declares:
Europe faces an immigration predicament. Mainstream politicians, held hostage by xenophobic parties, adopt anti-immigrant rhetoric to win over a fearful public, while the foreign-born are increasingly marginalized in schools, cities and at the workplace. Yet, despite high unemployment across much of the Continent, too many employers lack the workers they need. Engineers, doctors and nurses are in short supply; so, too, are farmhands and health aides. And Europe can never have enough entrepreneurs, whose ideas drive economies and create jobs.[42]
^Warlouzet, Laurent (2017). Governing Europe in a Globalizing World. Neoliberalism and its Alternatives following the 1973 Oil Crisis. London: Routledge. pp. 171–3. ISBN978-1-138-72942-1.