page_title: Catherine Ashton
section_title: Assessments
hierarchical_section_title: Catherine Ashton / Career / Assessments
caption_attribution_description: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton (second from left) poses for a photo with the Quartet, including Quartet Representative Tony Blair (left), UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon (center), Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (fourth from left), and EU High Representative Catherine Ashton in the Secretary General's Conference Room at the United Nations in New York, New York, on September 21, 2010. [State Department photo/ Public Domain]
context_page_description: Catherine Margaret Ashton, Baroness Ashton of Upholland, GCMG, PC is a British Labour politician who served as the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and First Vice President of the European Commission in the Barroso Commission from 2009 to 2014.
  Her political career began in 1999 when she was created a Life Peer as "Baroness Ashton of Upholland, of St Albans, in the County of Hertfordshire" by Tony Blair's Labour Government. She became the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department for Education and Skills in 2001 and subsequently in the Ministry of Justice in 2004. She was appointed a Privy Councillor in May 2006.
  Ashton became Leader of the House of Lords and Lord President of the Council in Gordon Brown's first Cabinet in June 2007. She was instrumental in steering the EU's Treaty of Lisbon through the UK Parliament's upper chamber. In 2008, she was appointed as the British European Commissioner and became the Commissioner for Trade in the European Commission.
  In December 2009, she became the inaugural High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy that was created by the Treaty of Lisbon.
caption: Ashton (far right) with the rest of the Quartet on the Middle East (2010)
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