Pat Cox (born 28 November 1952) is an Irish politician and former television current affairs presenter. He was President of the European Parliament from 2002 to 2004.

Cox first came to prominence as a journalist, then a presenter, with RTÉ's Today Tonight , a four nights a week current affairs programme which dominated the Irish TV schedules in the 1980s. Cox left the programme to become a political candidate. In 1989 he was elected to Dáil Éireann as a TD for a Cork constituency for the Progressive Democrats, a small economically right wing socially liberal Irish party founded by Desmond O'Malley in 1985. Following O'Malley's retirement from the party leadership in the early 1990s, Cox unsuccessfully stood for election to the post, but was beaten by Mary Harney. Cox became deputy leader.

Cox left the PDs in 1994 in a dispute over his seat as an MEP. It was expected that Cox would not contest his seat in the 1994 European Elections, with O'Malley, who had a large Munster base, becoming the party candidate. However Cox almost literally at the last minute chose not to do so, and contested the seat as an independent, where he beat O'Malley, the PD candidate, easily.

He was a member of the European Parliament from 1989 to 2004, representing the constituency of Munster in the Republic of Ireland.

He was elected president of the ELDR group in the European Parliament in 1998 and was unanimously re-elected Group President in June 1999 following the elections to the European Parliament; he resigned this post when he became President of the European Parliament on January 15 2002.

On 20 May 2004 he was awarded the Karlspreis for his achievements with regard to the enlargement of the European Union and for his work in promoting greater EU democratization.

He did not contest the 2004 elections to the European parliament, and the new parliament elected Josep Borrell Fontelles of Spain as its president on 20 July 2004.

External links

• Pat Cox's site
• President of the European Parliament