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Biography

I live in Brussels with my husband and our twins. Since February 2010, I have been the European Commissioner responsible for Home Affairs including EU work on police cooperation, border control, asylum and migration. This means that I am in charge of the EU's fight against serious international crime and human trafficking. I am also working to establish a common European asylum and migration policy.

I was born in 1968. I spent some of my youth growing up in France and have lived and worked in Germany and Spain.

I can trace my interest in European politics to a couple of key moments. The first was being taken by my parents to Normandy to see the vast cemeteries where soldiers who fought in World War II were buried, including some of my classmates' family members.

Another moment was when I lived in Barcelona, when my friend Blanca told me how her grandmother took her down to the cellar to sing Catalan children's songs, which was not allowed under Franco's fascist dictatorship.

These experiences awakened my interest and in European politics. I later completed a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Gothenburg, where I worked for a number of years as a researcher and taught European politics. I was a Member of the European Parliament from 1999 to 2006, working mainly on foreign affairs, human rights, EU enlargement and constitutional issues. After the Swedish national elections of 2006, I was appointed EU minister where I was responsible for issues such as the Lisbon Treaty, the EU strategy for growth and employment and the review of the EU budget. It was also my job to build support for the EU among Swedish citizens. In 2009, I coordinated the preparatory work and the implementation of the Swedish Presidency of the EU.

Read my full CV here [25 KB] .