Professional career After her
Abitur graduation in 1977 in
Tutzing,
Bavaria, she studied canonical law to the doctoral level in
Salzburg. From 1979 to 1992 she worked as an assistant at the
European Parliament. In 1983 she studied at the
National Journalism Center in
Washington, D.C., and worked at the office of ''
Reader's Digest'' in the same city. She worked for the Ministry of Information of the Sultanate of
Oman from 1985 to 1992, and in 2004 she became a member of the board of the Arab International Media Forum in
London.
Political career In 1973 she co-founded Paneuropa-Jugend Deutschland, and was its chairperson in
Bavaria, and vice chairperson on the national level. In 1977 she founded Brüsewitz-Zentrum (Christlich-Paneuropäisches Studienwerk). From 1980 to 1988 she was assistant international Secretary General of the international
Paneuropean Union, 1988 to 2004 she was its secretary general and she is its executive vice chairperson since 2004. She was one of the organisers of the
Paneuropa-Picknick at the
Iron Curtain on the 19 August 1989, on the border between
Hungary and
Austria. At this occasion, the fence was opened for the first time, letting more than 660 Germans from the
GDR escape from the east. This was the largest number of escapees since the Berlin Wall was built and is seen by many as one of the main symbols of the fall of Eastern European Communism. Since 2003 she is the chairperson of the local branch of the Swedish
Moderate Party in
Flen and on the board of the regional organisation of the party in
Södermanland. She is a member of the board of the
Jarl Hjalmarson Foundation since 2005, a foundation closely linked to the Moderate Party. In 1999 and 2004 she ran for the
European Parliament for the
Moderate Party, in 2002 and 2006 she ran for the national parliament (). She was elected 17 September 2006 to the
Swedish Parliament, in an election which showed the greatest support for the Moderate Party since 1928. Vice-president of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly and Head of the Swedish Parliamentary delegation to the
OSCE since 2011. She had to give up her seat in the '''' in 2014 due to the heavy losses of her party, after eight years as a member of parliament. She is a board member of the
Institute for Information on the Crimes of Communism. On 17 September 2023, Douglas visited
Armenia to dedicate the opening of the
PanEuropa Armenia branch in
Yerevan. ==Personal life==