A former Lib Dem councillor in
Cherwell and on
Oxfordshire County Council, twice European candidate and parliamentary candidate for
Banbury in 1997 and
Henley in 2001, Bearder has been an active Liberal Democrat for many years. Replacing
Emma Nicholson MEP, she was placed behind
Sharon Bowles MEP on the party list for the
2009 European elections. Bearder was elected to the European Parliament on 4 June 2009, and took her seat on 14 July.
In 2014 she was re-elected, as the sole British Liberal Democrat MEP. Bearder was a member of the European Parliament's
Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety and the
Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality, where she served as her parliamentary group's coordinator. She focused on environmental issues, especially wildlife conservation and biodiversity, and has founded the cross-party "MEPs for Wildlife group" which is calling for an EU Action Plan against Wildlife Trafficking. She was appointed as one of the lead MEPs working on the revision of the National Emissions Ceiling Directive, which was to set national targets to reduce emissions of harmful pollutants. This formed part of the EU's Clean Air Package, which according to the European Commission could prevent an estimated 38,000 premature deaths a year in the EU by 2030. Bearder is a longtime campaigner on the issue of
human trafficking and was appointed to draft a European Parliament report looking at the implementation of the EU Human Trafficking Directive 2011/36/EU. Following the
2014 European elections, Bearder was elected as
Quaestor of the European Parliament and served from 2014 to 2019. In this capacity, she was also a member of the High-level Group on Gender Equality and Diversity and chairwoman of the Artistic Committee. Her role as quaestor made her part of the Parliament's leadership under President
Martin Schulz. In addition to her committee assignments, Bearder was a member of the European Parliament Intergroup on SMEs. In 2015, the European Parliament approved an amendment introduced by Bearder demanding immediate publication of existing inquiries into member states involvement in secret flights operated by the
United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and linked to "
enhanced interrogations" conducted outside US territory, in particular the inquiry into UK involvement led by
John Chilcot. Following the 2019 European Parliament elections, Bearder was elected as leader of the Liberal Democrat group. == References ==