Background
Elles is the son of Diana Newcombe Elles, Baroness Elles and her husband, Neil Patrick Moncrieff Elles.
Elles is the son of Diana Newcombe Elles, Baroness Elles and her husband, Neil Patrick Moncrieff Elles.
He was educated at Eton College and the University of Edinburgh where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science in agriculture.
He served as the Member of the European Parliament for Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire from 1984 to 1989 and the Member of the European Parliament for Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire East from 1989 to 1999. He then represented the South East in the European Parliament from 1999 to 2014. Elles had special responsibility for the Conservative Party for the counties of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire.
He became a European Member of Parliament after an eight-year career as a civil servant with the European Commission, initially as a Tokyo Round negotiator and latterly as Assistant to the Deputy Director General of Agriculture.
Elles served six terms in the European Parliament, his principal Committee being the Budgets Committee for the whole 30 year period. He was overall rapporteur on the European Union budget for the years 1996 and 2007.
He founded the Thames Valley European Forum, now renamed the South East Conservative European Network (SECEN) of which he is currently Chairman. In 1992 he founded the The purpose of TPN is to help build bridges between the European Union and United States involving business and policy-makers on both sides of the Atlantic, feeding in ideas, for example, to create the new transatlantic agenda (National Tax Association, USA) in 1995 and, more, recently putting forward suggestions to strengthen transatlantic partnership through the completion of the transatlantic market from 2008 onwards.
This has now led to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment partnership (TTIP) under negotiation between the European Union and the United States. since February 2013.
He is currently Chairman of the Network. In 2000, the was launched by Elles and two other parliamentarians as co-founders. The purpose of the European Internet Foundation is to help encourage European political leadership in the development of active public policies that respond to the political, economic and social challenges of the worldwide digital revolution.
The EIF aims to ensure that the European Union remains open to developments in the digital economy and benefits fully from it, through enhanced global competitiveness and social progress.
lieutenant"s most recent contribution to long-term thinking was contained in its document "The Digital World in 2030: what place for Europe?" in which it called for completing the Digital Single Market (March 2014). In August 2002, Elles founded the, an open network think-tank on a European scale for the Centre Right.
He stepped down as Chairman of the Network in March 2008. Elles laid the foundation for creating the European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS) by tabling two budget amendments in 2010 and 2012.
Their purpose was to establish an inter-institutional system looking closely at long-term trends with a view to providing foresight, feeding in principal ideas into strategic policy-making.
lieutenant is governed by a Steering Group where all European Union institutions are represented at Secretary-General or substitute level meeting on a regular basis where Elles is Honorary President.
He was also a substitute member of the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Budget Control Committee during this period. He remains a member of the EIF Steering Committee.