Ivan Rogers appointed Britain’s ambassador to EU

Prime minister’s Europe adviser to succeed Jon Cunliffe in November.

The UK government has appointed Ivan Rogers, Prime Minister David Cameron’s adviser on Europe and on global issues, as Britain’s next permanent representative to the European Union.

Rogers is to replace Sir Jon Cunliffe, who at the end of July was appointed deputy governor of the Bank of England. He is expected to take up his new post in November.     

Rogers has worked in several government departments and in 2006-11 worked as a banker, first with Citigroup and then with Barclays Capital. He was Prime Minister Tony Blair’s principal private secretary in 2003-06.

In 1996-99, he was head of the private office of Leon Brittan, vice-president of the European Commission. (Nick Clegg, the UK’s deputy prime minister, was an adviser to Brittan during that time.)

His appointment has caused some grumblings from the Conservative Party’s eurosceptic wing. In 1994-95, Rogers served as private secretary to the UK’s finance minister at the time, Kenneth Clarke, one of the party’s most outspoken pro-Europeans.

As the prime minister’s adviser on the EU and global issues, Rogers currently deals not only with EU matters but also with wider issues of trade, energy, climate change, financial markets and international development.