Peter Denis Sutherland (25 April 1946 – 7 January 2018) was an Irish businessman, barrister and Fine Gael politician who served as UN Special Representative for International Migration from 2006 to 2017. He was known for serving in various international organisations, political and business roles.
Sutherland was the UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General for International Migration until March 2017. Appointed in January 2006, he was responsible for the creation of the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD). He also served as President of the International Catholic Migration Commission, as well as a member of the Migration Advisory Board of the International Organization for Migration. He was a board member of Wallenberg-owned ABB and the Wallenbergs' conglomerate holding company, Investor AB.
A barrister by profession, Sutherland was a Senior Counsel of the Bar Council of Ireland. He previously served as Attorney General of Ireland (1981–1982, 1982–1984); European Commissioner for Competition (1985–1989); founding Director-General of the World Trade Organization, formerly GATT (1993–1995); and chairman of Goldman Sachs International (1995–2015). He received numerous awards, including the European Person of the Year Award (1988).
Sutherland was born in Dublin in 1946 to William George Sutherland and Barbara Sutherland (née Nealon). He was educated at Gonzaga College in Ranelagh, Dublin. He graduated in Civil Law at University College Dublin and practised at the Irish Bar between 1969 and 1980. He married Maruja, a Spaniard, in 1974.
He was a Fine Gael candidate at the 1973 general election for the Dublin North-West constituency. He received 1,969 (6.2%) of the first-preference votes but was not elected.
Sutherland was appointed Attorney General of Ireland in June 1981, serving until March 1982. He retook the post from December 1982 to December 1984, during which he drafted the 1983 amendment bill that inserted the constitutional ban on abortion into Article 40.3.3°.
Sutherland was appointed to the European Commission (EC) in 1985 and had responsibility for competition policy and, initially for 1985 only, also for education. He said that he was especially pleased to have proposed the establishment of the Erasmus Programme that allows European university students to study in other member states.
He was chairman of the Committee that produced the Sutherland Report on the completion of the Internal Market of the European Economic Community (EEC), commissioned by the EC and presented to the European Council at its Edinburgh meeting in 1992.
Sutherland was the youngest ever European Commissioner. He served in the first Delors Commission, where he played a crucial role in opening up European competition, particularly in the airline, telecoms, and energy sectors. He also played a major role in reinforcing state aid control, notably through the high-profile Boussac case.
In 1993, he became Director-General of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (now the World Trade Organization). Later Mickey Kantor, the United States Trade Representative, credited him with being the father of globalisation and said that without him there would have been no WTO. The Uruguay round of global trade talks, concluded in December 1993 with Sutherland as chair of GATT, produced a "comprehensive, rules-based and global trade regime" which was the biggest trade agreement in history and established the WTO. His integral role in the successful conclusion of these negotiations has been cited as "indispensable". Chairing the Uruguay Round, Sutherland "employed tactics the likes of which had never been seen before in GATT…he worked to create the sense of unstoppable momentum" by mobilising the press and media and instigating "a more aggressive public relations than the staid GATT had ever before seen".
A 2013 book by Craig VanGrasstek of the Harvard Kennedy School, published by the WTO, The History and Future of the World Trade Organization, details Sutherland's role in the formation and establishment of the body.
On the elevation of the role of director-general, VanGrasstek writes, "The office is shaped to a great degree by the person who occupies it, and Director-General Peter Sutherland – who served both as the last GATT director-general and the first WTO director-general – redefined the role and the links between that office and the leadership in the members in a way that gave him and his successors additional options for the conduct of negotiations". Sutherland was instrumental in elevating the office of director-general to one that dealt directly with presidents and prime ministers, not just ministers, a key factor in the success of negotiations and the political esteem of the body going forward. He served as Chairman of the Advisory Council to the Director-General, which produced the report on the future of the WTO, published in 2005.
Sutherland was the chairman of Allied Irish Banks (AIB) from 1989 until 1993.
He was non-executive chairman of Goldman Sachs International (a registered UK broker-dealer, a subsidiary of Goldman Sachs) until June 2015.
Until June 2009, he was non-executive chairman of BP, being replaced by Carl-Henric Svanberg, formerly chief executive officer of Ericsson. Sutherland was a director of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group until the UK government took it over to avoid bankruptcy. He also formerly served on the board of ABB. He was also a non-executive director of construction materials giant CRH plc from 1989 to July 1993. CRH plc was fined in 1994 by the European Competition Directorate General for its role in the pan-European cement cartel (Case Number IV 33.126 AND 33.322).
He served on the steering committee of the Bilderberg Group until May 2014, and was Honorary Chairman of the Trilateral Commission (from 2010), formerly Chairman of the Trilateral Commission (Europe) (2001–2010); and vice chairman of the European Round Table of Industrialists (2006–2009).
He was chairman of the Board of Governors of the European Institute of Public Administration (Maastricht) from 1991 to 1996. He was also Honorary President of the European Movement Ireland.
He was a member of the Hong Kong Chief Executive's Council of International Advisers between 1998 and 2005.