PROFILE: Baroness Catherine Ashton: the EU's British face

London- Catherine Margaret Ashton, the 53-year-old British Labour politician sent to Brussels as trade commissioner a year ago, has long been a close ally of Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The quietly effective politician had held a number of middle- ranking posts in the British government before Brown sent her to Brussels to succeed the flamboyant Peter Mandelson a year ago.

Ashton has relatively little foreign policy experience. In Britain she had been responsible for issues including education, justice, equality and human rights.

And in her previous role as leader of the House of Lords, the upper chamber of the British parliament, she played a key role in securing the parliamentary passage of the reforming Lisbon Treaty through parliament.

But as trade commissioner in Brussels, the baroness has conducted key trade negotiations with world powers such as China and Russia on behalf of the EU.

"I am someone who regards herself as strongly pro-European," Ashton said in her introduction speech to the European Parliament in Strasbourg last year.

Ashton was given a life peerage under the previous government of Tony Blair in 1999 and has since then been known as Baroness Ashton of Upholland, taking the title from her native town of Upholland, in the northern county of Lancashire.

In 2001, Ashton was made parliamentary under-secretary of state in the Department for Education and Skills, where she dealt with issues ranging from school policies to a ban on smacking by childminders.

In 2004, she took up a similar role at the Department for Constitutional Affairs, dealing with human rights, equality and justice issues.

Ashton is married to the journalist and pollster Peter Kellner. She has two children and three stepchildren.