Tim Barrow

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Sir Timothy Barrow (born 15 February 1964) is a British diplomat who is the current Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom to the European Union.

Following Sir Ivan Rogers' departure, Barrow was named as a Permanent Representative in January 2017, and it will play a major role in the United Kingdom's Brexit talks.

He was responsible for informally referring Article 50 of the Treaty on the European Union on behalf of the United Kingdom on March 29, 2017. Since 1986, Barrow has served as a civil servant in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO).

Before being named as the British Ambassador to Ukraine in 2006, he served in London, Kiev, Moscow, and Brussels.

He was appointed Ambassador to the Western European Union in 2008 and the UK Representative to the Political and Security Committee.

He served as the British Ambassador to Russia from 2011 to 2016, before returning to London as the FCO's Political Director, the second highest ranking in the department, to the Permanent Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs.

Education

Barrow was born in 1964 and attended Arnold Lodge School in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, before attending Warwick School. He then went to Brasenose College, Oxford, where he studied English.

Personal life

Sir Timothy is married to Alison née Watts (now Lady Barrow) and the two sons and two daughters.

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Diplomatic career

Barrow joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in 1986 and spent as a desk officer in the Western European Department from 1987 to 1988. He continued Russian language lessons for a year before exhibiting in the British Days Exhibition in Kyiv, Ukraine's capital, in 1989. He served as the second secretary at the British Embassy in Moscow from 1990 to 1993 and then returned to London, where he spent a year as head of the Russia Section of the Foreign Office in London. He went from 1994 to 1996 as a private secretary to a Minister of State for Foreign Affairs. Barrow was first appointed as a first secretary of the United Kingdom Representation to the European Union from 1996 to 1998 before returning to London as a private secretary to Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary.

Barrow was named as the head of the Foreign Office's Common Foreign and Security Department in 2000, and he was appointed as the European Union's assistant director in 2003. At the time, he was also interested in talks over the Treaty of Lisbon. Barrow served as deputy foreign minister at the Foreign Office from 2005 to 2006 before being appointed Her Majesty's Ambassador to Ukraine in 2006. He took up the role in July and kept it until 2008, when he returned to Brussels as the UK Ambassador to the Western European Union and Parliament.

In August 2011, Barrow was announced as Her Majesty's Ambassador to the Russian Federation, after Anne Pringle takes over in November. He oversaw David Cameron's visit to Russia just shy of his arrival. Following Alexander Litvinenko's poisoning, it was part of Cameron's larger strategy to reestablish relations with Russia. He was summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry in August 2012 for the stoning of the Russian Embassy in London by anti-war activists protesting Russian involvement in the Syrian Civil War. Sergei Ryabkov, the British Foreign Minister, expressed his surprise to Barrow that "such volatile and provocative activities would be strongly discouraged by the British security in the future."

Following the assassination of opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, Barrow hosted former Prime Minister John Major in February 2015. He also attended Nemtsov's wake with Major and joined other Western ambassadors in laying flowers at a tribute to him near Red Square. Politico said he was a "low-key" ambassador, which enabled him to escape some of the attacks directed at other Western diplomats. Despite this, he mistook some significant accomplishments he gained in a time defined by Russian military involvement in Ukraine and Syria as well as a crackdown on opposition by Vladimir Putin. "He gave the appearance of a true professional who was able to advocate for the positions of his own government, while still trying to find out and understand Russia's positions."

After leaving his position in Moscow, Barrow was appointed as a political director at the Foreign Office in London, succeeding Simon Gass. This role involved the control of multinational organizations, multilateral policy, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, Africa, South Asia, and Afghanistan.

Ivan Rogers resigned from his position as Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom to the European Union on January 3, 2017, citing dissatisfaction with the government's negotiations process in their planned withdrawal from the European Union. Barrow was scheduled to replace him the next day. Barrow was "a seasoned and tough negotiator with extensive knowledge of winning UK interests in Brussels," a Downing Street spokesman said. Charles Crawford, a senior researcher with Barrow in the 1990s, said he "understands Brussels and the EU, but not pickled in the country's chaotic processes." Oliver Robbins, the permanent secretary of the Department for Exiting the European Union, who wanted to take over negotiations with the EU himself, sacked Barrow's appointment, according to the Financial Times. However, the Foreign Office had overruled him.

In March 2017, Barrow recruited two senior civil servants to his Brussels staff. They were Katrina Williams, a deputy permanent representative for the Department of Industry, Energy, and Industrial Strategy, and Simon Case, Principal Private Secretary to the Prime Minister, who had been named as the head of the UK-EU Partnership. Barrow appeared before the European Scrutiny Committee on March 20 to give evidence on UK-EU relations prior to Article 50's invocation of Article 50. During the hearing, he cautioned that leaving the European Union without paying anything would not be possible, as some Conservative MPs had suggested, and that "other legal opinions" provided "a different interpretation."

In Brussels on March 29, 2017, Barrow was responsible for handing over a letter from United Kingdom's invocation of Article 50 of the European Union to European Council President Donald Tusk.

Barrow joined British Prime Minister Theresa May to the European Council summit in Brussels on October 17, where 27 EU leaders met to discuss the Brexit talks (Art.50). After the Council meeting, Barrow wrote to the Secretaries General of the Council and Commission of the European Union on behalf of the UK. In his letters, the United Kingdom had no doubt about its own lands of Gibraltar, including British Gibraltar Territorial Waters, and that Gibraltar's sovereignty would never be transferred against the country's democratically expressed wishes.

Since the United Kingdom left the European Union in January 2020, Barrow's position was changed to British Ambassador to the European Union, effective January 1st, and Lindsay Croisdale-Appleby took over in 2021.

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