addition to his committee assignments, he was a member of the Parliament's delegation for relations with South Africa. When incumbent Gijs de Vries stepped down to enter the government of Prime Minister Wim Kok of the Netherlands, Cox was elected president of the ELDR group in the European Parliament in 1998, becoming the first Irishman to lead a political group in the Parliament. He subsequently played a key role in the fall of the Santer Commission by consistently – and loudly – calling for the Commissioners to resign. Cox was unanimously re-elected Group President in June 1999, following his re-election as an MEP at the 1999 European Parliament election. He resigned this post when he became President of the European Parliament on 15 January 2002, in accordance with an agreement between the European People's Party (Christian Democrats) and the ELDR groups at the start of the term (in the customary two-way split of the five-year Presidency of the European Parliament). He succeeded the Frenchwoman Nicole Fontaine. At his first press conference following his election as president he spoke positively of direct talks between the Cypriot President Glafcos Clerides and Turkish Cypriot President Rauf Denktaş. In July 2003, Cox took a personal telephone apology from Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, after Berlusconi managed to offend several MEPs. The controversy arose after Berlusconi compared a German MEP to a Nazi concentration camp commandant. Cox did not contest the 2004 elections to the European parliament. The Christian Democrats (European People's Party – EPP) and Socialist Groups agreed at the customary two-way split of the Presidency of the European Parliament. Josep Borrell Fontelles, a Spanish Socialist, assumed the Presidency on 20 July 2004, holding it until 15 January 2007. Later career Cox is a member of the Comite d'Honneur of the Institute of European Affairs. In 2006, he was elected President of European Movement, an international pro-European lobby association. In June 2009, Pat Cox temporarily stepped down as president and took over the position of the campaign director for the pro-Lisbon treaty initiative Ireland for Europe. He resigned as president of European Movement in May 2013. Also in 2009, Cox co-founded the European Privacy Association. On 15 September 2010, Cox supported the new initiative Spinelli Group, which was founded to reinvigorate the drive toward federalisation of the European Union (EU). Other prominent supporters include Jacques Delors, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Guy Verhofstadt, Andrew Duff and Elmar Brok.