Viviane Reding

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Viviane Reding Biography

Viviane Adélaïde Reding (born 27 April 1951) is a Luxembourgish politician and a former Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from Luxembourg. She is a member of the Christian Social People’s Party, part of the European People’s Party. She previously served as European Commissioner for Education and Culture from 1999 to 2004, European Commissioner for Information Society and Media from 2004 to 2010 and European Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship from 2010 to 2014.

Reding started her political career in 1979 as a Member of the Luxembourg Parliament and held the following positions:

From 1981 to 1999, she was Communal conciliator of the city of Esch, in which she was President of the Cultural Affairs Committee from 1992 to 1999.

From 1988 to 1993, she was national president of the Christian-Social Women and from 1995 to 1999 and president of the Christian Social People’s Party.

Reding served as the leader of Luxembourg’s EPP delegation in the European Parliament from 1989 to 1999 and she was a Member of the group’s Bureau.

From 1999 to 2004, Reding was appointed Commissioner for Education, Culture, Youth, Media and Sport.

In her first term as European Commissioner Viviane Reding pushed through the Erasmus Mundus expanding the co-operation between universities and university students of the European Union and the rest of the world. Among other achievements she has also played a key role in strengthening the Culture 2000 programme and the EU MEDIA programme.

Reding also promoted the use of the 112, the Single European Emergency Number following the European Union Directive 2002/22/EC.

In 2004 Reding became Commissioner for Information Society and Media.

On 7 April 2006 the Commission launched the new “.eu” TLD for websites for EU companies and citizens wishing to have a non-national European internet address. This has proven popular with 2.5 million being registered by April 2007. It is now the seventh most popular TLD worldwide, and third in Europe (after .de and .uk).

In an unsuccessful bid to centralize regulatory oversight, Reding proposed in 2007 that the European Union Agency for Network and Information Security (ENISA) be folded into a new European Electronic Communications Market Authority (EECMA).

While serving in the European Commission under President Barroso, Reding found a relatively popular policy in lowering roaming charges of mobile phones when travelling within the European Union, stating: “For years, mobile roaming charges have remained unjustifiably high. We are therefore tackling one the last borders within Europe’s internal market”. Her legislation to cap roaming charges was approved by the Parliament in April 2007.

In 2008 the European Parliament voted to pass the “Telecoms Package”, which would render the entire market a region into one market, making it easier to sell internet and phone services in EU, with the goal of making the telecom prices cheaper for customers in European Union. Among the many amendments to the proposal, amendment 138 was voted in favour with 574 votes for, and 73 against. This particular amendment requires any termination of internet subscription to be heard in front of a judge. Reding is known as an advocate for an open Internet, resisting attempts in 2010 by her colleague, Swedish EU Commissioner Cecilia Malmström, to block access to websites. In 2012 she disputed with EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht 2012 over the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). She favoured that amendment leading to the defeat of three-strikes policies such as those promoted by France’s Hadopi law.

The French government further stated that Reding had made an “unseemly blunder” and defended France as “the mother of human rights.” Mr Sarkozy denounced Reding’s comments as “scandalous” and stated that “if Luxembourg wants to take in Roma, that is no problem” as far as France is concerned. This statement was based on Luxembourg’s own rejection of migrants, yet Luxembourg’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Jean Asselborn, deemed it “malevolent”. President Sarkozy pointed out that Mrs Reding had been silent during larger-scale expulsions by other countries in earlier years, including by Italy specifically of its Roma during 2009 and when police reject Romani travellers trying to enter Luxembourg. French Immigration Minister Eric Besson said that in her statement Reding “intentionally skids, if I may say, that is she uses an expression aimed to shock, that contains an anachronistic fallacy, and that creates a false amalgam”.

In June 2009, Reding was elected Member of the European Parliament, heading the list of the Christian Social People’s Party.

Before starting a professional career as a journalist for the leading newspaper in Luxembourg, the Luxemburger Wort, she obtained a doctorate in human sciences at the Sorbonne. From 1986 to 1998, she was President of the Luxembourg Union of Journalists. On 27 November 2009, she was elevated in the “Barroso II Commission” to Vice-President responsible for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship. She is also an advisor for the transatlantic think-tank European Horizons.

For a while, the French government’s claim that it was expelling people on legal rather than ethnic grounds was claimed to be “openly contradicted by an administrative circular issue by the same government” mentioning the illegal Romani camps specifically (“en priorité ceux des Roms”). This mention could be explained by the fact that Romani account for the overwhelming majority of foreign migrants setting up camps in France, and that “most Roma from the two countries [Bulgaria and Romania] are thought to be in France illegally”. The then French President Nicolas Sarkozy stated that his government had been unaware of the directive in question signed by Mr Michel Bart, the Chief of Staff of the French Minister of the Interior, and that the directive had been cancelled as soon as the government became aware of it through press reports. He stated that France continues to welcome refugees and that “we refuse the creation of slums… that are unworthy of French Republic or European ideals.” President Sarkozy also stated that 80% of people removed from the camps during August 2010 were of French “gens du voyage”, i.e. most of the campers thus removed were not foreign citizens or Roma; and that all removals were done based on judicial decisions, i.e. they were not unilateral police operations as would be based on a circular directive.

After the leak of a French Interior Ministry circular of 5 August 2010, Reding made a public statement that was interpreted as likening the 2010 French deportations of the Roma to those made from France by the occupying German forces during World War II: “I personally have been appalled by a situation which gave the impression that people are being removed from a Member State of the European Union just because they belong to a certain ethnic minority. This is a situation I had thought Europe would not have to witness again after the Second World War”.

On 7 July 2010, Reding had an official meeting with the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, Thorbjørn Jagland, to launch joint talks on the EU’s accession to the European Convention on Human Rights. On that occasion, she was assaulted by a man with mental health problems in front of the Palace of Europe.

Upon taking office she put in place a truly EU Justice policy launching a series of groundbreaking proposals in the field of civil, commercial and criminal justice in line with the ambitions set by the Treaty of Lisbon to establish a European area of justice. This included proposals to strengthen the rights of people in criminal proceedings, both as accused and as victims. Many of these proposals are becoming European law and consequently improving the rights of citizens across the European Union. She has also initiated a series of proposals aimed at making justice contribute for growth enabling both businesses and consumers to benefit fully from their rights in the European single market. These included proposals in field of consumer rights, in the field of cross order recovery of debts, sales law and data protection. Viviane Reding has also put in practice a fundamental rights culture across the European institutions and their policies. In October 2010 she set out a strategy and a methodology to achieve that end in line with the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. She has also put in motion a citizenship-centred agenda with the drafting of the first-ever EU Citizenship report in October 2010 proposing concrete measures to make European Union citizens’ lives easier.

On 9 February 2010, Reding was confirmed in her third term as European Commissioner becoming Vice-President and Commissioner responsible for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship. She was also given responsibility for the Commission’s Directorate-General for Communication. In May 2010, Reding succeeded in having the original Directorate for Justice, Freedom and Security split in two, with the resulting Directorate-General for Justice – responsible for civil and criminal justice, fundamental rights, and citizenship – subsequently being added to her portfolio.

Subsequently, the EU said it would seek to compel European Union countries to amend their national rules to the requirements of the European Union’s free movement laws, but in so doing did not deny the lawfulness of the French actions. Zoni Weisz, a Roma activist and Holocaust deportation escapee who addressed the German Bundestag’s Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony on 27 January 2011, praised Mrs Reding’s ‘clear words’ in denouncing Roma expulsions. Hungarian MEP Lívia Járóka, the sole European Parliament member to have partly Roma heritage, described the root problem as “the failure of Roma integration in most member states in the last 20 years”. Journalist and author Eric Zemmour commented that in this matter, “it is the European Union that is disarmed in the face of migration movements in general… European police are like Gullivers hindered in dealing with [potential criminal] migration”.

On 11 July 2011, Reding expressed criticism of the power exercised by the three major US credit rating agencies stating that breaking up the big three was an option being considered. This criticism was followed on 25 July 2012 with a statement questioning the timing and motivations behind the US rating agency Moody’s comments over European ratings, drawing links with rating announcements in Europe with attempts to divert the attention of the markets from the growing debt mountain and economic difficulties in the US.

In 2012, the US-based magazine Foreign Policy ranked Viviane Reding at number 97 in its list of top 100 Global Thinkers recognizing her leadership in promoting the economic benefits of the role of women in top management and in the boards of companies.

In August 2012, Reding put the action of the French socialist government of Jean-Marc Ayrault and his Minister of the Interior Manuel Valls under surveillance responding to alleged expulsions of Roma people. The call resulted in a shift of policy by the French government confirmed in a Ministerial executive order signed by nine French Ministers and placing the focus of the action on the integration of the Roma as called for by the European Commission.

As part of the European debate on the Future of Europe Reding initiated in late 2012 a series of Citizens Dialogues bringing European politicians into town-hall meetings with European citizens. These dialogues began in Cadiz in Spain in September 2012 and took place across Europe throughout 2013, the European Year of Citizens.

In November 2012 Reding further detailed her ideas in a speech in Passau, Germany and later in a series of articles and interviews calling for the establishment of the United States of Europe building upon the Blueprint for a Deep and Genuine Economic and Monetary Union presented by the European Commission on 30 November 2012.

In May 2012 Reding delivered a speech on the Future of Europe in Tallinn, Estonia at the XXV Congress of the Fédération Internationale du Droit Européen. On 12 September 2012 José Manuel Barroso delivered the State of the Union speech in Strasbourg, taking up and elaborating on many of the ideas set out by Reding since early 2012.

The Reding initiative led a group of foreign affairs ministers of the European Union to put together a reflection group animated by the German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle on the future of Europe. The plan also served as inspiration and guidance to the report prepared in June 2012 by Herman Van Rompuy, José Manuel Barroso, Jean Claude Juncker and Mario Draghi to the European Council on the need to develop the united European continent into a genuine Economic and Monetary Union.

In February 2012 Reding challenged her fellow European leaders to start working towards designing the future of the united European continent. In an article first published in the Wall Street Journal she called for a political union in Europe as a necessary step to transform the current European Union into a genuine economic, monetary and political union.

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