Viviane Reding

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Viviane Reding (2014)

Viviane Reding [ viˈvjan ] (born April 27, 1951 in Esch an der Alzette , Luxembourg ) is a Luxembourg journalist and politician ( CSV and EPP group ). From February 10, 2010 to mid-2014, she was Vice President of the European Commission and Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship . Since the 2014 European elections, Reding was no longer an EU Commissioner and was again a member of the European Parliament. Reding is also a consultant for the transatlantic think tank European Horizons. On September 1, 2018, she left the European Parliament, and Christophe Hansen took her place .

Life and career

Reding during the WEF 2013

Viviane Reding studied at the Sorbonne in Paris , did her doctorate and graduated in 1978 with a doctorate in human sciences . After her studies she worked as a journalist for the daily newspaper Luxemburger Wort . From 1986 to 1998 she was also President of the Luxembourg Union of Journalists. At the same time she began active political activity. She was married to a Greek and has three children.

Political career in Luxembourg

In 1979, Reding went into politics for the CSV. From 1979 to 1989 she was a member of the Luxembourg Parliament. As a member of the Luxembourg Parliament, she was Chair of the Social Committee, Member of the Office of the Chamber of Deputies, Member of the Assembly of the Benelux Parliaments and Member of the North Atlantic Assembly. In her party, the Christian Social People's Party (CSV), she also held the deputy chairmanship from 1995 to 1999. She was also a member of the Esch an der Alzette town council from 1981 to 1999, where she chaired the committee for cultural affairs from 1992 to 1999.

Political career in Europe

Reding can look back on more than 25 years of professional experience in European politics. For the first ten years of that she was a member of the European Parliament. In 1999, Romano Prodi appointed her to the European Commission as Commissioner for Education, Culture, Media and Sport . Subsequently, she received the department for media and information society in the Barroso I Commission (2004–2009) . Since February 10, 2010, she has been Vice-President of the Barroso II Commission (2009–2014) and as Commissioner responsible for the Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship departments . From July 2014 to August 2018 she was again a member of the European Parliament .

Member of the European Parliament

In 1989 Reding was elected to the European Parliament for the first time and was re-elected in 1994, where she belonged to the Christian Democratic EPP Group and until 1992 chaired the Committee on Petitions . In addition, she was deputy chairman of the Committee on Social Affairs, Employment and the Working Environment from 1992 to 1994 and of the Committee on Fundamental Freedoms and Internal Affairs from 1997 to 1999 . She was also head of the Luxembourg delegation to the European People's Party (EPP) and a member of the EPP Group Bureau. Since July 2014 she has been a member of the European Parliament again .

Member of the European Commission

In the European elections in June 1999 she was elected a third time in parliament, but left a few months later to become a member of the European Commission under Romano Prodi . In the Prodi Commission , in office from 1999 to 2004, she was responsible for education, culture, youth, media and sport . Here she was significantly involved in the promotion of the Erasmus Mundus program , which promotes student exchanges among the member states.

Subsequently, she was given the responsibility for media and information society in the Barroso I Commission , which she held from 2004 to 2010. In this capacity she pushed through the politically controversial project for the reduction of EU-wide roaming charges. The regulation proposal initiated by her was passed by the European Parliament on May 23, 2007.

From February 10, 2010 to July 2014, Reding was Commission Vice- President and Commissioner for the Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship Department in the Barroso II Commission . In this capacity, she implemented a politically very controversial proposal for a directive on a more balanced representation of women and men on supervisory boards of listed companies (so-called women's quota ). A directive on strengthening victims' rights was also adopted on their proposal.

Furthermore, she worked on a European standardization of data protection law and on January 25, 2012 presented the EU Commission draft for the planned EU data protection reform, consisting of a basic data protection regulation for the processing of personal data by private companies and public bodies as well as a data protection Police and Criminal Justice Policy .

In addition, she was responsible for the Commission's public communication, even if she did not formally hold the communication strategy department that had existed in previous commissions. At the end of August 2010, Reding presented a new strategy in this function, according to which the Commission President José Manuel Barroso should be more in the spotlight in the future. She was in charge of the “Year of European Citizens” in 2013. In doing so, it has set itself the goal of bringing Europe closer to its citizens and initiating a debate on the future of Europe.

Reding also advocated the establishment of an EU public prosecutor's office, since in all member states of the EU, including Germany, EU funding is sometimes used in projects that are not very useful. Since the EU does not currently have its own public prosecutor's office and the national public prosecutor's offices only investigate the complaints of the EU Commission in 50% of the cases, the Commission is not able to punish the misappropriation of tax money accordingly.

Private sector offers

After moving from the European Commission to the European Parliament in July 2014, Viviane Reding received several offers from the private sector.

She has been a member of the Bertelsmann Stiftung's Board of Trustees since January 2015 and sits on the boards of directors at Nyrstar and Agfa -Gevaert. She has also received offers to work for the UEFA Foundation for Children (which is still in the planning stage) and for various speaker agencies .

In this context there has been criticism because of possible conflicts of interest and the political revolving door effect . Viviane Reding herself regards her secondary occupations as unproblematic; these have also been approved by the European Commission.

Political positions and activities

In her position as Commissioner for Education, Culture, Media and Sport, Reding made a significant contribution to the Erasmus Mundus program, which promotes student exchanges among the member states. In 2006, Reding, as media commissioner, strongly criticized the high roaming charges for mobile networks in the EU and initiated an EU regulation to lower them. Your regulatory proposal in this regard was passed by the European Parliament on May 23, 2007.

On September 14, 2010, Reding, as justice commissioner, accused France of deporting Roma only because they belonged to an ethnic minority. She spoke out in favor of initiating infringement proceedings against France. In the corresponding press conference she said: “ This is a situation I had thought Europe would not have to witness again after the second world war. ”(German:“ I had thought that Europe would not witness such an event again after the Second World War. ”) This was understood by some high-ranking politicians as a comparison with the persecution of the Roma by the National Socialists . ( See also: European reactions to Roma deportations in France in summer 2010. ) Reding expressed her regret at the possibility of such an interpretation.

In connection with the Greek financial crisis and the euro crisis , Reding criticized in July 2011 that the three most important US rating agencies ( Standard & Poor’s , Fitch Ratings and Moody’s ) were assuming oligopolistic power. She therefore called for either these three agencies to be broken up or for the creation of additional European and Asian agencies to be encouraged.

In connection with the mass protests against the ACTA bill on February 13, 2012, Reding requested its review by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) . She said: "The protection of copyrights can never justify the abolition of freedom of expression and information " and therefore blocking the network is never an option for her.

After the legislative changes and the introduction of a new constitution on January 1, 2012 in Hungary , Reding criticized Prime Minister Viktor Orbán for the far-reaching curtailment of the Hungarian rule of law: “The rule of law is not to be trifled with. A constitution is not a toy that can be changed every few months. ”Even after a fourth constitutional amendment, Reding objected to incompatibilities with the Treaty on European Union . Their criticism led to the fifth amendment to the constitution.

Reding works to improve equality between men and women. To this end, it supports a 40% quota of women on the supervisory boards of large listed companies. The proposal was adopted by the College of Commissioners in November 2012 and confirmed by the European Parliament in November 2013 . However, the approval of the EU Council of Ministers necessary to implement the idea in a legal regulation has not been achieved since then. An initiative of the Italian Presidency in the second half of 2014 failed, among other things, because of the determined resistance from Great Britain and the Netherlands.

honors and awards

Web links

Commons : Viviane Reding  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b europa.eu
  2. ↑ EU Commission
  3. ↑ European Horizons - A Transatlantic Think-Tank. Retrieved February 19, 2018 .
  4. ↑ Press release of the European Commission of January 25, 2012.
  5. ↑ Draft of the General Data Protection Regulation (Commission proposal of 25 January 2012; HTML and PDF, all EU languages)
  6. ↑ EurActiv , 30 Aug 2010: Redings “Communication Revolution” .
  7. ↑ European Commission : ec.europa.eu (PDF)
  8. ↑ New to the Board of Trustees . In: New Westphalian . November 14, 2014, p. 6 .
  9. ↑ Reding controls mining company . In: Börsen-Zeitung . November 13, 2014, p. 16 .
  10. ↑ Reding on the Agfa supervisory board . In: Luxemburger Tageblatt . January 9, 2015 ( tageblatt.lu [accessed May 18, 2020]).
  11. ↑ a b Eric Bonse: The Bertelsmann Commissioner. In: The daily newspaper. November 12, 2014, accessed February 24, 2012 .
  12. ↑ Dhiraj Sabharwal: "The most normal thing in the world" . In: Luxemburger Tageblatt . November 13, 2014.
  13. ^ A b c Corporate Europe Observatory: Revolving Door Watch - Viviane Reding. In: corporateeurope.org. Retrieved February 24, 2012 .
  14. ↑ "I don't see any problem at all". In: tageblatt.lu. November 12, 2014, accessed February 24, 2012 .
  15. ↑ Video of Viviane Reding's press conference on September 14, 2010 on ec.europa.eu
  16. ^ Spiegel Online, September 15, 2010
  17. ^ Die Zeit , July 11, 2011: EU Justice Commissioner wants to smash rating agencies .
  18. ↑ heise.de
  19. ↑ Reding to Orbán: "The constitution is not a toy". In: derStandard.at. May 31, 2013, accessed December 3, 2017 .
  20. ↑ Viviane Reding: Situation of fundamental rights: standards and practices in Hungary. July 2, 2013, accessed July 20, 2013 .
  21. ↑ derstandard.at
  22. ↑ EU plans women's quota for supervisory boards. Welt am Sonntag , September 2, 2012, accessed on September 3, 2012 .
  23. ↑ Cerstin Gammelin : Europe-wide women's quota is threatened. Süddeutsche Zeitung , September 5, 2012, accessed on September 5, 2012 .
  24. ↑ europa.eu
  25. ↑ Proposal for a DIRECTIVE OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL on ensuring a more balanced representation of women and men among the non-executive directors / supervisory board members of listed companies and on related measures (PDF)
  26. ↑ EU Parliament: 40 percent quota of women on boards of directors of the European Union. In: NZZ.ch of November 20, 2013, accessed on July 27, 2015
  27. ↑ Quota for women: And now Europe. In: SZ.de of December 11, 2014, accessed on July 27, 2015
  28. ↑ Report on the GDD webpage.
personal data
SURNAME Reding, Viviane
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Luxembourg journalist and politician (CSV), MEP
DATE OF BIRTH April 27, 1951
PLACE OF BIRTH Esch an der Alzette , Luxembourg