Viviane Reding - Agenda Setters 2008

Name: Viviane Reding

Title: European commissioner for information society and media

Position: 8    Last year: 10

Why? Shaping Europe's tech portfolio

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• Ashley Highfield
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• Werner Vogels

Viviane Reding, the formidable European commissioner for information society and media, makes her second appearance on the Agenda Setters list. Up two spots from last year, she continues to have a significant impact on Europe's tech scene and beyond.

As an EC commissioner, Reding is involved in proposing legislation and overseeing its implementation. But it's her 'information society and media' portfolio that puts her firmly on tech's map, with its focus on all things ICT - from fixed and mobile telecoms infrastructure, to satellite comms, broadband internet access and associated issues like e-health.

Last year the panel lauded her role in cutting mobile roaming costs for Europe's consumers. This is a cause she has continued to champion throughout 2008, warning operators at the start of the year they must make "credible" cuts to data and SMS roaming costs or face more regulation.

She's also eyeing up mobile termination charges - the fees operators charge to connect calls from each other's networks - and has talked of her hope these will fall some 70 per cent: an uncomfortable prospect for operators.

Making herself massively unpopular with mobile operators has only increased her value in the eyes of the Agenda Setters panel, with one judge describing her as "everything that an effective commissioner should be".

The scope of her brief is such that she's setting political and administrative agendas across a spectrum of issues of increasing importance - from digital inclusion to data privacy and protection, with one panellist even dubbing her "the Richard Thomas of Brussels". Reding's star, therefore, is rising.