Every night around midnight, Roberto Viola sits down at his electric piano and plays for hours. Neighbors don\u2019t complain, because only he hears the music through headphones.<\/p>\n
Like the silent piano, Viola doesn’t make a lot of racket around Brussels. The action is out of earshot.<\/p>\n
On September 1, Viola rose to head of DG Connect, the European Commission department that regulates\u00a0communications networks, content and technology. As the director general, he leads more than 1,000 public servants who have the daunting and history-defying mission of implementing a digital single market strategy to kick-start Europe’s tech and telecoms sectors.<\/p>\n
That makes him one of the most powerful men in the European Union, with an almost unparalleled ability to change the direction of tech policy.<\/p>\n
His predecessors failed more often than they succeeded.\u00a0Driving change in tech and telecoms across the EU’s 28 countries is usually blocked, delayed or watered down by the European Council and Parliament.<\/p>\n
In terms of difficulty, it\u2019s up there with playing Ravel\u2019s\u00a0Gaspard de la Nuit<\/em>.<\/p>\n The sweeping telecoms reforms unveiled in 2013 are\u00a0a classic example. Only two proposals were finally adopted this year.<\/p>\n Perhaps that’s why Viola claims his vision\u00a0for a\u00a0departmental shake-up is limited to \u201cfine adjustments,\u201d not a \u201crevolution.\u201d<\/p>\n While few describe him as a visionary, many talk about\u00a0a man who is meticulous in his attention to detail, pragmatic, apolitical and\u00a0diplomatic to a fault.<\/p>\n Above all, he is in control.<\/p>\n Viola’s career has been one long tight-rope walk, and he’s managed to keep his balance on the way up, even during a perilous period\u00a0as Italy’s media regulator under Prime Minister Silvio\u00a0Berlusconi.<\/p>\n “You will never find a powerful assistant to Roberto Viola,” said a person who has known Viola professionally for over a decade. He requested anonymity as he is still in the telecoms industry. “Roberto does things personally, he doesn’t delegate.”<\/p>\n Those who know Viola well believe\u00a0change is coming to DG Connect.<\/p>\n \u201cMy guess is Roberto will invent things that previous innovators in DG Connect have not invented,\u201d said\u00a0former\u00a0director general, Robert Madelin. “I’m sure it won’t be business as usual, as business as usual is too boring.”<\/p>\n Speaking of the man who took his job,\u00a0Madelin said,\u00a0“Roberto is a man you could go tiger hunting with. He’s the sort of person who has your back.” Madelin is now the senior adviser for innovation at the European Political Strategy Centre.<\/p>\n Viola, who sleeps about 4 \u00bd hours a night, has a brain hardwired for technology and two patents to prove it.<\/p>\n Born and educated in Rome, Viola studied engineering before being recruited at 25 by the European Space Agency. There, he invented a communications system that was one of the bases for 3G wireless technology and a satellite system that was the genesis for satellite radio.<\/p>\n All Viola has to show for it\u00a0are a couple of medals from the Space Agency and <\/span>\u20ac1 that he received for each patent. He came up with the ideas while working for the ESA, which kept the\u00a0rights to them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n While both 3G Internet and satellite radio may have their roots on this side of the Atlantic, America reaped the technological and financial rewards. The ESA granted\u00a0licenses to the technology to\u00a0U.S. companies, which\u00a0moved more quickly to build 3G mobile networks. The EU’s own 3G\u00a0push was\u00a0hamstrung by countries that\u00a0quibbled over standards, timing and access to spectrum.<\/span><\/p>\n “I’m very happy that someone became a billionaire in the United States, and again another euro and a medal for me,” he joked.<\/span><\/p>\n And while it became huge in the U.S., satellite radio never really took off here.\u00a0“The radio operators saw the satellite system as a competitor. This is something that often happens in the history of Europe,” Viola lamented. \u201cThe fact that it was not realized in Europe eventually was a really sour but important lesson for me.”<\/p>\n The\u00a0bitter taste of his under-appreciated patents\u00a0still seems to drive Viola. His professed goal is a regulatory environment that promotes innovation and competition. But he will\u00a0face stiff opposition from Europe’s incumbents, who are desperate to hold on to profits under attack from nimbler, younger local upstarts and the behemoths from across the Atlantic.<\/p>\n “There’s a little bit of difficulty in innovation because sometimes the traditional actors are the ones that have connections in politics and they see innovation as a threat,” he said. “We always have to be vigilant on this, to convince decision makers that innovation is going in the right direction.”<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In 1999, Viola left the space agency and joined the Agcom, the Italian regulator for phone, TV and radio. He worked as the director of regulation and technical director, and became\u00a0secretary general in 2004. Before he left the agency in 2012, he also served as chair of the European Radio Spectrum Policy Group, was a member of the Body of European Telecom Regulators board, and chairman of the European Regulatory Group.<\/p>\n Viola had one tricky overlord: Berlusconi. In addition to being the Italian prime minister, the flamboyant media tycoon was the founder and controlling shareholder\u00a0of\u00a0Mediaset, Italy\u2019s largest commercial broadcaster, which led to repeated allegations of conflicts of interest and corruption.<\/p>\n While Berlusconi’s reign wrecked numerous political careers, Viola emerged with his reputation intact, according to sources from both sides of the political spectrum\u00a0from\u00a0the time. They said that Viola kept his head down, didn’t stir trouble, and stayed\u00a0to\u00a0the letter of the law.<\/p>\n “He followed instructions,” a\u00a0telecoms insider\u00a0active in those days said. “There were some very controversial decisions being taken by the government with the support of Parliament in the Berlusconi years. Viola was a professional and he stuck to the rules.”<\/p>\n A particularly stormy period stretched from the mid-2000s to 2012, during\u00a0Italy’s switch from analog to digital television.\u00a0In 2006, the European Commission put the country\u00a0on notice, alleging\u00a0a\u00a0law governing Italy’s transition to digital TV\u00a0discriminated in favor of incumbent broadcasters.\u00a0Accusations swirled\u00a0that Agcom was overly protective of Berlusconi’s interests.<\/p>\n Then, with Viola at the helm,\u00a0Agcom performed a turnaround. Between 2006 and 2007 the regulator\u00a0reorganized, increasing staff numbers, setting up more transparent complaint investigation procedures, implementing\u00a0new restrictions.<\/p>\n In 2007, Agcom took on Berlusconi’s Mediaset and public broadcaster RAI, the two largest players in Italian TV.<\/p>\n It strongly\u00a0recommended that the companies give up\u00a0a share\u00a0of their analog frequencies to smaller challengers in the market. Given that the analog to digital switchover had already begun, in effect freeing up the spectrum Agcom wanted released to the market, it was as much a political statement as a regulatory\u00a0one. Neither Berlusconi nor RAI would be given a free ride.<\/p>\n Reflecting on that period, Viola conceded he faced constant pressure from left- and right-wing powerbrokers.<\/p>\n “The risk of being seen for one party or the other party was always there, and you being the referee, the regulator \u2014 this is not a very nice thing if people start to think you are going in one direction or the other,” said Viola, who closes his eyes when thinking deeply.<\/p>\n “But being independent is a state of mind, first of all,” he said. “The respect comes if you are completely convinced that someone has the stamina, the willingness to remain independent.”<\/p>\n Viola joined the Commission as deputy director-general of DG Connect in 2012. While it’s not uncommon\u00a0for the most important positions in Connect to go to former national telecoms regulators, the announcement of his promotion to the top job just three years into his stint in Brussels was a surprise.<\/p>\n Speculation was rife\u00a0about how a relative newcomer so quickly landed a job\u00a0usually reserved for Commission stalwarts.<\/p>\n One\u00a0theory: Madelin’s reported clash\u00a0with Commission President\u00a0Jean-Claude Juncker’s chief of staff Martin Selmayr over\u00a0the abolition of the post of Chief Scientific Adviser was his undoing and Viola’s ticket to the top.<\/p>\n Others say\u00a0Madelin was a divisive figure within the department and disliked by his boss, G\u00fcnther Oettinger, commissioner for the digital economy and society.<\/p>\n The Commission and Madelin dispute\u00a0this, with both camps saying that the relationship between the Oettinger\u00a0and Madelin was, and remains, positive. Madelin told POLITICO: “We have worked very well together and are doing so still.”<\/p>\n Others speculated Viola benefited from his nationality. As the most senior Italian bureaucrat in the directorate generals, he was the country’s only shot at a top role<\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n Viola bristled at that notion.<\/p>\n “This sort of strange, Brussels-bubble way of thinking, that you can be a top manager if some national flag would move, is a little bit a caricature of how things are,” he said. “The most important thing that the College [of Commissioners] is looking at, and the president was absolutely clear in this whole process, is the qualities of people.”<\/p>\n While Italian by nationality, Viola\u00a0doesn’t look\u00a0it. His face\u00a0\u2014 round, with a broad forehead and slightly downturned, blue-grey eyes\u00a0\u2014 is suggestive of\u00a0eastern European roots. He has the cheeky\u00a0smile of a schoolboy caught sneaking a forbidden treat; it makes him look younger than his 55 years. He fiddles, talks with his hands, gesticulating with a pen to emphasize a point.<\/p>\n Viola\u00a0does not have an\u00a0Italian temperament.<\/p>\n “I’m told I have a British-type approach to problems. I like understatements,” he said.<\/p>\n Those who know the inner workings of DG Connect agree on one point: Viola was pulling the department’s levers before he became director general.<\/p>\n One former Parliament staffer says that while Madelin was rarely seen in negotiations over the telecoms single market package, Viola was an ever-present figure.<\/p>\n “It was mainly Viola coming to Parliament. He really knows how to speak to MEPs. He knows all of them, he calls several\u00a0by their first names,” said the staffer, who asked for anonymity because she continues to work with DG Connect. “He was the one who was always sent there to present proposals. My boss could always call him when needed.”<\/p>\n These relationships served him well in negotiations over the two remaining elements of the telecoms single market package, a ban on roaming charges and the establishment of open Internet rules. While Parliament and Council jostled over detail, Viola pressed\u00a0the Commission’s line: innovate or die out.<\/p>\n Several sources said Viola was key during the final, 12-plus-hour negotiation session in June between the Council, Parliament and Commission.<\/p>\n “We went through moments where it seemed there was no way to go through, but he was always showing determination to go on,” recalled Pilar del Castillo, the Parliament’s rapporteur for the reforms. “He was able to find solutions without losing dominion of the goal to be achieved.\u2026 There is no doubt that Viola is one of the main people responsible for this.”<\/p>\n Viola said he learned the art of diplomacy during the rough times at Italian regulator Agcom.<\/p>\n “This is one of the reasons why maybe I’m a decent negotiator,\u201d he said, \u201cbecause keeping the balance, keeping away from pressures of all kind, has been an extremely difficult exercise.”<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Every night around midnight, Roberto Viola sits down at his electric piano and plays for hours. Neighbors don\u2019t complain, because only he hears the music through headphones. Like the silent piano, Viola doesn’t make a lot of racket around Brussels. The action is out of earshot. On September 1, Viola rose to head of DG … <\/p>\n‘Roberto doesn’t delegate’<\/h3>\n
A telco\u00a0fortune lost<\/h3>\n
The Berlusconi years<\/h3>\n
Fast rise in Brussels<\/h3>\n
The man behind TSM<\/h3>\n