BRUSSELS: France’s powerful European Union commissioner Thierry Breton abruptly resigned with a parting shot at the bloc’s chief on Monday, in a dramatic upset the day before Ursula von der Leyen unveils her new top team.

President Emmanuel Macron swiftly tapped Stephane Sejourne, his outgoing foreign minister and a close ally, to succeed Breton as Paris’s man at the EU.

One of the most influential figures in Brussels, Breton has been the bloc’s internal market commissioner since 2019 and has taken a hard line against abuses by the world’s biggest digital platforms — including sparring publicly with Elon Musk. Put forward by Macron for a second term, Breton’s reappointment to a sizable commission role — reflecting the country’s weight within the 27-nation bloc — had been taken as a given.

But his abrasive relationship with his German boss von der Leyen — who he publicly challenged on multiple occasions during her first five-year term — appears to have proven untenable. While Breton’s announcement he was quitting came as a surprise, he presented it as the result of backroom manoeuvring by von der Leyen to have him pushed out.

“In the very final stretch of negotiations on the composition of the future College, you asked France to withdraw my name,” Breton wrote in a scorching letter to von der Leyen, shared on X. “In light of these latest developments — further testimony to questionable governance — I have to conclude that I can no longer exercise my duties in the College.” A former CEO of France Telecom, the 69-year-old Breton was seen by Paris as a key counterweight to Berlin’s influence at the heart of the EU.

He was the architect of the EU’s landmark rules demanding web giants better police content online — something that led him to lock horns with Musk, the billionaire boss of X.

Published in Dawn, September 17th, 2024