The head of the European Union’s internal market, Thierry Breton, tendered his resignation on Monday. As his reason for the resignation, he cited the call by the President of the European Commission for France to provide another candidate for the next European Commission.
Thierry Breton, who has recently made headlines for threatening Elon Musk with all-encompassing censorship, was very critical of the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, in his resignation letter. He pointed out that her request was “further evidence of questionable governance”.
“I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my colleagues in the College, Commission services, MEPs, Member States, and my team.
Together, we have worked tirelessly to advance an ambitious EU agenda.
It has been an honour and privilege to serve the common European interest,” he wrote in his resignation statement.
Not the “right sex”?
In his letter, Thierry also explained that von der Leyen had asked France to remove his name from the list of nominees “for personal reasons, which you have in no way discussed directly with me,” in return for France being given a more influential role in the European Union’s executive arm. Von der Leyen asked Member States to reconsider their male Commissioner-designates in order to move closer to her goal of gender balance in the European Commission.
Breton was the bloc’s industry chief and was also the main implementer of the new Digital Services Act, which regulates the moderation of content on social media platforms. As such, he often got involved in the operating of the social media platform X and Meta Platforms Inc. In fact, Musk was threatened with a supranational censorship dictate in a letter from the European Commissioner because Musk announced at the time that he would host the Republican candidate for the President of the USA, Donald Trump, on his social network X, which we have previously already reported on.
During his five years as head of the European Commission’s Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs unit, the 69-year-old oversaw the introduction of a series of important digital regulations, including the DSA Content Moderation Regulation, the Artificial Intelligence Law, and the Chip Law.
Breton – who is the former Director-General of French software maker Atos and France Telecom, France’s finance minister and a bestselling science fiction author – has shown considerable impatience with social network owners, saying they do not follow EU rules strictly enough.
T. B.
