If the EU’s technical regulations of the last five years could be put into human form, they would embody the following: Thierry Breton.The pompous white-haired commissioner has become the public face of Brussels’ displeasure with US technology giants, visiting Silicon Valley last summer to personally remind the industry about regulatory deadlines.
Combative and outspoken, Breton warned that Apple had “spent too long”Squeeze” drove other companies out of the market. In a case against TikTok, he insisted, “Our kids Guinea pigs are not For social media.”
His confrontational attitude towards the CEO is evident in his posts on X. In the lead-up to Musk’s interview with Donald Trump, Bretton made a vague but threatening post. Letter On his account, he reminded Musk that there would be consequences if he used his platform to promote “harmful content.” Last year, he published a photo with Mark ZuckerbergAnnouncing a new EU motto of “Move fast to fix things” – a satire on the infamous early Facebook Slogan. And in a meeting with Google CEO Sundar Pichai in 2023, Bretton said that Allegedly They were made to agree to an “AI agreement” on the spot, before Told about the agreement by tweetingWhich made it difficult for Pichai to back down.
Yet in a reshuffle of top EU posts this week, Breton resigned — a decision he said he would back Alleged The incident was the result of a secret agreement between European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and French President Emmanuel Macron.
“I am sure [the tech giants are] “I’m glad that Mr Breton will go, because he knows that in the case of fines you have to hit shareholders’ pockets,” says Umberto Gambini, a former adviser to the European Parliament and now a partner at consultancy Forward Global.
Braaten is effectively to be replaced by a Finnish politician Henna VirkkunenFrom the centre-right EPP group, who have previously worked on the Digital Services Act.
“His style will certainly be less brutal and perhaps less visible on the Axe than Breton’s,” says Gambini. “It could be an opportunity to revisit and reboot the relationship.”
Little is known about Virkkunen’s attitude to the role of Big Tech in Europe’s economy. But his role has been reshaped to suit von der Leyen’s priorities for her next five-year term. While Breton was commissioner for the internal market, Virkkunen will work with the same team but under the upgraded title of executive vice-president for technological sovereignty, security and democracy, meaning he will report directly to von der Leyen.
The 27 commissioners, who form von der Leyen’s new team and are each tasked with focusing on different areas, still have to be approved by the European Parliament – a process that could take weeks.
,[Previously]“It was very clear that the Commission was ambitious in terms of thinking about and proposing new legislation to counter all these different threats, especially the threats posed by the big technology platforms,” says Matthias Vermeulen, public policy director at Brussels-based consultancy AWO. “This is no longer a political priority, in the sense that the law has been adopted and now it has to be implemented.”
