Will Breton be back?

by Igor Ramage on 26 Jul 2024

In this blog, we investigate what role current French Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton might play in the upcoming European Commission.

On 18 July 2024, the European Parliament elected Ursula von der Leyen for a second five-year mandate as president of the European Commission. But the politics continue, as she must now field Member-State nominations for her next College of Commissioners.

Many factors are in play, including personal experience and competence, and party-political leverage. Size generally matters, too. A German will again lead the European Commission; and Spain, Poland and Italy (among others) are reportedly demanding big portfolios.

And then of course there is France, a founding EU member and the EU’s second-biggest economy, where consecutive losses by President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party in European and French parliamentary elections have led to roiling domestic politics and uncertain prospects for France’s standing in Europe and beyond.  

On 27 June, Macron announced he would nominate for a second term as European Commissioner Thierry Breton, currently responsible for the EU single market. A second Breton mandate may cover competences even more far-reaching. Breton himself has since declared he is ready for another five years.

A former economy minister and ex-CEO of French IT and consulting company Atos, Breton has been one of the current Commission’s most prominent figures. Tasked with a portfolio stretching from financial services to industrial policy, he has led efforts in vaccine manufacturing, promoted increases in defence production and taken up major digital regulations by overseeing the adoption and implementation of the Digital Services Act (DSA) and Digital Markets Act (DMA). All the while, he has pushed Macron’s watershed paradigm of “EU strategic autonomy”.

Despite his record, though, Breton’s candidacy for a second mandate is far from secure. First, his pro-EU-autonomy stance has never been welcomed by all Member-States, especially the so-called “frugals” and co. — in particular, the Netherlands, Nordics and Germany — preferring deregulation and low public spending to what they view as dirigiste industrial policy. Breton may not get much help from von der Leyen herself either, following his overt criticism of her perceived lack of support from party delegates at the EPP Congress in March 2024. It must be said, too, that Breton’s persona itself could be a liability: his blunt style and highly political profile contrasts often sharply with the don’t-rock-the-boat, collegial stoicism of many of his fellow commissioners. Domestically, his record as Atos CEO has come under new scrutiny, too, after the company lost 98% of its stock value in the past five years, bringing it near bankruptcy. Despite being recently bailed out by banks and shareholders, the company faces renewed questions of potential corruption on the part of past executives.

All this could still obviously damage Breton. The example of Sylvie Goulard, Macron’s first pick for European Commissioner in 2019, provides an instructive case in point: Goulard was eventually rejected by MEPs after her name became associated with a fake-employment case in the European Parliament. There is no guarantee MEPs won’t similarly kill his candidature this time around. In France itself, although Breton’s pro-EU-autonomy stance reflects a traditional commitment to a strong, “colbertist” state intervening to foster vertical industrial policies, political opponents to both the right and left could conceivably, in such a fractious moment, look to deal Macron any blow they can.

Ultimately, and unless a new French governing coalition materialises soon, the choice for France’s next European Commission rests with the president; weak national support or pushback from MEPs, EU parties or other Member States, however, would not bode well for Breton and could spur Macron to rethink his strategy.

Another possibility may indeed be Breton — but for agriculture, not the single market. The EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has always been contentious in France, given the cultural and industrial significance of French agribusiness. Ensuring a robust CAP was even Charles de Gaulle’s pre-condition for France’s entering the European economic community (EEC) established by the 1957 Rome Treaty. There remains a very real sense of political urgency in France in defending a strong CAP, in the face of lower-spending Member States with relatively little agriculture pushing for cuts to direct payments or incentives for farmers.

In the end, though, it seems unlikely Macron would demand an agriculture portfolio for Breton, whose competence and interest lie elsewhere. Other potential names include Macron’s current finance minister — and former agriculture minister under Sarkozy — Bruno le Maire, previously floated for European commissioner after Goulard’s rejection in 2019. After seven years in national government and with little hope of being renominated as minister, given Macron’s recent losses, by moving to Brussels le Maire may hope to escape harsh domestic criticism for France’s post-COVID indebtedness as well as burnish his international profile in advance of France’s 2027 electoral cycle.

Another interesting choice would be current Defence Minister Sebastien Lecornu, an early and loyal Macron supporter. Mentioned in January 2024 as a potential prime minister, though ultimately losing out to the more media-friendly Gabriel Attal, Lecornu’s discretion and work on the ground could earn him a nod. For one, his experience as defence minister would help in fostering Macron’s vision for a “powerful Europe”, whereby the EU projects France’s military and diplomatic strengths internationally. Secondly, the respect Lecornu usually garners across the political spectrum could help ease tensions both within France and at EU level (although, too, Macron may want to keep him close by, for this very same reason).

Finally, Christine Lagarde, former International Monetary Fund (IMF) director and current European Central Bank (ECB) president, is an obvious fall-back. The former French economy minister would represent a more technocratic pick, capable of contenting a divided French electorate as well as fiscally conservative Member States; she would also likely be welcome in a second von der Leyen administration committed again to gender balance.

Ultimately, getting Breton back in the College of Commissioners, tasked with a wide-ranging portfolio covering industrial policy and the single market, likely remains Macron’s aim; it’s likely, too, his best bet for achieving his goals for the EU, as laid out in April 2024 in his second Sorbonne speech.

Macron there called for a “credible defence of the European continent” and defended the concept of EU preference in the purchase of military equipment. He also proposed revising EU trade policy to level the playing field with China and the US, whom he accused of circumventing WTO rules by subsidising their own industries. Most of all, Macron put forward the goal of EU global leadership, by 2030, in “five strategic sectors”: AI, quantum computing, space, biotechnologies and green energies like hydrogen or nuclear fusion. To finance these objectives — and citing recent or forthcoming reports on the EU single market and competitiveness, respectively, by former Italian Prime Ministers Enrico Letta and Mario Draghi — he called for an additional €650-1000 billion per year in total public and private investments.

Macron’s demands, which essentially add a national-security perspective to Friedrich List’s concept of “educational protectionism” (i.e., protecting vital but nascent industries before exposing them to world competition), clash with the vision espoused by the “frugals” — for whom another, potentially even more dirigiste, Breton mandate, with the EU already saddled with massive NextGenerationEU debt, would be a very hard sell. Especially since they could not expect, this time, to balance Breton, support from the more free-market-leaning EU competition czar Margrethe Vestager, who seems to be on her way out politically.

A closer look at France’s position on competition per se, especially as regards the strategic fields Macron wants to promote, may reassure anxious ‘frugals’ that the “Hexagone” still stands by the idea of free-and-fair competition. In a June 2024 opinion on the competitive risks of generative AI, France’s Autorité de la concurrence decried cases of price-fixing and production restrictions in computer components, financial and technical lock-in practices by cloud service providers aimed at generative AI startups, and potential abuses of dominant positions. It also worried over significant risks of refusal or discriminatory access to essential data for innovative companies. The vertical integration of major players, affecting access to chips, data, and services — or the possibility of collusion using algorithms and AI — were also highlighted as major risks.

The French authority ultimately recommends, among other remedies, increasing international coordination (to avoid creating distortions and extra costs for companies), continued investment in European supercomputers (to provide access to computing power, for public and private actors alike) and facilitating access to public and private data for training AI models. More generally, the Authority vows to further its 2023 objectives, as per its latest annual report: to enforce the DMA and guard against consolidation of the AI market.

Would all this suffice to convince European companies or Member States wary of French industrial policy? Maybe not. And yet the “frugals” — as with the so-called “Covid-bonds” agreed as part of the NextGenerationEU package, despite Germany’s refusal for years post-eurozone-crisis to entertain joint borrowing schemes — may again feel bound to relent on some degree of common investment, if the EU is ever to become the geopolitical force Europe’s leaders say their citizens want. With China competing hard for European industry and the US still at the cutting-edge of research and venture capital — not to mention military capacity — even fiscally conservative Member States will feel pressure to agree on bolstering strategic EU interests, whether on common defence or AI and quantum computing. Against this backdrop, renominating Breton indeed makes some sense for Macron, and for France. The coming weeks will tell.

Topics: European Politics, EU, Regulation, Technology, Europe, Politics

Igor Ramage

Written by Igor Ramage

Igor provides policy analysis, monitoring and advice to tech clients. His areas of expertise span EU politics and institutional processes, AI, algorithms and data transfers.

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