Digital portfolio spells trouble for new European Commission

Just as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was preparing to present her new team, there is trouble over the line-up for Commission posts: The European Union’s current Commissioner for the Internal Market and Services, Thierry Breton, has unexpectedly submitted his resignation.

“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 & privilege to serve the common European interest,” Breton wrote in the tweet accompanying his resignation letter.

‘Questionable governance’

A new European Commission is appointed every five years. Every EU country is entitled to a seat at the Commission table. But the importance of the different departments varies greatly. Each country tries to get control of a department that is as influential as possible.

Von der Leyen is apparently trying to fill the Commission with equal numbers of women and men. However, she has no influence on who the individual member states nominate as their commissioners. In any case, France’s nomination to replace Breton is another man: its current foreign and European affairs minister, Stéphane Séjourné.

Breton’s reaction to the volte-face was thin-skinned. In his resignation letter, he described von der Leyen’s tactics as “another testimony to questionable governance,” and said he had come to the conclusion that he could no longer perform his duties on the Commission.

French President Emmanuel Macron thanked Breton for his service and called him a remarkable Commissioner who had strongly advocated European sovereignty in digital policy.

‘Unprecedented flood of regulations’

However, these merits are interpreted quite differently by the IT lobby.

“The EU Commission, under Commissioner Thierry Breton, who is responsible for digitization, has unleashed an unprecedented flood of regulations in recent years and put a tight corset on the digital economy in Europe,” said Ralf Wintergerst, president of German digital industry association Bitkom, said of the personnel change. “Whoever his successor in this office will be, in the future the main question must be how the conditions for local innovation drivers can be improved in a targeted manner.”