{"id":47676,"date":"2019-10-25T02:40:00","date_gmt":"2019-10-25T00:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/?p=47676"},"modified":"2019-10-25T06:53:23","modified_gmt":"2019-10-25T04:53:23","slug":"macron-nominates-thierry-breton-atos-chief-and-former-finance-minister-as-eu-commissioner-%e2%80%8b%e2%80%8b","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/2019\/10\/macron-nominates-thierry-breton-atos-chief-and-former-finance-minister-as-eu-commissioner-%e2%80%8b%e2%80%8b\/","title":{"rendered":"Macron nominates Atos CEO Thierry Breton for EU commissioner \u200b\u200b"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

French President Emmanuel Macron has nominated Thierry Breton, former finance minister and current chief of technology company Atos, as the nation’s EU commissioner, according to The Independent<\/em><\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Macron\u2019s initial pick for commissioner, Sylvie Goulard, was rejected<\/a> by the European Parliament, which must approve the nominations. Breton could be well-positioned to gain the approval of the conservative European People\u2019s Party (EPP), which has the most members of any party in parliament and played a key role in blocking Goullard\u2019s appointment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Macron is hoping that Breton will be appointed to the same broad portfolio that was initially negotiated for Goulard, including industrial,<\/g> space, defence, and digital policy.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tara Varna, head of the ECFR think tank in Paris, told Reuters<\/a> that Breton may have a good chance of approval by the European Parliament. She said the pick was the \u201cbest tactical decision\u201d for Macron.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But for others, Breton has proven to be a controversial choice. One unnamed, senior French official\u00a0told Politico<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is incomprehensible and a risky choice for Macron. Breton is brilliant, very smart, and has a lot of ideas but he is man of utmost arrogance, and that ego has harmed him a lot in his career.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Atos has also been the subject of several controversies in the UK, and Breton\u2019s career in the private sector could draw scrutiny in parliament. Officials have said Breton would recuse himself from any matters that would create a conflict of interest, and he\u2019s announced plans to resign from his role at Atos at the end of this month.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When he announced his plan to step down, Breton also told reporters that he planned to focus on helping Europe\u2019s private sector compete with that of the US. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou may start to see some European companies performing better than U.S. companies, you need to get used to this, and I will work for this where I will be.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Breton served as finance minister under President Jacque Chirac, and has headed Atos since 2009. He was also an early supporter of Macron\u2019s presidential campaign in 2017. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each EU member state appoints a commissioner, who must be approved by parliament. Together with its president, the commission acts as the executive branch of the EU government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One official said that while she hasn\u2019t given any assurances on the appointment, Commission President-elect Ursula von der Leyen believes Breton “is a very experienced man, particularly on digital issues.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo: Copyleft [CC BY 3.0 (https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/3.0)]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

French President Emmanuel Macron has nominated Thierry Breton, former finance minister and current chief of technology company Atos, as the nation’s EU commissioner, according to The Independent.  Macron\u2019s initial pick for commissioner, Sylvie Goulard, was rejected by the European Parliament, which must approve the nominations. Breton could be well-positioned to gain the approval of the conservative European<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":47682,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[113],"tags":[7921,9252,7172],"class_list":["post-47676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-finance","tag-emmanuel-macron-en-2","tag-european-commission-en","tag-france-en-2"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/77"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47676\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}