If the last five years of EU tech regulations could take human form, they would embody Thierry Breton. The bombastic commissioner with a mane of white hair became the public face of Brussels’ irritation with American tech giants, touring Silicon Valley last summer to personally remind the industry of looming regulatory deadlines.
The outspoken and combative Breton warned that Apple had spent too much time “squeezing” other companies out of the market. In the case against TikTok, he stressed that “our children are not guinea pigs for social media.”
His confrontational approach to CEOs themselves was evident in his posts on X. In the run-up to Musk’s interview with Donald Trump, Breton posted a vague but menacing tweet letter on his account, reminding Musk that if he uses his platform to amplify “harmful content,” he will face consequences. Last year, he posted a photo with Mark Zuckerbergannouncing the recent EU motto: “Act quickly to fix the situation” – a mockery of the infamous early Facebook slogan. And in a 2023 meeting with Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Breton apparently forced him to immediately agree to the “artificial intelligence pact” before tweeting about the dealmaking it complex for Pichai to back down.
But this week, in a reshuffle of top EU positions, Breton resigned – a decision he made alleged was the result of backroom deals between the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and French President Emmanuel Macron.
“I’m sure [the tech giants are] “I am glad that Mr Breton will leave because he has understood that in the case of fines, it is the shareholders who have to be hit in the pockets,” says Umberto Gambini, a former adviser to the European Parliament and now a partner at consulting firm Forward Global.
Breton is to be replaced by Finnish politician Henna Virkkunen from the centre-right EPP group, who previously worked on the Digital Services Act.
“Her style will certainly be less brutal and perhaps less visible on X than Breton,” Gambini says. “It could be an opportunity to reboot and restart the relationship.”
Little is known about Virkkunen’s attitude to Big Tech’s role in Europe’s economy. However, her role has been recast to fit von der Leyen’s priorities for her next five-year term. While Breton was the internal market commissioner, Virkkunen will work with the same team but will operate under the revised title of executive vice-president for technological sovereignty, security and democracy, meaning she reports directly to von der Leyen.
The 27 commissioners who make up von der Leyen’s new team, each with a different focus, still need to get the approval of the European Parliament, a process that could take several weeks.
“[Previously]it was very, very clear that the commission was ambitious in terms of thinking and proposing recent rules to address all these different threats that it saw, especially those posed by massive tech platforms,” says Mathias Vermeulen, director of public policy at Brussels-based consultancy AWO. “It’s no longer a political priority, in the sense that the rules have been passed and now they need to be enforced.”