If the past five years of EU tech rules could take human form, they would embody Thierry Breton. The bombastic commissioner, with his sweep of white hair, has become the public face of Brussels’ irritation with American tech giants, touring Silicon Valley last summer to personally remind the industry of looming regulatory deadlines.
Combative and outspoken, Breton warned that Apple had spent too long “pushing” other companies out of the market. In a case against TikTok, he stressed: “Our children are not guinea pigs for social media.”
His confrontational attitude toward the CEOs themselves was visible in his posts on X. In the run-up to Musk’s interview with Donald Trump, Breton posted a vague but menacing letter to his account reminding Musk that there would be consequences if he used his platform to spread “harmful content.” Last year, he posted a photo with Mark Zuckerberg, proclaiming a new EU motto: “move fast to fix things”—a dig at Facebook’s infamous early slogan. And in a 2023 meeting with Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Breton reportedly got him to agree to an “AI pact” on the spot, before tweeting out the agreement, making it difficult for Pichai to back out.
However, Breton resigned this week in the reshuffle of top EU posts, which he said was the result of secret deals between European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and French President Emmanuel Macron.
“I know for sure [the tech giants are] “Fortunately, Mr Breton will go because he understood that you have to hit shareholders' pockets when it comes to fines,” said Umberto Gambini, a former adviser to the European Parliament and now a partner at consultancy Forward Global.
Breton will effectively be replaced by Finnish politician Henna Virkkunen, from the centre-right EPP Group, who previously worked on the Digital Services Act.
“Her style will definitely be less brutal and maybe less visible at X than Breton,” Gambini says. “It could be an opportunity to restart and reboot the relationships.”
Little is known about Virkkunen’s stance on the role of Big Tech in the European economy. But her role has been tailored to fit 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 operate under the enhanced title of executive vice president for tech sovereignty, security and democracy, meaning she will report directly to von der Leyen.
The 27 commissioners who make up von der Leyen's new team, each assigned a different area of focus, still need to be approved by the European Parliament, a process that could take weeks.
“[Previously]“It was very, very clear that the commission was ambitious in terms of coming up with and proposing new legislation to counter all these different threats that they had seen, particularly those from big tech platforms,” said Mathias Vermeulen, director of public policy at Brussels-based consultancy AWO. “That is no longer a political priority, in the sense that legislation has been passed and now it needs to be enforced.”
