France's freewheeling Thierry Breton rises to the crisis
Commissioner's hands-on approach has created a stir among his colleagues.
Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton has muscled his way to the forefront of the European response to the epidemic | Olivier Hoslet/EPA
By Laura Kayali, Paola Tamma and Hans von der Burchard
Much like a leopard, a CEO can't change its spots. Or maybe he just doesn't want to.
In the months since the beginning of the coronavirus crisis, Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton has muscled his way to the forefront of the European response to the epidemic.
With a series of high-profile interventions in areas both in, and outside, his portfolio, the former CEO of the French tech firm Atos has overshadowed more senior members of the European Commission, such as Executive Vice Presidents Margrethe Vestager, Frans Timmermans and Valdis Dombrovskis. On at least one occasion, he has come close to openly contradicting his boss, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
The French politician, who once served as finance minister, is on constant phone calls with CEOs, ministers, MEPs and journalists to coordinate Europe's production of medical supplies, ensure telecoms networks are not congested and inform the public about his actions, filling a space left almost vacant by an institution that traditionally struggles with effective large-scale communication.
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In February for instance, before Europe went on lockdown because of the coronavirus, Breton wrote to the bloc's industry ministers — without looping in his fellow commissioners — asking them to report back on supply chain hiccups caused by China's confinement.
Breton's man-of-action style has earned him praise.
"It created quite a stir in the Commission that he took this initiative alone," said a high-ranking Commission official who spoke on condition of anonymity. "But everyone realized 10 days later that it was a good thing."
The coronavirus crisis is highlighting Breton's maverick, unorthodox style, which stands out in a town driven by process, coordination and collegiality. "He grants himself a certain freedom," the official said.
"He has an American approach to things," said Andreas Schwab, a German MEP from the conservative European People's Party.
"He calls you by 'tu' right away and accepts to be called 'tu' himself," Schwab said, referring to the informal way of addressing people in French. "He's fierce, and takes decisions rapidly; he's very quickly 'for' or 'against.'"
It's an approach that can easily backfire.
Breton's man-of-action style has earned him praise. An early move to get Netflix to ease internet congestion by lowering the quality of its videos was widely applauded.
But his go-it-alone attitude and his excursions into policy areas usually managed by his colleagues have earned him a dose of sneer among the cheers.
"He is coordinating relatively little with others and sometimes misses the mark," said another Commission official.
The crisis CEO
When von der Leyen first announced she was forming a coronavirus task force in early March, Breton was not part of the team. It consisted of Commissioners Janez Lenarčič (crisis management), Stella Kyriakides (health), Adina Vălean (transport), Ylva Johansson (home affairs) and Paolo Gentiloni (economy).
It didn't take long before his name was added to the list.
On March 6, Breton made a surprise visit to a meeting of the EU's health ministers to protest French and German export bans on personal protective medical equipment.
"Breton made a clear intervention, asking for restrictions to be lifted," said a diplomat who attended the meeting. "He was direct: It was the CEO talking, not the politician. He couldn't care less about interrupting ministers."
After Brussels applied pressure, France and Germany backtracked and allowed exports to other EU countries — a move Breton cheered in an Italian-language tweet: "Thanks to our intense contacts and connections, 🇫🇷 and 🇩🇪 are lifting the blocks for masks and PPE."
Italian Economic Development Minister Stefano Patuanelli thanked Breton personally in an official government statement for the "far from trite words of solidarity… and also for having personally worked to solve the problem through direct dialogue."
Thierry Breton | Johannes Simon/Getty Images
Breton is now a member of von der Leyen's task force.
"The reason why Breton came on board is that the focus broadened from Lenarčič's crisis management to areas of industry and internal market, such as the production of protective equipment and vaccines," a Commission official explained.
In that role, Breton has made a point — and a show — of doing everything he can to address the crisis. He holds regular calls with producers of personal protective equipment to assess European stocks. Doing so "was my proposal," he told reporters on March 9.
He has also called on manufacturers, and on CEOs directly, to reconvert production lines to make products that can be used to fight the virus: ethanol gel, masks, ventilators. And he has spoken with CEOs from tech giants such as Netflix, Google, YouTube and Facebook about everything ranging from network congestion to coronavirus-related disinformation.
Fund of discord
Breton's efforts have sometimes run into pushback, including in one of his core areas of competence: the handling of data.
In late March, Breton, a former telecom CEO himself, spoke with Europe's telecoms giants asking them to provide users' anonymized aggregated location metadata to track the spread of the virus and determine where people's need for medical supplies was the most pressing.
Breton's echo of the French position is seen as denting his European credentials and alienating other capitals.
The effort came under criticism from privacy hawks in Parliament, who are worried it would put the personal information of EU citizens at risk, while the Dutch privacy regulator warned it is "not possible" to anonymize location data.
"The Commission's explanations are not complete yet," said Sophie in 't Veld, an MEP who belongs to Breton's political group Renew Europe. "If they want to introduce very intrusive measures, they should be very transparent about it."
Another case in point is Breton's idea for an "European Industrial Recovery Fund," costed at €1.6 trillion, which he pitched on French media and to the European Parliament's Internal Market Committee last week just hours before von der Leyen presented a €100 billion loan scheme to back up countries' national short-term unemployment programs.
"I'm working with the way which I presented, which is probably the only way to do it, so at the end of the day we will reach consensus," a confident Breton told MEPs.
The announcement bewildered many who didn't appreciate Breton stealing the president's spotlight. "He reminds me of [Günther] Oettinger," said a senior EU official, referring to the former German commissioner who became famous in Brussels for going off script.
Undeterred, Breton doubled down by penning an op-ed three days later with Italian Economy Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni, in which the duo call for European bond-issuance to fund the recovery.
The article was published ahead of an inconclusive Eurogroup meeting on Tuesday where collective debt proved to be one of the apples of discord among EU countries. It had not been previously agreed with von der Leyen, who sent out her chief spokesman Eric Mamer to tell journalists that the president had a different opinion, which is funding recovery through a more ambitious EU budget and a €100 billion unemployment fund.
EU officials said the op-ed blindsided other commissioners, particularly since Breton is not part of the Commission's informal macroeconomy group made of Dombrovskis, Vestager and Gentiloni tasked with dealing with the economic response to the crisis.
Thierry Breton speaks with Ursula von der Leyen | Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty Images
Some in the Commission even raised concerns that the proposed fund by Breton could sabotage von der Leyen's plans because if countries were to pay into such a fund, it would probably reduce their willingness to also finance the president's proposals.
Breton's proposal was ill-received for another reason: It reinforced the idea that he is Paris' man in Brussels.
The day before Breton pitched his idea of a fund to the Parliament, French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire has proposed a time-limited, debt-financed coronavirus rescue fund.
The two men's proposals fanned the flames of a divisive debate between European governments on how to coordinate and pay for the recovery from the crisis.
In addition to his hands-on approach to managing the crisis, Breton has shown signs he doesn't intend to waste it.
"If we think of reconstruction after the economic downturn that is now before us, that is something that we can manage with quite traditional instruments — the European budget, for example, which can be tailored to it," said German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz on Wednesday.
Breton's echo of the French position is seen as denting his European credentials and alienating other capitals, as commissioners are not meant to represent their countries of origin, even if in practice they often do.
Asked if Breton is seen in the Berlaymont as Macron's man, one Commission official said yes, adding: "But he is good!"
An Elysée official acknowledged that Breton is in close contact with the French government.
One Commission official says Breton is seen as Macron's man in the Berlaymont | Eric Piermont/AFP via Getty Images
"We are in touch multiple times a week," the official said. "The president sometimes texts with him."
As early as March, he suggested the epidemic demonstrated the importance of relaunching European manufacturing, a key part of his portfolio, as it revealed the Continent's dangerous dependence on China.
From how he presents himself, it's clear his hands-on attitude reflects the way he sees his role in the Commission.
It's a stance that earned him unlikely friends in the European Parliament. "Thierry Breton has understood that we went too far with globalization," said French MEP Karima Delli, the Greens chairwoman of the Parliament's Transport and Tourism Committee.
Breton, in any case, is not changing the way he operates. From how he presents himself, it's clear his hands-on attitude reflects the way he sees his role in the Commission.
"If some of you believe that, in the Berlaymont, we are at most civil servants thinking only regulation, [it] is not the case," he said in an event streamed by the Bruegel think tank. "We have now people being able to anticipate and to think out of the box.
Maïa de La Baume, Lili Bayer and Rym Momtaz contributed reporting.
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