In response, Van der Leyen fired him before the start of his second term as Commission President.
“It's a big deal. It's a good old power play,” said a senior official in von der Leyen's own center-right European People's Party. The official, quoted as writing on condition of anonymity, said: Not allowed to speak openly about a tense and evolving situation.
Von der Leyen, who has led the influential European body since 2019, has earned a reputation for a top-down approach to centralizing power among a small group of trusted advisers. EU officials told Politico that getting rid of one of the bloc's most powerful countries and one of its staunchest critics was a no-brainer to cement Van der Leyen as a global power player. There is an obvious power move.
Breton — known for his public spats with Elon Musk, interest in boosting European defense, and key role in van der Leyen's Covid response — is not the first EU official to challenge and lose to the commission president. Of the handful of commissioners who were hardest on van der Leyen, none remain.
In April, the now-former French commissioner for the EU's single market and industrial policy was one of a handful of commissioners who removed Van der Leyen's chosen special envoy Marks Paper for small and medium-sized enterprises.
The group included Breton and fellow commissioners Nicolas Schmidt and Paolo Gentiloni, along with the bloc's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, who wrote to van der Leyen expressing his concerns about the appointment. He said the appointment “raised questions about the transparency and impartiality of the process.”