Von der Leyen and Macron in ‘backroom deal’ to force out top EU commissioner

Thierry Breton resigns after accusing commission president of ‘questionable governance’ and horse-trading with French president

France’s EU commissioner has accused Ursula von der Leyen and Emmanuel Macron of forcing him out of Brussels in a backroom deal that culminated in his resignation on Monday.
Thierry Breton attacked the EU Commission president’s “questionable governance” in a letter he posted on social media on Monday.
He claimed Mrs Von der Leyen offered France a more influential role in her new executive in exchange for getting rid of him “for personal reasons”.
It comes amid horse-trading over jobs in the new EU executive, which has been dominated by Mrs Von der Leyen’s struggle to name a gender-balanced “college” of commissioners.
But by Monday lunchtime, Mr Macron appeared to have spurned the commission president’s demand for two candidates by only nominating a man for the position – his outgoing foreign minister, Stéphane Séjourné.
The Elysée Palace said Mr Séjourné, who is a close ally of Mr Macron, “meets all the required criteria” for the position, having previously led the centrist Renew Europe group in the European Parliament.
In his resignation letter, Mr Breton accused Mrs Von der Leyen of having “questionable governance” and offering France more influence in return for getting rid of him.
“A few days ago, in the very final stretch of negotiations on the composition of the future college, you asked France to withdraw my name – for personal reasons that in no instance you have discussed directly with me – and offered as a political trade off an allegedly more influential portfolio for France,” he wrote.
Mrs Von der Leyen pledged that there would be gender parity in her administration, but some EU capitals have been reluctant to name female candidates to serve for the next five years.
Romania and Slovenia have replaced male candidates with women under pressure from Mrs Von der Leyen, who is reported to have dangled plum jobs as rewards for naming female candidates.
Mr Breton said Mr Macron had already announced that he had picked him to be France’s commissioner for a second five-year term before saying he would propose a different candidate.
“In light of these latest developments – further testimony to questionable governance – I have to conclude that I can no longer exercise my duties in the college,” Mr Breton said. “I am therefore resigning from my position as European commissioner, effective immediately.”
The decision of the 69-year-old former chief executive of France Telecom to resign will force Mrs Von der Leyen into a quick reshuffle of responsibilities held by her current commissioners.
Mr Breton and Mrs Von der Leyen clashed in public and private during the five years he was France’s commissioner.
Mr Breton is best known in Britain as the EU’s coronavirus tsar during the pandemic. During a row over jabs in 2021, he introduced export controls on vaccines that prevented a shipment of AstraZeneca jabs being delivered from the Netherlands to the UK.
He also threatened an EU vaccine blockade of Britain, if Boris Johnson did not abide by the terms of the then recently agreed Brexit deal.
EU sources said Mr Breton was ultimately ousted by Mrs Von der Leyen because he had become “ungovernable”.
The former French commissioner had repeatedly issued public statements, such as his open letter denouncing Elon Musk’s interview with Donald Trump on social media platform X, without permission from his boss.
“You can’t have someone like that, a rattlesnake in the basket, next to you,” a source said.
Mr Breton also had a reputation for over-regulating using European powers. A recent report by Mario Draghi, the former Italian prime minister, recommended overhauls to the bloc’s competition rules, many of which were drawn up by the Frenchman to counter rivalries with the US and China.
It is widely considered that Mr Macron nominated Mr Breton as France’s EU commissioner to remove a problematic voice from domestic politics.
Mr Séjourné, 39, was appointed foreign minister earlier this year despite at the time being a novice on the international diplomatic scene. He is one of the “Macron boys” who helped him win the presidency in 2017 and led the Renew group in the European Parliament and Macron’s Renaissance party in France.