Breton’s tweeting would backfire as competition chief, top US economist says

BRUSSELS — Thierry Breton’s hasty tweets could backfire if he becomes the European Union’s competition commissioner, according to a U.S. economist whose EU job hopes he dashed last year.
Yale economics professor Fiona Scott Morton, who quit as the EU’s chief competition economist after a French lobbying campaign, doesn’t think he’d be a good candidate, she told POLITICO last week.
“I think that firing off tweets, if you’re competition commissioner, without careful thought about what’s in them and how that will be perceived by courts and other constituencies could really set back the whole enterprise,” Scott Morton said.
The competition commissioner job is one of the EU’s most powerful posts, with the ability to levy billions of euros in fines for antitrust breaches, block big deals — even those that create European champions — and demand governments reverse course on financial aid for favored companies.
France on Tuesday nominated Breton for a second stint at the European Commission, and it’s no secret President Emmanuel Macron wants him to take on a big economic portfolio. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will decide on posts in the coming weeks.
In Scott Morton’s view, Breton would be a liability because “he isn’t very good, for example, at understanding the legal risk of things that he says.”
Outspoken EU competition officials are a long-running bugbear for competition lawyers and companies facing big cases in Brussels. The current commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, was praised by the legal community for being more tight-lipped then her predecessor Joaquín Almunia, who infuriated corporate lawyers with his public remarks.
One of Breton’s aides insisted that the French commissioner’s comments “are always legally bulletproof, especially when it comes to ongoing cases.”
“Interesting to note that — of all the people — some are calling Ms. Scott Morton to the rescue,” said the person, who was granted anonymity to speak freely.
There’s little love lost between Scott Morton and Breton, who last year led a campaign against her appointment to a sensitive EU post because she wasn’t a citizen of an EU country.
Breton, like the current competition chief Vestager, frequently uses his social media presence to publicize digital enforcement.
Earlier this month, Breton sparred with Elon Musk on X after the EU executive charged the company with letting disinformation run wild on its platform. The tech tycoon said he wanted “a very public battle in court, so that the people of Europe can know the truth.” Breton responded coolly by saying: “Be our guest.”
Ultimately, Scott Morton said, the best person for the job should have “a firm belief that competition is important to growth and productivity and everybody’s well-being, and that you are going to enforce that even if the company is somebody you know or from your home country, or something you consume and love.”
“You just have to be straight and willing to protect consumers all the time,” she said.