Thierry Lets It All Hang Out
The Breton Follies, part II
edited with a correction about von de Leyen and Pfizer 15 1 25
Thierry Breton, you’ve done it again. Someone should write an Ode for this self-styled Disruptor, living embodiment of the ceaseless self-promotion of the Continental Merry-Go-Round, the busiest clown in all of Europe, a man whom, no matter how many times they hand him the bag, always lets the cat out. Thierry has been busy of late, so let’s have a go at it.
In or out of power a perennial guest on les programmes de politique televisée, it’s work keeping up with Breton’s most recent confessions on the evening’s roundtable, where Those In The Know let the rubes into A Bit of the Truth but not The Whole Thing because, as Nicholson put it in his great peroration, You Can’t Handle The Truth. None of that for Thierry ! He’s not saving it for his memoirs, he positively roars the quiet bit out loud.
Riffs readers may remember he got his walking papers back in September when Ursula von der Leyen, the Vampire of Europe, booted him off the European Commission, the holy of holies. Over his illustrious career of Screwing Things Up he’d never been shown the door without so much as a sinecure to salve his wounded pride. He’s been on a tear ever since. This last autumn alone…never mind, last month…no, the last few days…Breton took to the air the second half of last week. On Friday night he gave us a succinct encapsulation of the mindset at the European Commission.
Commenting on the democratic franchise in Roumania and Germany, he said, «Il faut garder le sang-froid. Nous l'avons fait en Roumanie et nous devrons évidemment le faire, si c’est necessaire, en Allemagne.»
This is a straight-up confession of election interference. “We must keep our composure. We did it in Romania and if necessary, we must do it in Germany.” The first refers to presidential elections in Romania, annulled on account of ‘Russian tampering,’ no evidence provided. Leading candidate, outsider Călin Georgescu, had unorthodox, somewhat conservative, somewhat nationalist, opinions. Elections have been rescheduled for May, comfortably far off. Georgescu still leads the polls.
The second comment is even more damaging, suggesting the European Union is ready to play fast and loose with February elections in Germany. That’s quite an admission, an earthquake. The two parties Breton had in mind are the conservative AfD and BSW, politically liberal but socially conservative, both a threat to the shaky coalition of Christian Democrats and Greens.
Breton isn’t at the Commission Table anymore but insinuates he knows their strategy. His off-the-cuff admission continues his personal vendetta with von der Leyen, knowing the Commission can neither affirm nor deny his comments.
Of course that’s just Breton’s opinion but he has a right to express it, non ? It could be fake news. You decide.
On Sunday evening Romanians, enraged by Breton’s comments, took to the streets of Bucharest to protest European interference in their fragile democracy. Score another for Thierry.
On Saturday, after noting that one hundred and fifty European ‘fact-checkers’ watched Elon Musk’s conversation on X with Alice Weidel, the AfD’s candidate for Federal Chancellor, Breton accused the billionaire of gross behavior and election interference; further he proposed banning X in Europe if the owner doesn’t censor his freewheeling site. Conducted in English, Musk’s conversation with Weidel hasn’t budged her poll numbers in Germany but has moved politicians to hysterics. The elites are nervous. People are saying bad things about them. On Monday of this week French Green Marine Tondelier echoed Breton’s call to ban X ‘to save our democracies,’ without offering substantive examples of the site’s bad behavior.
You can’t go wrong with a truth teller like Thierry Breton ! His loyalty to the EU hierarchy and evident distaste for Madame von der Leyen is unquenchable. Is he hinting that the grand bureaucracy, hier to the Austro-Hungarian empire, is riven by internal dissent? Emily O’Reilly painted a somewhat similar picture when she announced her departure from the august office of EU Ombudswoman for Accountability and Transparency a month ago, using language that will endear her to the capos. O’Reilly characterised the Commission as a battleground between competing ‘consiglieri,’ a comparison to the Mafia sure to make EU higher-ups uncomfortable. ‘Intelligent people, none of them elected to anything,’ O’Reilly added in her interview with Politico.
All of which really begs the question, Are there so few capable elites in Europe that we must suffer imbeciles like this to run the show ? Can we not do better than Breton, von der Leyen, Baerbock, Scholz, Macron, Starmer et al, their cabinets stuffed full of nobodies with inflated CVs ? What happened to the Sagacious European who takes the long view ? Possibly extinct. Soros & Co. must be convulsed with laughter as they watch an army of bureaucrats shut down debate. Only irritants in Eastern Europe like Fico and Georgescu refuse to play the game. Russia, the dread Russia, which supplied Europe with gas at half the price, is always available to play the Bogey Man, Casus Belli, guilty for all eternity. The Ukraine war marches on, endlessly. They’ll be dragging children to the front shortly.
Let’s be grateful to Cher Thierry for a few peaks behind the curtain. He’s obviously not content to pass the time counting his considerable fortune in his Moroccan digs. He could go back to novels, like the three techno-thrillers he penned in his youth but how can they compete with the lure of having his way with a microphone live on primetime ? Television will never tire of the Thierry Bretons of this world. Does he dream of a French presidential run in ’27, when immigration and EU membership are sure to be dominant issues? I don’t think he’s cut out for the hurly burly of elections these days. Too much disinformation.
Like Breton, Von der Leyen rarely responds to criticism but may soon have to: she’s due in court in Belgium. Von der cancelled all events and public appearances for the first half of January when she came down with pneumonia, although the Commission spokesman says she is working remotely and is in close touch with her working groups. A fortuitous turn of events. The 10th of January has come and gone without her having to answer questions about the purchase of millions of vaccines from Pfizer, the pharma giant with a long track record of endangering public health. That was November of 2020. She appears to have negotiated the deal with Albert Bourla, head of Pfizer, over the phone, which, you can imagine, is ever so wildly irregular in todays’ EU regulation hothouse. But Madame just couldn’t resist. Now she has to stare down the judge in a courtroom in Liège.
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Am I too tough on Thierry Breton, former Outstanding Young Person in the World (’88, Australian Jaycees), critic of real estate and le monde informatique before he morphed into corporate titan and government minister ? When he was Minister of Finances in the first decade of the century he did try to tackle the ravenous French bureaucracy, a third rail most politicians are afraid to touch.
In the meantime no need to resign your office: you can buy me a cup of coffee for my disinformation efforts here. Be the first to do so. (I’m either doing something terribly wrong, or a few things that piss people off, I can’t tell.) Paid subscriptions are set at Substack’s lowest rate.