Thierry Breton, the EU’s Internal Market Commissioner and tech enforcer until September 2024, has received special approval from the European Commission to start a new job with Bank of America without undergoing a normal two-year cooling-off period.
Normally, former Commissioners must wait two years after leaving office before engaging in lobbying activities.
However, the European Commission said Breton’s employment would not breach EU regulations so long as he refrains from lobbying on behalf of the bank and kept sensitive EU information confidential.
“The European Commission is making a mockery of its own rules on banning lobbying for former European Commissioners,” Green MEP Daniel Freund told French news agency AFP.
“Former Commissioner Breton’s envisaged post term of office activity as a member of the Global Advisory Council [GAC] of Bank of America is compatible with Article 245 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union,” the Commission wrote in its January 16 decision.
Breton will join Bank of America as a member of its Global Advisory Council. He told AFP his role would be primarily consultative, involving only three meetings a year focused on economic and geopolitical issues.
“How is this not a lobbying gig?” Freund said to the news outlet Politico. “They pretend they have cooling-off periods and strict integrity. There is a website [where] all such decisions are published. They sneak it out the back door, but my team monitors such things.”
Virginie Joron, a French MEP for the Patriots for Europe Group, said in a reaction on X it was “a farce.”
“The Commission? (Ursula has been out for a month due to “pneumonia”) approves Bank of America’s new role for Musk’s nemesis, Thierry Breton, despite a regulation requiring a two-year waiting period before taking a new position involving lobbying or potential conflicts of interest,” Joron said.
“This farce with Breton, this self-righteous lecturer, is beyond pathetic—it’s dangerous.”
Breton served for five years in one of the previous Commission’s most powerful positions. He resigned after von der Leyen asked France to withdraw his name from the list of candidates for the next Commission.
The European Commission said Breton had no contact with Bank of America during his mandate in the Commission.
The European Commission hushed up an attempt by former Commissioner Neelie Kroes to secure an exemption to ethics rules that would allow her to lobby on behalf of Uber. https://t.co/42ie9Kvy68
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) September 15, 2023
Since resigning, Breton has made headlines with outspoken opposition to US entrepreneur Elon Musk.
When Musk held a public conversation with the Alternative for Germany’s joint leader Alice Weidel, Breton said the move constituted foreign election interference.
Breton called for a crackdown on Musk’s X platform, saying it could be banned throughout Europe.
The former commissioner also described recent developments in US politics as “shocking”, in an interview with business newspaper Handelsblatt.
The Bank of America is a US multinational investment bank and financial services holding company. It is the US’s second-largest bank, and the second-largest worldwide by market capitalisation, in both cases after JPMorgan Chase.
Paris acts as a hub for the bank’s market activities within the EU. The bank must therefore adhere to EU capital requirements, consumer protection rules, and data privacy laws.
Former EU Commissioner Thierry Breton has decried recent allegations of censorship within the European Union as just a “buzzword” pushed by “conspiracy theorists”. https://t.co/rZOKYwpTQv
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) January 15, 2025
