Does the EU’s tech ‘enforcer’ know what he’s talking about?

Thierry Breton is, on the face of it, well qualified to regulate Europe’s tech industry. After a brief spell as French finance minister, from 2009 to 2019 he ran the computing giant Atos, one of the champions of France’s IT industry. Yet Atos is now in deep trouble. Shares have plunged more than 90 per cent in the past five years; an issue of new shares to raise fresh capital has been cancelled. Whether the company will survive without a bailout is far from clear.

It is, of course, a while since Breton left Atos for Brussels, where he works as the European Union’s internal market commissioner. A lot may well have changed since Breton’s departure. Yet it is hard to shake the feeling that Atos’s woes go further back than the last few months.

This is an era in which many tech firms are thriving.