It’s a pity Thierry Breton didn’t resign sooner

The spectacular resignation of Thierry Breton from the European Commission suggests that the president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen is not quite as useless as her numerous critics suggest. Breton’s departure was overdue. Credit to von der Leyen for wielding the long knife.

Breton’s arrogance was exceeded only by his uselessness. After Mario Draghi’s taxonomy of European decline last week, the role of Breton as commissioner in charge of the single market was a nonsense. Draghi said Europe is on a path to self-destruction, becoming nothing more than an open-air museum, sustained by tourism.

Gavin Mortimer wrote here that Draghi admitted to having ‘nightmares’ about Europe’s future if nothing can be done to halt what he described as the ‘slow agony’ of the continent’s decline. It is a damning indictment of how moribund the EU has become that of the world’s leading 50 tech firms only four are European.