French President Emmanuel Macron answers questions from journalists in Brussels on July 18, 2023 (AFP/Emmanuel DUNAND)
French President Emmanuel Macron said he was “skeptical” on Tuesday about the appointment of American Fiona Scott Morton to a key EU post for the regulation of tech giants and said he was waiting for answers from the European Commission.
His declaration made in Brussels, on the sidelines of a summit with the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, comes just before a hearing of the vice-president of the European executive, Margrethe Vestager, before the deputies of the European Parliament at the end of afternoon.
This appointment announced last week aroused indignant reactions in France. Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna had asked the Commission to review this choice. The latter rejected this request, stressing that she saw “no reason” to reconsider this decision.
“If we have no (European) researcher of this level to be recruited by the Commission, that means that we have a very big problem with all the European academic systems”, replied Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday, questioned by journalists.
He also underlined the lack of “reciprocity” on the part of the United States and China to appoint Europeans who would be “at the heart of (their) decisions”.
Elected officials have pinpointed the former functions of Ms. Scott Morton as head of economic analysis at the antitrust division of the United States Department of Justice, between 2011 and 2012, or as a consultant for large tech groups such as Amazon, Apple and Microsoft .
They denounce possible conflicts of interest and the risk of interference by Washington in EU decisions.
Mr. Macron stressed that he had “a lot of respect” for the American expert. But “she has been hired by a lot of companies and should step back from these situations, which makes what we hire her for quite ineffective,” he said.
“I think that Europeans need to develop European skills, to have strategic autonomy (…), we need to have autonomy of thought” and the recruitment of Ms Scott Morton “is not necessarily the decision more consistent in this regard,” he criticized.
© 2023 AFP
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