International Politics

[Nintex]

The anti-growth censorship clown has been pushed out. Make Europe Great Again  

can you give more context on what he was doing that was bad

He's responsible for a regulatory push on AI, digital services and more. His vision is that the EU can 'regulate' Silicon Valley. In reality he mostly pushes policies that curb innovation and protect big corporations (mostly French) that don't innovate from competitors. I wouldn't call it corruption, it's just the general idea in French politics that the big corporations must be protected by the state and are more or less an extension of that state. France can't hope to compete and Breton believes the EU can't either, so his solution is to level the playing field with regulations which give EU corporations that can meet all the regulatory demands a leg up over their foreign competitors. But that also means SMEs can't compete with big firms because they can't hire the GDPR data officers and legal teams required to meet the demands of their clients. There is very little real data on what these regulations actually do or achieve to protect privacy or protect the EU market but those against it are framed as right wing radicals which is why he openly feuds with Elon Musk so much. 

Von der Leyen however threw a curve ball and asked Mario Draghi to issue a report on the state of the EU economy and to the surprise of everyone Draghi (or his team) actually talked to digital nomads and entrepeneurs and asked them why they were not doing business in the EU but choose to go to Singapore, The United States and other places instead. Mario Draghi estimated in his report that the GDPR alone costs SMEs and start-ups in the EU 15% in lost revenue on average and many more billions in lost revenue because a lot of tech talent leaves the EU. His report is shaking up EU politics because no one expected him to go in such detail of how seemingly unrelated policies and regulations affect the economy.