French president Emmanuel Macron is preparing to name Thierry Breton, a tech CEO and former finance minister, to be EU single market commissioner.
The second choice comes after MEPs rejected his first pick, Sylvie Goulard.
And the stakes are high in Macron's bid to wield influence in Brussels as well as to assert authority on the wider EU stage.
Breton, the CEO of French tech firm Atos, was Macron's "favourite" and was "well placed" to take the post, French magazine Le Can...
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Andrew Rettman is EUobserver's foreign editor, writing about foreign and security issues since 2005. He is Polish, but grew up in the UK, and lives in Brussels. He has also written for The Guardian, The Times of London, and Intelligence Online.