Jean-Noël Barrot, tech minister since July 2022, was appointed as new EU minister in the final stretch of the French government reshuffle late on Thursday.
He notably oversaw EU negotiations over the Cloud Act and the AI Act, and took the lead on the “securing and regulating digital space” bill, which transposes both the DMA and DSA into French law and adds new provisions for protecting minors from access to pornographic content.
The bill, which has yet to be adopted, has been met with severe criticism from the European Commission, which issued formal warnings to France on grounds it was going way beyond the DSA’s remit and included provisions that ran contrary to the ban on mass surveillance imposed to EU member states.
The announcement comes a month after the first wave of senior ministers – which saw the appointment of France’s youngest Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal – were appointed as part of a government reshuffle.
However, the list of more junior ministers took quite some time to draft, culminating in a last-minute crisis, with one of Emmanuel Macron’s key allies storming out of the negotiations room.
Barrot will report directly to Stéphane Séjourné, Europe and Foreign Affairs minister and the former President of the Renew Group at the European Parliament. He should be responsible for EU institutional matters and EU integration, primarily economic and military support for Ukraine.
“I am delighted to be joining the Foreign Affairs Ministry and Stéphane Séjourné to work for a united, sovereign and democratic Europe,” the minister posted on X (ex-Twitter).
(Théo Bourgery-Gonse | Euractiv.fr)
Read more with Euractiv
New additions to Meloni’s ECR cools relations between ID and EPPRelations between the European Parliament’s far-right ID group and the right-wing European People’s Party (EPP) seem to have cooled following the new addition of Eric Zemmour’s far-right party Reconquête!, with relations expected to cool even further if and when Orban’s Fidesz joins.
Source: euractiv.com
