Bonum Certa Men Certa

Understanding Thierry Breton: Thierry & Nicolas - a Bromance That Turned Sour?

Overview





Understanding Thierry Breton



Further parts pending review and research




Sarkozy and Breton
Thierry and Nicolas: despite a promising start, the bromance turned sour in the end.



Summary: "Whatever Sarkozy's motives may have been, he decided to dispense with the services of his former colleague and so Breton's ministerial career came to an abrupt end in the summer of 2007."

Thierry and Nicolas go back a long way to the days when they were ministerial colleagues under the presidency of Jacques Chirac between 2002 and 2007.



"Sarko", or Nicolas Paul Stéphane Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa, to give him his full name, joined the Chirac government in 2002 where he served as Minister for the Interior.

Thierry joined the cabinet as Minister for the Economy a few years later in February 2005. He replaced Hervé Gaymard who was forced to resign after the satirical investigative newspaper Le Canard enchaîné disclosed that he was using public money to fund the cost of an exclusive Parisien apartment for his family.

Sarkozy and Breton with group
President Jacques Chirac with Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin and his cabinet, including Sarkozy and Breton in the front row



In 2004, Sarkozy began to position himself as a contender to succeed Chirac and he was successful in securing election as leader of the UMP, the French conservative party.

He moved to the Ministry for the Economy for a short stint between 2004 and 2005 and then returned to his former post at the Ministry for the Interior where he remained until he stepped down in March 2007 to focus on his election campaign to become President of the Republic.

Sarkozy faces
"Sarko", Minister for Silly Faces who became President in 2007.



It would appear that Thierry and Nicolas enjoyed cordial collegial relations at the cabinet table. Many photos from that time show them having a good laugh in each other's company.

There were signs that a Gallic bromance was beginning to blossom between the two poster-boys of the UMP's ultra-liberal wing. But appearances can be deceptive especially in the ultra-Machiavellian world of French politics.

Sarkozy and Breton as pair
Colleagues at the cabinet table (2005): Thierry Breton (Minister for the Economy), Nicolas Sarkozy (Minister for the Interior) and President Jacques Chirac



Sarkozy and Breton with Chirac
Thierry and Nikolas having a cordial collegial tête-à-tête.
Uncle Jacques looks on with a furrowed brow.
"What are those little rascals up to this time?"



Sarkozy and Breton trio
Thierry and Nikolas enjoying a good chortle together with their ministerial colleagues.
Who are they planning to shaft this time?



Sarkozy with Breton behind
Catch-me-if-you-can.
Nikolas plays hard-to-get
with Thierry in hot pursuit.



A photo of the duo taken on the margins of the Armistice Day Ceremony against the backdrop of the Arc de Triomphe in 2005 contains a premonition of things to come. Maybe it was just the November weather, but Nicolas has a distinctly frosty countenance and his attitude towards his cabinet colleague seems to be on the chilly side.

Sarkozy, Breton in Paris
Thierry and Nicolas at the Armistice Day Ceremony in Paris (11 November 2005).
Early signs of a chill in the relationship?



Sarkozy's presidential ambitions had become clear from around 2004 onwards. This led to increasing tensions between the ambitious acolyte and his former mentor, Chirac, the elder statesman of the UMP party. Breton opted to maintain his personal loyalty to Chirac and this seems to have led to a growing alienation from Sarkozy despite their ideological closeness.

"Breton opted to maintain his personal loyalty to Chirac and this seems to have led to a growing alienation from Sarkozy despite their ideological closeness."However, Breton did not permit the cracks in the personal relationship to become visible to the public eye. In January 2007 when the UMP elected Sarkozy as the party's candidate for the presidential election later that year, he rose to the occasion and delivered an endorsement speech during the official investiture held in Paris.

UMP Breton
Breton giving an endorsement speech for UMP presidential candidate Sarkozy during the official investiture in Paris (January 2007)



He accompanied Sarkozy on the election campaign trail and appeared as a supportive colleague in the usual photo-ops, for example, at an educational center in the town of Joue-les-Tours in April 2007.

UMP, Sarkozy and Breton
UMP presidential candidate Sarkozy accompanied by Breton during a visit to an educational centre in Joue-les-Tours (April 2007)



Sarkozy's provocative public utterances as Minister for the Interior, such as his description of urban rioters as "scum", "riff-raff" and "hoodlums", led to him being dubbed the "candidate for brutality" by his critics who warned that his election as President would polarise French society. But his tough language and hardline poses made a positive impression among certain sections of the electorate and he soon gained the pole position.

Throughout the later campaign period he remained consistently ahead of his main rival, the Socialist Party candidate Ségolène Royal, and it came as no surprise when he emerged as the winner in the final round of the electoral contest in May 2007.

"Breton's close personal loyalty to Chirac made him "unreliable" in Sarkozy's eyes."Chirac recommended to Sarkozy that he keep Breton in his post as Minister for the Economy. But the President-elect was very much his own man and he decided not to follow the advice of his erstwhile mentor.

Breton's close personal loyalty to Chirac made him "unreliable" in Sarkozy's eyes. Another factor which counted against him was the perception that his political credibility was on the line because of the EADS insider trading scandal.

Noël Forgerard's "golden parachute" had become a prominent topic of public discussion during the 2007 presidential election campaign and Breton's involvement in this saga raised a number of awkward questions for the UMP.

Whatever Sarkozy's motives may have been, he decided to dispense with the services of his former colleague and so Breton's ministerial career came to an abrupt end in the summer of 2007.

"Whatever Sarkozy's motives may have been, he decided to dispense with the services of his former colleague and so Breton's ministerial career came to an abrupt end in the summer of 2007."But even after his official departure from the political parquet, Breton continued to play a significant behind-the-scenes role, for example by advising François Baroin when the latter was Minister of the Budget in 2010-2011.

They say that revenge is a dish best eaten cold and this is a view that Thierry seems to subscribe to. He waited almost a decade before settling accounts with Nicolas for having snubbed him in 2007.

In 2016 when Sarkozy published a book reviewing his term of office as President between 2007 and 2012, Breton went public with an excoriating indictment of Sarkozy's lack of economic rigour and his incompetent management of the financial crisis which occurred on his watch.

"In the next part we will look at Breton's close connections with another prominent French political figure, the "killer-shark" Christine Lagarde, former head of the IMF and now Director of the European Central Bank."In particular, Breton criticised the explosion in the French national debt during Sarkozy's term of office:

"We had a crisis management between 2007 and 2012 that was one of the worst of all European countries. France's debt has been increased by €600 billion. We fell way behind Germany."

In the next part we will look at Breton's close connections with another prominent French political figure, the "killer-shark" Christine Lagarde, former head of the IMF and now Director of the European Central Bank.

Recent Techrights' Posts

For the First Time in a Month OSI's "OpenSource.org" Blogs and It's Basically a Microsoft Blog Post (Microsoft Controls OSI)
For the first time in a month OSI writes something and it is Microsoft propaganda composed by a Microsoft-salaried operative
Microsoft, Already Borrowing 3 Billion Dollars a Month, is Trying to Cause Many People to Resign
MSN (i.e. Microsoft) and others openly admit it
They Want Activists to Just Barely Walk and Eat, Not Do Activism Anymore
It's sort of like the ending of '1984'
Non-Free JavaScript Programs in Banks Aren't Even the Biggest Problem
Technology was supposed to make life easier; in practice, however, for most of us the opposite effect can be observed
IBM is Obliterating Fedora
"Fedora releases were shipping with an increasing number of bugs on launch day even while I was using it for a several year stretch."
Red Hat Layoffs Expected in 5 Days (Monday)
"They will announce and proceed with the cuts on 08/11."
 
Links 07/08/2025: Hardware Wars, Mass Recall of Colgate Total Clean Mint, More Microsoft Holes Found
Links for the day
Gemini Links 07/08/2025: "Right To Manage" and LoRa Analysis
Links for the day
GAFAM 'Says' is Front Page "News"
The point of journalism is to check and assess facts, not parrot what people and companies merely claim
Links 07/08/2025: Apple Makes False Promises, More Trouble for Microsoft
Links for the day
OSS Didn't Always Mean Open Source Software
"oligarchs all the way down"
The Register MS Does More Microsoft Sez or GitHub Sez (Says) Pieces
60 minutes ago
Quit Perpetuating the Narrative of Gemini Protocol 'Dying' (It's False)
The "whisper campaign" against Gemini Protocol
Criticising Social Control Media in Social Control Media
Many people are quitting Social Control Media (fewer of them announce this in public)
Slopfarms Are Typically Fake News
Slopfarms typically relay falsehoods
Gemini Links 06/08/2025: Replacing a Pocket Watch and Buying in Bulk
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, August 06, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, August 06, 2025
August Hits Microsoft Hard: Dead Divisions, Dead Products, Layoffs Again (on Week 1)
Microsoft's debt is soaring
Slopwatch: Slow Day for LLM Slop, Serial Sloppers Still at It in Their Slopfarms
The Web would be better off if those sites went offline
Links 06/08/2025: Substack in Trouble, Slop Sceptic Shira Perlmutter Seeks Emergency Injunction Pending Appeal
Links for the day
Gemini Links 06/08/2025: Pinephone, Reverse-Engineering, and More
Links for the day
Links 06/08/2025: Faked Values of Slop Companies and Government Bailouts
Links for the day
FOSSY 2025 Conference Safety
The GAFAM-funded FOSSY 2025 is over
Microsoft's Favourite Pay-to-Say 'Analyst' Firm Has Just Collapsed
'Analysts' that helped propel Microsoft to fictional values akin to Ponzi schemes
Ask Google (Jeeves)
What does Google "know", not know, or would rather forget (or embellish)?
They Want You To Talk About Trump or 'The Other Bill' in Relation to Trafficking of Underage Girls for Sexual Exploitation
Just something we wanted to say...
How to Quadruple Your "Goodwill" Value and Grow Your (Wall) Street "Value" From $152B to $4000B Without Producing a Single Successful Product/Service
The longer it goes on for, the bigger the implosion will be
Staying Productive
Two very reputable institutions recently told us they now reckon Microsoft is somehow funding those SLAPPs against us
A Blow for Patent Ambitions of Bill Epsteingate
It's about money
66 Countries Where More People Use iPhones (or iPads) Than Microsoft Windows, According to statCounter Data
a list of countries where iOS now exceeds Windows
Apple's iOS Bigger Than Microsoft Windows in Many Countries
This ought to alarm Microsoft
The Mainstream Media Talks About Spotify Share Price and Price Hikes, Not Its Debt Increasing by About 33% in Just 12 Months
Spotify isn't a company in good shape
New "US Editor for The Register" is 80% Microsoft and Windows
they typically just treat Microsoft like the "Holy Grail" of "IT"
Microsoft is Apparently Sending Gag Orders or NDAs to Staff That Got Laid Off (“We were told not to post on LinkedIn. Not to say anything.”)
The main lies we keep seeing
Richard M. Stallman Has Published AI Memos Since 1980 (45 Years Ago)
Back when the term AI actually meant something
Gemini Links 06/08/2025: BitTorrent and Feedly Bots
Links for the day
Windows All-Time Lows, Android All-Time Highs in Kuwait
New lows for Windows can be found in many countries this month
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, August 05, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, August 05, 2025
Openwashing Slop... Using Slop!
So get ready for "open" "hey hi" with its proprietary models to engage in openwashing, helped by serial sloppers who use the LLMs to produce fake 'articles'.
On "Tragedy of the Commons in the Production of Digital Artifacts"
There's a better way to do things. None of that should involve GAFAM.
Gemini Links 05/08/2025: Opel Zoo near Frankfurt and Alhena 5.2.5
Links for the day
The Inflammatory Influence of Social Control Media Giants
CPC's ByteDance says it's cool
Microsoft v Planet Earth
Is Microsoft profitable?
IRC Turns 37
Internet Relay Chat (short: IRC), which started in 1988, turns 37 this month
Shortly After a Microsofter Took Over The Register as Editor in Chief Microsoft Tim (Tim Anderson) is Back and It's Still Microsoft Propaganda, Sometimes Funded by Microsoft
Notice his focus
Stricter Enforcement of Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act is Sorely Needed
Who's keeping track anyway?
Calling Plagiarism "Intelligence" is Pure Genius, Brilliance!
One thing to "like" (or dislike) about LLMs is how they're falsely marketed using various buzzwords
Geminispace Promises Simplicity But Also Provides a "bunch of forums that get flood-filled by agitation against the very essence of Gemini itself"
claims of stagnation in Geminispace started because of a person who spent a long time agitating against GNU/Linux as well
Zimbabweans Aren't Into Windows or Microsoft
This cannot be good news for GAFAM
Microsoft's Washington Layoffs Aren't Everything, They're Definitely Not Happening in Just One State in the US
Washington is just more strict with WARN notices
Gemini Links 05/08/2025: Lagrange v1.18.6, No Stagnation in Geminispace, and Fake Coding (Slop)
Links for the day
The Register's Editor in Chief (Who Left for Google) Told Me "AI" Was a Bubble, But Now The Register Gets Paid to Participate in Inflating This Bubble
A lot of the online media is a scam
The Register is Desperate for Money, According to The Register
I decided to check how they're doing as a business
Some Cola Formulas Aren't Secret, But the Barrier is the Branding
That's the power of the channel/distribution, marketing, and brand recognition (accomplished through endless marketing)
Introducing Mission:Libre and FreeXR (and BreakXR)
efforts that accompany the foundations put there by the Free Software Foundation in 1985
Slopwatch: WebProNews, LinuxSecurity, and Some Success Stories
Google News still has a slopfarm issue
Links 05/08/2025: Hey Hi (AI) Passing Fads and GAFAM "Embracing the Military"
Links for the day
Links 05/08/2025: Samsung and Microsoft Layoffs
Links for the day
Rumours of Mass Layoffs at Red Hat Next Week (August 11th, 2025)
The eleventh means next Monday
IBM is Shutting Down (Piecewise)
IBM is basically being liquidated
The Debian Language Police Department (PD)
"there has never been complaints about anyone that was offended by this -off package"
Tesla's Debt More Than Doubled in 2 Years and the Company Will Operate in the Red (at a Loss) Quite Soon
If your first-quarter net income is $409 million and you borrow billions from banks, plus interest to pay on those loans, then you're not far from returning to losses
When The Register MS Says "Linux Backdoor" It Actually Talks About Malware
The leading story in The Register US/MS this morning is Microsoft
Microsoft Windows Fell to 19% "Market Share" in Montenegro
Microsoft must be well aware of this trend
Why We Also Include Gopher Links in Our Gemini (Protocol) Links
There are still many people who use Gopher to relay their messages (like blog posts). They're mostly technical people.
Shouting is an Indication of a Lack of Convincing Argument
Beware what they are attempting to distract from
Mongolia: Microsoft Windows at All-Time Low
in 2009 when Windows was at 99.45% in Mongolia the company was "worth" less than 200 billion dollars
About a Quarter of Today's "linux" News in Google News Came From One Domain and It's a Slopfarm
Not kidding!
Gemini Links 05/08/2025: Zombie Threat and Switching to NixOS
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, August 04, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, August 04, 2025
ChatGPT in Trouble
Watch out for the newer buzzwords
The Register MS Links to the Wrong statCounter Page
They link to older data
Dr. Andy Farnell Explains How Google Turned From "Librarian" Into "Oracle", Telling Us What to Think Instead of Where to Look
Google was always a lousy librarian
Microsoft Layoffs Continue in August 2025
If Microsoft is doing so well, how come about 10 rounds of layoffs in about 7 months in 2025?