By Foo Yun Chee
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Commission will restart its search for a chief economist at its antitrust unit after a U.S. economist pulled out due to a French outcry, the EU executive said on Thursday, declining to say if the role would be open to non-EU citizens.
Fiona Scott Morton, the former chief economist at the U.S.
Department of Justice during the Obama administration, cited the political controversy around her appointment for her withdrawal in a letter to EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager.
France, from President Emmanuel Macron to its politicians and a champion of Europe’s strategic autonomy, had been the biggest critics of the hiring of an American to help the European Union police Big Tech.
The EU executive will start afresh, a spokesman told a daily press conference.
“When it comes to the recruitment of a senior manager, when it comes to defining the parameters of the vacancy notice, of course, this discussion has not taken place and I cannot preempt it.
So, we will know this when we have an official vacancy notice which, as I said will come in due course,” the spokesman said.
He said the decision lies with the group of 27 commissioners.
Scott Morton’s appointment had been made possible after the Commission made a rare exemption from EU rules specifying only Europeans for EU jobs in what it said was a search for a specific combination of skills and academic expertise.
(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee;Editing by Elaine Hardcastle)
