Thierry Breton is a French business executive, politician, writer and the current Commissioner for Internal Market of the European Union. Breton was vice-chairman and CEO of Groupe Bull (1996–1997), chairman and CEO of Thomson-RCA (1997–2002) and chairman and CEO of France Télécom (2002–2005). In 2005 he entered politics serving as Minister of Economy, Finance and Industry (2005–2007) in the governments of Prime Ministers Jean-Pierre Raffarin and Dominique de Villepin, during the presidency of Jacques Chirac. From 2007 to 2008 he was a professor at Harvard Business School before joining group Atos from 2009 to 2019 as its CEO.

A dispute broke out in January 2021 between the European Commission and the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca AB about the provision of COVID-19 vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic, and, in February, spilled out into a dispute over Article 16 of the Northern Ireland Protocol. Vaccination proceeded apace in the UK but more slowly in the EU, and by the end of March 2021, over 30% of the UK population had received at least one dose of vaccine compared to about 8% of the EU population. This was partly due to limited availability of the AstraZeneca vaccine in the EU. The World Health Organization and the European Medicines Agency continued to state that the vaccine was safe and effective. However, a representative of the European Medicines Agency said in June that vaccines based on the mRNA technology should be preferred if available for all age groups, including for the over 60s.