{"id":396437,"date":"2026-04-13T15:40:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T15:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/396437\/"},"modified":"2026-04-13T15:40:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T15:40:09","slug":"irishman-anthony-whelan-appointed-to-senior-job-in-european-commission-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/396437\/","title":{"rendered":"Irishman Anthony Whelan appointed to senior job in European Commission \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Irishman Anthony Whelan has been appointed head of the European Commission<\/a>\u2019s competition department, one of the most important positions in the EU executive body. <\/p>\n

Whelan, a career EU civil servant who served as a key adviser to Ursula von der Leyen<\/a> for several years, had been deputy director general of the commission\u2019s competition directorate. <\/p>\n

The commission department oversees politically contentious EU state-aid investigations, such as the Apple case challenging the tech giant\u2019s previous favourable tax arrangements in Ireland. The job heading the commission\u2019s competition arm is a coveted one in the Brussels political system. <\/p>\n

Whelan\u2019s appointment to the senior commission post will be welcome news for the Government and the Department of Foreign Affairs, who have become concerned about losing influence inside the Brussels administration as significant numbers of Irish-born EU civil servants are due to retire in the coming years. <\/p>\n

Although officials working in the commission represent the European interest, rather than a national one, governments still like to have a good spread of their nationals in senior posts. <\/p>\n

The commission is the body that proposes and enforces EU laws. Its antitrust investigations into the practices of US tech multinationals have been a regular point of tension between Brussels and Washington. <\/p>\n

Teresa Ribera, European commissioner for competition and the green transition, welcomed the appointment, saying Whelan would bring \u201cdeep experience in European policymaking\u201d to the job and a \u201cstrong understanding of how our rules serve citizens, innovation and fair markets\u201d<\/p>\n

Ribera, a Spanish politician who took over the high-profile role as competition chief from Margrethe Vestager, said Whelan\u2019s professionalism will be \u201cessential\u201d to help uphold the independence and equal treatment of companies by Brussels regulators. <\/p>\n

Whelan, from Scariff, Co Clare, temporarily took over as von der Leyen\u2019s chief of staff<\/a> for a number of months in 2024, when her closest adviser, Bj\u00f6rn Seibert, took leave to run her political campaign during the European elections. <\/p>\n

Whelan had been the commission president\u2019s adviser on digital policy, and had stepped up as her top adviser on economic affairs for a number of months after the German politician secured a second term running the EU executive. <\/p>\n

Before joining her team he had been the commission\u2019s director of electronic communications networks and services. Whelan previously worked as head of cabinet for Neelie Kroes, a Dutch politician who served as commissioner for competition and digital policy. <\/p>\n

Whelan is a former pupil of Cistercian College Roscrea, Co Tipperary. After school he studied law in Trinity College Dublin, and later worked as a lecturer in public law in the university. <\/p>\n

His work in the EU institutions began in the cabinet of advocate general Nial Fennelly in the European Court of Justice in 1995, after which he moved into the commission\u2019s legal services department.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Irishman Anthony Whelan has been appointed head of the European Commission\u2019s competition department, one of the most important…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":396438,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,5148,1712,61,60,1713],"class_list":["post-396437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-european-union","tag-european-commission","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-ursula-von-der-leyen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396437\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/396438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}