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The job is the most senior permanent role in the Competition Commission, under the commissioner herself, Teresa Ribera. The Competition Commission is among the EU’s most powerful arms, responsible not just for policy but enforcement, including imposing the controversial €13bn Apple tax decision on Ireland when Margrethe Vestager was commissioner. The competition brief has become more fraught since Donald Trump’s return as US president, with the current White House increasingly unabashed in its opposition to almost any EU enforcement action against US firms. Mr Whelan is currently one of two deputy directors in the Competition Commission. He joined in recent months from a post in EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen’s cabinet, where he was digital adviser. The Irish barrister has been an EU civil servant since 1995, initially at the Court of Justice of the EU in Luxembourg and since 2000 in a series of increasingly senior roles in the European Commission in Brussels. He has been named by -Euractiv, a dedicated EU affairs publication, among a number of internal candidates tipped for the DG competition role vacated by -Olivier Guersent, who has retired. Euractiv is owned by -Mediahuis Group, which also owns the Irish Independent. In a news report yesterday, it named Mr Whelan, Celine Gauer, Ditte Juul Jorgensen and Guillaume Loriot as being in the mix for the job. During his brief pre-EU career in Ireland, Mr Whelan qualified as a barrister at Kings Inns and was a lecturer in public law at Trinity College Dublin. Before that, he gained an bachelor’s degree in law at Trinity College Dublin and a master’s in law from Cambridge University. If he becomes DG competition, he will be among a handful of Irish professionals who have made it to the most senior ranks of the EU’s permanent civil service, alongside the likes of -David O’Sullivan, who served as DG trade and later EU ambassador to the US; and Catherine Day, DG for the environment. Both subsequently capped their Brussels careers as secretary general of the European Commission. While commission staff should not represent the interest of their country of origin, there has been concern of waning Irish influence in Brussels as a cohort of senior leaders ages out.
