*Anthony Whelan.
SCARIFF’s Anthony Whelan is among the leading contenders for one of the most powerful jobs in the European Commission.
Anthony has emerged as one of the front-runners to become Director General for Competition which is the most senior permanent role in the Competition Commission, under the commissioner herself, Teresa Ribera.
Regarded as one of the European Union’s most powerful arms, the Competition Commission is responsible for policy and enforcement including imposing the controversial €13bn Apple tax decision on Ireland last September.
Frenchman Olivier Guersent officially retired from the post at the end of July. He recommended that his successor should “resist all the self-serving nonsense of the CEOs of large firms when they whisper to the ears of prime ministers,” that, for example, they would be “a lot more competitive with a lot less competition.”
An EU civil servant since 1995, Anthony was first working as legal secretary in the chambers of the Irish Advocate General Nial Fennelly at the Court of Justice of the EU in Luxemburg but since 2000 he has climbed through the ranks of senior roles in the European Commission in Brussels. In 2006, he led the legal service of the Commission in their high-profile case involving Microsoft in 2006, where the tech giant was fined a record €500 million over competition breaches.
At present, he is one of two deputy directors in the Competition Commission, having recently joined from the cabinet of EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen where he most recently served as a senior economic advisor. He began working for von der Leyen in late 2019 as a digital advisor before she formally entered office.
Born in Moynoe in Scariff, he attended Dooglaun NS in Killanena which closed in 1974 before moving to Scariff NS when his mother Brid Whelan transferred to the teaching staff there. He attended the Cistercian College in Roscrea before studying Law at Trinity College for four years in the late 1980s. He taught public law in the Law School of Trinity College as the youngest ever lecturer in the famed college. He qualified as a barrister at Kings Inns. His father Jackie owned Leyland Garage in Scariff for many years which is now the site of Tom Collins Engineering.
In 2024, he served as Chief of Staff for the European Commission President for three months during her campaign to secure a second term. “You see a lot as an advisor in her Cabinet but when you’re the Head of the Cabinet you see everything or you are meant to see everything, to have some steer on it, it was a quite enough period because it was an electoral period, it made it a bit easier than if we were in full production,” Whelan recalled of the role.
Speaking on Scariff Bay Community Radio in May on their award winning ‘Democracy In Action’ series, Anthony outlined that his working days were generally from 8am to 8pm. “The President lives in the office, she has an apartment just beside, when she is not back in Germany she works at the weekend and we help out let’s say”. On working with von der Leyen, he commented, “She is very focused, one good thing about any leader is she works harder than any of us, she leads by example in that sense, it is a hard example to follow”.
Based in Brussels, “when weather permits” he cycles to work. “If I was on public transport I would be reading emails all the way home so the bike is obligatory headspace”. He has completed ten marathons including Paris, Rotterdam, Seville and he ran in New York City for Clare Crusaders. He said “the view of Lough Derg” is among the items he misses the most from Co Clare.
According to a report by Euractiv, Anthony is one of four candidates in the hunt for the top job alongside Guillaume Loriot, head of the Commission’s energy department Ditte Juul Jørgensen, Director General of the Commission’s Reform and Investment Task Force, Céline Gauer and Guillaume Loriot who is currently Deputy DG in the Competition sector.
