His successor, Guersent said, 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.”
What’s next for the longtime official? Traveling and quality time with family, he said. His wife has also recently retired, and his third child has just left for university.
Guersent said he’s firmly resisted any (likely sizable) offers for consultancy work. “I have refused any paid job … and any kind of academic recurrent commitments because I want to have at least a year or two where I’m free to do whatever I want to do.”
No books are on the horizon, the official said, except a “very, very dry treaty on competition law” that he will work on with his “friend,” Jonathan Faull, a former British senior Commission official, now a consultant at Brunswick, and Ali Nikpay, a professor at Oxford and lawyer at international firm Gibson Dunn.
While travels are on the agenda, he won’t stay away from France — where he famously boasts tomato-growing ambitions — or the EU capital for too long.
“After 32 years, most of our friends are in Brussels.”