PARIS (Reuters) -Patrick Pouyanne, the chairman and CEO of TotalEnergies, said on Friday the European Union may wish to consider its own government downsizing programme, like the one implemented by U.S. President Donald Trump.
Many critics of the EU say its bureaucratic processes hold back the bloc compared to the U.S. and China, which have faster growing economies.
“It’s a machine we have created in Brussels – I don’t know if we need a DOGE programme – plenty of civil servants, which are in fact there to create regulations. That’s a problem … Sometimes you must say, ‘Okay, let’s eliminate it,'” Pouyanne said at the Council on Foreign Relations, referring to the Department of Government Efficiency, which is overseeing a sweeping government cost-cutting programme in the U.S.
“It’s a question, can Europeans really re-think their own model?” he added.
(Reporting by America Hernandez and Sudip Kar-Gupta; Editing by Kirsten Donovan and Paul Simao)
