EU Digital Commissioner Says He's Perfect for the Job – Because Uses the Internet and Can Work an iPhone

Everyone has the occasional jitter about a new job: will they be able to manage a new team and get to grips with the industry jargon?

But this doesn’t seem to be a concern for the EU’s new digital commissioner who has said that he’s the perfect man for the job – because he can browse the web and use a search engine, reports the Telegraph.

Gunther Oettinger, who will find out next week in Strasbourg if MEPs support his appointment, told German regional newspaper Passauer Neue Presser “I go online every day”.

Mr Oettinger, who will a oversee a large and technical portfolio including the IT and telecoms industries, has perhaps failed to grasp the complexity of the technologies and legislation, and boasted that he can cover multiple areas at the same time:

“Sometimes I even put my own appointments into the calendar using my iPhone.”

He has previously caused controversy by saying celebrities who store naked pictures of themselves on iCloud were “Stupid”.

“The fact that recently there have been an increasing number of public lamentations about nude photos of celebrities who took selfies – I just can’t believe it,” he said.

“If someone is dumb enough as a celebrity to take a nude photo of themselves and put it online, they surely can’t expect us to protect them. “I mean, stupidity is something you cannot – or only partly – save people from” he said in a comment, which may come back to haunt him.

However, Mr Oettinger’s experience of the internet seems only to have been positive:

“It facilitates things enormously” said the man who is, admittedly, unlikely to be the subject of any naked selfie shots.