Jacques Delors, one of the great architects of European integration, died this Wednesday at the age of 98. Outside France, where he was a minister, no figure like him is as closely associated with the presidency of the European Commission, which he held between 1985 and 1995. He had already had a long political career in his country, which he had begun before he took office in the Socialist Party. French in 1974 and later served as finance minister and mayor of Clichy.
When he arrived in Brussels to head the executive branch of the community club, the European Economic Community, as it was then called, was more like a large continental common market of ten countries trying to combine their interests in an experiment with little or no historical record set a precedent to prevent the continent from ending another devastating war. Just as he was leaving on January 1, 1995, the number of member states that had become the European Union had reached 15 – Spain joined during this period. He even left a will outlining how future expansions could be pursued.
Delors is not one of the founding fathers of the European project, but his career during the ten years he was President of the Commission makes him one of its great creators. The impulse he gave him puts him on a par with the French Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman, the Italian Alcide de Gasperi or the German Konrad Adenauer. “Europe has just lost one of its giants. […] “He enters the pantheon of the greats that Europe has produced and whose legacy we must inherit,” emphasized the High Representative for EU Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, when he learned of the death.
Jacques Delors is dead. L'Europe wants to kill one of its Géants. The aura gave the EU's purpose the power of its beliefs and the need to act. We were in the panthéon of the greats that gave birth to Europe and we were not convinced of the acceptance of the legacy
— Josep Borrell Fontelles (@JosepBorrellF) December 27, 2023
His figure is associated with a time when there was a great leap in European integration. The increase in the number of countries from 10 to 15 (Spain, Portugal, Austria, Sweden and Finland) is just another milestone achieved during his years in Brussels. Between 1985 and 1995 a big leap was made in the integration of the countries involved. From a common market that resembled the abolition of trade tariffs, we moved in 1993 to a union that moved toward the abolition of borders on goods and people (imperfect, as it turns out 30 years later).
During these years, words that identify policies that are now part of the daily lives of the 450 million citizens living in the EU emerged, as a result of projects launched in the Commission of which Delors chaired or promoted. The most popular is undoubtedly the Erasmus scholarship program, born from the idea of the Italian educator Sofia Corradi and supported by the European executive, in particular one of the commissioners who accompanied him for almost his entire career Spanish Manuel Marin. He also
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Delors took over the presidency of the Commission, which was promoted by the then President of France, François Mitterrand, and the German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, two great monsters of European politics. With them and with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, or rather against them, she had to fight to implement projects such as economic and monetary union.
As a good Frenchman – he was finance minister from 1981 to 1984 – he fought for the introduction of the single currency, that Gallic effort that would link the fate of the franc and the mark. As President of the Commission, he led the working group that produced the so-called Delors Report, which outlined the path to the creation of the common currency in three steps. He believed that the customs union created in the 1950s would be lame if there was no single currency.
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