For both fans and foes of the European project, Jacques Delors was Brussels’ driving force during the EU’s greatest period of integration, the creation of the single market and the euro.
In his native France the statesman was a respected figure in the remaking of the centre-left under Francois Mitterrand and for many perhaps the greatest president the country never had.
Dead on Wednesday at the age of 98, the champion of an ever closer European Union and the bugbear of British Thatcherites received tributes from across the continent he sought to unite.
“Generations of Europeans will continue to benefit from his legacy,” declared the speaker of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, a Maltese conservative hailing a French socialist.
Another conservative, the current president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, declared: “Jacques Delors was a visionary who made our Europe stronger.
“His life’s work is a united, dynamic and prosperous European Union,” the German EU chief said.
Delors stood down as president of the European Commission in 1995 after disappointing his French supporters by declining to stand for office as president of his homeland.
But he had already played a transformative role as the European Community, which became the European Union during his term, took on a central role in the continent’s affairs.
This reflected his previous role under Mitterrand as French finance minister, as he imposed rigour on public accounts and rewrote the romantic language of the centre-left in a more “realist” register.
In 1984, Mitterrand wanted to make Delors prime minister, but he offended the president by asking to keep his finance portfolio alongside the top job, and he was sidelined.
Mitterrand would later declare bitterly: “He’ll be remembered for his role at the European Commission, but in politics: zero.”
Citizen of Europe
But it would indeed be in his Brussels role that Delors would enter history, taking the job of EU chief executive in 1985 after two years in the European Parliament.
Delors’ vision of Europe as a federation of nation states and his workaholic doggedness would see him compared to the post-war founders of the European project, Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman.
In 2015 he was named a “Citizen of Europe”, becoming the last person to receive an honour only Monnet and former German chancellor Helmut Kohl had previously enjoyed.
Under the Delors presidency the man who had once reassured world markets that France’s budget was in safe hands would lay the foundation of what would become Europe’s monetary union.
A passionate educationalist, he would also found the Erasmus programme of university exchanges, helping educate a whole new generation of young Europeans with a greater EU identity.
This passion for closer union also made him enemies.
Across the Channel in the UK, prime ministers Margaret Thatcher and John Major adopted him as a foil — the archetypal “Brussels bureaucrat”, constraining British sovereignty.
In 1990 the top-selling British tabloid The Sun urged its readers to take to the streets at midday and to raise a two-fingered salute in Brussels’ direction under the front-page headline: “Up yours Delors”.
Thatcher had supported his original appointment, seeing him as less federalist than a rival candidate, but London came to regret his championing of greater European integration.
He declined The Sun’s invitation to “Frog off” and to stop pushing unification “through the back Delors” and by the time he left Brussels, the single currency was irreversible, albeit sans London.
As a teenager, Delors had lived in German-occupied Paris, and always said Europe would know lasting peace only if its main powers became so entwined they could never again go to war.
For Delors’ generation this proved the need for the euro and he was frustrated after he stood down at what he saw as Europe’s failure to build on his economic success to find political momentum for unity.
Orthodox economics
Born in Paris on July 20, 1925, Delors grew up in a family of seven children.
His father was a humble cashier at the Banque de France where a young Delors later worked as a clerk. He studied in the evenings and joined the Christian trade union federation CFTC.
In 1962 he joined the civil service as an adviser on social affairs. As Mitterrand’s finance minister he pursued orthodox economic policies that alienated him from the traditional left.
Delors and his wife Marie lived in Paris after his retirement. They had two children: a son, Jean-Paul, who died of cancer in 1982, and a daughter, former French socialist leader Martine Aubry.
