Jacques Delors, one of the great architects of European construction, died this Wednesday at the age of 98. Outside of France, where he was a minister, no figure like his is so associated with the presidency of the European Commission, which he commanded between 1985 and 1995. In his country he already had a long political career, which he had begun before joining the Socialist Party. French in 1974 and continued later as Minister of Finance and mayor of Clichy, previously he had passed through the General Commissariat of the Plan, a post-war organization in charge of economic planning, and had been an advisor to the Bank of France.
When he arrived in Brussels to head the Executive arm of the community club, the European Economic Community, as it was called then, was more of a large continental common market of 10 countries that were trying to combine their interests in a experiment with little or no historical precedent that was intended to prevent the continent from ending a devastating war again. Just when he left it, on January 1, 1995, the number of 15 member states was reached – Spain joined during that period – that had become the European Union. He even left a will in which he pointed out how the path of future enlargements could be followed.
Delors is not one of the founding fathers of the European project, but his career during the 10 years that he was president of the Commission places him among one of its great creators. The impetus he gave him places him at the level of 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 given and whose legacy we must assume,” highlighted the high representative for EU Foreign Policy, Josep Borrell, upon learning of the death.
Jacques Delors is dead. L'Europe vient de perdre l'un de ses géants. Il aura façonné le destin de l'EU par la puissance de ses convictions et la rigueur de son actions de él. Il entre ainsi dans le Panthéon des grands que l'Europe a produit et dont nous nous devons d'assumer l'héritage
— Josep Borrell Fontelles (@JosepBorrellF) December 27, 2023
Its name is linked to a period in which there was a great leap in European integration. The increase in countries from 10 to 15 (Spain, Portugal, Austria, Sweden and Finland) is just one more milestone achieved during his years in Brussels. Between 1985 and 1995, a great leap was made in the integration of the countries that were part of the European project. We went from a common market, something similar to the elimination of commercial customs, to a union in 1993 that was moving towards an elimination (imperfect, as can be seen 30 years later) of borders for goods and people.
Words that name policies that are currently part of the daily life of the 450 million EU citizens emerged in those years. They are the fruit of projects that were launched in the Commission that Delors chaired or that he promoted. Erasmus: this scholarship program for students, emblem of community policies, was created in those years based on the idea of the Italian pedagogue Sofia Corradi endorsed by that European executive, especially by one of the commissioners who accompanied him for almost all of it. his career, the Spanish Manuel Marín.
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Outside Brussels it is not as popular as the Erasmus program or the Schengen Area, but practically everyone who lives in the community bubble knows what the EU Multiannual Financial Framework is. This kind of multi-year Union Budget was first proposed in 1987.
Delors came to the presidency of the Commission sponsored by the then president of France, François Mitterrand, and the German chancellor, Helmut Kohl, two great monsters of European politics. With them and with the British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, or rather against her, he had to struggle to implement projects such as the Economic and Monetary Union. He was not new to the community capital.
As a good Frenchman – he was Minister of Finance between 1981 and 1984 – he fought to implement the single currency, that old French aspiration that sought to link the fate of the franc and the mark. As president of the Commission, the European Council commissioned him to lead the working group, together with the governors of the central banks, which produced the so-called Delors report, which outlined the path to follow until achieving the creation in three steps of the common currency. He thought that the customs union that had been created in the 1950s was lame if it did not have a single currency.
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