In a national tribute held on Friday, January 5, President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to the memory of the former president of the European Commission Jacques Delors, who died on December 27, who “truly reconciled France with Europe” and “Europe with its future “.
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On Friday, January 5, French President Emmanuel Macron presided over a solemn tribute to Jacques Delors, who died on December 27 at the age of 98, praising his “visionary intuition.”
He “truly reconciled France with Europe” and “Europe with its future”, greeted the Head of State. “Jacques Delors never tired of exploring to reconcile, of looking for alternatives, of building bridges,” he continued in the Invalides courtyard, in the presence of numerous European leaders.
“The baton has just been passed to us,” added the president, celebrating the “conciliator skills” of a man “who never settled, at any of the crucial moments of the century, with habits or expectations.”
To pay tribute to the former president of the European Commission and father of the euro, an “innovation” was also introduced in the republican rite. After Emmanuel Macron's speech, there was a minute of silence in the courtyard of Les Invalides and then La Marseillaise, the Hymn of Joy and the anthem of the European Union were played.
Delors, architect of the modernization of the EU
Jacques Delors, a social democrat, had disappointed his people by renouncing his candidacy for the Presidency of France in 1995, after his two terms in Brussels. But before that he had left his mark on political life, collaborating with the Gaullist socialist Jacques Chaban-Delmas in the late 1960s, and supporting France's decision to remain in Europe in 1983, when he was Minister of Economy under Socialist President François Mitterrand. .
At the head of the Commission from 1985 to 1995, he “contributed to drawing, line by line”, the “face of today's Europe”, that of the single market and the euro, the Schengen agreements and the Erasmus student exchange programme, Emmanuel Macron stressed.
A destination also welcomed by the numerous leaders invited to the ceremony. He gave “a soul to Europe,” summarized the current president of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. “His legacy from her is immense,” she added.
His former socialist colleagues also praised his qualities. “He had great integrity,” said Pascal Lamy, who accompanied him to Bercy and then to Brussels. Former Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, for his part, “recalls his extreme demands at work, his awareness of his responsibilities, combined with a great simplicity of manners.”
A dozen leaders at the tribute
In his greeting to the French on December 31, Emmanuel Macron invoked the “legacy” of Jacques Delors to call for a “decisive election” to be made in 2024 for a “stronger and more sovereign Europe.”
To remember their “concrete achievements”, a hundred Erasmus students from all over Europe attended the tribute.
Also present were the German President, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the Belgian Prime Minister, Alexander De Croo, his Dutch counterpart, Mark Rutte, and the presidents of the Council, the Commission, the Parliament and the European Central Bank. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, leader of the nationalist side, stood out from the crowd five months before the European elections.
With AFP
This article was adapted from its original in French
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