Jacques Delors, the father of the euro and the modernization of the European Union, has died

French politician Jacques Delorsone of the great promoters of the European Union (EU) and the creation of the euro, died this Wednesday, at the age of 98.

The former European Commission president “died this morning in his home in Paris while he was sleeping”, Martine Aubry, his daughter, told AFP.

Delors was “the inexhaustible architect of our Europe”, said French President Emmanuel Macron on the X social network.

Minister of Economy from 1981 to 1984, under the presidency of the socialist François Mitterrand, Delors frustrated the hopes of the French left by refusing to stand in the 1995 elections, despite being clearly favored in the polls.

After serving as Minister of Economy, he was appointed President of the European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, based in Brussels.

His management, from 1985 to 1995, was marked by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.which put an end to the division that existed in Europe after the Second World War and started negotiations for the integration of the countries of the former Soviet bloc into the EU.

Delors promoted the creation of the single market, the signing of the Schengen agreements (on the free movement of people), the Erasmus student exchange program and the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy.

Under his mandate, the economic and monetary union was also launched, which would lead to the creation of the euro, the single currency shared by 20 of the current 27 EU members.

Delors was born on July 20, 1925 in Paris into a Catholic environment. He married Marie Lephaille in 1948 (died in 2020), with whom he had two children: Martine Aubry, born in 1950 and current mayor of Lille (north), and Jean-Paul, born in 1953, who died of leukemia in 1982.

“Mr. Europe”

“The degree to which he personified Europe was evident in the labels assigned to him by the world’s media: ‘Mr. Europe,’ ‘Tsar of Europe,’ etc.,” wrote biographer Helen Drake in “Jacques Delors – Perspectives” on a ‘European Europe’. Chief’.

The current president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, called Delors “a visionary who made our Europe stronger” and whose work “shaped entire generations of Europeans”.

The president of the Spanish government, the socialist Pedro Sánchez, wrote in X: “Without him, Europe would not be what it is today. We will carry on his legacy to consolidate further progress in the Union.”

Delors’ push for greater European integration nevertheless met resistance in some member countriesespecially in the United Kingdom of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, of the Conservative Party.

London never joined the common currency and left the European bloc in 2020.

In March 2020, Delors called on the heads of state and government of EU countries to show more solidarity in jointly tackling the coronavirus pandemic.

Until his last days, he supported strengthening European federalism and called for greater “boldness” in response to Brexit and attacks by “populists of all stripes.”

Delors founded workshops of ideas such as the “Club témoin” and “Notre Europe”, which later became the “Institut Jacques-Delors”.

In France, his refusal to run for president in 1995 surprised the entire country.

“I am about to turn 70, I have been working continuously for 50 years and it is more reasonable, in these circumstances, to consider a more balanced lifestyle between reflection and action”, he argued at the time in front of 13 million people. viewers.

In 2021 he revealed there were other reasons for his stepping aside.

“I was too worried about independence and I felt different from those around me. My way of doing politics was not the same,” he told the French weekly. Le Point.

“I don’t regret it,” but “I’m not saying he was right,” he added.

Source: AFP