(Paris) Unwavering apostle of European construction, father of the euro, ephemeral hope of the French left in the 1995 presidential election, Jacques Delors died on Wednesday at the age of 98.
The former president of the European Commission “died this morning (Wednesday) at his Parisian home in his sleep,” his daughter Martine Aubry, socialist mayor of Lille, announced to AFP.
Former Minister of the Economy under François Mitterrand (1981-1984), Jacques Delors dampened the hopes of the left by refusing to run in the 1995 presidential election even though he was the big favorite in the polls.
From Brussels where he remained at the head of the Commission from 1985 to 1995, he played the role of architect in shaping the contours of contemporary Europe: establishment of the single market, signing of the Schengen agreements, Single European Act, launch of Erasmus student exchange program, reform of the common agricultural policy, start of the Economic and Monetary Union which will lead to the creation of the euro…
In March 2020, he again called on EU heads of state and government for more solidarity at a time when they were struggling over a common response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
At the end of 1994, his spectacular renunciation of a candidacy for the presidential election, announced after six months of suspense live on television in front of 13 million viewers in Anne Sinclair’s “7 sur 7” show, stunned the French.
“I will reach 70 years old, I have worked tirelessly for 50 years and it is more reasonable, in these conditions, to consider a lifestyle more balanced between reflection and action,” he declared, his eyes blue falling in front of the camera.
“I’m not saying I was right.”
“I have no regrets”, but “I am not saying that I was right”, he commented in Le Point in 2021. “I had too great a concern for independence, and I felt different from those around me. My way of doing politics was not the same.”
His political career then stalled and it was almost as a simple activist that Jacques Delors continued his fights from the mid-90s.
With his think tanks, “Club witness” or “Notre Europe” (later becoming “Jacques-Delors Institute” and based in Paris, Brussels and Berlin), he pleaded until the end for a strengthening of European federalism, demanding more of “audacity” at the time of Brexit and attacks from “populists of all kinds”.
Born in Paris on July 20, 1925 in a simple and Catholic environment, Jacques Delors moved from parish patronage to the Young Christian Workers (JOC), to which he remained linked throughout his life.
He joined the Banque de France, then joined the French Confederation of Christian Workers (CFTC) and participated in the deconfessionalization of the union, which gave birth to the CFDT.
This admirer of Pierre Mendès France had waited until 1974 and the age of 49 to join the PS, in the hope of “being useful”.
Second French left
From social Gaullism with Chaban-Delmas to the union of the left, then to social-realism alongside François Mitterrand, Jacques Delors traced the contours of a second French left.
“I am a social democrat,” he summed up in Le Point.
At the head of public finance under Mitterrand, he was one of the initiators of the turn towards austerity from 1982, preventing France from plunging into inflation.
He married in 1948 with a colleague who shared his trade union and religious convictions, Marie Lephaille, who died in 2020. They had two children: Martine Aubry, who was born in 1950, then Jean-Paul, born in 1953 and died of leukemia. in 1982.