The French politician Jacques Delors, former president of the European Commission, father of the euro and figure of the French left, died this Wednesday at the age of 98.
It was his daughter Martine Aubry, also a politician and current mayor of Lille, who announced Delors’ death. “She died this morning at her home in Paris while she was sleeping,” she declared.
Former Minister of Economy under François Mitterrand between 1981 and 1984, he extinguished the hopes of the left by refusing to stand in the 1995 presidential elections, despite the fact that he was the great favorite in the polls, in a spectacular television resignation in front of 13 million spectators.
“I don’t regret it,” but “I’m not saying I was right,” he told Le Point in 2021. “I had too much concern for independence and I felt different from those around me,” he said. “Politics was not the same.” “he concluded.
From Brussels, where he remained at the head of the Commission from 1985 to 1995, Jacques Delors played the role of architect in shaping the contours of contemporary Europe: creation of the single market, signing of the Schengen agreements, Single European Act, launch of the Erasmus student exchange program, reform of the common agricultural policy, and start of the Economic and Monetary Union that will lead to the creation of the euro, among others.
In March 2020, he again called on the heads of state and government of the European Union for greater solidarity at a time when they were fighting for a common response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
With his think tanks “Club Witness” or “Notre Europe” (later called “Jacques-Delors Institute” and based in Paris, Brussels and Berlin), he advocated to the end for a strengthening of European federalism, calling for more “boldness” in a moment of Brexit and attacks from “populists of all stripes”.
