Jacques Delors, architect of European construction, died at 98

The former president of the European Commission died, in his 99th year, "this morning (Wednesday) at his Parisian home in his sleep", his daughter Martine Aubry, socialist mayor of Lille, announced to AFP.

Emmanuel Macron hailed on

“Shaping Europe”

His disappearance "will create strong emotion throughout Europe as he will have contributed to shaping it", reacted the former socialist president François Hollande.

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...

He also supports the rapid integration of the German Democratic Republic into the European community in the wake of reunification.

“His life's work (...) shaped entire generations of Europeans, including mine,” commented Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission.

“His successes were numerous,” declared ECB President Christine Lagarde, citing “the path he had shaped towards the creation of a common currency.”

He was “an activist”, “a committed trade unionist”, greeted the leaders of the two organizations in turn.

This admirer of Pierre Mendès France had waited until 1974 and the age of 49 to join the Socialist Party, in the hope of "being useful".

Second French left

From social Gaullism with Jacques 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.

Jacques Delors married in 1948 with a colleague sharing his trade union and religious convictions, Marie Lephaille, who died in 2020. They will have two children: Martine Aubry, who was born in 1950, then Jean-Paul, born in 1953 and taken away by a leukemia in 1982.