THE former EU Commission president Jacques Delors has died at the age of 98.
Delors was the eighth president of the European Commission from January 1985 until the end of 1994.
His daughter Martine Aubry said he died in his sleep in his Paris home on Wednesday.
He created the single market that made the free movement of persons, capital, goods, and services within the European Economic Community (EEC) possible.
The French socialist also headed the so-called Delors Committee which proposed the monetary union to create the Euro, a new single currency to replace individual national currencies.
He was desperate to drag Britain into the European common currency, leading to fiery run-ins with MPs and journalists.
Clashes with British MPs continued as Delors vehemently opposed Brexit.
But he was respected as a passionate and hardworking politician
Last night French President Emmanuel Macron paid homage to a “fighter for human justice”.
He said: “His commitment, his ideals and his righteousness will always inspire us.
“I salute his work and his memory and share the pain of his loved ones.”
Michel Barnier, the European Union‘s chief negotiator during Britain’s divorce from the EU, said Delors had been an inspiration and a reason to “believe in a ‘certain idea’ of politics, of France, and of Europe“.
His notoriety in the UK was cemented when The Sun took aim with one of its classic front pages, sending a clear message to the Frenchman with the headline: “UP YOURS DELORS”.
In 1990, The Sun under Kelvin MacKenzie was voicing its view about the European common currency and more powers for the European Parliament being sought by then European Commission President Delors.
Former Brexit Party chief and Reform Party leader Nigel Farage, who spearheaded the Leave campaign, said: “Jacques Delors had a vision that turned the European Community into the EU.
“For Eurosceptics like me he was an important figure who helped propel me into a political career.
“My only regret is not doing battle with him on the floor of the European Parliament.”
Ex-Tory Chancellor and vocal Remainer Lord Clarke of Nottingham said Europe had its “most powerful and reforming leadership” during the era of Margaret Thatcher and Delors.
He said: “Jacques Delors was one of the most reforming and creative of the four and when they worked together, or when one of them managed to prevail to get an idea, Europe developed as never before.
“Margaret’s own contribution was the single market because Margaret was in favour of economic Europe, she was in favour of a total free trade Europe, she never talked about leaving the European Union, she saw it as an economic thing to make us more prosperous by giving us a big free trade bloc.
“She suspected Jacques, as she revealed in that extraordinary outburst in the House of Commons, of going beyond that and being in favour of a political Europe, which she was against, which was going to be a sort of united states of Europe, a superstate and all the rest of it.”
Delors’ death came three years after Britain fully exited the EU on Dec. 31, 2020, following tortuous negotiations and 47 years of membership.
Delors, a Catholic trade unionist with a background in economic planning, was an outspoken force at the heart of the Brussels bureaucracy, tirelessly crafting compromises among member states to build the European single market, one of the EU’s defining achievements.
He oversaw a period of rapid enlargement, with the 10-member European Community, as it was then called, growing to 12 with the accession in 1986 of Spain and Portugal and then adding Sweden, Austria and Finland in 1995.
The era was defined by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany, as the tectonic plates underpinning modern Europe shifted.
The post-war ideal of a unified continent – the dream of federalists – began to seem real.
Delors’ commitment to a united Germany led to a close bond with then German chancellor Helmut Kohl and helped to cement the Franco-German relationship that remains critical to the EU.
Those who worked with Delors recall a man with endless energy and drive who was not afraid to lose his temper or twist the right arm if it might get the deal he believed possible.
“I like Delors above all for his intellect. He had the most formidable brain I ever encountered,” Peter Sutherland, a former commissioner from Ireland, said of him in the 1990s. “But he was extremely tense, like a coiled spring.”
Others describe the small, dapper man with heavy-framed glasses and grey hair swept back as someone capable of applying “rudeness, finesse, insight and diplomatic skill” all at the same time “while promising more than there really was”.
Of himself, Delors once said: “I don’t hide. I make mistakes, I lose my temper. But people say, ‘that guy, he’s human.’ I shall never be a great politician because I cannot get concerned about my image.”
Jacques Lucien Jean Delors was born in Paris in 1925 to a devoutly Catholic family. He earned a degree in economics from the Sorbonne and followed his father into a career at the central bank.
A union member from a young age and a staunch defender of labour rights throughout his life, Delors joined the Socialist Party in the 1970s, carefully balancing his politics with his religious faith and a belief in a market economy.
After a two-year stint in the European Parliament, where he headed the economic affairs committee, he served as minister of finance, economics and budget under President Francois Mitterrand, gaining a front-row seat on the shaping of economic policy in Europe in the early 1980s.
As president of the Commission from 1985 he was convinced of the need to forge deeper economic and monetary ties among the member states of the European Community.
That passion for integration is what would set him on a collision course with Margaret Thatcher, who saw in Delors all the dangers of a French-dominated European superstate.
Their bristling animosity came to a head in 1988, after Delors made a pro-Europe speech to Britain’s Trade Union Congress, an enemy of Thatcherism, prompting a severe retort from Thatcher in a speech in Bruges weeks later.
The blood rose again in 1990, when Thatcher’s government was on its last legs and Britain was becoming isolated in Europe.
Challenged in parliament over her Europe policy, Thatcher said: “The president of the Commission, Mr Delors, said… he wanted the European Parliament to be the democratic body of the Community, he wanted the Commission to be the executive and he wanted the Council of Ministers to be the senate. No! No! No!”
Delors ushered through the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, which established the European Union, and launched the single market in 1993, finally stepping down in December 1994.
He decided not to run for the French presidency in the 1995 election and remained mostly preoccupied with European issues, setting up his own think-tank, Notre Europe, and supporting groups dedicated to federalism.
He spoke often during Europe’s 2010-2013 debt crisis about his belief in the single currency, the euro, while acknowledging its faults as a project launched with strong political will but insufficient economic underpinning.
Delors is survived by his daughter Martine Aubry, a French politician who is mayor of Lille and who campaigned to be the socialist candidate for the French presidency in 2011, losing to Francois Hollande
More to follow… For the latest news on this story keep checking back at The Sun Online. Thesun.co.uk is your go to destination for the best celebrity news, football news, real-life stories, jaw-dropping pictures and must-see video.
Like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/thesun and follow us from our main Twitter account at @TheSun.