Jacques Delors, president of the European Commission during its most imperial and self-confident years, unwittingly became the Gallic symbol to British eurosceptics of all they feared and despised about the great European project. This perplexed but did not faze him, especially given that after his departure the structure and aims of the European Union remained much as he had envisaged them during his decade from 1985 in Brussels. Appointed to a record three terms as president, he has claims to be the most significant architect and leader of the European project since its emergence following the second world war.
The irony was that the great achievement of Delors, who has died aged 98, was the creation of a single regulated market for trade, goods and services across the European Union – an idea that Margaret Thatcher, his nemesis, enthusiastically signed up to. However, he wanted to go much further than her and some other European leaders, seeing the concomitant need for a single currency and a more powerful, centralised federalist governing system in a global economy with competing power blocs: “National sovereignty no longer means much ... voluntary cooperation never works,” he said. “In order to face American and Japanese challenges we need to be supranational” – this before the rise of China as an economic power.
