Jacques Delors died in December 2023 at the ripe old age of 98. Delors’ career was that of the quintessential French administrator turned statesman, a type extremely rare in the UK, but not uncommon in France, where success in politics does not entail the slog through democratic elections.
Like the post-war French political elite, Delors grasped that France must pursue its national interest via European integration. Delors shared a common pragmatic vision with fellow French statesmen, Robert Schuman and Jean Monnett – de facto founders of the European Union – that the future of France in Europe needed to be with, and not against Germany.
Long remembered here for his epic battles with Margaret Thatcher, Delors’ political career reached its apogee with his ten-year tenure as president of the then European Commission (1985-1995). The present European Union bears his decisive imprint. His period of office was the most dynamic and transitional in the integration of Europe; so dynamic that the nation states have tacitly conspired never to allow the European Commission such power again.
Delors’ mission to ease ‘eurosclerosis’
When Delors became president of the commission, in effect the civil service of then European Economic Community (EEC), the watchword in Brussels was ‘euroscelorosis’.
The promise in the founding treaty of Rome (1958) of “an ever closer union” seemed to belong to a distant and vague future. Delors was given the mandate to bring some drive to the stuttering process.
In one of history’s many ironies it was his soon-to-be adversary, Thatcher, who brought about his elevation. Under the complicated horse trading for key positions in Brussels, France emerged as the winner for choice of the top job in the commission. Thatcher’s advisers warned her that President Francois Mitterrand’s first choice for the job, Claude Cheysson, was “too left” and, as a compromise the seemingly more conventional Delors, got the top job.
Delors spent most of his early professional life in France’s central bank (Banque de France) before being recruited to a government post in France’s planning department. France still has a highly centralised and government-driven economic strategy.
His own political philosophy is one rare in the higher political echelons in Britain, but common in France, and based on his deep Catholic faith. He believed that unless the church paid more practical attention to social and economic progress, then it would lose any appeal to working people to competing political forces on the left. And during his formative years, the Communist Party was a powerful force in French politics.
‘Capitalism with a human face’
During his first spell in the French government, Delors pursued a policy of consensus economics making efforts to include both employers and unions in the dialogue of policy making. It was a policy of state intervention based on consensus which was later to infuse his later conviction that European integration needed a social agenda as well as an economic one.
Mitterrand’s socialist government of 1980 had radical and ambitious plans but was torpedoed by the money markets leading to a crisis in the French Franc. Delors was brought in as finance minister to reassure the business sector and calm the financial markets. This established his international reputation.
Delors’ plan for bringing momentum to the integration of the Common Market was threefold: constitutional, economic and financial.
First was the need for institutional reform to speed up decision making.
This step was achieved by the so-called Single European Act (SEA) which in effect removed the member states’ ability to veto regulations deemed to further market integration. Thatcher was persuaded, eventually to her regret, to allow ‘qualified majority voting’ (QMV).
Second, was the call to complete the ‘internal market’. Contrary to popular myth, the internal market was not a ‘Brussels plot’, but the brainchild of Lord Cockfield, the UK nominated commissioner sent by Thatcher to promote the virtues of the free market. Where she was to eventually come into bitter conflict with Delors, was that Thatcher wanted the internal market to be the framework in which her free market philosophy would prosper; Delors was the traditional social democrat, who wanted the market to be inclusive and consensual, it was to be – adapting Edward Heath’s line – “capitalism with a human face”.
The social chapter and Thatcher’s antagonism
The original foundation treaty of Rome carried an idealistic but vague commitment to “an ever closer union”. But until Delors, the discussion trod warily around just how and when to achieve momentum in that process.
Where Delors showed political acumen was in his setting a ‘finish by date’ for the completion of the internal market, set somewhat arbitrarily at 1992, by which time the regulatory system needed was to be in place. This was to involve a distinct legislative shift from the member states to the commission, and also a shift towards the only directly elected part of the European institutions, the European parliament.
Moreover, this internal market was to have a ‘social chapter’. This brought Thatcher to the somewhat over-exaggerated claim that she had not rolled back socialism in Britain only to have it introduced from Brussels.
The battle lines were drawn. Incidentally, it was the social chapter, added to existing stream of European funding obtained by many local labour authorities, which turned the Labour movement pro-EU. No more so than within the British trade unions, battered for nearly a decade with Conservative anti-trade union legislation. The much disparaged, but actually effective, “beer and sandwiches at No 10”, where dialogue had taken place between government and unions was long since buried.
Delors’ open offer of dialogue with the ‘social partners’ was music to the ears of the British trade unions. Ron Todd, leader of the then largest union, the Transport and General Workers Union (T&G), was emphatic and realistic when asked why he was going to Brussels, said “because it’s the only game in town”.
The warmth was reciprocated when Delors accepted an unprecedented invitation to address the annual Trades Union Congress (TUC) in Bournemouth in September 1988.
No longer to exert a veto, the UK (under Thatcher’s successor, John Major) negotiated an opt-out of the social chapter and the rest of the EU sailed ahead.
The Euro
Buoyed by his success, Delors went for the third part of his attempt to bring a dynamic to European integration, the introduction of a single currency.
As president of the commission, Delors had taken the lesson from Mitterrand’s U-turn on financial stability; if the money markets could blow the French economy off course, then unless there was financial stability at the European level, the “ever closer union” promised in the treaty of Rome could be blown off course too.
The single currency has not been fully implemented and is unlikely to be so, but from France’s and Delors’ point of view, it succeeded in keeping France in a position of influence over the power of the German economy. In effect, the single currency meant reducing the sovereign power of the Banque de France in return for a share of power in a new European Central Bank (ECB) and its currency, the Euro. The ECB gives France and other countries some influence, whereas previously interest rates in Europe were effectively in the hands of the German central bank (Bundesbank)
The passing of a statesman
Delors retired from the Commission in 1994 having played an enormous role in disenchanting the Conservatives with Europe at the same time as enhancing Europe in the eyes of the Labour movement.
In retirement, Delors, a member of the French Socialist Party, studiously avoided the siren calls to enter elected French politics. He preferred the committee room to the public platform. He also refrained from commenting on his successors’ actions.
The official ceremony to pay respects to Delors was in keeping with his character, modest and dignified; and in a typically churlish manner, which reflects badly on our country, there was no official British government presence to honour one of the outstanding European statesmen of our age.
