Jacques Delors is a compass in the EU!
Subscribe here: https://bit.ly/eudebates Former European Commission President Jacques Delors - described as the architect of the modern EU - has died aged 98, his daughter says.
He helped create the single market allowing the free movement of people, goods and services within the bloc.
Serving from 1985 to 1995, Delors also laid the groundwork for the single European currency, the euro.
But for those sceptical of integration, especially in the UK, he was seen as a symbol of Brussels meddling.
A headline by British tabloid The Sun once famously shouted: "Up Yours, Delors."
Delors' daughter Martine Aubry said he had died in his sleep on Wednesday morning in his Paris home.
French President Emmanuel Macron praised Delors, who also served as French finance minister from 1981-84, as a "statesman with a French destiny" and "inexhaustible craftsman of our Europe".
"His commitment, his ideals and his righteousness will always inspire us," he said. "I salute his work and his memory and share the pain of his loved ones."
He served three terms as European Commission president, longer than anyone else.
Ursula von der Leyen, who currently holds the post, said he was "a visionary who made our Europe stronger".
European Council President Charles Michel described him as a "great Frenchman and a great European" who had "entered history as one of the builders of our Europe".
A French Socialist, he was a firm believer in post-war integration.
As well as the single market and the euro, his tenure at the top of the EU saw the creation of the Schengen agreement for travel and the Erasmus programme for student exchanges.
But for the UK's ruling Conservative Party under Margaret Thatcher, moves towards a federal Europe were seen as anathema.
Thatcher described the 1989 Delors report calling for economic and monetary union as unacceptable, because it would wrest many economic policies from the hands of the British Parliament.
Lord Clarke of Nottingham, who as Kenneth Clarke served in Thatcher's cabinet, told BBC Radio 4's PM programme she shared Delors' vision of a single market, but suspected him of also wanting a political union, which she was against.
"The truth was that Jacques Delors and Margaret Thatcher deeply disliked each other personally, they hated each other for personal and political reasons," he added.
Former UK opposition leader Neil Kinnock told the programme he was a "very polite, calm, highly intelligent man, a problem-solver" and not a "fanatical federalist" as Thatcher tried to portray him.
On leaving his post in 1995, Delors declined to stand for the French presidency, despite a huge lead in the polls.
He remained true to his federalist ideals. More recently, he warned of the dangers of populism in Europe, calling for bold moves in the wake of Brexit.
The former President of the European Commission and a prominent figure of the French left, Jacques Delors, passed away on Wednesday aged 98.
The former President of the European Commission "passed away this morning (Wednesday) at his Paris home in his sleep", his daughter Martine Aubry, Socialist Mayor of Lille, told AFP.
A former Economy Minister under François Mitterrand, Delors dashed the hopes of the Left by refusing to stand in the 1995 presidential election, when he was the clear favourite 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: setting up the single market, signing the Schengen agreements, the Single European Act, launching the Erasmus student exchange program, reforming the Common Agricultural Policy, setting in motion the Economic and Monetary Union that led to the creation of the Euro.
At the end of 1994, his spectacular renunciation of a presidential candidacy, announced after six months of suspense live on television in front of 13 million viewers on Anne Sinclair's program "7 sur 7", stunned the French.
"I'm going to be 70, I've been working tirelessly for 50 years and it's more reasonable, in these conditions, to envisage a lifestyle more balanced between reflection and action," he had declared, his blue eyes drooping in front of the camera.
His political career then came to a halt, and from the mid-90s onwards, Delors continued to fight almost as a simple activist.
With his think tanks, the "Club Témoin" and "Notre Europe" (which later became the "Institut Jacques-Delors", with offices in Paris, Brussels and Berlin), he argued to the bitter end for a stronger European federalism, calling for greater "audacity" in the face of Brexit and attacks from "populists of all stripes".
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