FRANCK FIFE / AFP
Jacques Delors, here in 1994 when he was President of the European Commission. The former Minister of Finance died on December 27, 2023.
POLITICS – The images of his television intervention during which he announced, in 1994, that he would not run for the Élysée, remain anchored in memories. However Jacques Delors, who died this Wednesday, December 27 at the age of 98, is not just a non-candidate for the presidential election.
As Minister of Finance under François Mitterrand (1981-1984) and President of the European Commission (1985-1995), Jacques Delors was in fact the architect of numerous policies which marked France and Europe. HuffPost has selected three of its most emblematic measures below.
• The “rigor turning point”
Two years after being elected MEP, Jacques Delors was called into government in 1981 by François Mitterrand. At the head of Public Finance, he was one of the initiators of the “ turning point of rigor “. This policy, which he defended in 1982 in the face of France’s increasingly degraded economic situation between unemployment and inflation, tore the government and the left apart.
Hostile to this idea and fiercely determined to respect his expansionist program on the economic level, François Mitterrand initially did not listen to the warnings of his minister who requested a ” break “ in the reforms. At this time, however, France risked being excluded from the EMS (European Monetary System), which served to stabilize European currencies before the euro.
A debate then took place between the pro-Europeans who demanded austerity and the defenders of the Keynesian recovery. Finally, after a new devaluation of the franc and a bitter failure in the municipal elections, François Mitterrand announced on March 23, 1983 the “ turning point of rigor » which resulted in lower spending and higher taxes.
• Artisan of the Euro
As he showed during the “ turning point of rigor », Jacques Delors was an ardent defender of Europe and the path towards a common currency. After his time in government, he was largely involved in creating the Euro which more than 300 million people use today.
Jacques Delors was in fact in 1988 at the head of the committee which bore his name and which aimed to consider the creation of a single European currency. THE “ Delors report », resulting from this working group and published the following year, was adopted by the European Commission and laid the first milestones for what the Euro has become.
• The Erasmus program
During his ten years at the head of the European Commission, Jacques Delors was at the origin of the single market, the signing of the Schengen agreements and the CAP (common agricultural policy). But he is also the instigator of the student exchange program called Erasmus.
On the Delors Institute website, which he founded and of which he was president, he explained in 2022 that the creation of this program was painful. It was finally adopted in 1987 and extended to apprentices in 1995.
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