Jacques Delors Was the Gravedigger of “Social Europe”
At his funeral last week, former European Union chief Jacques Delors was hailed as a left-wing architect of the EU. But far from realizing the Left’s hopes for a “social Europe,” in the 1990s Delors built a new European order in thrall to free-market dogmas.
Former EU president Jacques Delors was instrumental to Europe’s neoliberal turn. (Jacques Langevin / Sygma via Getty Images)
This past Friday, Emmanuel Macron presided over a much-publicized ceremony of national tribute to Jacques Delors, the 1981–84 French finance minister who headed the European Commission from 1985 to 1995. Heads of state from all EU countries were invited to join Macron and leaders of the European institutions in paying their respects to Delors, who died age ninety-eight the previous week. Upon his passing, the former Commission chief was widely acclaimed as a “visionary,” an “architect,” or even the “father” of the European Union.
On both Right and Left, French and European political elites’ reactions have been unanimous in praising Delors’s “European engagement.” He is also considered one of the most important figures on the Left during France’s Fifth Republic. Yet if we look beyond such pieties, we see that his role was really something else. Delors was, in fact, one of the main actors in the abandonment of the French socialist program after the left-wing government came to power in 1981, and then in the dashing of the European left’s hope for a “social Europe” later that decade.
Delors and French Socialism’s Liberal Turn
Indeed, Delors was a key player in the French left’s liberal turn. This is not entirely surprising, given his political trajectory: in brief, that of a social democrat reformist who surfed on the radical wave of the 1970s before somewhat naively rallying to economic liberalism.
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