At the end of last year, the French politician Jacques Delors died at the age of ninety-eight. Delors is best remembered for his time as president of the European Commission, during which he laid the groundwork for the single currency through the Maastricht Treaty.

One of the main ideas associated with Delors was the concept of a “Social Europe,” a term that originated in the crisis of global capitalism during the 1970s as left parties and unions sought a radical alternative to the status quo. However, when Delors and his commission took up the slogan of “Social Europe,” it lost its radical connotations and eventually became an alibi for the neoliberal framework of the eurozone, with consequences that are still very much with us today.

Aurélie Dianara is a research fellow at the University of Évry and the author of Social Europe, the Road not Taken: The Left and European Integration in the Long 1970s. This is an edited transcript from Jacobin’s Long Reads podcast. You can listen to the interview here.