Jacques Delors a fanatic federalist? Up yours…
The central architect of the EU, Delors was a brilliant statesman whose first-hand witnessing of the horrors of the Nazis in Europe led him to work, every day, to ensure the lessons of history were learned and never forgotten, remembers Alastair Campbell
![<p>Jacques Delors, president of the European Commission, with Margaret Thatcher in 1986 </p>](https://static.independent.co.uk/2023/12/27/18/France_Delors_Obit_64015.jpg)
Jacques Delors, president of the European Commission, with Margaret Thatcher in 1986
In an era when we perhaps bemoan the lack of politicians with a big vision, and determination to match, sadly we have just lost one.
Jacques Delors, who died in his sleep two years short of reaching 100, was a man with a vision of a Europe that would never again be at war, never again be victim to the hard right, and who saw ever closer union between sovereign nations inside a growing and ever more influential and prosperous EU as the key to turning that into reality.
With a vicious war happening right now on the eastern edge of the EU, with populist and far-right parties on the rise in countries as varied as France and Germany, the Netherlands and even Sweden – and with the UK having entered and now left the EU as part of the populist wave – some might see his vision as having failed. They would be wrong.
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