At first glance, Jacques Delors did not readily fit the label of being some kind of radical, let alone “revolutionary”, figure. His public demeanour was always that of a reflective intellectual rather than a brash activist. But it was a label some French commentators attached to him when he was first appointed president of the European Commission in 1985.
After the postwar years, which led to the launch of the European Economic Community in 1957, most of the subsequent commission presidents proved to be worthy but utterly unmemorable “Eurocrats”. During my first years in Brussels, before Delors’s appointment, there was a widespread fear the initial momentum behind an ever more united Europe was melting away.
