This week, Jacques Delors will celebrate his 80th birthday. And he's never been so up-to-the-minute. The current trouble with Europe, the partial detachment of its citizens, the gaping holes in European construction, he predicted these and announced them, and he suggested remedies. Today, we are going back, in part, to what he proposed or suggested. I have just received a publication (by Claude Didry and Arnaud Mias) on social Europe, entitled "Le Moment Delors" (and which exists only in French, as far as I'm aware). It is highly topical, and yet it is part of history. This is a rare situation. I think I have already recounted the following episode, but never mind. This happened in 2002. I was accompanying him to the Gare du Midi in Brussels from where he was to take a train for Paris, and he stopped off at a newsagents to kill time before his train left. A young girl came up to me to ask: "is that really Jacques Delors?" And after a short pause: "would we be able to take a photograph with him?". When I answered yes, a whole group of young men and women gathered round him. They were a "Political Sciences" class from Paris, who were studying a module on his impact on the Presidency of the Commission. They were studying him at the university, and at the same time they bumped into him at the railway station and took a picture together. And I would like to both wish him happy birthday and remind my readers of his answers to the questions which the Europeans are asking today again.
The economic plank of the EMU. We know how far the imbalance between the monetary plank and the economic plank of the Economic and Monetary Union will go to explain and justify certain reluctance towards the single currency and accusations levelled at the "Stability and Growth Pact" that it guarantees stability without encouraging growth. Jacques Delors's imagery of the EMU limping along with a solid monetary leg and an atrophied economic leg has been taken up time and again. What is less well-known is that during the preparatory work for the single currency, Jacques Delors proposed that two additional criteria be added to the four definitively decided upon (annual budgetary deficits, overall debt, inflation rate, interest rate) for any country wishing to join the euro; the two additional criteria related to youth unemployment and long-term unemployment. It is even less well-known that during the duration of the work of the committee he chaired himself, and right up to the Maastricht Summit, Jacques Delors recommended a Pact on the coordination of economic policies, to work alongside the Stability Pact. He even drew up a draft, sent copies to Lionel Jospin, Wim Kok and others, but with no luck. In his memoirs, he reiterates that the economic plank of the EMU should: a) give the Commission the responsibility for proposing the economic policies of the countries of the euro zone, in order to avoid excessively dissimilar evolutions, which would make any kind of uniform monetary policy on the part of the European Central Bank impossible; b) create a European fund to level out differences in economic cycles, to be paid into during favourable economic periods and to support activity during less favourable times; c) move forward a common employment strategy, whilst respecting national areas of autonomy in this field; d) carry out minimum fiscal harmonisation covering tax on companies and revenue from transferable securities.
Social Europe and delocalisations. Jacques Delors vigorously challenges the commonly-held view that Europe has done nothing and obtained nothing in the social field, and rejects the trend for permanent competition between the Member States, on the basis of difference in taxes. He repeated this in a speech in September 2004 (our translation): "we would be turning our back on the spirit of European construction and all that it has achieved if we took competition between the States as a basic principle, on top of competition between economic agents. If this conception won the day, all of the coherence of the system would be endangered. This would equate to unlimited encouragement of tax and social dumping. The EMU would be plunged into a deeper political crisis, not to mention the serious risks of social destabilisation". This was why he recommended a minimum level of tax harmonisation as part of the EMU.
In the social field, Jacques Delors criticises the confusion between what is European and what ought to remain national, first and foremost employment, health care, social security, education and culture. These aspects are the "building blocks of national cohesion" and "the European Union cannot make up for the delays and shortcomings of the Member States". In any case, who wants there to be uniformisation? In actual fact, "as Europe is developing, the social minimum standards are increasing. The social dimension is already alive and kicking; equality between men and women, the minimum level of social rights and working conditions, structural policies which are never spoken of and yet which represent the exercise of solidarity". In his memoirs as in previous speeches, Jacques Delors stresses at length the social dialogue he relaunched in 1985. According to the aforementioned publication "Le Moment Delors", the effects of this dialogue constitute (our translation) "an unknown reality, which brings together a number of directives, from the contract of employment to European company boards". The authors demonstrate that "the initiatives taken by Jacques Delors played a decisive role in involving the social partners with progress on European construction, and this paved the way for legislative work which sketch the outlines of a Community employment law".
Limits and realities of the common foreign policy. Jacques Delors does not share the impatience of certain federalists, who feel that the EU should already have a common foreign policy, to be established by qualified majority procedures. In an oft-neglected or overlooked passage of his memoirs, he writes: "the countries of Europe have their traditions, their geopolitical history, privileged relationships with certain parts of the world. How could they abandon all of this for an artificial merger in the form of a common foreign policy? Of course, when faced with certain events or problems, it is possible and desirable to consider that the interests of the European countries are common interests and that these would be better served if the countries worked together. In other words: don't make a drama, at the expense of European integration, of the differences which may crop up; and, on the contrary, build common actions every time there is agreement on the analyses, the interests and the willingness to take action". Then, further: "over the last 20 years, we have seen that the Member States did not share the same positions, nor the same traditions, nor the same diplomatic customs, in terms of foreign policy. As a result, progress can only be made by clearly defined joint actions, for which a consensus is possible". But the first thing to be done is to rule out institutional construction in three pillars, because "when the European Union takes action in the field of foreign policy, it must have all its aces in the same hand: diplomacy, certainly, but also trade policy, financial resources, the multitude of aid it provides for development and humanitarian actions are light, and the euro". In 1991, Jacques Delors fought against the three separate pillars, but this is a battle he lost due partly (but not solely) to British opposition to a "single European identity on an international scale". He goes on to explain that, for the Maastricht Treaty, "it was, therefore, me, with the greatest ambition to make Europe into an active and respected power in the world, who proposed the most modest, yet most realistic, wording. The governments preferred the illusion of words, not realising that they were only sowing the seeds of disappointment and indifference on the citizens". Sometime after, by way of the Constitution, the three pillars disappeared. We know the situation.
The role of the nations, the role of Europe. Despite the ironic comments of certain commentators and the reservations on the part of certain lawyers, the Delors formula of the "Federation of Nation States" has made its way, and everybody, or just about, refers to it. Jacques Delors explains this formula by his "indefatigable belief in the future of the nation (...). It is, first of all, the cement of our wish to live together, shored up by a past of joint struggles, progressive mergers, and construction which 'make society'. These foundation stones remain in place, and the nation must conserve the instruments of national and social cohesion (...). It must, therefore, have some room for manoeuvre in everything that goes to reinforce this cohesion and which affirms a collective personality: the policies on employment, education, health care, social security and, of course, culture. This in no way excludes collaboration and coordination on a European scale, in these fields". The rest is united Europe. This concept implies a Europe whose duties and responsibilities are clearly defined and deliminated by the principle of subsidiarity, but which, in the same time, functions effectively under the community method; in the institutional triangle Parliament/Council/Commission, each one must take up its duties, and European action must include "structural actions, which is an indispensable counterpart to the greater single market, thus consecrating economic and social cohesion as some of the essential elements of European integration (...). If there is no explanation, no transparency, Europe create more concerns than it allays, and it is duller than it is passionate".
Abridged imagery. This point, I'm disappointed because I was only able to present abridged and edited imagery of the responses of Jacques Delors to the problems of Europe. I did my best, but there is too much intuition and too many ideas. In practice, he predicted everything that is today of concern to the citizens of Europe: the lack of governance of the euro zone with the imbalance in the EMU; the need to strike a new balance between the taxation of employment and the taxation of savings (how many years it took for the first step to be made!); the danger of competition between the States; the need for "differentiation" in progress in order not to run the machine out of steam... I intend to return to his ideas on two elements: the ambitions for a "greater Europe"; the limitations of tax competition and the presence of the States in the economy. (F.R.)