Brussels, 27/03/2006 (Agence Europe) - The Socialist group at the European Parliament celebrated the eightieth birthday of Jacques Delors in Brussels on 22 March. Delors has been the French Finance Minister, the President of the European Commission from 1985-1995 and the President of the European Parliament's Economic and Monetary Committee, directly elected for the first time in 1979. Mr Delors admitted that he was concerned at the current European crisis and used this occasion to call on Heads of State and governments to stop hiding from problems, declaring, “there are currently profound divergences on where the Union is ultimately going. We need to speak about them with frankness…If there is not a minimum of trust between Member States, it is impossible to go forward. This minimum of trust does not currently exist”. Speaking about the tensions provoked by the proposed mergers in the energy sector, he evoked the need for a “psychological armistice” between countries of the Union. Jacques Delors also reiterated his support for the idea of “differentiation” that enabled the Euro and Schengen to go forward, and support for a Federation of National States. In the context of the institutions, Delors said that in order for the European Council to be able to off-load, it was indispensable for them to have a real “General Affairs Council”.
During this meeting, the President of the Socialist group, Martin Schulz gave Mr Delors a book of testimonies from 80 past and present MEPs. German Social Democrat Evelyne Gebhardt, rapporteur on the “services” directive affirmed that “I greatly regretted…Oh, if only you were still President of the Commission! If only Jacques Delors were still there, we would then be able to make some progress on the services market with a genuine European approach!” In this touching book, accompanied by a lot of photographs (from the archives or taken by Ambroises Perrin, who also collected some of the testimonies), there were also a large number of personal notes such as that by Gilles Savary, “Jacques Delors, you are an immense pleasure of cycling erudition!” John Home remembered Jacques Delors' visit to Derry to launch the “Special Programme for peace and reconciliation in Northern Ireland…I took you calmly around Derry, it was a great moment of calm, happiness and peace”. The former leader of Solidarnosc, Jozep Pinior wrote, “during the referendum campaign…before Polish accession to the EU, I quoted the famous speech you made during the British Trades Union Congress of 1988, many times. In this speech I found the arguments to convince the Eurosceptics…” Jacques Delors played an essential role in persuading the British Unions to change their attitude to the Common Market, pointed out British Labour Party member Eluned Morgan. Another British Labour Party member, Michael Cashman recalled that when he was an actor and played Prospero in Shakespeare's Tempest, he dreamt of Jacques Delors, that he was being attacked by the rabid right-wing British media. Cashman said that Delors was a man who had a dream, a dream of a Europe with a social dimension that was important to the daily lives of its citizens. He concluded that Delors had stood firm and his dream had been achieved. Paolo Casaca from Portugal recounted, “How far are you going? As far as Jacques Delors! Yes, dear Jacques, everyday Portuguese people think of you…households going shopping and a lot of pupils too…at the train stations…Jacques Delors is not far from the schools…Jacques Delors, a meeting place between the station on the Ligeiro de Mirandela line in the north of Portugal”. Robert Goebbels accompanied his contribution with a drawing by Jacques Delors, sketched at the time when Goebbels was the Luxembourg minister for the budget and he was making a speech at the Council of the EU, “ashamed to have pocketed this souvenir, I'm now giving back to you”, said Goebbels. Former Danish Prime Minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen had a personal memory of a European Council, “It was on one of those days when Helmut Kohn was in a bad mood…It was one of those days when François Mitterand had other things on his mind…It was one of those days when most of us were in 'our internal movie theatres'…It was at that moment when Jacques Delors, President of the Commission, spoke to us of our responsibilities…Helmut Kohn then began murmuring that this would again mean Germany having to pay and François Mitterand began illustrating a vision of the future….This was the moment when the negotiations really began”. Pervenche Berès, President of the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee, on which Jacques Delors had formerly spent a lot of time and energy, exclaimed, “You know Jacques, as soon as things start to go badly and doubts come to the fore, I ask myself…what would Jacques Delors think?. The French Socialist noted that he had been the bridge between France and Germany. German Social Democrat, Willi Görlach pointed out that, “your Jacques Delors Commission succeeded in finishing all the legal conditions for the European integration of the new German Länder regions faster than the German government itself”.