Jacques Delors

Jacques Lucien Jean Delors (born July 20, 1925, in Paris, France) is a French economist and politician, the only person who served two terms as President of the European Commission from 1985-1995.

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• It is impossible to build Europe on only deregulation...1992 is much more than the creation of an internal market abolishing barriers to the free movement of goods services and investment...The internal market should be desgined to benefit each and every citizen of the Community. It is therefore necessary to improve workers' living and working conditions, and to provide better protection for their health and safety at work...Europe needs you.
  • Speech to the British TUC. (8 September, 1988.)

• My objective is that before the end of the millennium Europe should have a true federation. The Commission should become a political executive which can define essential common interests...responsible before the European Parliament and before the nation-states represented how you will, by the European Council or by a second chamber of national parliaments.
  • To French television. (23 January, 1990.)

• The Americans should stop insulting us, I'm not going to be an accomplice to the depopulation of the land. It's not up to the Americans to tell us how to organise our farm policy and the balance of our society. Their attitude is to treat the EC as if it had the plague and then encourage the rest of the world to join in.
  • On American attitudes to the Common Agricultural Policy. (7 December, 1990.)

• Federalism is a guideline, not a pornographic word, you can speak it out loud...We have been focusing too much on a country that has said no, no, no!
  • Speech in Maastricht. (8 December, 1991.)