EU leaders salute father of European integration Jacques Delors

Leaders of the European Union have paid tribute to the late Jacques Delors. 

He was "a visionary who made our Europe stronger" and whose "work... shaped entire generations of Europeans", wrote EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on X.

“His life's work is a united, dynamic and prosperous European Union... Let us honour his legacy by constantly renewing our Europe,” she added. 

Delors, himself an ex Commission President between 1985 and 1995, passed away on Wednesday at his home in Paris, according to his daughter.  

From Brussels, he shaped the contours of contemporary Europe: Setting up the single market, signing the Schengen agreements, the Single European Act, launching the Erasmus student exchange program, reforming the Common Agricultural Policy, setting in motion the Economic and Monetary Union that led to the creation of the Euro.

Delors "entered history as one of the builders of our Europe", said European Council President Charles Michel said, describing him as a "great Frenchman and great European".

He “led the transformation of the European Economic Community towards a true Union based on humanist values ​​and supported by a single market and a single currency,” added Michel. 

A former Economy Minister under François Mitterrand, Delors dashed the hopes of the Left by refusing to stand in the 1995 presidential election, when he was the clear favourite in the polls.

At the end of 1994, his spectacular renunciation of a presidential candidacy, announced after six months of suspense live on television in front of 13 million viewers on Anne Sinclair's program "7 sur 7", stunned the French.

"I'm going to be 70, I've been working tirelessly for 50 years and it's more reasonable, in these conditions, to envisage a