Reconsidering Jacques Delors’ leadership of the European Union

Abstract

Jacques Delors’ presidency of the European Commission (1985–1994) is a major example of transformative leadership at a moment of significant innovation in a transnational institution. Leadership by the president involves both leading the supranational Commission, and exercising leadership in the intergovernmental setting of the European Council, which takes key decisions about major innovations for the European Union. This analysis uses a typology developed by Oran Young to analyse Delors’ successes and failures both in mobilizing the Commission for the major projects of the decade and in promoting them in the intergovernmental context of the Council. After reviewing his early career in French politics and the resources it provided, the article analyses Delors’ successes, beginning with the 1985 Single Market program, an exercise that presented innovative win–win proposals to member states that unleashed energy that could be invested in new projects. As Franco-German preferences diverged over monetary union and member states grew wary of his ‘Russian Dolls’ strategy, Delors’ capacity for transformative leadership dwindled. Following the 1992 Maastricht treaty, as the EU turned toward issue areas central to national power and identity, member states began retreating towards intergovernmentalism. The decline of Delors’ leadership became clear when member states refused to support his 1993 White Paper on Growth, Competitiveness, and Employment.

Keywords:

• Jacques Delors
• political leadership
• European Commission
• European single market
• Maastricht Treaty
• social Europe

Acknowledgements

For support of this research we acknowledge the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, Successful Societies Program. For workshop participation George Ross acknowledges the European Commission Erasmus+ programme – Jean Monnet Grant 565351-EPR 2015 – 1 – CA – EPPJMO Project.

Notes

1. We build on a number of case studies of the Delors years, including Maris (1993); Grant (1994); Ross (1995); Endo (1999); Drake (2002) and Lord (2002).

2. The options of any Commission and its president are also limited by the powers of the Parliament, the CoJ and, in the post-Delors years, the European Central Bank.

3. Walter Hallstein, the first president, stands out. Working when European institutions were a construction site, he had little choice but to take the lead, but his ambitions, personal characteristics, and the frictions of an open-ended situation led him straight into battle over the Commission’s role with President Charles de Gaulle, which he lost (Dinan 1994, ch. 2).

4. These years make up a major part of his memoirs (Delors 2004).

5. Delors eventually did get a degree at night-school, rare for France at the time.

6. In 1964 the majority of the CFTC (Confédération française des travailleurs chrétiens) became the CFDT (Confédération française démocratique du travail).

7. Writing in 1997, Delors sketched the ‘economic pole’ he had sought: a new ‘framework and institutional processes governing macroeconomic cooperation’ on the same level of importance and elaboration as the Stability and Growth Pact. The Delors Committee had proposed a pact for macroeconomic policy cooperation to supplement the stability pact, but Delors judged that Maastricht had created instead a situation of ‘competitive federalism’ rather than ‘collective sovereignty’ on macroeconomic matters (Delors 2007, 65–77; our translation). Commenting on Maastricht’s twentieth anniversary, he added ‘… this was my last effort as Commission President to establish equilibrium between the economic and the monetary. We know what happened then …’ (Delors 2012).

8. UNICE became BUSINESSEUROPE in 2007.