2023-12-28 06:30:47
The March 7, 1985, Jacques Delors, who has been serving as President of the European Commission for two months, is awarded the Legion of Honor by François Mitterrand (1916-1996). In his speech, the President of the Republic uses one of those little cryptic phrases that he likes: “You realized, a little late, that we cannot only change things through economic and social issues. You discovered, a little late, that politics was also necessary. »
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The remark has its share of truth. A committed citizen since the Liberation, Jacques Delors has long favored forms of activism other than parties to try to change French society. It was only in 1974 that he decided to knock on the door of François Mitterrand’s Socialist Party (PS), which had been engaged for three years in a strategy of union with the communists. To say that Jacques Delors felt uncomfortable there is an understatement. Hostile to the logic of the currents structuring the PS, he never tried to create his own. His reluctance to confront universal suffrage and his aversion, inherited from [l’ancien président du Conseil] Pierre Mendès France (1907-1982), for the revolutionary rhetoric, which many of his comrades were fond of, accentuated his feeling of strangeness towards the PS.
Subscribing without nuance to Mitterrand’s analysis would, however, amount to ignoring the factors that allowed him to earn his stripes as a statesman. Jacques Delors was not “the Saint Sebastian of socialism”, as he liked to present himself, even if he had to overcome two original sins: his participation in the cabinet of Gaullist Prime Minister Jacques Chaban-Delmas (1969-1972), whose “new society” project he had helped to develop, and his claimed Catholic faith, which offended a number of activists attached to secularism and aroused the suspicions of François Mitterrand, worried about a potential Christian offensive on his training.
After the humiliation of a session of self-criticism inflicted by the Chevènementists in the 12th section of Paris, Jacques Delors then highlighted his three key assets: high-level economic and social expertise, marked by the personalism of the Christian philosopher Emmanuel Mounier (1905-1950) and his professional experience at the Plan in the 1960s, an excellent media image, unwavering loyalty to the person of François Mitterrand.
Suspicion
When the rivalry between [l’ancien premier ministre] Michel Rocard (1930-2016) and the first secretary of the PS became sharper from 1977, Jacques Delors supported the latter, without however participating in the cabal of the Metz congress (April 1979), which established the victory of the Mitterrandists. This “good choice” facilitates his ascent. He became candidate Mitterrand’s main economic expert for the 1981 presidential election. Once the victory was achieved, he obtained the ministry of finance, but found himself relegated to a historically low protocol rank – fourteenth – for such a portfolio. This great football fan is also subject to a tight marking from Laurent Fabius, Secretary of State for the Budget.
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