Jacques Delors, founding father of EU’s single currency project, dies at 98

Delors had a high-profile political career in France, where he also served as finance minister under Francois Mitterrand.

Jacques Delors, former European Commission chief and a founding father of the European Union’s (EU) historic single currency project, has died. He was 98.

The French socialist and ardent advocate of post-war European integration died in his sleep at his Paris home on Wednesday, his family said.

Delors served as president of the European Commission for three terms – longer than any other holder of the office – from January 1985 until the end of 1994.

During Delors’s decade as the European Commission chief, the EU completed its integrated single market and agreed to introduce a single currency, the euro, and built a common foreign and security policy.

The then-12-nation bloc also set the conditions on his watch for eventually admitting the former communist states of Central and Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.