Jacques Delors: Perspectives on a European Leader

Jacques Delors

Jacques Delors became a household name during his decade as President of the European Commission. His conversion of the Commission presidency into a highly public and political role took many Europe-watchers by surprise. He acquired the image of a strong leader overstepping the boundaries of his formal authority, and his fame and notoriety quickly surpassed that of his predecessors. This fascinating study explores the combination of personal, political and other factors which lay behind the ‘Delors phenomenon’ and assesses Delors’ legacy for political leadership and institutional reform in the European Union. It addresses questions including the role of individual leaders in contemporary politics and the contested legitimacy of the EU as a political system. Drake traces the development of Delors’ thinking and expertise on European integration, and draws on his public life after the European Commission for additional perspectives on his Commission presidency. Drawing on exclusive interviews with Delors, this comprehensive, accessibly written study of his life and Commission presidency is an invaluable resource for students of all levels in European and French Politics, as well as the general reader. Helen Drake is a Lecturer in the Department of European Studies, Loughborough University. She has published widely on aspects of French and European Politics. Her previous publications include The Language of Leadership in Contemporary France (co-edited with John Gaffney).

Jacques Delors Perspectives on a European leader

Helen Drake

London and New York

First published 2000 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003. © 2000 Helen Drake All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Drake, Helen Jacques Delors: perspectives on a European leader/Helen Drake. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. European Commission. 2. Delors, Jacques. I. Title. JN33.5.D73 2000 341.242’2’092–dc21 [B] 00–03 6629 ISBN 0-203-43225-8 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-74049-1 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-12424-7 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-12425-5 (pbk)

For Harry

Contents

Preface Acknowledgements

ix xiii

1

Jacques Delors, 1985–95 images of a leader

2

The making of a European Commission President, 1945–85

26

3

Leadership and legitimacy dilemmas: the European Commission and its President in perspective

51

Delors the pragmatic visionary?: the White Paper on completing the internal market, 1985

78

4

5

6

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Towards a new European society?: the 1993 White Paper on growth, competitiveness and employment

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Jacques Delors: perspectives on a European leader

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Appendix: list of people interviewed for this book Bibliography further reading Index

157 159 170 181

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Preface

‘Ever closer union between the peoples of Europe’, as imagined by the signatories to the Treaty of Rome, has time and time again proved itself vulnerable to the commitment or opposition of strong political leaders. French President Charles de Gaulle virtually broke the EEC in 1965 by rejecting the letter and spirit of the founding treaties, and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher demonstrated similar intent in the 1980s. De Gaulle’s successor in the 1980s, François Mitterrand, in tandem with German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, built on those treaties to create the European Union. The European-wide, supranational leadership of a Jean Monnet, a Walter Hallstein, or a Jacques Delors—the ‘statesmen of interdependence’ (Dinan, 1994; see also Duchêne, 1994)–has shown itself to be contingent upon the goodwill and co-operation of such national leaders. But Monnet, Hallstein and Delors and other leaders of the new, European, supranational institutions, were also endowed with a form of leadership authority in their own right as the keepers of new and novel institutions charged with finding supranational solutions to international problems. The ‘rightness’ (Lodge, 1994b:365) of this authority—its legitimacy—was derived from the extraordinary bargain struck between Europeans in the post-World War II years to deliver peace and prosperity through an experimental form of political co-operation. When Commission President Delors (1985–95) harnessed this authority and transformed the Commission Presidency into an internationally recognised political leadership position for a whole decade, with the approval of many of the member state governments for most of the time, the effect was to bring this form of authority into focus, and its legitimacy into question. By virtue of an unprecedented but forseeable combination of factors, Delors provided a form of statesmanship at the supranational level which exposed the logic—or, at least, a logic—of the Community system. The experiment in democracy undertaken by the Community’s ‘founding fathers’ had always contained the potential for a federal-type political system with its own government and leadership, but Delors demonstrated, in part malgré lui, how it might work in practice. He did this by optimising and mobilising the Commission’s resources (Endo, 1998b) in a set of circumstances which, initially at least, were propitious, and he did so as much by accident as by ix

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design or intent. He came to personalise an institution and, indirectly, a polity, renowned until then for its ‘leaderless pluralism’ (Page, 1992:193) and anonymous institutions. In many respects, Jacques Delors can be seen as the first accidental European statesman, whose search for personal and collective influence in the political process of European integration drew him inadvertently but inevitably into a struggle for legitimacy on his own behalf, and on the part of the Commission, thereby contributing to the EC/EU’s reputation as a ‘contested polity’ (Banchoff and Smith, 1999). My study of Delors is placed squarely within this conceptual context of the legitimation of political authority. My initial interest in the subject matter arose from a perception that Delors, in his Commission Presidency incarnation, seemed to act as a magnet for many of the conceptual and political conundrums associated with political leaders, and with the EU. First, for example, is the fact that the EU, as Delors himself came to perceive it, is an ‘unidentified political object’ whose development has challenged the norms of democratic theory and practice. Second, there are the conceptual and normative difficulties associated with studying leaders without reifying them into ‘great men’ (Carlyle, 1907) or otherwise over-emphasising their significance. The various accounts of Delors’ influence on the process and institutions of European integration (Endo, 1998b; see also Grant, 1994a; Ludlow, 1991; Moravcsik, 1998; Ross, 1995) differ fairly dramatically, and I deduce that there is simply no one definitive assessment to be made, whatever one’s methodology or theoretical framework. Third is the fact that terms such as ‘legitimacy’ and ‘legitimation’ are themselves endlessly contested concepts. Fourth is the part that the media play in distorting the role of political leaders and their political personas. For the purposes of clarity, and in order to go some way to meeting these difficulties, I have elaborated a number of key definitions, upon which I build in subsequent chapters. These definitions work for me, and are derived from dictionary definitions as well as from the mainstream literatures on political legitimacy in democratic theory and in relation to the EU. Where the other problems are concerned, I have simply reached my own conclusions concerning Delors’ political life, which reached its zenith during his decade as Commission President, based on a fairly lengthy process of digesting the relevant literatures, and comparing their representations of reality with my own empirical research, and my own judgements about the political process. Definitions I take authority to be in a critical and formative relationship to democracy. It can refer to the authority of institutions and their rules (collective authority), or to the authority of individuals (personal authority), usually but not always based on the rules—formal and informal—of the post they occupy. Whether or not authority is converted into power will depend on political circumstances, context and the personal factor. Authority is closely related to

Preface

xi

legitimacy. Legitimacy I understand to be the conforming of the authority of political institutions and individuals to objective criteria of democratic laws and norms, and to the subjective criteria of social beliefs, values and expectations regarding these laws and norms. I take legitimation to be the act or process of making authority legitimate. Such acts can pertain either to political actors (in the form of activity undertaken to justify their authority) and/or to the subjects of political authority—the ‘ruled’, or ‘governed’ (in various forms, such as the offering or withdrawing of electoral support). The process of studying legitimacy and legitimation is complicated in the contemporary age by the scope for perceptions and expectations of political authority to be manipulated by media representations and interpretations of reality, and by the generalised focus on the powers, real and ascribed, of the individual leader. Interviews My approach to the study of Delors includes the use of a small number (30– 40) of elite interviews, of which five are with Jacques Delors himself, carried out over a period of three years. Such interviews are fraught with methodological difficulties. Interviewees in my experience tend to see interviews as an opportunity to rehearse a script, or narrative of events. This script inevitably functions as a substitute for memory, or at least as a reinforcement, particularly when the interviewee in question is requested and invited to give multiple tellings of the same ‘story’ to different interviewers. In Delors’ case, the interview appears to be his preferred medium for imparting information. It suits his style, being a variation on the Socratic method, or dialectic (la maïeutique) that he favours for its pedagogical possibilities. He has certainly given hundreds of interviews in the course of his career, and his major publications (Delors, 1975; Delors, 1994b) are in fact transcripts of interviews and conversations held between Delors and an interviewer. The existence of a script does not undermine either the interviewee’s intentions (to be open and helpful and encouraging; to promote and facilitate academic interest and so on); nor the value of their testimony; but it does impose caution in the interpretation of material gained in this way, particularly since interviewers are doomed to suspect both those versions of events that appear to be shared by different actors, and those which differ radically from others’ scripts. My solution has been, first, to treat the interviews first and foremost as privileged occasions to meet key—and busy—individuals. Such meetings go some way towards reconciling the intensity of media images of political actors, and the intuitive knowledge that leaders can change structures if not circumstances, with the ultimate human ordinariness—and so extraordinariness!—of all politicians or public servants, Delors included. Interviews are, moreover, invariably pleasurable occasions and welcome distractions for the researcher. This was certainly

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true in my case, and I am indebted without question to Jacques Delors for his time and availability, and for his unfailingly pleasant, polite and constructive support and welcome. My second response to the fallibility of interviews is to use the material gained in this way sparingly and selectively, having compared different accounts of the same events: sometimes to lend ‘colour’ to the narrative in the form of a direct citation, which readers can take or leave, depending on their level of interest; elsewhere as a primary source alongside others to substantiate the context of events. Wherever possible I have cleared direct citations with their author, and respected anonymity where requested. These numerous caveats are intended to convey to readers that while I am extremely grateful to my interviewees, I have lingering doubts concerning the ‘correct’ methodology of oral interviews in a political study of the kind I have undertaken here, and as a result have deliberately sought to relativise their contribution to my study.

Acknowledgements

Many people have provided me with all kinds of support during the long haul of this project. I would like to acknowledge the financial assistance provided by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Study Visit Scheme (Award no. I455264020); the Nuffield Foundation Social Sciences Small Grant (SOC/100 [1096]); the Department of Languages and European Studies, Aston University; and the Department of European Studies, Loughborough University. I would also like to record and thank the helpfulness of various librarians (at Aston University Library and Information Services; Loughborough University Pilkington Library; les Services de Documentation de l’Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris and the Commission Central Library); as well as many others who were in a position to help me locate materials, information and interviewees (including Lissa Bradley, formerly of Notre Europe; J.Lastenouse, Heidi Taylor and Annegret Van Miert of the then DGX at the European Commission; and Mme. Rielau and Anika Van Aelst of the Commission’s Spokesman’s Service, 1993–4). I thank the Marçais family for their hospitality and friendship during my stay in Paris in 1994. My interviewees all gave up valuable time to listen to my questions, and to answer them patiently, and I am most grateful for their collaboration (they are listed in the Appendix on page 157). I would particularly like to thank Jacques Delors, who quite apart from his courteous attention during five interviews, provided me with information and documentation upon request. The enthusiasm of a number of students and graduates for subjects covered by this book has on occasions helped bolster my determination to finish. I thank again most warmly those colleagues and friends who kindly read draft chapters of the book: David Allen, Michelle Cini, Alistair Cole, Susan Milner, Andy Smith and Mike Smith. With projects of this kind, however, at least in my experience, the biggest obstacles are those in the mind and in one’s daily life, and for truly invaluable assistance in overcoming these, my thanks go to my close friends and family.

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Jacques Delors, 1985–95 Images of a leader

Introduction: the Delors factor For ten years and three weeks from 6 January 1985 to 23 January 1995, Jacques Lucien Jean Delors, President of the European Commission, provided a form of European leadership which in its duration and imagery was unprecedented in the history of European integration. During Delors’ decade, European integration was characterised by treaty revision, institutional change, budgetary reform, policy deepening, completion and innovation, two rounds of enlargement, and the beginnings of common policies in European security and defence. By the time Delors left office in January 1995, the European Communities had become the European Community (EC), the European Community had itself been subsumed into the newly-formed European Union (EU), and an Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) was only a few years away. President Delors acquired celebrity and notoriety for his association with many of the developments of the decade 1985–95. He also literally became a household name throughout the EU member states, and even beyond. The degree to which he personified ‘Europe’ was evident in the labels assigned to him by the world’s media—‘Mr Europe’,1 the ‘Czar’ of Europe,2 and so on. During Delors’ presidency, the number of accredited news correspondents to Brussels soared, and it was a source of satisfaction to Delors that the news and analysis of his successors’ appointments (Jacques Santer in 1994; Romano Prodi in 1999) received far more media column inches and pages than had his own in late 1984.3 An inevitable consequence of Delors’ public profile was the stimulation of interest in the precise nature of his impact on events during his decade as Commission President, particularly amongst academics numbed by the relative stagnation and vagaries of leadership of the previous decade. Many authors have argued that Delors played a key role in shaping the events of his decade in office. Charles Grant, working from an insider’s position as the accredited correspondent for The Economist in Brussels for much of Delors’ decade, argued that ‘no politician since the war has made a greater impact on Western Europe’ (cited in Radice, 1994:96). Grant took 1

2

Jacques Delors

the single market, the Single European Act (SEA), the Social Charter, Social Chapter, the Delors Committee’s report on EMU, and ‘advocacy of the European economic area’ as Delors’ most memorable achievements. (Grant’s account of the Delors decade, moreover, is Delors’ favoured rendering of his decade in Brussels.) George Ross, similarly, is credited as having demonstrated ‘the importance of the Commission as a highly original and dynamic institution, as a source of ideas, initiatives, and policies—when it is headed by a driven and inspired leader’, namely Delors (Hoffmann, 1995:98). Ross, who is suspected of some overstatement of Delors’ significance (Peterson, 1999:51), is surpassed in his assessment of Delors as ‘the most successful Commission leader in the history of the Community’ (Ross, 1994:14–15) by Hurwitz, who claims that ‘Jacques Delors’s success transcends the commission, and he will join the select group of those who rediscovered Europe’. (Hurwitz, 1996:705.) Whether saint, sinner, or statesman of interdependence, President Delors certainly revived interest from many quarters in Europe’s ‘supranational entrepreneurs’ (Moravcsik, 1999). In 1994, François Duchêne argued that one of Delors’ predecessors, Jean Monnet, was a pure expression of the ‘transforming’ leadership associated with historic leaders such as Gandhi (Duchêne, 1994:390). Duchêne was using the terminology of J.M.Burns (1978) whereby, in contrast with ‘transactiona’ leadership, which ‘is the art of tying up compromises between political forces in the normal operation of a settled system’ (Duchêne, 1994:390), ‘transforming leadership requires a much rarer capacity—to renew the terms in which the political debate are [sic] conducted.’ Although Monnet did not have the ‘contact with the masses’ usually associated with transforming leaders such as Gandhi, Monnet’s ‘view of changing the context by injecting a new vision, through a new entity, into the status quo, a “ferment” of change, puts him in the same category.’ (ibid.) In very different circumstances, but having inherited the Monnet method and institutions of integration, Delors certainly contributed to renewing the terms of some of the political debates of his day, beginning with the slogans linked to the completion of the internal market ‘without frontiers’ by 1992, whilst his daily activity involved many of the ‘transactions’ of compromise and consensus-building. Monnet and Delors have both been described, moreover, as ‘statesmen of interdependence’ (Dinan, 1994; Duchêne, 1994), to express their capacity to wield influence despite holding virtually no power. Both men seized on periods of opportunity, created by circumstances, to bring about changes within their institution and, more significantly, to the agenda and future of European integration. In Delors’ case, the popular image of the Commission and its President also underwent change, since, as we saw above, Delors came to personify a unique international leadership role. Much scholarship, of course, has also been dedicated to relativising, if not minimising, Delors’ leadership and impact, since political science, generally

Jacques Delors, 1985–95

3

speaking, aims to emphasise structure over contingency and human agency, and to draw generalisable conclusions from exceptional events. There is also some truth in the statement that ‘fame, in contemporary politics, is usually a prelude to debunking or, at best, neglect’ (Pinder, 1998:47). Nevertheless, ‘…the political scientist’s search for regularities and structural explanations often meshes poorly in practice with his or her pragmatic perception of the idiosyncratic influence of individuals on polities’ (Cerny, 1988:131); and it is hard to ignore the ‘phenomenon of a Delors’ (to paraphrase Haas, writing about de Gaulle, 1968:xxii) when seen from the perspective of his impact, as leader, on the structures which contained him; on the policies for which ‘his’ institution was responsible; and on the prevailing and dominant images and perceptions of ‘Europe’ during his decade.4 Delors seemed to contribute, furthermore, to a revival of the whole question of the leadership of European integration (Nugent, 1995), and his portrayal by national medias reflected a renewed focus in the ‘Euro-polity’ on questions of the ‘structuration of authority’ (Hooghe and Marks, 1999:72) in the European Union. Such questions turn on the critical issue of the legitimacy of a Delors (or a Monnet, Hallstein, Santer or Prodi) to wield influence from such a dubious power base—in conventional terms—as the Commission of the EC/EU. Most research into contemporary democratic political leadership seeks to achieve three interrelated aims: first, to relate the individual political leader to his or her ‘times’, that is to say, to his or her immediate circumstances, as well as to historical, traditional, cultural and socio-politico-economic contexts; second, to relate the leadership of the individual to the formal structures, institutions and systems in which his or her leadership is exercised; and third, to relate a leader’s personal qualities, characteristics, political experience and background, past and future, to the type of leadership he or she provides. It is the combination of what we can call the ‘skills’ of a given leader, derived from their personal characteristics and qualities, and capabilities, and the ‘rules’ composed by his or her institutional and wider environment, that form the basis of the leader’s legitimate exercise of authority, and govern success, or other leadership outcomes. Measuring this combination in Delors’ case is complicated by the nebulous and contested nature of the ‘rules’ of his immediate environment— the would-be polity of the EU. Moravcsik (1999:270) has claimed that ‘The role of legendary figures such as Monnet and Delors has been much exaggerated’. Such claims reflect in part an almost intuitive determination to counterbalance the interest in leaders and leadership which has run through political science, European and North American, since the early twentieth century. They tend also to reflect legitimate doubts within the discipline concerning the methods and standards used by political scientists to evaluate the action of ‘supranational entrepreneurs’ such as Delors, or the Commission, or leaders more generally; that in fact seems to be Moravcsik’s primary concern in his quest for a ‘parsimonious’ theory of European integration (and Moravcsik is reluctant

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Jacques Delors

even to accept that individuals, as opposed to institutions, can exercise supranational entrepreneur ship: ibid.: 298).5 I do not intend to ‘conflate activity and influence’ as Moravcsik accuses others of having done (ibid.: 291), in order to ‘prove’ that Delors was a leader of a particular type who achieved specific results. Rather, I set out in what follows to explore and clarify the ‘Delors factor’, and to reflect upon it from the specific perspective of Delors’ impact upon the vexed questions of the legitimacy and legitimation of authority in the EU. I aim to offer just that—a perspective—on an individual, Jacques Delors, and a phenomenon, leadership. While I acknowledge the importance of evaluating Delors’ results, this perspective also aims to explore how a leader can expand (or not) the resources at his or her disposal (Endo, 1998c) in order to maximise his or her authority to exert influence, if not power. Much as de Gaulle was deemed, in the 1960s, to have shifted the locus of authority in the EEC system towards the member states in the Council, Delors was associated with a shift of authority back to the supranational core of the system, however counter-intuitive or unwelcome such a development might seem. While not entirely agreeing with Rose (1970:114) that ‘in their haste to develop general categories of analysis, social scientists have been pitifully weak in developing measures of the extent to which different individuals in the same office vary in their competence’, I acknowledge that political leadership still baffles political scientists, particularly those who, in respect of the EU, seek explanatory theories of integration (Diez, 1999b). Rose is nearer the mark when he suggests (ibid.: 114) that: ‘perhaps the best test of a politician’s greatness is his ability to create new roles for an established office, or even to create a new office’,6 and when he reminds readers that ‘socalled great men are not all-powerful’ (ibid.: 115). I do not claim that Delors was a ‘great man’ (Carlyle, 1907), or even a great politician in the formal sense of the term, but I do suggest that his leadership of the European Commission, taken in the context of his public life as a whole, requires a focus on the individual and his or her room for manoeuvre in contemporary politics, including those of the EU. In this I concur with Oran Young when he notes that: ‘in the final analysis, leaders are individuals, and it is the behaviour of these individuals which I must explore to evaluate the role of leadership in the formation of international institutions’ (Young, 1991:287). Legitimacy in the European Union: discourses and debates Leaders have always fascinated observers of and participants in politics, of course, and the end of the twentieth century is not so different in that respect; indeed, the twentieth century in general has been noted for the centrality of the leadership factor to politics (Seligman, 1956:177). But at a time—the turn of the twenty-first century—when national, supranational and especially international politics is increasingly characterised by an emphasis

Jacques Delors, 1985–95

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on the immediate and the short term, on summitry and political imagery, on the sound bite, the dramatic political persona, the said, the projected, the ascribed and the perceived, the gaze upon the individual leader and his or her impact is inevitable. Contemporary politics in these crucial respects heightens expectations of the political individual’s potential to lead and, as intangible and hard to measure as such phenomena might be, affects the political process with identifiable and consequential effects. Seen from this perspective, although Delors was unelected, essentially contained within a bureaucrat’s role and ultimately subservient to his nationally-legitimated counterparts, the member state leaders, and although he was always careful to reject the specific label of ‘political leader’, and did not seem to see himself as one, Delors was a political leader, albeit of a new type. Moreover, it is precisely because Delors was appointed and not elected to his post that his legitimacy to act as a leader was problematic and contested. This factor constitutes the primary context to understanding his leadership, perceptions of that leadership, and the impact he had on the debates which occurred during his decade, in academic and other circles, on the question of the legitimacy of European integration and of the EU’s institutions—and leaders. It is in the very nature of European integration itself that its legitimacy should be in question since, in Laffan’s terms (1999:330), ‘The EU is a challenge to how we conceptualize democracy, authority and legitimacy in contemporary politics’. Memorably described by Delors in 1985 as an ‘unidentified political object’,7 the European Community/Union is the product of an idea remarkable precisely for its originality and iconoclasm. The decisions taken in the 1950s to create the first European Communities were difficult and historic because they represented a deliberate departure from political practice and tradition towards a system ‘essentially concerned with the administration of things’ (Shackleton, 1997:70). From the very outset, the nature of the relations between the new European institutions and the sovereign member states, their populations and electorates, was uncertain, problematical and unresolved, and it was only through a mix of ambiguity, faith, innovation, incrementalism, inertia, and trial and error that these relations functioned at all. There was and still is no one, single, unequivocal political blueprint for European integration (Westlake, 1998:17); nor one dominant ideological narrative, other than the teleology of integration itself, and this is far from being uncontested. Given this resolutely experimental nature of European integration, and its overpowering of many traditional political cleavages and differences, it is not surprising that its political dynamics have challenged the categories and terminology of political, economic and legal analysis and practice. Such elusiveness has not meant, however, that the EU, as a set of institutions (however novel), objectives (however lofty), and principles (however vague), or of legislative acts (however obscure), and individuals (however famous, or ‘successful’, or popular) has escaped analysis or, more

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significantly, judgement, when compared with the norms of national democratic governance in Europe (and beyond), particularly where its authority to make decisions binding on its members and their peoples is concerned. The EU has powers of its own to enact norms which create rights and obligations for both its member states and their nationals…; to take decisions with major impact on the social and economic orientation of public life within the member states and within Europe as a whole; to engage the Community and consequently the member states by international agreements with third countries and international organizations… (Weiler, 1997b:502). and it is natural and inevitable that one should enquire, as does Weiler: ‘Whence the authority to do all this and what is the nature of a polity which has these powers?’ (ibid.: 52).8 Whereas at the time of Delors’ appointment to the Commission presidency in July 1984, the academic community had devoted relatively little time or space to the analysis of the legitimacy of these various dimensions of European integration, the number of studies taking up the question of legitimacy and the EU had grown exponentially by the late 1990s. This reflected the turn that European integration had taken since the mid-1980s, when as a result of the SEA and then the Treaty on European Union (TEU), ‘several new policy sectors which belong to the core of state sovereignty [were] “Europeanized”’ (Höreth, 1999:252). Moreover, neither the national leaders’ indirect legitimacy to take majoritarian European-level decisions by virtue of their status as elected national representatives; nor the ‘direct’ legitimacy of the European Parliament, with its tenuous claim to represent European opinion and to hold the Commission accountable, appeared to satisfy significant portions of the member states’ public and elite opinions. The combination of a Jacques Delors, seemingly driven by a value-laden vision of European unity and endowed with the experience and character to achieve it; an intransigent Margaret Thatcher bent on recreating Great Britain without the help of a European superstate; a François Mitterrand in need of a ‘mobilising myth’ (Hayward, 1990:27) to substitute for the lyrical illusions of a Socialist France; a Helmut Kohl determined to preserve forever the notion of a European Germany; and a Felipe Gonzalez whose career and country’s fortunes rested on him facilitating Spain’s transition from poor relation to big EU member, had contributed to this build-up of doubts about the extent of the EU’s authority. The so-called legitimacy crisis experienced by the EU in the 1990s, to which the Maastricht Treaty responded and which it fuelled, was no sudden crisis at all, but the culmination of a set of circumstances in which all aspects of European integration came into focus for the first time in the forty year history of the EU. The permissive consensus

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of its foundations gave way to the re-nationalised voicing of concerns and challenges about the quality of people’s lives, the direction they were taking, and the degree of control individuals and national politicians could hope to exercise over them. By the mid-1990s, political leaders believed that they needed to legitimate further integration, where their predecessors had merely had to maintain a tacit ambiguity about the ultimate costs, benefits and objectives of further integration. By the mid-1990s, the concept of legitimacy had in fact become something of an opportunity for the political leaders of the EU, in the sense that the concept of making Europe more legitimate appeared as the key which would unlock public support for the increasingly constraining reasons compelling national leaders towards agreeing to more integration. Successfully ‘selling’ Europe to its ‘consumers’ became the watchword, for example, for the revision of the founding treaties in the Intergovernmental Conference of 1996–7: the ‘spirit which imbues the 1996 IGC Reflection Group’s Report’ is that of a ‘veritable legitimacy crisis’ due to the ‘serious erosion in public support for the European construct’ (Weiler, 1998a:254). Beetham and Lord (1998a:124) note accordingly that: ‘a condition of “forced reflection” about the justification for political authority could be said to be a chronic one for the European Union; the question of its legitimacy is continuously present’. For Shaw too (1998:64–5) ‘legitimacy is universally accepted as one of the most acute challenges faced by the EC/EU and it is through legitimacy that the stability and acceptability of the enterprise of European integration can be secured’. These difficulties arise principally because the EU is indeed an ‘unidentified political object’, based on the norms of international diplomacy and national democratic practice; of nation state and international organisation—and market. Consequently, there is a lack of political and academic agreement that the dimensions of legitimacy associated with the analysis of the nation state can even be applied with any validity to the EU in the first place. The ‘rivalry’ or ‘dichotomy’ between the research approaches and perspectives of international relations and ‘new governance’, and comparative public policy, is a recent expression of the dilemma posed by the sui generis, experimental quality of European integration to analysts of political institutions and behaviour. (Hix, 1998). Analytically speaking, it is usually helpful to think of legitimacy as a dynamic web of factors, rather than as a static or immutable state of being; and to conceive of legitimacy as a political resource which delineates the limits (and limitations) of the authority of an individual or institution, or system of government. Legitimate politics are defined by a changeable mixture of factors, some of which are objective (such as the legality of authority, and due democratic process), while many others, such as the acceptability of political outputs, are more subjective: the fit between these outputs and the flow of historical tradition; the conformity of institutions to formal and informal democratic tradition and culture, or to popular myths (Hansen and Williams,

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1999; see also Obradovic, 1996; Weiler, 1992:19–20).9 Beetham and Lord have argued (1998a:22–3) that the crux of the EU’s ‘legitimacy dilemmas’, and the key to its ‘legitimacy deficits’ lie in understanding the interaction—in reality a difficult balancing act—between the different dimensions of its legitimacy, which they classify as relating to performance (‘effective performance in respect of agreed ends’), democracy (‘democratic authorisation, accountability and representation’) and identity (‘agreement on the identity and boundaries of the political community’). Christiansen (1998:105) describes the problem as the potential conflict between the values of democracy (‘the demand for public acountability’), integration (‘the search for institutionalised solutions to transnational policy making’) and member state autonomy (‘the maintenance of national diversity’). The dilemma for the EU’s leadership is to build an institutional and constitutional framework to ensure a process by which legitimacy from each of these perspectives can be achieved, and sustained; an aim that so far has proved elusive, in large part because the question of the EU’s legitimacy is posed so differently by different actors and observers. Is legitimacy a question of balancing the efficiency and democracy of a political system? Or is it a contest between the opposing and varied ‘polity-ideas’ (Jachtenfuchs, 1995) held by political decision-makers of different national or partisan origins? Or is it a question of public identification with underlying ‘myths of origin’ (Obradovic, 1996)? Given that the EU is itself a ‘contested polity’ (Banchoff and Smith, 1999), addressing and resolving the problem of which ‘polity-idea’ (Jachtenfuchs, 1995) it should represent; what it should do, and to what standards, and what values and ideals it should carry and promote, has proved intractable, leading to inherently contradictory proposals for institutional reform, as demonstrated in the 1996–7 round of reform, which culminated in the Amsterdam Treaty and its contradictions (Christiansen, 1998:110–1). Academics (Abromeit, 1998; Christiansen, 1998; Höreth, 1999) have been led to conclude that constitutional reform is unlikely to resolve the EU’s legitimacy dilemmas, if conducted within the usual parameters of sovereign-state thinking. Such difficulties have tended to focus upon the place of the Commission in the Community/Union system, where they are amplified. Of all the EU’s institutions, the Commission is arguably the most alien, since the innovation which characterised the ‘founding fathers’ experiment in democracy in the 1950s centred on the creation of an independent, supranational, executive authority. Images of Delors as a very powerful and ambitious man with unfettered powers are distorted: in January 1985 he inherited a post that offered far fewer opportunities for wielding power, or even exercising influence, than the French presidency, the German chancellorship, or the British premiership. This was a post which in the past had frequently been enfeebled in an interesting variety of ways by wilful national leaders such as Charles de Gaulle, Margaret Thatcher; and even by self-styled proEuropeans such as Valéry Giscard d’Estaing or François Mitterrand.

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European integration in the 1950s was the product of a set of needs (to reconcile two hereditary enemies, France and Germany; to reconstruct Europe’s national economies; to bring peace and prosperity to a continent marked by two wars in the space of one generation); a set of solutions (the creation of new institutions and policy-making instruments through the mechanisms of international treaties and law); and a set of political actors and institutions (national leaders; former members of the resistance movements against Nazi Germany; political parties; national administrations; incumbents of newly-created European institutions and posts; a new European bureaucracy and legal system). The process was marked by a palpable sense of urgency, a readiness to experiment, and an awareness of a time frame within which new solutions to far-reaching problems would be feasible, but beyond which these new solutions would encounter the resistance of re-nascent and divergent national interests. To quote Weiler (1997b:506): The European Community was to be an antidote to the negative features of the state and statal intercourse; its establishment in 1951 was seen as the beginning of a process that would bring about the elimination of these excesses. The Commission was and still is at the centre of the experimental method— the Community method—that emerged from these exceptional circumstances and the visions they engendered. A source of political control, in the form of the College of Commissioners, was established within the Commission, alongside its bureaucratic structures for the administration of the Communities. Although they are sworn to independence, the Commissioners are appointed by national governments who can and often do decline to renew their term. The Commissioners are therefore appointed by democratically-elected national politicians, and in this way derive a form of delegated, indirect, political authority, as well as a form of accountability to their national ‘constituencies’. This accountability has been described as the Commissioners’—and increasingly the Commission President’s— obligation, in practice even more than in theory, to both accommodate and reconcile national diversity (Christiansen, 1998; see also Peterson, 1999; Quermonne, 1990) in pursuit of the task of identifying, proposing and pursuing ‘public policies which serve the Union’s basic objectives as set out in Article 2 of its Treaties, the first of which is to “promote the economic and social progress” of the EU’ (Peterson, 1999:48). However, the College is also answerable as a body to the EP, the EU’s only directly representative body. Since 1995 it has seen its term of office aligned with that of the European Parliament, and has become formally more accountable to the EP in the form of the requirements for the EP to approve the governments’ nominees for Commission President and Commissioners. These arrangements are the bases of what has been called the Commission’s

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‘parliamentary’ (Christiansen, 1998) or ‘democratic’, majoritarian legitimacy (Featherstone, 1994; Quermonne, 1990). The Commission President, moreover, has gained some measure of political authority over his colleagues in the College, intended as a means of endowing him (or perhaps, one day, her) with the means of greater efficiency: under the terms of the 1997 Amsterdam Treaty, the appointment of the President of the Commission will become effective only after it has been endorsed by the European Parliament. The new President, duly confirmed in office by the European Parliament, will choose the other Commissioners by ‘common accord’ with the national governments. Taken with the Commission’s functional and unique responsibility to act in the ‘general interest’ of the Communities on the basis of the inter-national alliances and compromises that it succeeds in building, and the authority that it derives from the formality of its bureaucratic methods and internal organisation, the Commission’s structural, indirect link to the ‘peoples of Europe’ (through the national governments and the EP), leads to the possible and not unreasonable assumption that the Commission, logically-speaking, could be expected to provide a form of leadership of the European integration process, in the sense of guiding a Community based on a sense of shared values, and in the form of its monopoly and functional expertise over the instigation of policy initiatives deemed in the Community interest (based on these values) (Lindberg and Scheingold, 1970:128–33; see also Peterson, 1999:48; Weiler, 1997b: 506–7). In the new system, therefore, representation—of the ‘peoples of Europe’— was envisaged along functional as well as democratic and national lines, and lines of accountability were deliberately blurred to account for the innovatory quality of the times, and for a break with the past. There were faint provisions (in Robert Schuman’s call for a ‘European federation’) for a dual allegiance by the peoples of Europe, to their nation (-state), but also to a European-wide, general interest. In this scheme, there was arguably room for a European-wide leader to emerge from the spaces and ambiguities deliberately left in the various treaty texts. Seen from this systemic perspective, Delors’ leadership falls squarely within the broader question of the legitimacy of supranational authority in the EU, and specifically of the orthodoxy of ‘ever closer union’, and the teleology of (pro-) Europeanism. It also and thereby falls into the trap set by these largely contradictory tasks and obligations. However unclear it may be from Europe’s founding texts whether their authors ever intended Europe to one day develop federal institutions and powers, Delors’ ten year ‘tenure’ at the Commission seemed to point to a potentiality in the Community method and design for a future political entity with its own leader; and his ‘failures’, real, imagined, or perceived, simultaneously serve as reminders of how contentious such an entity has been, and still remains. ‘European’ leadership, in the sense of supranational, was made plausible by the letter, spirit, and circumstances of the founding treaties, but it was unpredictable and historically unwelcome (ultimately) when it did occur.

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Delors, in enacting the logic of the Community’s provisions for supranational authority, also exposed them and their weaknesses. In this sense, the rise and partial fall of Delors’ star in Brussels was both foreseeable, given the combination of the idiosyncracy of Delors’ previous political life, and the peculiarities of the would-be European polity; and accidental, in that this particular combination was unprecedented, experimental and unexpected; because at one level he simply enacted the logic of the treaties; and because political science cannot easily attribute, let alone ‘prove’ the intentions or impact of political leaders. His reputation as a European was acquired because he—almost inadvertently—styled himself as the leader of a semi-imaginary European polity; and as a statesman, because of the protocol and trappings of political office conferred upon him, and deployed by him, and because of the obligations which he perceived as weighing upon him. His version of the Commission presidency revealed the (or a) logic of the Community system and its provisions for authority. In many respects, Delors’ reputation as as supranational leader was acquired malgré lui, as a product of both the constraints and opportunities offered by the post to its incumbent, in combination with his driven attitude to his work; and his presidency of the Commission had the merit of highlighting the complexity of the EU leadership—and legitimacy—puzzles, and offering, by logic and default, a demonstration of a new leadership option for European integration. As Hoffmann notes (1995:101) ‘Delors had practiced the “Monnet method” in a way no successor of Monnet had ever practiced it, and he had added “dramatization,” in order to keep the Community moving.’ So the structural dilemma of a Commission President is how to exercise influence without power, and how to acquire legitimacy without formal democratic credentials but with internally contradictory missions. One solution lies in the Commission President’s ability to mobilise and optimise, and even expand, the little legitimacy that his post—and personality— affords; in Delors’ view, by being ‘useful’ to the member state governments, and running a strategically-oriented Commission.10 In this setting, legitimacy is both source and condition, and currency, of a Commission President’s ‘successes’, and the Commission President, as can be seen from a historical perspective (and as we shall see in Chapter 3, in more detail), has proved to be a key figure in shaping the rightness of the Commission’s authority at any one time. It is the interaction of the ‘skills’ of the Commission president with the ‘rules’ formed by the institutional practices and norms, as well as the prevailing circumstances of the times, which can produce either the ‘exceptional’ and intermittently successful Commission leadership of a Delors (Peterson, 1999), or the ‘normal’ and ultimately failed leadership of a Jacques Santer (1995–9), or a Gaston Thorn. Legitimacy, of course, is only one amongst a leader’s potential resources, and that is as true of the Commission President as of the French President, or British Prime Minister. Endo (1998b) has described, moreover, Delors’ track

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record in mobilising the various resources at his disposal, including legitimacy, in a number of different cases during his presidency. But without legitimacy, a leader’s other resources are of limited effect, both in terms of their substantive impact and regarding the duration of their impact. Legitimacy has a place as a ‘major feature of the observable relations of government. Its existence obliges us to give an account of it. No one, it seems, wishes not to appear legitimate.’ (Barker, 1990:14). It is also the case that ‘the manner in which regimes are justified to those whom they govern is an important matter in determining what kinds of regime they are’ (ibid.: 26). And in the specific case of a Commission President, whose formal leadership resources are relatively, if not severely limited (Nugent, 1995; Endo, 1998b), the outcome of the quest for legitimacy is even more critical to his performance and acceptability, particularly at a time when the Commission became increasingly caught up in a climate of demands for it to justify its authority and action. Delors inevitably became part of the process of legitimating Europe to an increasingly sceptical set of constituencies, including public opinions. Seen from this perspective, his presidency was in no small part an exercise in balancing the different dimensions to his and the Commission’s legitimacy in the relationships that he facilitated or created: within the College of Commissioners; between the College and the services; between the services; between the Commission and the European Council, the Council of Ministers, the European Parliament, and the web of interests circling Brussels; with national medias, national public opinions, and third countries such as the USA. Many of the images associated with President Delors relate precisely to the means and manner by which he carried out his tasks, and to perceptions of these. Delors has in retrospect interpreted his entire public life as precisely a quest to exert influence and, where necessary, acquire the legitimacy to do so (and we develop this claim in respect of Delors’ French career in Chapter Two);11 and his style of leadership as Commission President can meaningfully be put into this broader context. ‘Exercer une influence, conquerir une legitimite’12 A pervasive image of Commission President Delors, for example, is of a determined and driven individual, resolutely moulding the practices and institutions of the European Communities and Union in accordance with a personal vision (some might say crusade) of the goals of European integration. This image lingers in part because over time, Delors was accorded, and deployed, all the trappings, finery, and protocol normally associated with democratically elected national leaders, including the attention of the world’s media. The Commission in any case is in many ways an open institution: to the press, and in its attention to communicating with its various ‘constituencies’ (Lamy, 1991:77). Delors found that he could not for long fruitfully work ‘in the shadows’, a method he thought of as typical

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of Jean Monnet,13 who Delors saw as reluctant to sustain a public leadership persona (and who in reality played down the political components of his job). Instead, from the very start of his mandate, Delors took all the opportunities a Commission President has to sit and dine at the table with EU Heads of State and Government. He behaved as their equal, and drew on the credibility of his national political past, and possible future, to do so, as well as on the precedents set by previous Commission presidents (such as Roy Jenkins, Commission President between 1977–81, who had won the right to attend G7 gatherings on behalf of the Commission (Endo, 1998b:64), and on his right (formalised in the Single European Act—Endo, 1998b:55) to membership of the European Council. Delors, over time, came to see the Commission President as a public figure. He did much during his decade to bring the post into the public eye, with varying effects and consequences both intended and unintended, and initially with some reluctance, by his own account. He eventually became as visible to the public as most national leaders of the time, and more visible than all of his predecessors, and he forged a close relationship, and in certain cases, friendship, with several of his contemporaries in national capitals, not least of which was with Chancellor Kohl of Germany. With other leaders— memorably, Margaret Thatcher and to a lesser extent, François Mitterrand—his relationship was more problematic, but no less public for that. It is possible that Jacques Delors remains in the collective popular memory at best as an ambitious and wilful political individual frequently scapegoated for national governmental indifference and indecisiveness, and for exploiting these same weaknesses; at worst, as a dreamer responsible for an idiosyncratic and autocratic exercise, if not abuse, of power and managerial responsibilities; or perhaps as a failed visionary guilty of a misguided assessment of European historical trends and values, and an inappropriate and untimely blueprint for European politics and society. But these images provide only partial and distorted pictures of a man who in his home country, France, had had only the merest and shortest of brushes with high political office (as we shall see in Chapter Two). Delors was a top government minister from 1981–4, but until then had largely worked on the sidelines and in the margins of mainstream French leadership and party politics, and had only come into direct and sustained contact with la construction européenne in the 1970s. It was, significantly, only after Delors had been Commission President for several years that he became a possible contender for France’s top political job, that of President of the Republic, and on that occasion he declined even to campaign for the office. Whatever the reasons Delors gave for rejecting the opportunity to win France’s top post in 1995 (and Delors, as well as many commentators and pollsters at the time believed he would win), his decision was not entirely surprising when seen in the light of his political life as a whole. Delors’ sense of ambition motivated him to fulfil his various posts to the best of his abilities over the

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50-year span of his professional life, but did not drive him to strive to attain particular political positions; he did not appear at any time in his career to have a political life and ambition mapped out in advance, and his successes and moves have a quasi-accidental quality to them. A politician, moreover, who liked to emphasise the fact that the Commission presidency was his sixteenth career,14 stands in stark contrast to a career politician of the likes of Jacques Chirac, who devoted a quarter of a century to capturing the presidency of the Fifth French Republic. Delors was no less dedicated for that, providing over fifty years’ worth of intensive work and a dogged determination to ‘be useful’ at all times. Delors’s lack of conventional political ambition and commitment in mainstream institutional French terms, contributed to him failing to live up to others’ expectations of him in France by his eschewing of political power, and especially of electoral office, and to his exceeding of expectations in Brussels, where he warmed to his power, and where his post required of him precisely the qualities which were liabilities, if not handicaps, in the French context. In France, to be a democrat of both social and Christian persuasions, was not only largely a contradiction in terms, but rendered him doubly a political orphan, since in Delors’ political lifetime, French politics, and in particular the semi-presidentialism of the Fifth French Republic, produced no mainstream parties willing to wear those labels overtly. In the European context, on the other hand, Delors’ relatively flexible political affiliations, coupled with a deep sense of duty to social reform, were an asset in reaching compromises over the ‘European general interest’, while his personal—and ‘personalist’—philosophy simultaneously lent a sense of direction to the European enterprise at critical moments, sustained his own motivation, and kept him in tune with the Christian-democratic inspired foundations and supporters of the Community. Delors’ reputation (and self-image) as an atypical French political character, moreover, meant that during his Commission presidency, he was generally less representative of the French ‘national interest’ than might automatically have been assumed to be the case (Peterson, 1999), a factor which supported him in his crucial role of alliance-building and the mediation of interests. His disagreements with French leaders over the form of political union enshrined in Maastricht (Bocquet, 1995:28; le Monde 19 June 1991) and the tension he experienced more generally over Maastricht, between maintaining neutrality and defending the Commission, are examples of Delors’ interpretation of his duty to keep the ‘general interest’ in mind. His one notable blind spot in this respect was perhaps agriculture, where he was generally deemed to support French over European interests, for example in the build-up to the Uruguay Round GATT deal in late 1993. Nevertheless, in this specific case as in others, he did not ultimately stand in the way of a European solution.15 Delors was not a product of the hothouse of the French elitist education system as were many of his French contemporaries; nor—and partly as a result of this fact—did he work his

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way through the grands corps at the centre of French public policy-making; un homme de l’appareil (a party man) with firm national ambitions was unlikely to have stayed the course ‘in exile’ in Brussels as long or as fervently as did Delors. Delors’ public persona, before, during and after his decade in Brussels, was markedly different from many of his political contemporaries who, for the most part, did not take the autodidact route, which Delors portrayed as both a personal virtue and asset, and as a factor which limited his affinity with politics. Delors’ style of politics, and specifically his earnest discourse, often seemed too raw, too honest, too modest—and too sincere— for the murky realities of ‘real’ French politics, since he was rarely in the position of needing to win votes. Delors’ discourse on la construction européenne, moreover, was also part of the process by which he became a recognisable voice—and face—of European integration. He was and remains a prolific writer and speaker (who claimed to have personally written up to eighty per cent of his own speeches), who contributed enthusiastically to the process of ‘speaking “Europe”’ (Diez, 1999) as part of a strategy of legitimation of his and the Commission’s activity (Delors, 1992, Ross, 1995:55). His words and gestures—primarily as relayed by the media—contributed to perceptions of him as embodying and legitimating a certain ‘polity-idea’ (Jachtenfuchs, 1995) although, as I show in subsequent chapters, Delors did not maintain entirely the same discourse (neither in content nor in style) throughout his decade as Commission President. A belief in the relevance of political discourse to the political process stems from the observation in political science and political practice that timely and well-chosen messages can form part of leadership strategies to prepare, amongst other things for change, by formulating rationales (and rationalisations—Arter, 1997:125) for shifts in policy goals or methods; by diffusing potential resistance to such change (Schmidt, 1997); by linking change to other agendas and decisions (Drake and Milner, 1999); by, in sum, justifying—legitimating—political decisions. Discourse can also be a tactic designed to appeal to given constituencies (usually voters) with a view to persuading and convincing them of a given course of action; this is rhetoric, a resource favoured by demagogues, and not part of Delors’ usual armoury. In the case of la construction européenne, where what is in question is a polity-in-the-making, devoid of most of the traditional reference points characteristic of stable democratic nation states (Obradovic, 1996), the role of discourse, including specialist terminology, cliché and metaphor, can be expected to play a larger role than usual in the construction of political expectations, mores, paradigms, and conceptual frameworks (Jachtenfuchs et al., 1998:410). Ideas and their circulation, and therefore their articulation and expression, are part of the process of ‘building’ Europe.16 Building images, or worlds, in part through discourse, can of course have both positive and negative effects, and any gap between leaders and the led in the EU can be seen to stem in part from the mismatch between the image/

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s of European union built by and believed in by elites, and specifically the Commission, and the difficulty for most people of feeling part of (or interested in) that image, or to identify with the European ‘project’ or ideal that motivates the policy-makers and which they promote (Abélès, 1994:116). According to Marks (1997:26), even the complexity of the names of the different EC/EU institutions and entities, post-Maastricht, can be seen as harmful to EU’s ‘quest for legitimacy’, in the absence of a constitution with a fixed, or at least relatively stable, political terminology, many active participants, to say nothing of mass publics, are confused about the formal designations of major European political institutions.’ The EU, furthermore, is an unfinished (and probably unfinishable) polity, and as such there are opportunities for language to shape the emerging structures and practices more forcefully than is the case in polities whose institutional norms and practices are more stable and secure. Almost by definition the EU is open and permeable to outside influences. Terms such as ‘federalism’, ‘subsidiarity’ and ‘union’, even ‘integration’ itself, for example, not only do not mean the same things to all peoples, nations or states, but their meaning becomes even more fragmented when filtered through the many official and non-official languages of the EU; not to mention the national medias. Such semantic confusion, moreover, reflects the more persistent and fundamental ambiguities and differences of opinion surrounding the very notion of a unified or integrated Europe. Paradoxically, it is in part the fluidities of language that have allowed such differences to coexist over many years with only minor instances of open conflict. In this context, the scope for political discourse to influence perceptions and understandings of the political process is broad, and is a resource available to leaders of the integration process at the national, supranational and transnational levels, either to support or to undermine the integration process and rationale (Gaffney, 1999). Since the Commission presidency is relatively unscripted in comparison with national leadership positions, Delors’ readiness on chosen occasions to exploit this freedom to depict European integration to the heads of state and government, or to the European Parliament or outside constituencies (such as the British TUG, in 1988) in more robust terms than his predecessors contributed to images of him as a European leader with an agenda and method for further integration. His style of discourse, for those who were listening, spelt out a Commission President with both a more global and ambitious vision of Europe than his immediate predecessors, and a detailed method by which to proceed (Deroubaix and Gobin, 1994; Hogenraad, 1998). But Delors has also, in retrospect, claimed that he did not intend to be the voice of the EU, speaking to national populations over the head of national politicians and other ‘intermediaries’; he did not believe that such appeals lay within his authority as Commission President,17 and nor do they, in formal terms. He did not explicitly set out to create a relationship between himself (or his post, or his institution) and the ‘masses’, although he regularly sought

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occasions to communicate his and the Commission’s thinking. He did in fact effectively create opportunities to ‘speak’, however indirectly, to national populations, and could usually not resist suggesting to such audiences that they should demand clear explanations of events from their national leaders. This was particularly true of his numerous television appearances in France, but also of some of his more heated speeches in the 1989–92 period, as we see in Chapter Five. He did, however, reject demagoguery as a political tool on principle (he was not suited to it), as he did the langue de bois (empty promises) characteristic of much electorally-charged political discourse. His was the style of the pédagogue, and he also likened himself on many occasions to a craftsman (artisan) with specialist expertise. Part of his style of leadership was based on his ability to explain himself, as well as his willingness to listen,18 and on his belief in the role of la pédagogie de la réforme (the explanation of reform), and on the need for ‘a permanent effort to explain’ (le Nouvel observateur 26 June 1995), a style which fits with his broader philosophical framework of the educated and active citizen (le Monde 17 June 1996). Delors was uneasy, in any case, with generalist audiences, prefering to communicate with fellow specialists or enthusiasts, and so stay on terrain familiar to him. He was generally at ease in televised interviews, not because he craved the attention of millions, but because the interview format allowed him control over his discourse (Drake, 1995:147–8), and the opportunity to explain himself, often at length. By extension, a characteristic of Delors’ discursive (and general) strategy whilst Commission President was the relationships he created with the ‘intermediaries’ of society—the two sides of industry; ‘intellectuals’ and the church—as befitted his view of state-society relations, and as was arguably his duty, by virtue of the Commission’s duty to mediate between divergent interests (Peterson, 1999). On the occasions when Delors’ discourse was of the more emotional, rhetorical variety, such as in 1991 regarding Europe’s security dilemmas in the post-Cold War world (as we see in Chapter Five), this approach represented a deliberate, provocative but risky change of tactic, intended to open up space for thinking and enacting radical change, and was ultimately responsible for negative perceptions of his public persona. Usually Delors was wary of the dangers of any gap between rhetoric and reality, and of politicians getting ahead, rhetorically speaking, of their material and political possibilities (la fuite en avant), as he believed to be the case of the national governments in their early promises of a Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) for the new Europe. Neither in France or Brussels was Delors the fervent, life-long federalist that many assumed him to be. In many respects, he effectively became ‘a federalist’, in that he came to believe that ‘Europe’ required, for example, a recognised leading figure to act as interlocuteur with third party countries and regions, possibly in the shape of a directly or indirectly-elected European president at some time in the future. He also became convinced that certain

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policy matters (including matters formerly defining of national sovereignty, such as security and defence, and currency) could legitimately be decided at the European level, whereas others—culture, education, unemployment— were the domain of national governments, for cultural and practical reasons. But Delors’ pro-integrationism was a journey travelled over time and as a matter of necessity, rather than the result of any previous and strongly held conviction, and it was combined with his abstract preferences for decentralised democracy (in France in the 1960s and 1970s he was associated with proposals for decentralisation reforms), which in the European context eventually translated into proposals for subsidiarity. He was never part of any of the organised pro-European movements, for example, and his first initiatives as Commission president were not those being promoted through the EP at the time by federalists such as Altiero Spinelli. Delors does claim, however, to have felt a strong sentimental attachment since the Second World War to Franco-German reconciliation, and he was in many ways an internationalist long before the majority of the French left, interesting himself in other European countries’ social models for their relevance to reforming French political culture.19 Over a lifetime, Delors remained a patriot in favour of a strong France in a strong Europe, within an internationalist frame of reference. In so far as Delors developed a theory of federalism, it was encapsulated in his concept of a ‘Federation européenne d’états nations’—a European Federation of Nation states—by which he attempted to express the critical need for a working balance between national sensibilities and Europeanlevel efficiencies.20 Federalism as a political solution, or state, for Europe was in any case not the point for him; it was a relevant mode and method of political organisation only in so far as it successfully determined ‘qui fait quoi?’ (who does what?); and it was closely bound up with Delors’ working principles of the informed and active individual citizen. As Commission President, his attempts to convert his democratic ideals into practice revolved ultimately around his ‘personal investment’21 in interesting the forces vives—intermediaries—of society in the rationale for European integration. This he saw as amongst the most useful contributions a Commission President can make to building Europe. As Commission President, Delors usually defined the institution by its roles, such as ‘social engineer’, collective ‘memory’, and agent provocateur, and he used his presidency to try to adapt those roles to changing circumstances, since, as Peterson notes, ‘the role of the Commission is determined largely by broad changes in the political and economic environment in which the EU operates.’ (1999:47). During his decade as Commission President, Delors demonstrated that the Commission’s influence was indeed contingent upon circumstances, and upon the state of its relations with other more powerful institutions and individuals, especially—but not exclusively—national leaders; and he frequently found the need to bypass its formal internal working methods and processes in

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order to enable the institution to function as he wished. Delors has described his approach to the Commission as threefold: to instil a strategic dimension into the Commission’s activities (and expectations); to enhance and support collegiality; and to enable the Commission to act as mediator—‘gobetween’—with the member state governments in order to facilitate decision-making.22 There is evidence that Delors did alter the Commission’s institutional sense of its own capacities and purpose, as we see in later chapters (and see Grant, 1994a; Ross, 1995), and that he enhanced its role in the integration process.23 His presidency certainly coincided with the rise of a renewed academic interest in the autonomy of the Commission as a supranational actor, and as a carrier of past memories and beliefs. But Delors’ leadership of the Commission demonstrated above all that the Commission’s capacity to fulfil any of its roles was and still is largely contingent upon circumstances, and in particular the state of the reigning intergovernmental consensus. This was a fact of EU life which Delors understood, despite his idealistic tendencies, and which he attempted to turn to his advantage. Ultimately, images of President Delors relate closely to his perceived success or failure in doing so. Developing a perspective on Jacques Delors: overview of the book My perspective on the Delors decade and factor, as defined above, suggests a thematic approach combined with a sense of chronology for this book. In Chapter Two, I explore Delors’ French background; namely, his forty years of professional activity before he arrived in Brussels in 1984–5. This exercise provides us with an understanding of the man who in Brussels succeeded where he had ‘failed’ in France: to exercise significant influence largely shielded from the more distasteful (as he saw them) characteristics of political power. I conceptualise and represent Delors’ political life as a continuum of public service, which culminated, but did not terminate, in Brussels. To many, this route appeared tortuous (some might say tortured), and it was certainly idiosyncratic, and atpyical of the French Fifth Republican political elite. Tracing its path provides insights into the chronological unfolding of Delors’ commitment to European integration, in the abstract and in reality, and his evolving rationale for supporting it. It allows us to contextualise the strategies and rationales for which he became notorious, and to assess the personal resources and skills that he took to the Commission and its presidency. I confine myself therefore, in Chapter Two, to an interpretative, narrative account of Delors’ professional parcours before 1985, with a view to introducing the lines of continuity which link the various stages of his public life. In Chapter Three, I describe the various combinations of Commission and Commission President since the days of Jean Monnet’s High Authority. In taking an historical perspective, I trace the Commission’s fortunes in the

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Community system from the perspective of its legitimacy to act in the general interest of the Community, and that of the scope of its President to articulate its institutional claims to legitimacy. From this chapter emerges a picture of the factors governing the Commission’s ‘amount’ of supranational authority at any one time, the degree of tolerance extended to it in this respect—its legitimacy—and, importantly, the role of the Commission President in shaping perceptions and realities concerning the Commission’s role in the Community system. Subsequently, in Chapters Four and Five, I apply the perspectives developed in the three introductory chapters by means of a contrast between what have often been viewed as the high and low points of the Delors presidency. These are, respectively, the reclaiming of the Commission’s authority to drive economic integration forward in the mid-late 1980s, and the limitations of authority experienced by Delors and the Commission in the early to mid1990s. In each of these cases, I provide an overview of the period in question, from the perspective of the legitimation and legitimacy of the Commission’s authority, followed by a focused study of a key moment during that time span. These moments are, respectively, the genesis and production of the 1985 and 1993 Commission White Papers. These documents can be taken as representations and expressions of the Commission’s assessment of its authority on each occasion, and they indicate the President’s role in formulating, shaping and driving initiatives within the Commission. They form part of Delors’ legacy to la construction européenne, and as such allow an assessment of his role in optimising (or not) the Commission’s ability to exercise influence and authority within the EU. Commission texts such as the White Papers are evidence of strategic and tactical decisions made by the Commission about its authority to initiate policy, and the form and content that policy should take. They are a means of launching debate, and setting an agenda for policy initiative or change (Mazey and Richardson, 1994:179; see also Nugent, 1995:605–6; Spence, 1994:103). Factors such as the choice of the format of the text, its structure, and the dominant themes of its vocabulary and discourse, provide indications of the intentions of the initiative, and their relation to the Commission’s self-perceived authority. I present these White Papers as significant moments in the life of the Commission, because I wish to focus upon the totality of the production of the texts over a period of time: their origins in an historical and immediate environment and context; their mode of production within the Commission; their content and form; their presentation, their promotion and their impact. In 1985, the Commission adopted the concept of the White Paper as the ideal format for a document intended to relaunch the integration process by means of a series of specific actions, based on the Comission’s formal, functional authority, programmed to occur within a specified time frame and as part of an overall package of measures. Such a document and strategy precisely reflected the meaning of a White Paper in the British context from

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which it came, and which British Commissioner Cockfield translated in a literal fashion into the Community context: The White Paper should set out the philosophy or principles to be followed and the programme in detail. This must be a complete programme and it should be set in a time frame, every single proposal having its own time schedule and a completion time set for the whole project. In short, I proposed planning and executing the programme in precisely the same way as I had done in the past with an industrial project. (Cockfield 1994:31–2). Lamy described this choice of a White Paper as a vehicle for the Commission’s strategy regarding the internal market as a mixture of routemap and itinerary for a journey of fixed destination, duration and stages.24 The 1985 White Paper was primarily a list of measures to be accomplished within eight years: by ‘1992’, the date that became the promotional symbol and effective target of the single market programme. The measures elaborated were closely related to provisions in the original Treaty of Rome for completing an internal market; indeed, the Paper was justified, as we shall see, in terms of it providing for the implementation of the Treaty of Rome’s provisions for the free movement of goods, persons, services and capital. The Paper was presented to the Commission’s several constituencies (specifically, the EC Heads of State and Government; organised interests; and Members of the European Parliament) for discussion and consultation, and subsequently became the founding text for guiding the completion of the single market. It was a document whose production within the Commission was delegated by President Delors to Commissioner Cockfield and the then Directorate-General III (Internal Market and Industrial Affairs), but which was promoted personally by Delors, and which formed part of his unfolding strategy for the revival of European integration, and of the Commission’s role therein. In comparison, the ‘influential 1993 White Paper’ (Nugent, 1995:614) was a White Paper in far looser terms. Whereas the 1985 White Paper had recommended specific actions to be taken at the Community level in order to complete the single market, the White Paper of 1993 was principally a compilation of analyses of Europe’s declining economic and competitive situation, and contained relatively few specific recommendations for action, or firm timetable of the ‘1992’ sort. It did not lay out a programme of action for the Commission, but was intended to illustrate where action was needed, and of what sort. The member states themselves collaborated in producing one part of the White Paper, as did outside experts and advisors, including some from Clinton’s administration.25 In promoting and presenting the White Paper, Delors, who personally wrote some of the White Paper and,

22

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within the Commission, centrally controlled the production of the document, stressed its role in encouraging ‘réflexion’ (strategic thinking) on its subject matter; it was intended to generate debate and ideas: Un ‘Livre blanc’ est un livre ouvert. Il débouche sur un plan d’actions à mettre en œuvre à tous les niveaux. Il offre un cadre à la réflexion et au dialogue du social. Ce faisant, la Commission européenne a voulu ouvrir la fenêtre de l’avenir…. Vive done le débar, car une fois encore si le contenu du Livre Blanc pouvait être discuté, critique, en de multiples forums, de tous types, à tous niveaux, alors il aurait déjà atteint une grande partie de l’objectif fixé: nourrir la réflexion, contribuer à la prise de decisions, mais aussi restaurer les sens des responsabilités de chacun. (Delors, 1993: preface, vii-viii.)26 My approach in Chapters Four and Five of this book is to contrast the two White Papers, which the Commission itself perceived as two very different documents produced under two different sets of circumstances. Each of the two documents was equally the Commission’s response to a set of circumstances, and the expression of its perception of its own authority to act upon those circumstances; the Commission has, moreover, since defined a White Paper as ‘a document presenting a detailed and debated policy both for discussion and political decision’ (from Europa, Commission Website, 14 March, 1996). Whereas in 1985 the White Paper had the direct effect of marshalling, enacting, and then expanding the Commission’s functional authority, and was accepted on this basis by the member state governments, Delors said of the 1993 White Paper that its greatest strength was to have been acceptable to 12 countries which disagreed over the goals of integration. (Delors, 1994b:297). This was because the Paper explicitly revealed the limits of the Commission’s own authority: it did not ask for additional formal competences, or indicate the need for further constitutional change. By the same token, however, the Paper signalled the limitations, for the Community’s future, of these confines: the Paper had the effect of highlighting the absence of an intergovernmental consensus on the scope and goals of integration, even economic integration, and of identifying the possible consequences of such a situation. Delors’ personal contribution to the White Paper was greatest in the choice of terminology and discourse for the presentation of these messages: simultaneously a discourse of limited responsibility where the Commission and its President were concerned, and of warning with regard to the Community’s restrictive and contradictory provisions for authority and responsibility. By taking the 1985 and 1993 White Papers as expressions of the Commission’s authority to articulate and enact the general interest of the Community, and as indications of Delors’ presidential role in relation to this authority, I develop a focus for studying the changes that occurred in the Commission’s legitimacy during the years of Delors’ presidency. I place each

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of my examples in their chronological and narrative context in order to emphasise and clarify the all-important role of circumstances in determining the impact a given leader can expect to have. In Chapter Six, I review Delors’ final years at the Commission, and his activity on leaving the Commission in early 1995, covering his focus since 1996 on think-tank type activity, in the context of a fifty year career approach to changing society through the propagation of practical ideas for socio-economic reform. In many respects, Delors’ decision not to stand as French presidential candidate, which took so many commentators by surprise, was entirely in keeping with his political career and ‘character’. To have stood as candidate would have represented, for Delors, a significant and possibly disastrous departure from his fifty year long career of thinking and doing politics. Politics, for Delors, was a mix of idealism, efficiency, utility and relevance. He believed that even had he been elected French President, a combination of personal and political factors would have prevented him from implementing that mix, and that he would consequently have failed by his own criteria. His decision was not devoid of the motivations associated with ‘usual’ politics—pride, ambition and so on— and it does not seem unreasonable to suggest that he preferred to end his career as a successful European Commission President rather than as a failed French President. My approach is deliberately eclectic, and is intended to complement existing studies of Delors’ Commission presidency. Studies of Delors before this have ranged both more widely and deeply across the ten year span, and I draw on them for corroboration and contrast. Certain authors (Endo, 1998b; Grant, 1994a; Ross, 1995) have provided dense, empirical, ‘insider’quality detail of a cross-section of policy initiatives taken during Delors’ presidency, and I acknowledge my debt to their insights and narratives. My focus is deliberately on that spot where political analysis meets the less tangible qualities of political life, such as legitimacy and leadership, political image and perception. My emphasis on the role of one individual, Delors, allows a focus on the impact of human agency upon structure, as well as its limitations. It is an approach which underlines how mediatised and popularised politics tends to create perceptions at variance with the realities of political leadership, which itself is so hard to capture and measure. I am interested in Delors as a case of ‘personal leadership’ (Cerny, 1988) in the late twentieth century; a case which contributes to the evidence amassed over centuries of European history that individuals can intervene in politics in ways that are frequently unexpected and unforeseen, but almost never entirely unpredictable. By conceptualising Jacques Delors’ Commission presidency as the adventure of the first accidental European statesman, I hope to be part of the ‘inventive mood’ (Abromeit, 1998:169) increasingly called for in studies of European integration.

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Notes 1 The rise of Mr Europe’, The Sunday Correspondent 3 December 1989:6–7. 2 The cover story of Newsweek 6 February 1989; also the title of an article in le Point 7 December 1991:18–19. 3 Interview with Delors, 15 July 1999. 4 A more melodramatic depiction of Delors as leader comes from Boris Johnson writing in the Daily Telegraph (13 August 1994), reviewing Grant’s study: ‘…[Delors] went on to become, without question, the foreign politician to have the greatest influence on British life since Hitler.’ 5 ‘Rare moments of comparative entrepreneurial advantage enjoyed by informal entrepreneurs arise…where they help mobilize new and previously unorganized domestic and transnational social actors, and advanced packages of policy proposals blocked by domestic coordination failures. This ability is an attribute of institutions, not individuals, and follows from the superior administrative coherence, political autonomy, and centrality in transational networks enjoyed by supranational officials.’ 6 Readers should also refer to Lagroye (1997:8) for his description of a role as ‘l’ensemble de comportements qui sont liés à la position qu’on occupe et qui permettent de faire exister cette position, de la consolider, et surtout de la rendre sensible aux autres.’ (A role is ‘the sum of behaviours which are linked to the position occupied and which allow the holder to bring this position to life, to consolidate it, and, above all, to make it sensitive to its surroundings.’) I thank Andy Smith for pointing me to this definition. 7 In his speech to the inaugural session of the Intergovernmental Conference in Luxembourg on 9 September 1985, Delors said: ‘For we must face the fact that in 30 or 40 years Europe will constitute a UPO—a sort of unidentified political object—unless we weld it into an entity enabling each of our countries to benefit from the European dimension and to prosper internally as well as hold its own externally.’ (Bulletin EC 9–1985:8). 8 And: ‘it is difficult to see how either the new institution [the EEC] or its personnel can escape judgement by some, at least, of the criteria applied to existing forms of government. It will still be important to know who exercises what powers, from whence the holders of power derive their authority, how it can be taken from them, and how their work will be supervised and their decisions checked.’ (Pickles, 1963:78). 9 According to Weiler, formal legitimacy derives from a polity’s democratic structures, and popular consent to these, whereas social legitimacy ‘connotes a broad societal acceptance (empirically determined) of the system…. [social] legitimacy is achieved when the government process displays a commitment to, and actively guarantees values that are part of the general political culture—such as justice and freedom.’ 10 Interview with Delors, 15 July 1999. 11 Interview with Delors, 15 July 1999. 12 ‘Exert influence and win legitimacy’: Delors’ own description of the leitmotiv of his public life. 13 Interview with Delors, 28 April, 1997. 14 Radio interview: (Delors 1985). 15 See, for example, The Economist 9 March 1991; le Monde 9 October 1991. 16 I limit my approach where political discourse is concerned to essentially empirical observations of how the search amongst political actors, academics, journalists and so on for a terminology with which to label the process and institutions of European integration reveals, demonstrates, and both masks and exacerbates differences in underlying beliefs about that process and those

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17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

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institutions. These differences might be national in origin, or partisan (party political), regional and so on. They are compounded by individual styles of discourse, i.e. idiosyncracies and idiolects. I note the potential for elite discourse to contribute to the legitimation (or de-legitimation) of political activity—such as the building of Europe. There is a growing literature on the significance of political discourse to the process of European integration, and so on the relevance of discourse analysis to European studies. This is largely based in the constructivist arm of international relations, and draws on linguistic philosophy for its explanatory power and theoretical underpinnings. See Larsen (1997); Diez (1999a); Holm (1997); Anon (1999). At its simplest, the argument made by these authors is that ‘the various attempts to capture the Union’s nature are not mere descriptions of an unknown polity, but take part in the construction of the polity itself. To that extent they are not politically innocent ….’ (Diez, 1999a:599). One focus for such authors is the differences between the ‘stubbornness of national discourses’ (Diez, 1998:4) as a result of national governments being ‘restricted in their choice of European policies to the extent that they have a limited vocabulary at their disposal, both in terms of words and in terms of concepts…. (Diez, op. cit.: 7; Larsen, 1997). Interview with Delors, 15 July 1999. Interview with Delors, 15 July 1999. It is the case that unlike certain of his non-Communist leftist contemporaries, such as Michel Rocard, Delors appeared more consistently open-minded to the prospect of a more internationalised France. See Delors (1975:218–25) on federalism within the context of a discussion of democracy and democratic reform, and decentralisation in France. Interviews with Delors, 16 December 1997 and 19 October 1998. Interview with Delors, 15 July 1999. He also acknowledged, in this interview, that his successors had to add a fourth dimension to their presidency: in-house management. In this respect, the literatures of new and historical institutionalism are useful conceptual frameworks; see Bulmer, 1994; Pierson, 1996. Interview with Pascal Lamy, 9 August 1999. Interview with Pascal Lamy, 9 August 1999. ‘A White Paper is an open book. It leads to a plan of action to be implemented at all levels. It offers a framework for ideas and for the discussion of social affairs. In writing this White Paper, the Commission wished to open a window on the future…. Long live debate! Let me stress once more that if the content of the White Paper has been discussed and criticised in many and varied forums, then it will already have reached its main objective: to nourish our thinking, contribute to decision-making and restore a sense of responsibility to all concerned’.

2

The making of a European Commission President, 1945–85

Introduction: a reluctant politician? Politics was not Delors’ first choice of profession. He came to politics by necessity, as he saw it, rather than conviction or ambition, and his notoriety as Commission President contrasts sharply with the many years he spent working on the margins of mainstream French politics. Delors’ natural inclination was to shun high political office and the constraints of shorttermist electoral politics, and his brief periods in such positions were not particularly comfortable experiences for him. This is not to say that he did not wish to engage with politics, nor contribute to and participate in socioeconomic change and reform: he did. It is rather that his preferred strategy was to influence the political agenda of change through the power of soundly-researched ideas for which he acted as initiator and vehicle: ‘semer (to sow) was his strength; the burden of ‘recolter’ (to reap) could usually be delegated to others. 1 The ideas in question were, broadly speaking, informed by a working model of society in which an enlightened (because educated) citizenry would fulfil its potential within rational (understandable, accessible and transparent) democratic structures. This was a model intended to redress what Delors saw as the three major imbalances of post-war French society: a ‘tentacular’ State, ‘excessive’ individualism, and the more inhuman sides to capitalism (le Monde 24–5 May 1981). Eventually these preferences revealed their limits (Delors, 1994b:34–5), in that they did not create the momentum for change for which Delors had hoped, and he entered the mainstream of French, Fifth Republican politics, almost thirty years into his professional life. Even there—in François Mitterrand’s renovated Socialist Party, and in the first Socialist government of the Fifth Republic—he retained an unmistakable measure of independence from the pressures of national career and ambition which marked virtually all of his well-known contemporaries. The unique combination of pragmatism and utopianism, which Delors recognised as characteristic of his approach to public life and society, along with the balance between thought (‘la réflexion’) and action, which Delors 26

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claimed was a vital need underpinning his very being, account for his idiosyncratic relationship with both the structures and politics of the Republic, and go some way towards explaining why the European Commission Presidency was, in many respects, Delors’ ideal professional and political home. Delors habitually claimed to make career decisions based more on whether a given post would allow him to be ‘useful’ as a public servant, and on whether it would provide him with the opportunity to generate reform in keeping with his unchanging set of values (Delors, 1975:35–6), rather than on its merit as a stepping stone to ever higher offices. With hindsight, this claim would appear to be accurate. His trajectory through the French political system was, as a result, neither linear nor predictable, and largely escapes classification or labels. His political relationships and networks within the personalised semi-presidential politics of France were not geared towards the alternating strategies of alliance-building and the destruction of political rivals, which have tended to characterise the political lives of France’s most successful career politicians. Moreover, as an autodidact and self-proclaimed pédagogue (the two qualities are linked in Delors’ mind), Delors hovered outside the elite networks that emanate from Sciences Po and l’ENA, which dominate the core of post-war French politics and administration (although he permeated those networks to the extent of teaching them, recruiting from them, and working in close collaboration with their top graduates, such as Pascal Lamy).2 On the same basis, as a man who put himself through higher education at night school whilst working full-time, Delors was able to claim a distance from les intellectuels. This distance possibly eased his contact and communication with the other milieux with which he had more familiarity and instinctive rapport, such as trades unionist activists; nevertheless, he admired intellectuals as a social category, and called on their assistance on several occasions in Brussels. As Commission President, Delors acquired celebrity on the scale of a French President: outside of France, he was surely at least as well known as French President Mitterrand during the decade 1985–95. Yet he was unable—or unwilling—to occupy the French Presidency itself. Delors was frequently voted the most popular French politician in opinion polls in his country (particularly in late 1994, at the time of his putative presidential candidacy, when he regularly scored over 50 per cent of favourable opinions; but also at other times, such as in the early 1990s, when Mitterrand changed his Prime Minister three times in four years, and Delors’ name was circulated widely in the press as a possible Prime Minister; and for at least a year after becoming government minister in 1981). Yet he avoided several opportunities to stand for high national office, to the extent of earning him a reputation as l’homme qui dit non (the man who said no) (Bazin and MacéScaron, 1995; Milési, 1995). His lack of interest in building a local base of political support, moreover, and his apparent indifference to national elected office, ensured his absence

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from the parliamentary chambers of the French legislature. Delors is not the only French politician to have acquired the status of perennial outsider, or atypique in the Fifth Republic: Michel Rocard and Raymond Barre were, for different reasons, similarly perceived within mainstream French politics at roughly similar times. Unlike those contemporaries, Delors carried the distinction of, first, having enjoyed substantial opportunities to occupy France’s highest office and having rejected them (rather than squandered or lost them, à la Rocard); second, of having apparently turned this status to permanent advantage by acquiring and maintaining an international political leadership role. Delors’ public life in France provides clues which, even if only in retrospect, shed light on the European leader that he subsequently became, and the nature of that match (rather than a biographical explanation of Delors for its own sake) is the subject of this chapter. Much is often made of Delors’ Frenchness as an explanatory factor of his impact as Commission president, yet in a number of ways he was very atypical of his home country and its politics. Exploring the French context to his Commission presidency allows us to identify the lines of continuity which extend from his early professional life in the 1940s and 1950s into his life in Brussels from 1985– 95; it also invites us to acknowledge the ways in which Delors always distinguished himself, by instinct more than anything else, from many of his French contemporaries whose fame was sought and won, or lost, in the national arena in accordance with unwritten rules of political rivalry and ambition. I include Delors’ own accounts of his French past in my sources for this chapter, and point to inconsistencies where I have found these to exist. Those factors which, informally speaking, disqualified Delors from sustained political leadership in the French context subsequently contributed to his legitimacy as supranational leader, and, later still, to the criticism he attracted in that role. The iconoclastic attitude of Delors to the structures of power and influence in the Fifth Republic has its mirror image in his speedy adaptation to and exploitation of many of the possibilities of the European Commission presidency, a post whose prime responsibility, one could say, was producing templates for change which others, ultimately, would implement. Unlike the positions of French Prime Minister or President of the French Republic, the Commission presidency is a position of influence— rather than power—whose script and scope is not over-determined by historical precedent, or the expectations of a dominant political culture, nor even by the wishful thinking that is part and parcel of the personality politics of French semi-presidentialism. It does not, importantly, revolve around a permanently prominent public persona, and we see in our following chapters that it was an irony—and eventually a problem—that Delors developed such a persona over time. In many respects, the Commission presidency is an atypical post par excellence, which found in Delors an ideal incumbent. It is not, for example, subject to the permanent pressures of electoral temperature-taking, nor to

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periodic electoral rendezvous, other than indirectly through the Commission President’s dependency for appointment and re-appointment on the right constellation of consenting and consensual Heads of State and Government. In this respect alone, the Commission presidency could be expected to appeal to a political individual like Delors, for whom seeking and maintaining an electoral mandate was never a first priority of political life, as we have seen. Nor does it therefore rely on a charismatic-type leader, in the sense of an orator with a gift of appealing to massed followers. The Commission President, in practice (as we see in our following chapter) is more likely to sustain relationships with networks of politicians and experts (other elites; ‘epistemic communities’ based on shared knowledge and expertise) than with the ‘peoples of Europe’. This suited Delors, who was far more at home with the language of rational and expert diagnosis, prognosis and remedy than with the rhetoric of political promise. The sworn independence of Commissioners and Commission President from national and partisan interests in the service of the general European interest must also have appealed to Delors, who had not made a comfortable political home in the brand of French socialism represented since 1971 by Mitterrand’s Parti socialiste. Delors has described himself as an orphan of French politics,3 although he is emphatic that the Left, however dysfunctional it might have seemed to him, was his political family.4 Delors’ broadly internationalist leanings, often emphasised by him in contrast to his contemporaries, as he saw them, from the same political family,5 also predisposed him to a relatively pro-European integration outlook. This developed slowly throughout his French political life, and was only converted into sustained action (as opposed to réflexion) from 1979 onwards, following his election as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP). Delors professes to have nurtured a sentimental attachment to the goal of Franco-German reconciliation from his teenage days (many spent in exodus from the occupying German forces),6 and to have been moved by the 1948 Hague Congress (which he did not attend, but was aware of). His logical, public rationale for European integration, however, developed on the basis of reasoned judgements about France’s economic and social strengths and weaknesses. Delors’ relative openness of mind towards France’s international interdependence, and his predominantly pragmatic (not ideological) approach to the question of international governance, therefore predisposed him to the Commission presidency, a post concerned first and foremost with the management of interdependence. Furthermore, the Commission’s overriding task—to initiate and propose policy at the supranational level—lends itself to the application of the pained combination of reformism, pragmatism and idealism which characterised Delors’ public persona. The scope and duty of a Commission President to consult and negotiate with a wide selection of individuals and groups from political life and la société civile (the partners of industry; churches; intellectuals, and other ‘intermediaries’ between rulers and the ruled), a duty

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which Delors took seriously and with some concrete effect, also drew on his long experience of French trades unionism and economic planning, which preceded his governmental activities in Paris. ‘Europe’ as an economic and political entity was still to be ‘perfected’ on Delors’ arrival in Brussels in January 1985 (and on his departure ten years later): a perfect opportunity for a pragmatic visionary, driven in his personal and political life to improve himself and his social environment, albeit on the basis of an often abstract and perhaps idealised notion of social realities. The early years, 1925–45 Born in Paris on 20 July 1925, Delors, socially, had a lower middle class upbringing in a working class district (the eleventh arrondissement) of Paris. His upbringing was shaped by the Catholicism and cultural creativity of his mother, the secular republicanism and work ethic of his father, the ambient socialism of his father’s many relatives, and the rural roots of his grandparents. Educationally, the aspirations of this family were projected onto their only child through the educational choices made on his behalf: his schooling was initially Catholic, until he later requested to be removed from the school his mother had chosen for him.7 He then acquiesced with his parents’ wish for him to attend the local lycée, and later claimed that this experience, which separated him from most of his neighbourhood friends, raised his consciousness of social difference and inequalities (Delors, 1975:16–17). His secondary education was disrupted by the war, and later still, his father refused to allow him to follow higher education in the arts. At this point, in May 1945, at the age of twenty, Delors embarked on a professional life of public service in one form or another which would last for over half a century, and from which his desire to educate himself, and others, was never absent. From secondary education onwards, Delors followed an essentially secular path towards public action; as a practising Catholic, the Church was most meaningful for his social and family life and its interactions, and for the shaping of his thinking about society. Delors’ out-of-school activities and his academic successes at the lycée Voltaire, were interrupted when his family joined the exodus from Paris to the zone libre in 1940. The family went to Clermont-Ferrand in l’Auvergne, and Delors’ experience of the period from 1940–44 was marked, according to him, by his contacts with a mix of people his own age, many more politically committed than himself, and by his growing awareness of France’s ‘decadence’ at that time (Delors, 1975:19). His wartime experience was soon stabilised. First, he passed his baccalauréat in mathematics in Clermont-Ferrand. Second, his family returned to Paris in 1942 following the occupation by the Germans of the zone libre. After a period of uncertainty Delors acquiesced with his father’s wish that he take up employment at the Banque de France (where Louis Delors had himself worked). He signed on as a trainee at the bank in 1944, abandoning his desire to embark upon a career in either film or fashion

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design, and dropped plans to take exams in the philosophy course he had begun at l’Ecole universelle (Maris, 1993:52–4). Delors’ early years provide some evidence of a number of traits which formed his adult personality. His taste for the arts and entertainment, for music (he played the drums), theatre and cinema, and his love of sport (he was an avid basketball player and football supporter) were developed within the confines of his Catholic parish and family-dominated surroundings and environment, which cultivated a sense of community. The tensions that would characterise his Commission days, between duty and pleasure, opportunity and limits were evident at this early stage in his sense of duty to his father and to his father’s aspirations, and his own nascent personal desires and ambitions. Duty triumphed. The picture that emerges from Delors’ first twenty years is that of a young man in whom many interests and varied talents coexisted with a desire—as he said later—to be useful. During his decade at the Commission, being useful won out over the more frivolous side of his character (he says he only went to the cinema twice in ten years). His wartime years were unsettling and disruptive, particularly for his education, but he nevertheless experienced them within the relative sanctuary of his family, and those years have not, for his biographers, been treated as a significant explanatory factor in the formation of his political consciousness, or as a cause of concern. The Delors that emerged from the wartime years seemed already set on a course marked more by an abstract but passionate sense of society and community, than any ambition for political commitment, fight or office. 1945–62—Trades union activism and career progression at the Banque de France: a social actor in the making Delors’ prospects at the Banque de France were good. He passed the competitive banking examination allowing him to begin his career in a managerial capacity, and following the completion of a degree in economics at the bank’s nightschool, was rapidly promoted (Delors, 1975:23) to the office (cabinet) of one of the Bank’s directors. Alongside his successes at the bank, Delors became heavily involved in the CFTC (Confédération française des travailleurs chrétiens), thereby beginning a lifetime of commitment to the role of trades unions in socio-economic policy-making and reform. He was sympathetic to the minority in the union who wanted to break its links with the Christian-Democratic MRP (Mouvement républicain populaire) and the Catholic Church, and in 1953, Delors joined a reformers’ group within the bank’s CFTC section, known as Reconstruction. (Branciard, 1990:99–101; Delors, 1975:41). From within this group, and using the pseudonym of Roger Jacques, Delors published socio-economic reports and analyses in the group’s bulletin, and gained a reputation for his accuracy and expertise (Hamon and Rotman, 1982:135). He also began lecturing and teaching union members,

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and travelling to attend international congresses of Christian trades unions. In 1957, he took over the leadership of what might now be called a think tank: the BRAEC (Bureau confédéral de recherches, d’analyses et d’études). This move gained him formal recognition as the expert of the minority group, and contributed indirectly to the transition of the CFTC towards the secular CFDT (Confederation française démocratique du travail) in 1964. This role again involved communicating his ideas on topics which came to include the question of European integration—then in its very early days (Delors, 1975:43). Delors undertook study visits to other European countries and began to develop an internationalist framework to his thinking about current economic, social and political problems. His curiosity in understanding France’s environment was unquestionable, as were his energy and commitment. In 1959, Delors was offered the chance to represent the CFTC on the Conseil économique et social (CES), one of France’s prestigious institutions of state. He agreed, but not as a permanent, paid representative, indicating through this decision that he wished to maintain his financial independence from the union (Rollat, 1993:64). Within the CES he was a member of the section with responsibility for national investments, and planification, where he stayed until 1961, and where Delors worked to put forward the CFTC’s and BRAEC’s view. In this capacity, he was subsequently nominated to undertake a study for le Plan (the Planning Commissariat) on the redistribution of economic growth (Hamon and Rotman, 1982:135). On the basis of this report, and also of Delors’ contribution to the so-called Rapport Bonéty on incomes policy (‘Pour une politique des salaires’), carried out for the CFTC in 1961 (Branciard, 1990:180), he was asked by Pierre Massé, then head of the French Planning Commissariat, to leave the bank for a post at le Plan. He did so on 2 January 1962, defying his father’s wishes that he stay at the Banque de France. He also left the CFTC. During his time at the Banque de France and the CFTC, many of the skills which Delors was deemed to have exercised as Commission President were evident. He had a capacity for crushing workloads and pressing deadlines; an ability to absorb and learn quantities of new material and subjects (the autodidacte at work); a desire—a need, even—to communicate, and an ability to do so effectively, both in writing and using the spoken word, given the right match with his audience. His communicative style was that of the earnest exposé of a self-taught expert, rather than the persuasive rhetoric of a demogogue. This style became a hallmark of his communication when Commission President. His favourite metaphor to describe himself was l’artisan—the honest but expert worker. His activity in the union also brought him into contact with the sorts of people and networks that were to reinforce his subsequent career posts. Fortuitously, it brought him into the orbit of people from the networks from which Delors was excluded by education and background, and enabled him to develop relationships of equality with such supporters.

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The extent and breadth of Delors’ writings and presentations during these years demonstrated his capacity as a thinker as well as activist, and served as a means by which a blueprint for society began to take shape in his own mind and in the networks he was beginning to weave. His commitment to defining and living a particular way of life also led him to harness his personal life and virtually all of his spare time to his cause. Nevertheless, despite the time pressures of his work at the bank, and his activities in the union, Delors pursued some of his outside interests, notably creating a CinéClub in his old neighbourhood in 1950 (he gave it up in 1953 to concentrate on his professional and activitist activities). In 1948 Delors had met and married his wife, Marie, and moved from across the Seine to the sixth arrondisssement. By 1953 the couple had two children, and had moved within Paris once more. Delors’ activism did not stop with his professional and trades union work. Outside work he pursued activities which reflected and in some cases reinforced his core interests. He dedicated much time to la vie associative (local organisations) along with his wife, principally in the form of his very active membership of a group called la Vie nouvelle. He also began to experiment with some of the political parties active at that time, creating the first of his own para-political clubs, Citoyens 60 in 1959, thus taking him a further step towards organised and full-time politics. La vie associative and political clubs Just before Delors joined the Reconstruction group within the CFTC in 1952, Delors and his wife had joined the club la Vie nouvelle. In Delors’ words (1994b:18): Ce mouvement rassemble des hommes et des femmes soucieux de mieux comprendre le personnalisme chrétien, en travaillant sur les trois fronts de la religion, de la vie privée et de la vie collective, selon leur vocation ou selon leur manques. Nous faisions cela dans ce que l’on appelle les “fraternités de voisinage”, c’est-à-dire avec d’autres couples ou des célibataires qui étaient dans le même quartier que le nôtre.8 The club formed the framework of much of the Delors’ social life at this time, including educational holidays within Europe, and was a reflection of his ability to maintain convivial but educational contacts beyond his immediate professional circles. From within la Vie nouvelle, Delors founded his own club Citoyens 60 in 1959. Its publication, Cahiers 60 (many of the articles were written by Roger Jacques),9 had as its objective to update and diffuse socialist ideas and thinking in accordance with its slogan of la democratic à portée de la main (local democracy): a commitment to active citizenship and the decentralisation of power (Delors, 1994b:26; 1975:61–9) inspired by the pragmatic socialism of

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Proudhon and Fourier (de Bodman and Richard, 1976:32–3). The club’s attitude towards European integration, although not a priority subject, was broadly favourable, defined in terms of a desire to counter de Gaulle’s sterile vetos and resistance to the building of the Community, and by the perceived need to build a regional bloc capable of independence vis-à-vis the USA. The approach included traces of the principle of subsidiarity in its focus upon individual interests and participation; it was outward-looking, defined in terms of world politics, with clear references to the need to dissolve national sovereignties within a regional entity. It also imagined a consensual polity based on social pacts between equal partners. The political club phenomenon of the 1950s and 1960s is to be seen within the context of de Gaulle’s young Fifth Republic, which for its first twentythree years kept the Left away from power and alienated many on the Left with its concentration of political and state power in the highlypersonalised office of the President.10 It was simultaneously a development associated with (concerns about) the mutation of France towards a consumerist, technocratic and leisure-oriented society, in which the gap between people and politicians was seen to be growing. The majority of the clubs formed at this time were on the political left, although not exclusively so, and in many respects they perpetuated the divisions which obstructed the recomposition of a unified left-wing party for over a decade. Clubs on the left were in disagreement on the approach to winning power in the Republic, as well as on their relationship to organised religion and the Catholic Church. In many respects, however, this ‘club land’ was the perfect terrain on which Delors’ energetic commitment to the planning of socio-economicpolitical reform could take root, being one step removed from the harsher political landscape of electoral and organisational strategy, in which the likes of François Mitterrand became deeply engaged. Delors’ involvement and participation in the club land of the late Fourth and early Fifth French Republics was linked to his own version of how to reunite the non-Communist left, alongside his excitement in the intellectual opportunities that this parallel world to the mainstream parties offered. On joining the PS in 1974, Delors admitted that Mitterrand’s presidential and personalised strategy to bring the Left back to power, including the Union de la Gauche pact with the French Communist party, had been more successful than his own more abstract ideals for the Left. In retrospect, one can say that these were concerned more with the ideas and ideals of the Left than with a concrete plan for bringing the Left into power in an alien Republic—for which he had voted. This anti-strategy strategy was also reflected in Delors’ activities in the late 1950s and early 1960s in relation to the political party scene of the time (and, one could say, was a theme which ran through his professional life, including at the Commission: a preference for innovation over implementation, and for ideals over organisational strategy). Delors soon formed the view that organised religion had no place in his politics; and he was dubious, as suggested above, that the organised politics of

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the left which evolved during the 1960s (centred around Mitterrand) would bring the non-communist left back to power. This judgement and position did not undermine Delors’ gut feeling of belonging to the left of the spectrum of French politics. It did, however, keep him away from the front-line battles being fought during this time in order to settle the organisational form that would take the Left into power. His association with what became known as la deuxième gauche—the non-Mitterrand, non-Communist left—stems from this idiosyncratic stance vis-à-vis the core struggles of the French left before 1981. Yet it might be more accurate to think of Delors as incarnating a further, would-be social-democratic troisième gauche, which by the 1980s and 1990s had found its (admittedly amorphous) shape in the transcourants— transfactional—meetings of the PS and related party groupings known as Démocratie 2000, of which Delors was labelled the ‘spiritual father’, and ‘uncle’ to his ‘nephews’, or followers (le Monde 8 September 1987). This was a non-faction faction characterised, as with Delors in the 1950s and 1960s, by the premium placed on policy over strategy.11 In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Delors’ political affiliations in the mainstream sense, were experimental and generally short-lived; as a rule, he was wanted more by others (such as Mitterrand) than he wanted them; and neither his heart nor head seemed to lead him to commit himself to sustained political action. In 1955, following disagreements with Christian Democrats in la Vie nouvelle (Delors, 1975:51), he had joined La Jeune République, a small and eclectic party which was subsequently drained by the loss of much of its membership to the larger and dominant Fourth Republican party, the MRP (mouvement républicain populaire). Delors had himself joined and left the MRP within a matter of months in the mid-1940s (Delors, 1975:27) on the grounds that he found it overly sentimental and given to overblown rhetoric. In the legislative elections of 1956, Delors supported the candidate of the Front Républicain (FR); when in 1957, the FR reformed into the UGS (L’Union de la Gauche socialiste), Delors sat on its bureau national. The UGS merged in 1960 into the PSU (Parti socialiste unifié), whose leadership Delors joined (along with Michel Rocard), and which for a time became the ‘most ostentatious rival’ to Mitterrand’s Socialist Party’s claim to ‘the inheritance of 1968’ (Cole, 1997:71). When the PSU were called upon by Pierre Mendès France to vote against de Gaulle’s new Fifth Republic, Delors personally supported de Gaulle (and voted ‘Yes’ in de Gaulle’s 1958 and 1962 referendums), and the PSU leadership ultimately decided against joining forces with Mendès. This was a difficult decision for Delors, who greatly admired Mendès France (Daniel and Lacouture, 1992:88; see also Delors, 1994b:51–3; Rollat, 1993:99) for, as Delors saw it, his rational approach to socio-economic reform, his desire to justify reform to the French in a non-sensationalised way, and his intellectual honesty. Delors nevertheless preferred the Fifth Republic, with its faults, over what he saw as the chaos, harmful to democracy, of the previous and short-lived regime.

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By late 1960, Delors had left what he saw as the growing radicalism of the PSU, and was spending more time on his activities in Citoyens 60 and on his trade unionist preoccupations (Delors, 1975:57). From this point until the mid-1970s, he took no further formal part in party politics, although he remained close to the circles around François Mitterrand. In the 1965 presidential election, Citoyens 60 signed the manifesto for a single candidate of the left, the socialist Gaston Defferre, but Delors was personally pessimistic of Defferre’s chances—he subsequently withdrew his candidature through lack of support. Delors later joined Mitterrand (who did stand) in his campaign HQ, and Citoyens 60 collectively joined Mitterrand’s Convention des institutions républicaines. After the election, where Mitterrand scored an honourable 45% of votes in the second round, marking the beginning of a new phase for the recomposition of the left and the party political system in general, Mitterrand asked Delors to join his ‘shadow cabinet’ (the FDGS—la Fédération démocratique de la gauche socialiste), with the promise of a constituency for the next legislative elections: an offer which Delors refused. In the 1974 presidential election, Delors eventually rallied behind Mitterrand’s candidacy (and joined Mitterrand’s Socialist Party), but was deemed cautious about this affiliation. Delors’ political activity, such as it was, inclined at this time towards the rebuilding of the non-Communist left around the ideas that he championed. He felt himself to belong to an avant-garde of political and intellectual activity, where real opportunities existed to shape the socialist left and society more broadly. Where the institutionalisation and structuring of such ideas were concerned—around party machines (appareils), or political personalities—he was less confident, and reluctant to commit himself. Delors did not initially join the Socialist Party when it was created by Mitterrand in 1971; nor was he unreservedly part of what emerged as the deuxième gauche, since he did not associate himself with any conviction with the strategy of Michel Rocard and his circles, which also, during a period in the 1970s, veered away from an internationalist, Europeanist outlook. During this period Delors had expressed cautious but largely optimistic attitudes towards the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and the European Defence Community (EDC), but was reserved about the EEC (Delors 1995b:xiv), a position which he defended in terms of his doubts at the time for France’s capacity to seize the opportunity offered by the EEC for a more dynamic economy. Delors has admitted, moreover, to harbouring an ingrained pessimism about France’s (and later Europe’s) economic capacity and will. Au service de l’etat12, 1962–73 Au Commissariat du Plan Pierre Massé’s invitation to join le Plan was a welcome opportunity for Delors to work alongside people he admired, and to serve the State, as haut

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fonctionnaire, from a position which required him to formulate concrete proposals for policy and structural reform on the basis of detailed analysis and long-term planning, without pressing political constraints. (Delors, 1994c:31–2). The area he took responsibility for was, broadly speaking, industrial relations (affaires sociales). Delors has claimed, and this has been recorded in many places, that of all the posts he held during his career, his time at le Plan was the most rewarding (Delors, 1994c:31–2; 113–4). He was surrounded by brilliant colleagues and working first hand on the question of decentralisation, to which he felt instinctively committed. His political contacts, for example with François Mitterrand, took place on the basis of his expertise and work at le Plan; he was allowed, indeed invited, to be innovative in his thinking, and was not hampered in doing so from any quarter; he thus could achieve a near perfect balance between la réflexion and action. Delors compared the European Commission to the French planning commission; but unlike his experience at the Commissariat du plan, his’ ‘tenure’ of the Commission presidency led him, in his view, beyond the exercise of influence to the wielding of power, which was where many his difficulties concerning his legitimacy began (as we see in subsequent chapters). Delors’ first major challenge in his role at le Plan came in the shape of the 1963 miners’ strike, when he was the rapporteur of a wise men’s committee, whose report on salary structural reform and increases was accepted by the government, and led to a settlement of the strike (Hamon and Rotman, 1982:138; Maris, 1993:73–4). Delors’ work at le Plan, on the reform of national income accounting methods,13 on working time, and on collective bargaining, laid foundations for later reforms both in France and Brussels. This work also took him into the circles of EEC policy-making, because he represented France, along with Michel Rocard, on the EEC’s economic policy committee. This proximity with EEC policy-making (particularly with the Council of Ministers) convinced him that de Gaulle’s preference for a ‘Union of states’ built on co-operation alone would not bring the political unity—of purpose and intent—that Delors thought vital. The job at le Plan, however rewarding, meant personal and professional sacrifice: leaving the stability and prospects of Banque de France; leaving the CFTC which suited him, and in 1965, relinquishing the leadership of Citoyens 60. But he gained additional responsibilities during these years. From October 1968 to 1973, he was appointed Secretary General of the Comité interministériel de la Formation professionnelle et de la Promotion sociale, within the governmental administration; and in 1973 he was appointed to the General Council of the Banque de France (Dyson and Featherstone, 1999:692). During the student strikes of May 1968, Delors addressed the students (who included his daughter Martine) directly, and sympathised with the causes of the ‘events’. A year later, he was offered the opportunity to contribute directly to the project for a ‘new society’, dreamt of by the revellers and rebels of May 1968, and formulated by Gaullist Prime

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Minister Jacques Chaban-Delmas, who invited Delors to join his cabinet (Chaban-Delmas, 1997:432) with responsibility for transforming French industrial relations through the implementation of a culture and system of collective bargaining (Delors, 1994b:39–40). This was a duty which chimed with Delors’ evolving ‘theory’ of the negative impact in France of the absence of a social-democratic culture based on strong unions and collective action, and with his desire to create and reinstate the role of social ‘intermediaries’ such as the trades union movements. This period also brought him into the public eye for a sustained period for the first time in his career, and notions of ‘Delorism’ and ‘social-Delorism’ date mostly from this phase in his life, as a result of his hand in forging a would-be ‘new society’. Advisor to Prime Minister Jacques Chaban-Delmas, 1969–72 Delors’ decision to accept the invitation from President Pompidou’s Prime Minister Chaban-Delmas to fill the role of advisor in the prime minister’s cabinet on industrial relations (including collective bargaining and continuing education) has been much commented upon as an indication of Delors’ ambiguous political affiliations. It was nevertheless a role in which he wielded real influence, and created a legacy. A post was initially created specifically for him as adviser on industrial relations and cultural affairs, and from 1971 to his departure in July 1972 he acted as expert heading up the cabinet’s economic and financial sector under the Prime minister’s direct authority (Hamon and Rotman, 1982:228). Delors has rarely if ever expressed regret at the decision he took, despite the opprobium and suspicion which lingered in some circles in the Socialist Party thereafter. It was a decision which demonstrates par excellence Delors’ strong tendency to prioritise service and ‘usefulness’, and the opportunity to put ideas into practice—to apply his thinking to the public policy process—over and above the forwarding of a party political career, and it effectively alienated him from key sections of the socialist party. With hindsight we may judge the decision as naïve, given that it contributed to the doubt perenially shadowing Delors’ commitment to party politics: nevertheless it accurately reflected the values of the emerging political actor. One advantage of the post for Delors, much like his time at le Plan and, for the most part, at the European Commission, was that he was surrounded by colleagues and personalities whom he admired for the quality of their thinking; including Simon Nora, formerly advisor to Pierre Mendès France, and directeur du cabinet for Jacques Chaban-Delmas; and Maurice Schuman, Foreign Minister in Chaban-Delmas’ government and life-long pro-European. Chaban’s association with Delors and other left of centre reformists, specifically over the formulation of the ‘new society’ (la nouvelle société) project, the ‘big idea’ for which Chaban’s administration has been known henceforth (Berstein and Rioux, 1995:51–64), was part of the reason for the opposition which Chaban aroused in his Gaullist parliamentary

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following, which ultimately if indirectly it brought about his resignation in 1972. Chaban’s left-of-centre project (at a time when the party system had yet to take firm shape along the left-right spectrum) was the reason why Delors agreed to join his cabinet; this same project was at the centre of the government’s downfall, providing Delors with a harsh lesson in the realworld constraints and limitations of political power, and in the ambiguities of his own relatively apolitical stance. President Pompidou denounced the plan as too abstract, intellectual and visionary, although he was in principle committed to his government’s goal of social and industrial reform. In a letter he wrote to Chaban before taking up his post, Delors explained in detail his own perspective on what une ‘nouvelle societe’ should look like, and the extent to which it was intended to reform French socio-political culture, and not simply its surface phenomena (Delors, 1975: appendix 333–8). His hopes were for a prosperous, young, generous and liberated society in place of a France which was under-industrialised, with a fragile economy based on conservative and outdated structures, in which the State had become all-embracing and inefficient (Berstein and Rioux, 1995:51). Delors was closely associated in writing the speech with which Chaban launched his projet to the National Assembly on 16 September 1969, and on the basis of which the National Assembly voted its confidence (by 369 to 85 votes) in the new government. Chaban’s own account of the projet (Chaban-Delmas, 1997:432) certainly resonates with key threads of Delors’ thinking as it had by then developed: an approach to reform centred on the individual citizen, of whom a degree of personal effort and commitment to the reform process were expected and hoped for; citizens assumed to be rational adults willing and educated to make such an effort for the common good; longtermism; a determination to scale down the role of the State in public policy; a fuller role for trade unions in industrial relations policy-making, and recognition by trade unions of the capitalist context of enterprise. As one of the so-called ‘modernisers’ (Moss, 1989), whose influence underlies much of the reform which occurred in France’s industrial relations structures in the 1970s and 1980s, Delors’ specific brief, within his role and advisor to the Prime Minister on industrial relations, was to put in place a system of pacts (contrats de programme) between the state and public companies, giving the companies greater autonomy in industrial relations, and then (contrats de progrès) between unions and management in these organisations, as a way of negotiating salaries in the public sector. In the ‘new society’, unions would be part of a consensual culture of negotiation and compromise in the context of economic growth. The approach was therefore attempting to overcome both the limitations of a trade union presence in industrial life largely committed over and above anything else to winning the class struggle, and the constraints of an overbearing state role; in these respects, the Prime Minister’s project was closely linked with the thrust of the thinking of the non-Communist left, of which Delors was a part.

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The approach was partly but not entirely successful. Scores of contracts in the public sector were signed, with emphasis placed on the ‘pioneering role of certain large companies’ (Milner, 1998:173) in national wage agreements. There was also a notable rise in collective bargaining at the sectoral level in this period, which was linked to the industrial relations culture being promoted by Chaban-Delmas and Delors (Reynaud, 1975:61–2). Delors’ personal hobby-horse—continuing education—was the subject of laws passed in 1970 and 1971 (Berstein and Rioux, 1995:57), which also worked their way down to sectoral level bargaining. When President Pompidou replaced Chaban-Delmas as Prime Minister with Pierre Messmer in July 1972, the ‘new society’ was barely in its first phase of implementation. It had, however, brought Delors into the public and media eye, and associated him firmly with an approach to social engineering which, at that time, was alien to the mainstream of Gaullists and Socialists alike. The ‘new society’ was, almost by definition, dependent for success on a political centrism which neither at that time (nor since) existed in organisational, party political terms. Upon leaving Matignon, Delors continued to carry out his administrative functions as general-secretary to the interministerial commitee on vocational and continuing education until August 1973, when he put an end to his shortlived career as haut fonctionnaire.14 He took up teaching: at Paris University (Dauphine), where he led a research master’s course in comparative public policy in the EEC and another on labour policy (la politique du travail), and later set up a research centre entitled Work and Society (Travail et société); and at l’ENA from 1969 to late 1975, where he met Pascal Lamy. One year after leaving public administration (following President Pompidou’s death in office and Mitterand’s narrow defeat at the ensuing presidential election) Delors had joined the French Socialist Party, out of ‘solidarity’ with its struggle for power (le Nouvel observateur 11 November 1974). Delors had thus taken a step closer to the centre of power politics in France, along with Michel Rocard and the ‘new blood’ from the so-called deuxième gauche (Hanley et al., 1979:155). Delors considered that he joined the party as a ‘petit adhérent’—an ordinary member—and that he felt at ease within its ranks. In 1973, however, Delors had nevertheless thought to create another club of his own, Echange et Projets,15 a think tank whose membership excluded active politicians, (and which in 1999 merged with two Rocardian clubs to form a new organisation, [Convictions: le Monde 2 April 1999:9]), and whose thought-pieces, publications and proposals received steady media coverage. The club was a device for Delors to maintain the contacts he had already acquired in his professional life, particularly business leaders in the public sector, in order to stimulate public debate and define a ‘projet de société’ to fill the void left by the political parties‘ failure to do so; it was, in his words, a ‘lieu de rencontre, indispensable’ (an indispensable ‘meeting place’: le Nouvel observateur 11 November 1974). It is also hard to imagine

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Delors going through any period of his professional life without an outlet of this kind for his ongoing and unceasing réflexion. On Europe (see le Monde 11 July 1980), Delors criticised, in the name of the club, what he saw as Europe’s weakness in responding to the international economic challenges of the time (the oil price crisis; accelerating globalisation; the breakdown of the former international financial order). He was also critical of the EC decision-making process, accusing the Commission in particular of a lack of imagination, and of suffering from a ‘degeneration’ of its right of initiative. His analysis of the so-called ‘eurosclerosis’ of the time concorded in many respects with the dominant image of the period which has come to characterise most narratives of that time. The club’s proposed solutions included a more vigorous Commission, a more credible and efficient EP, alongside a greater role for national parliaments, and the rehabilitation of the Council of Ministers (as opposed to the European Council) as the seat of the EC’s decisionmaking. The club also focused on questions of decentralisation from a standpoint favourable to what later became popularised as the principle of subsidiarity, and which followed from Delors’ working philosophy of citizencentred democracy. It is not hard to see significant elements of continuity with Delors’ later thinking, both on Europe and on the distribution of decisionmaking power in an ideal model of society (the sketching of a blueprint for such a model being central to Echange et Projet’s work). Towards the political mainstream, 1974–9 Delors joined the Socialist Party in November 1974 in a Paris branch meeting, an occasion whose hostilities have been described elsewhere in some detail (Maris, 1993:137–8), but where he was nevertheless accepted as a party member by over two-thirds of the members present. From the start, he was not a quiescent party member, speaking out against the Common Programme of Government signed between the PS and the PCF, giving interviews to the press, and speaking at party conferences. The publication in 1975 of his book Changer, his philosophy of reform, also acted as a vehicle for his ideas.16 Nevertheless, Delors was sought out by Mitterrand to hold positions of responsibility, and he found himself concentrating on questions of European integration and advising the party in this respect. In 1976, for example, he was invited to sit on the party’s comité d’experts as one of the conseillers techniques (specialist advisors) to Mitterrand, first secretary of the party. In 1978 he was asked to brief the party leadership on the European Monetary System (Dyson and Featherstone, 1999:692). He was also appointed as the party’s national delegate on international economic relations, and created his own expert committee on international affairs. He represented Mitterrand in a group of European experts requested by the European Commission to produce a report on the ‘conceptions économiques et sociales dans la Communauté’ which worked against integration.17 He was also an expert consultant to the OECD. Delors was thus being solicited

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for his expertise in international economic affairs and in industrial relations, which drew him ever closer to the centre of political power. Although Delors was satisfied with these positions, which suited his interests and expertise, Mitterrand encouraged him to seek electoral office in the late 1970s, and offered him several constituency nominations for local and national politics, all of which were refused. Within the party, Delors did not ally himself systematically with any one particular faction (courant), although he was fairly consistent in his support for Mitterrand, even when this placed him in opposition to Michel Rocard, or led to occasional uncharacteristic gestures (such as signing an anti-capitalist manifesto after the party’s defeat in the 1978 elections). Delors was clearly more than the ‘ordinary’ party member he had imagined himself to be, but did not appear to be using the party as a route to high office, although he co-operated with Mitterrand fairly consistently in the latter’s strategies to get the party into power. As in earlier days, Delors was an individual sought out by Mitterrand for his independence and expertise, but within a relationship which remained ambiguous and unpredictable. In some respects the two men were diametrically opposed in their rapport with political life: Mitterrand was known to place political considerations first whenever possible; Delors put socio-economic rationales before political considerations (Giesbert, 1990:107), as was demonstrated in his period as government minister. In the first direct elections to the European Parliament in June 1979, Delors was placed low on the party list and Mitterrand did not intervene to change matters; he was nevertheless elected twenty-first out of twenty-two on the list. In September 1979 he was elected as president of the EP’s Economic and Monetary Committee, where by all accounts he was an efficient and effective operator. In the party, Mitterrand asked Delors to be his chief adviser in the electoral campaign on economic and social questions; he accepted, as he did Mitterrand’s request (Rollat, 1993:203) to write a ‘programme of future government’, to be distributed after Mitterrand’s election to reassure international and business milieux. Rollat has claimed, however, that after the Socialists’ victory in 1981 Delors’ unwillingness to ally himself unreservedly with Mitterrand cost him his preferred posts of either secretary-general of the Elysée (the presidential office), or commissaire-général au Plan—Monnet’s former post. Instead he was appointed Minister of the Economy and Finance, ranked only thirteenth in the government, and forced to devolve responsibility for the budget to Laurent Fabius, a man firmly in the Mitterrandist courant of the party.18 Delors’ entry into the mainstream of French politics did not appear to have unduly compromised his quest for political independence, in that he did not permanently graft on to any of the dominant factions or ‘stables’ characteristic at that time of the PS. This could have been a key reason for Mitterrand’s courting him, particularly since that independence turned in part upon Delors’ particular stance—anti-ideological, informed and rational—on France’s position in the EC economy.

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Towards Europe, 1979–84: international images of ‘Delorism’ Delors dates his definitive move into politics, and especially into pro-EC activity, as his election to the EP and, subsequently, to the chair of its most powerful committee (Delors, 1994b:113–6). Before this date he liked to think of himself as a militant—an activist—operating within the world of political clubs and parties, and as a citizen privately interested in politics. It should be noted that Delors’ self-image as a militant conflicts with the narrow meaning of the term in French politics—a party worker, or other grass-roots activist. Delors was politically active, in the sense of creating networks of like-thinking people, generating debate, serving the state, working extremely hard, ‘activitating’, and offering his services to the socialist party and to the trade union movement (to use a metaphor he likes to employ, getting under the bonnet and getting his hands dirty). But this form of activity in certain respects made him the antithesis of the party faithful, working often on a voluntary basis for the party’s election to power, and therefore concerned primarily with issues of membership, electoral strategy and voting behaviour.19 Delors’ status as MEP, his nomination by Mitterrand to Mauroy’s government and, possibly, his election as mayor of Clichy in March 1983,20 could have been the launchpads for a successful move into the structures of power at the heart of the Fifth Republic. But the decisions Delors took led him away rather than towards such opportunities, in a manner consistent with his public life to date. His role as government minister was to all intents and purposes his first real relationship with French public opinion (and with international communities: business, industry, other governments, and international organisations). He has described himself as aware of the need for caution in his—or any government minister’s—communication with the public, a reserve based amongst other things on his understanding and approval of Pierre Mendès France’s educational ‘fireside chats’ with the listening public in the 1950s (Delors, 1994b:174). Such a stance resonates both with Delors’ faith in the active citizen, and with his reticence to occupy the role of politician-demagogue in any respect. The ‘provocation’ that he says was central to his public persona as minister, particularly in relation to his wish to effect a ‘pause’—a breather—in the socialist programme as soon as this had begun to run into difficulty in November 1981– was directed more at his government colleagues (and particularly at his detractors and opponents) than at public opinion per se, although he was to some extent attempting to tap into the support he assumed existed for a less ideologically-informed policy programme (Giesbert, 1990:124–8). He has also said of his self-styled role of explaining the government’s economic policy Uturns to the public that he had been left by his colleagues ‘singlehandedly to explain the country’s socioeconomic policy’ (le Matin 31 March 1983). With hindsight, Delors saw his approach to government as typical of his atypical public persona (Delors, 1994b:171), since he found himself to be a

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pragmatic reformer in a government committed, rhetorically at least, to an idealistic ‘break’ with capitalism. This experience can also be seen as emblematic of Delors’ journey through the French political landscape: in that he by all accounts missed out on an opportunity to replace Pierre Mauroy as Prime Minister in 1983 by misjudging Mitterrand’s mood,21 and this was the period par excellence which earned Delors his international reputation as a supporter of European and global market interdependence. At this time he was often described as an ‘européen convaincu’ (a convinced European), by both supporters and opponents (such as the hard left factions in the PS and government).22 In this respect, Delors’ four years as government minister represented a continuation of his activity and reputation as a ‘modernised on the French left, acting within liberal capitalism, and standing aside from the class struggle of the traditional left (Moss, 1989). Delors was responsible for (and symbolic of) the details of the government’s U-turn towards austerity measures in 1983 (Berstein, 1998:60; Schmidt, 1996: Chapter 4), and for much of the pressure upon Mitterrand to do so, to the extent that Thatcher was reportedly lulled into believing him a neo-liberal: hence her approval of his appointment to the Commission in 1984. He questioned some of the more extreme measures that formed part of the Socialists’ programme of government, such as the mechanisms and extent of the nationalisation programme (Schmidt, 1996:99), and was the architect of the devaluations of the French franc and their accompanying measures, which occurred three times within the government’s first three years in power (Cameron, 1996:64–5), and which marked the turning point for Mitterrand’s commitment to European integration. Negotiating France’s position in the European Monetary System (EMS) brought Delors into direct contact with his counterparts in the other EEC countries, particularly Germany, and also with the decision-making mechanisms of the Community at Council and European Council levels (intensively so during the currency crises, and during the French EEC presidency in the first half of 1984). Given what Delors symbolised at the time, in his role of maintaining the French economy within the bounds of EEC interdependence, and in terms of the hours he spent in Brussels, his profile as future Commission President was almost being constructed by default and malgré lui during the years 1981–4. This was his first real, sustained exposure to the constraints of power, as opposed to the luxuries of behind-the-scenes, consultant-expert-wise man influence. Delors’ own account of his time as government minister (Delors, 1994b: Chapter 3), suggests that he was frustrated by the political game, which frequently led, in his view, to measures that by strictly economic criteria were imprudent. The reasons he gave for leaving the government when he did in 1984,23 moreover, related to political methods and scheming of which he disapproved (and to his desire to spend more of his time on intellectual activity, a recurring theme in his own narrative of his political life). His four years in government,

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however, sealed his reputation and image as a French leader committed to maintaining a strong France in an integrated Europe. Within the PS Delors’ record was inevitably more mixed. He was fiercely opposed by those in the party and government who wished to continue the ‘Mitterrand experiment’; he gained a reputation for being temperamental, for example, for threatening to resign on a whim; for being overbearing, and for poorly judging political relationships and tactics, for example the question of him becoming Prime Minister. In so far as he attempted to defend his record of these years, Delors subsequently pointed to the inevitable constraints of political power, particularly in times of high public expectations such as that following the socialists’ victory in 1981, and claimed that he made only restrained and tactical use of the threat to resign. His 29-year old son, Jean-Paul, died of leukaemia in February 1982 at a time when the government’s honeymoon period was already coming to an end, and Delors’ position was exposed and difficult. Jérôme Vignon (who was in Delors’ ministerial cabinet in the early 1980s, and went on to head Delors’ cellule de prospective in Brussels in 1989) has described ‘le delorisme en économie’, with reference to the years 1981–4 as, in essence, the unique combination of action and an accompanying justificatory (but not exhortatory) discourse in the service of change: ‘l’action et la pédagogie de ‘l’action’ (Vignon, 1984). This claim to a belief in the power of explanation fits, again, with the belief in the enlightened citizen which we assume to be central to Delors’ working philosophy, and is one which Delors has emphasised on many occasions since.24 Delors’ experience of government office only served to underline the contradictions that he had always experienced between the desire to change society, and the constraints inherent in the political means of doing so, and in his own temperament. His forty years of professional life in France had been heavily skewed towards roles where he hoped to bring about change through influence in the form of ideas, expertly researched, effectively communicated to the appropriate channels, and delivered by others. The flaw in this formula in France was that his ideas were often distorted or dropped in the political process, and so his influence diluted, in the name of political expediency or astute strategy. The same formula, in the very different setting of the EC, was to meet with greater success, before indirectly contributing to the similar sorts of political constraints, both on the Commission and its presidency, that Delors had experienced in politics in France. Conclusions: la France par l’Europe?25 On Delors’ departure from the Commission in 1995, French journalists wrote of la fin de l’Europe à la française—the end of Europe going France’s way (L’Expansion 5–18 May 1994). At points during Delors’ presidency he had been caricatured as the poodle of the French (and German) governments. There is little firm evidence that Delors as Commission

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President acted systematically in favour of France, and it was during his commission presidency that French confidence in its role in la construction européenne was more severely shaken than at any other time since 1958.26 Delors as Paris’ emissary is in any case an unconvincing thesis; the contacts he maintained with his French political networks were largely harnessed to his activity in and for Brussels, and speculation at various times that he would return to high office in Paris came to nothing. If anything he was seen as an irritant in French politics, maintaining a public profile and popularity in France, and commenting frankly upon French government decisions (for example during the cohabitation period of 1986–8). Delors as an ambassador of European unity back in Paris (as well as beyond the EU) is more convincing,27 as the following chapters demonstrate. Delors went to Brussels as what we could call a ‘rational European’, a pragmatist predisposed towards the neo-functionalist analysis of European integration, tempered with idealistic if not abstract hopes for the potential of Europe’s nation states to change their political culture in the name of social reform. His refusal in December 1994 to stand as PS candidate opposite Chirac in the elections to replace Mitterrand is still seen in many quarters as baffling, if not incomprehensible. Taking the long view (backwards) of Delors’ career pattern since taking up his first job in 1945 aged twenty, it is hard not to see lines of continuity, and possibly stubborness, and even a certain inevitability about his decision to eschew the biggest political prize France has to offer. These lines stretch into Delors’ decision to accept the post of Commission President in 1984 (when it was an obscure and little-prized possession), and to his behaviour in that post. Although such grandes lignes are in some ways only truly visible with hindsight, when one runs the danger of overstating their linear progression, I have attempted in this chapter to demonstrate precisely that Delors did not appear to be following stepping stones towards one specific career goal and that by 1984, ‘Delorism’—for the sake of argument—consisted primarily of a blueprint and a method rather than a political programme. He did appear to pursue and develop certain key values and principles of socio-political action, and it is not too far-fetched to assume that he carried this ‘baggage’ forward with him into the European Commission. The threads to which we refer lie in his preference for a leading role in the production, dissemination and communication of ideas via like-minded people, over the holding of political (or other) office for the sake of the career rewards it might bring; a perception of a political career as a dilemma between commitment (l’engagement) and the loss of independence; a belief in the power of dialogue and explanation (la pédagogie de la réforme) and optimism concerning a more open and informed society, combined with a personal disposition to guard against unwarranted optimism: the pessimiste actif, as he has described himself (le Monde 17 September 1982). Such an assessment can be condemned as naive (as can and has Delors himself);

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nevertheless the facts of Delors’ route to Brussels do suggest an outsider who was more at home in Brussels than in Paris (Delors, 1994b:172) and as President of the Commission (or potentially of some other international institution), than President of the Republic. In the context of the Fifth Republic, this eventually forced him towards the mainstream of politics, taking the unusual trajectory from governmental Gaullism (with ChabanDelmas) to governmental socialism. Delors was effective in both of those positions, but on each occasion, and in different ways, was constrained by the orthodoxy of domestic party and presidential politics. He appeared to be driven by an intuitive sense of sincerity, and personal integrity, and a desire that politicians provide honest explanations of reality, which potentially sit uneasily with the exigencies of election campaigning and the maintenance of political power. I have portrayed a Delors who believes he became a politician out of a sense of duty rather than ambition (other, that is, than the ambitious desire to serve state and nation), and having taken stock of the limitations of his own apolitical strategies. His most substantial contributions to French politics, with the exception of his time as government minister, were made out of the limelight and public gaze, although not in obscurity. His awkward fit with the dominant mould of French politics was one reason why Delors was ‘sent to Brussels’. He had also gained direct experience of the EEC as a trade unionist, a civil servant, an expert economist, MEP and French government minister: Europe was familiar to him by 1984 (Delors, 1994b: 219). He did not take to Brussels a style of politics typical of and shaped in predictable ways by the curiosities of the Fifth Republic, many of which he was uncomfortable with, although he did take with him a burning conviction that a ‘new society’ was still necessary, and possible, in France and within the framework of European and international interdependence. He must also have considered that he was as good a man for the job as any. Moreover, he was an internationalist, predisposed towards a socialdemocratic organisation of society, but hampered in France by the lack of a social-democratic tradition or practice, demonstrated in particular by the weak role of France’s trades unions, and civil society more generally, in the public policy-making process. He was partially disqualified from earning the systematic support of the leading characters on the left because of his practising Catholicism and personalist philosophy, and his dismissal of Marxism. He was also suspected of leanings to economic liberalism which, in the French context, was not a strength. In many respects, in his role as Commission President, Delors subsequently became subject to similar constraints to those of elected political posts, a development for which he was himself partly responsible. He described how he had to learn to ‘be visible’, that is to say, to be exposed and vulnerable to external judgement. This was the case because although the Commission president is nominated, not elected, he (and perhaps one day she) is in an indirect relationship to the public opinions and

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electorates—and increasingly the media—of European member states, as we saw in Chapter One. This characteristic of the job gained in significance over time, transforming itself into an additional dilemma for Delors. (Delors, 1994b: 113–6). As Delors’ influence, direct and indirect, took hold, he found that he was engaged in a struggle for legitimacy in an essentially contested polity and institution. In other respects, nevertheless, the Commission Presidency was a post full of potential for Delors in his sixtieth year of life and fortieth year of professional activity. How did Delors the reluctant politician become a leading European statesman? The answer lay in the combination of Delors’ ‘personal equation’ (Cerny, 1988), as explored in this chapter, the prevailing assumptions about Delors, the circumstances of ‘his’ decade, and the atypical structures of authority encapsulated in the European Commission and its presidency, which we explore in the next chapter. Notes 1 Interview with Delors, 15 July 1999. 2 Sciences Po is the leading French Institut d’études politiques. L’ENA is L’école nationale d’administration, also Paris based. Entry to both institutions is highly competitive, and they both feed graduates to the highest levels of public service and private enterprise. 3 Interview with Delors, 28 April 1997. 4 Delors’ interview with le Nouvel observateur of 11 November 1974 covers his decision to join the French Socialist Party (PS). On this occasion, he describes the left as ‘ma vraie famille’ (my true family). 5 When Delors joined the PS in 1974, he expressed his views on European integration (le Nouvel observateur 1974, ibid.) as a desire to see a greater role for workers and trades unions in the decision-making process at EC level; to see European-level collective bargaining agreements; and to strengthen the EC vis-àvis the USA. Notably, he claimed it was time to stop thinking, in France, in terms of ‘independence’. 6 He cites his childhood memories of learning German at school, and having had a German penfriend, as emotionally underpinning what later became an awareness of the need for Franco-German reconciliation. Delors 1996, ‘L’Europe: voilà la solution’, Delors 1995b: XII–XV). 7 Delors is reported to have told François Mitterrand that he only stayed three months in a private Catholic school, aged five, before asking his mother to move him (Giesbert, 1990:238). 8 This movement united men and women wishing to better understand Christian personalism by working on one of three areas—one’s religious, private or collective life—depending on indidivual preferences and needs. We did this in what we called ‘neighbourhood fraternities’, that is to say, with other couples or single people in the same quartier (district) as ourselves. See also Delors 1975:32–3. 9 The Sciences Po library in Paris has a near full collection of Citoyens 60’s main publications. See, for a statement of the club’s raison d’être, the ‘lettre mensuelle’ no. 6 of Citoyens 60, dated June 1965. 10 Although France has a much older tradition of political clubs, circles and assemblies, dating back to the 1789 Revolution.

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11 And later organised into the political club called Témoins, whose members were mainly from the PS, created and underwritten—intellectually and inspirationally—by Delors in 1982. Delors seemed to see this club as a site where the next generation of PS members and leaders who felt an affinity with the Delorsstyle approach to politics could reunite; the name ‘Témoins’ was intended to convey the idea of wisdom and experience (the ‘baton’) being passed from generation to generation. Nevertheless, as with his previous clubs, Delors never accepted that they were ‘stables’ for ‘his people’, and they never in reality functioned as such, at least not successfully. Delors did not see Témoins’ membership as exclusive to the PS, although the club is more directly linked to the party than Échange et Projets was. 12 Serving the State. 13 See l’Express 11 June 1982:134–5 for Delors’ role in updating France’s indicateurs sociaux—setting new parameters (in the fourth and fifth Plans) for measuring national wealth and health. 14 He has given, as the reasons for making this decision, the ‘petty’ difficulties created for him within the administration, which he saw as being aimed at discouraging him and emasculating his power base (Delors, 1994b:55; 1975:104), and which he was not prepared to accept. 15 Sometimes referred to as Échange et Projets 73–80. La Croix (7 July 1988:7) summarises the first fifteen years of the club’s life, and its priorities in 1988. 16 Delors has never seemed able to resist the temptation to publish his thinking at the most delicate—politically speaking—of times. His book of collected speeches, Le nouveau concert européen (1992) appeared in France during the difficult year of the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty; his interviews with Dominique Wolton (Delors, 1994b) were launched during the critical build-up to the 1995 French presidential election campaign, when the volume was widely taken to be his manifesto as the socialist presidential candidate. This was an assumption which spelt cruel disappointment for many of his supporters— especially those in the socialist party, short of a credible candidate—when Delors declined to stand for election after all, announcing his decision less than one month after the publication of his book. Le Nouvel observateur (15–21 December 1994) judged the publication of Delors’ L’Unité d’un homme as a ‘giant communications error’. Delors justified the timing of the publication of the Wolton book (le Monde, 15 November 1994) by saying that he wanted to publish it before he left the Commission presidency, so that readers from other EU countries would remember him for who he really was; and after the difficult years for the EU (1991–3). If, by appearing at this time, the book could contribute to the debates of the French presidential election, then so much the better, Delors said. 17 The conceptions of economic and social policy issues held in the Community. (CEC 1979). 18 He held this position in Pierre Mauroy’s first two governments, 22 May 1981 to 22 March 1983. From 23 March 1983 to 17 July 1984 he was Ministre de l’Economie, des Finances et du Budget, (Minister of the Economy, Finance and Budget), and held much higher rank in the government. 19 Ross (1994) compares the methods of Delors’ cabinet at the Commission to a French style of militantisme based on deductive thinking, a moral mission and unreserved commitment (engagement) to agreed goals. 20 Delors claims that he was quite looking forward to building up his post as Mayor of Clichy, and in particular to getting to grips with his constituents’ social dilemmas, etc. He had to give up the post when appointed Commission President. (Interview with Delors, 15 July 1999.) See le Monde 14 March 1983

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21 22 23 24

25

26

27

Jacques Delors on Delors’ successful election as mayor, and le Monde 9 February 1983 on his campaign. Mitterrand’s relationship with Delors during the difficulties of 1981–3 was one in which Delors was largely an irritant to the President, who frequently undermined him (Giesbert, 1990). See, for example, le Matin 21 March 1983. Interview with Delors, 15 July 1999. ‘…le “delorisme” est devenu une morale du comportement et une méthode de gouvernement.’ La Croix 23 May 1981, ‘Du “social-delorisme” au delorisme’. (“Delorism” has become a moral guide to behaviour and a method of governing.) The title of the book published collectively by colleagues of Delors under Delors’ name in 1988 (with reference to Clisthène, the collective name of the other authors). The English-language version of this book was published as Our Europe—an interesting shift in emphasis! There were occasions, mainly concerning competition and state aids, where he appeared to demonstrate bias towards French interests, but he was not seen systematically to endanger collegiality in this way. Middlemass (1995:220) also points out that ‘bias is a relative concept’. (See also Cini, 1996:190.) In Le Quotidien de Paris 6 January 1989, Delors described his task in France as to succeed first and foremost as a European, and second as a Socialist. Also see le Monde 17 June 1997: ‘Ce qui m’a amené aller travailler à la Commission européenne, c’est la hantise du déclin de nos pays, même si cela fait sourire certains.’ (‘What made me go and work for the European Commission was the spectre of the decline of our countries, even if certain people find that an amusing thought’). Delors (1994b:303) covers Delors‘ patriotism and hopes for a strong France in a strong Europe.

3

Leadership and legitimacy dilemmas: The European Commission and its President in perspective

Introduction: the Commission ‘at the heart of the union’1 One of the most remarkable aspects of Delors’ European leadership is that he acquired a political and politicised persona. This acted as a resource and burden for himself, a precedent for his successors, and a warning to member state governments about the potential of the Commission to disrupt the Community system when led by an individual as determined and dedicated as Delors. Such a development was the result of the accidental combination of human agency (Delors’ leadership skills), contingency (the circumstances of his decade), and the ambiguous structures and rules of European governance: the processes, norms, institutions and conventions devised for providing and legitimating supranational authority of the form provided by the Commission and its President. Delors became closely associated with the surge in supranational authority and further integration which characterised his decade at the Commission, and which culminated in the Maastricht Treaty on European Union; and the images and impact of his leadership relate directly to that development. The significance of this supranational European authority as a characteristic and dimension of the EC/EU would-be polity can be assessed from several angles, depending on one’s perspective.2 From the perspective of its legitimacy—one of the more intangible of the resources in the Commission’s ‘power base’ (Vahl, 1992/3)—the conceptual and political conundrum posed by Delors’ leadership of the European Commission between 1985–95 is situated squarely within a broader context, which has in many respects dominated the history of the EC/EU. This is a context in which the Community’s provisions for supranational authority in the shape of the Commission emerge as democratically problematic and functionally contradictory, a point introduced in Chapter One, and which I develop in some detail below. How successive Commissions, under the guidance of their President, have succeeded—or not—in converting the Commission’s authority into influence, power and legitimacy is the subject of this chapter, since their performance in this respect formed a crucial part of Delors’ inheritance on taking up the Commission presidency in January 1985. Within this setting, 51

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the European Commission is not only ‘one of the most unusual administrations ever created’ (Peterson 1999:60); it is not even simply an administration, since ‘it was born as a body that would perform both mundane administrative and overtly political tasks’ (ibid.). It is, according to Cram (1999) a ‘bureaucracy with a mission: a body charged by the founding treaties to promote the integration process’, whose officials ‘are expected to support the aims of strengthening European integration’ (Page, 1997:131), and whose role was, amongst other things, to ‘identify new and promising avenues for European integration’ (Peterson, op. cit.: 47). I develop these theoretical perspectives below, before assessing the records of Delors’ several predecessors at playing the supranational game. A leadership role for the Commission? In Nugent’s terms (1995:604), it is the EU’s ‘shortfall’ of ‘democraticallybased political leadership’ that has created opportunities for the Commission ‘to exercise not just the advisory and administrative responsibilities which are the normal business of national civil servants and international secretariats, but also to exercise considerable leadership responsibilities’, and experience has shown that it often falls to the Commission to provide a sense of direction in times when member states cannot or will not reach an intergovernmental consensus under their own steam (Page, 1997:162; Peterson, 1999:61). The Commission, in former Commissioner Davignon’s terms (1979:470) has no responsibility other than the ‘responsabilité communautaire en general’ (a responsibility to the Community in general), and as such can be expected to dedicate itself to providing systemic leadership in a regime in which political authority has been deliberately fragmented and shared between the Community institutions and the member state governments (these acting both within and outside these institutions), and, moreover, in which provisions for collective and collegial forms of political leadership outweigh those made for leadership by individuals. As Helen Wallace (1985:1, quoted in Page, 1992:192) has written: ‘The European Community has no clear focal point within its various institutions. Though both the Council of Ministers and the Commission have Presidents, the buck stops with neither. No single political officeholder can lay claim to preeminent authority or influence. There is little scope for the systematic exercise of political leadership in the form with which we are familiar from the experience of the national state’. Höreth has pointed to the ‘multitude of different resources of legitimacy’ that follows from this division of political authority ‘among several levels of governance’ (1999:252), and Nugent underlines the ‘lack of direct accountability between the governing and the governed’ (1995:603) which results.

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The Commission is at the hub of a new polity which has been described by Page (1992:193) as a ‘leaderless pluralism’. According to the Community design, one logical place for ‘European’ political leadership to emerge was the Commission: ‘within this environment, the Commission performs a pivotal brokerage role, without which few EC policies would ever be agreed upon in the Council of Ministers’ (Lindberg and Scheingold, 1970:92; see also Mazey and Richardson, 1994:172). The Commission was invested with the authority to formulate and safeguard the general interest of the Communities, implying that it could see beyond, and reconcile, divisive national and partisan interests (Cram’s ‘bureaucracy with a mission’). It was given the bureaucratic authority to implement the general interest, and the authority associated with technocratic methods of politics (Laffan, 1999:336). Furthermore, it was linked, indirectly, to the representation of ‘Europeans’ through the European Parliament, and through the democratically-elected national governments, a link enhanced in principle (but not necessarily substantiated in practice) by the reforms of the Maastricht and Amsterdam treaties (Duff, 1997; Nugent, 1995:607). On all of these grounds (its responsibility to act in the general European interest; its technocratic authority; its indirect political and partisan links to a ‘European’ electorate) logically the Commission could be expected to provide a form of leadership in the sense of guiding the process of European integration in accordance with a belief in the normative value of integration itself. It is in these respects that the Commission has often been described as ‘a political leadership’, with its President formally primus inter pares but playing an intermittently authoritative role vis-à-vis his colleagues as well as beyond the Commission and the Community, and thereby assuming (or being ascribed) the persona of political leader. But the Commission’s role of providing leadership of the integration process, whether of the policy, political, internal or other variety, has been contested—by member state governments; by individual national leaders; indirectly, by public opinions, and by national medias—throughout its history. The Commission’s legitimacy dilemmas Simplifying matters for analytical purposes, the dichotomy and source of tension at the heart of the Commission’s existence is its dual existence as bureaucracy-cum-political leadership or, as Cram puts it, (1999:51, 53) the coexistence of the ‘executive’ and the ‘administrative’ Commissions— although even these useful distinctions only overlap, and do not precisely mesh. They are well-worn distinctions (see Cini, 1996:15; Rometsch and Wessels, 1994:203), but they have remained analytically and empirically valid over the Commission’s lifespan to the extent that they highlight the ambiguities that define the Commission (Edwards and Spence, 1994:4). Within its ‘bureaucratic’ remit the Commission has multiple roles: as

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‘administrator’ of policy and funds, ‘mediator’ (and sometimes negotiator) of interests (Page, 1997:112–6), or manager (of its own house). When it comes to its ‘political’ capacity, the situation is harder to grasp, since its tasks are, in Coombes’ well-known terms, to be initiative (of policy) and normative (of ideas and ideals) in order to further the objectives of European unity, to defend the European interest and to guard or defend the legal integrity of the treaties (Cini, 1996). The Commission’s ‘power of initiative’ 3, was portrayed by Coombes and others (Lindberg and Scheingold, 1970:92; Metcalf, 1992; Neunreither, 1972; Noel, 1973) as political, in the sense of orienting the integration process and injecting choice—on the basis of a perception of the general interest (the general will), and a sense of the collective interests (the will of all)—into that process, much as a national government sets the tone and ideological content of its overall policy programme. Coombes, in relation to this political activity, also referred to the Commission’s duty to be ‘partisan and protagonistic’ on Europe’s behalf; to enact the spirit as much as the letter of the Treaty of Rome; to behave as the Community’s ‘conscience’ (Michelmann, 1978:15; see also Nugent, 1994a:120–1; Peterson, 1999:47). It was in relation to these Commission activities that the Commission was provided with a tenuous link to representative politics (in the sense of representing European politics and people), and was to be staffed by a new elite of European ‘professional administrator[s] cum political operator[s]’ (Shonfield, 1965:408): The Treaties also gave a political significance to the exercise of the power of initiative, when they laid down that the proposals of the Commission or at least the most important—would be submitted to the European Parliament for their opinion—that is to say, that they should be publicized and made the subject of a public debate by the representatives of the peoples of the Community. (Noël, 1973:123). This particular interpretation of ‘political’, moreover,—the Commission’s duty to communicate its activities to a wider public, and to stimulate debate, potentially pan-European, about integration—is amongst the most contentious of its remit.4 It remains the case that each and any of the categories—political or bureaucratic or administrative—can be defined inclusively in order to encompass the quasi-totality of the Commission’s functions. Page, for example, defines the Commission’s political role broadly to include both ‘its need to mobilize support and persuade other institutions and groups’, and ‘in terms of its constitutional function as an iniator of policy’ (1997:146); and the terminology one chooses depends to a considerable extent on the image one wishes to construct of this institution, and whether or not it is compared to national bureaucracies or executives, or accepted as ultimately sui generis in virtually all key respects.

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Based on these different functions and qualities, and however one chooses to classify the Commission, it is, both historically and contemporaneously, in a position to make various overlapping and contradictory claims to legitimacy. By the 1990s this had led to a set of pressures on the Commission which ‘appear as a triangular force field, in which the “corners” are constituted by the need for public accountability, the attention to member state interests and a measure of independent expertise’ (Christiansen, 1996:81). In its tenuous link with the peoples of the member states by virtue of its formal accountability to the directly-elected European Parliament (and, Delors came to think, its informal accountability to the European Council), the Commission has a form of ‘democratic’ or ‘parliamentary’ legitimacy (Beetham and Lord, 1998; see also Christiansen, 1998; Fitzmaurice, 1994; Quermonne, 1990). The Commission’s duty to deliver public policies efficiently in furtherance of the general interest of the Communities can lead it to claim what has been described as its ‘technocratic-utilitarian’ legitimacy: ‘the efficient and effective tackling of political challenges on the bases of its general problem-solving capacity (Christiansen, 1998:107; Höreth, 1999:249). This dimension is also a question of the Commission’s ‘capacity to achieve the citizens’ goals and solve their problems’ (Höreth, op. cit.: 251), or its delivery of effective integration. As a bureaucracy, or administration, the Commission is also judged by its efficiency and probity in managing its internal structures and resources (Laffan, 1997), in tackling its inbuilt and growing ‘management deficit’ (Metcalfe, 1992), and generally in keeping its house sufficiently in order so as to fulfil its multiple roles. The Commission can also lay claim to legitimacy by virtue of its ability (and duty) to mediate successfully between the competing interests brought to Brussels by the member states, and to facilitate an intergovernmental consensus on the EU’s ends and means (such mediation ultimately being a condition of the Commission’s ability to achieve effective integration as described above). This task—the Commission’s ‘diplomatic’ activity (Christiansen, 1998:107) was uppermost in Delors’ mind when he described the Commission’s ultimate duty as to ‘be useful’ to member state governments,5 and involves the protection of ‘national diversity’ within the Union (‘Commissioners themselves…all carry “national baggage”’ (Christiansen, 1998). ‘Their origins are in member states and not in a polyglot polity called “Europe”’ Peterson 1999:58). The Commission, in other words, suffers from ‘multiple accountabilities’ (Christiansen, 1998), ‘identities’ (Peterson, 1999) and, probably, personalities in its status as simultaneous representative, in theory and in practice, of European, national and sectoral interests. Towards the end of Delors’ presidency, the potentially contradictory nature of these demands on the Commission became evident when Delors was increasingly criticised for biting off more on the Commission’s behalf than the Commission could chew, and particularly for having prioritised policy initiative over policy (or

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organisational) management. (Laffan, 1997). He was also criticised, as we mentioned in Chapter One, both for defending and not defending French and/or agricultural interests. It was the Commission’s performance in relation to a perceived management deficit which constituted the stumbling block on which Jacques Santer, Delors’ successor, fell when his Commission was forced by the EP (and, some would say, the media) to resign following accusations and some evidence of corruption, incompetence and ethical indifference, if not negligence (Cram, 1999).6 These contradictions are in many respects more damaging of the Commission’s coherence, capacity and performance, than of its overall legitimacy per se, since the Commission’s very essence lies in meeting its multiple challenges: ‘…internal contradiction and coherence are the price the Commission will have to pay to remain the key actor in the development of European governance and to contribute positively to the legitimatation of the EU as a whole’ (Christiansen, 1998:110). Shonfield, writing in 1972 (Shonfield, 1972) thought that the Commission’s future back then lay in learning to live with its contradictions, and balancing them skillfully. The outcome of the Amsterdam reform process in 1996–7 demonstrated, moreover, that the member states in the late 1990s were as reluctant as ever to resolve definitively the ‘character’ of the Commission in one way or another for, although the procedures for making the Commission more accountable to the EP might have seemed to ‘push the Commission along the “parliamentary” avenue’ (Christiansen, 1998:110; Dehousse, 1998), the inability of the governments to decide on the number of Commissioners in an enlarged EU until the weighting of votes in the Council was resolved underlined that for most member states, ‘the future legitimacy of the Commission hinges on the element of member state representation that goes on within it’ (Christiansen, op. cit.: 110). In other words, the Commission’s existence hinges on its success in achieving a balance between the various sources of legitimacy that are at the heart of its being: the Commission was born out of compromise and innovation—the federalist-functionalist experiment devised by the EU’s founders in the 1950s (Page, 1997), which introduced the notion of a general, European interest.7 This interest has, over time, proved both too abstract and vague a notion to make it and its bearer, the Commission uncontentious; and too ambitious and innovatory to ensure the unquestioning support of an increasingly diverse set of national elites and populations in the EU. The normative quality of the concept of the general interest has lent a unique character to the institutions built around it, first and foremost of which is the Commission, which has a ‘strange and ambitious remit’ and has always played a ‘candidly normative role in European policy-making’ (Peterson: 1999:47), with the ‘power to set priorities for the Community’ (Höreth, 1999:250). This overtly proEuropean definition of the ‘general’ interest has been contested over time, with that contestation most pronounced during the decade of Delors’ strong

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leadership, to the extent that Pascal Lamy, Delors’ chef de cabinet for almost the entire decade, was prepared to publish his opinion—at a difficult time for the Commission, however tactical his reasons—that the Commission’s former ‘messianistic’ mission to promote a pro-European agenda was no longer acceptable, and that the Commission, accordingly, increasingly operated within pragmatic guidelines (Lamy, 1991:69–70; Interview with Lamy, 9 August 1999). Shonfield (1972:32–6) had criticised the impracticability of the federalist idea of the Commission adopting a ‘holierthan-thou’ attitude, as the ‘organizer of a benign conspiracy which would somehow create a federated Europe behind the backs of governments’. In the 1950s, the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) invested the High Authority with the power to make decisions binding on the member states in matters relating to the regulation of the production and supply of coal and steel, and granted it a measure of financial independence in order to do so (Spinelli, 1966:28). The High Authority was a body of experts each sworn by oath to uphold their independence from national governmental instructions in their work. In other words, the national governments were not to interfere with the work of this ‘supranational’ body which, by virtue of its independence, would have the European ‘general interest’ in mind, not the clash of national interests, in the pursuit of limited economic goals. The members of the High Authority were not supposed to be divorced from national interests as such, but to see these interests in the wider context of the general, Community interest. In the European Economic Community (EEC, 1958), the Commission did not have the same authority as the High Authority to make decisions that would bind national governments, but it was given the exclusive right to initiate economic integrative policy, to oversee and, in some cases, implement such policy. As had been the case for the High Authority, the Commission was established as the custodian of the ‘general interest’ of the Communities, and was granted independence from national governments: The characteristic of independence…was certainly intended in the Treaties to be the crucial attribute of High Authority and Commission. It took various forms—the right of initiative; non-dismissability by member government; and responsibility to a separate and independent power base in the European Parliament (Henig, 1980:62). The Commission was composed of national experts who swore, on oath, their independence from the government which had appointed them. However, the founding treaties were deliberately ambiguous concerning the locus of political authority and control in the Communities (Page, 1997:111–33). They had to express federalist hopes for the end of the nation state (and so, in the federalists’ view, the end of international war); provide for the functionalists’ urging towards the rational reconstruction of Europe’s

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economic structures and strength; and cater for those national governmental delegates to the Treaty negotiations who were convinced that national governments remained the ultimate source and locus of democracy.8 The result was that whereas the High Authority’s and the Commission’s functions were clearly supranational, its authority was less clearly so. (Lapie, 1960:47–8). Jean Monnet’s invention was a deliberate and experimental attempt to construct a new political system on top of (supra) the member state polities, with its own institutions, goals, procedures, processes and norms. It was the compromise of negotiations between member states united over their goal—to overcome the effects of European war and prevent it occuring again—but divided over the means of achieving that goal: how to arrange the sharing of power between the new Community institutions and the national governments (Coombes, 1970:329). The founding acts of the Community system were, therefore, the product of a compromise based on a consensus achieved in exceptional and extraordinary circumstances, and which as such was inherently vulnerable to changes in the nature of that consensus, as expressed by Coombes (Sasse et al., 1977:252): This important change in the pattern of government in Western Europe had been brought about without a direct or deliberate challenge to the political authority of the governments of the states concerned, and without the need for a general constitutional division of powers between the Community and the states…. In making this progress, the Community relied greatly on the prevailing consensus among the national governments. What mattered was the willingness of the members to identify national interests with the successful implementation of the treaties…. Integration really depends on sustaining an effective balance of interests among states. Leadership of the Commission: the Commission President In this respect, the legitimacy of the High Authority’s authority (and of the Community system as a whole) was derived from the urgency of the practical matter of rebuilding economies and raising standards and quality of living (and so by the need for long-term vision which put ‘Europe’ before France, or Germany and so on). As such, its legitimacy seemed to be a question of its technical expertise and knowledge and, less easy to define or measure but real nonetheless, its commitment to the ‘general interest’ of Europe. This commitment to the general interest was the reason why the High Authority’s (and then the Commission’s) members were granted independence from the member states, who could appoint and renew their membership, but not issue them with direct instructions, or recall or dismiss them at will.9 Furthermore, these members were, first, to be appointed because of their general competence;10 second, to reach majority decisions (to act collegially)11 and third, to be supported by a European ‘civil service’, which the President of the

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High Authority would have responsibility for organising.12 These were the conditions under which it was expected that the High Authority would bring about the integration of the coal and steel sectors of the six ECSC members and so realise the Community’s general interest. The question of who or what would control the bureaucracy (in the form of the Commission administration) set up by the founding treaties was never really addressed in explicit terms, nor, more to the point, resolved by experience. The Community system does allow to some extent for the separation of politics and bureaucracy, in terms of control and the type of person recruited for each type of activity, in that the College of Commissioners (and their cabinets) are appointed on a very different set of grounds and criteria to the services—the directorates-general and their staff—of the Commission, which are recruited and trained in the manner of a bureaucratic civil service (Morgan, 1992:20). Given this context, the Commission presidency can be interpreted as a potential source of the kind of charismatic leadership that Weber (1918) considered necessary for unifying and integrating societies: an individual whose claim to authority would be made on the grounds of personal qualities and those of the post itself; and because of the values and expectations which he would incarnate as a ‘European leader’. Many authors (Donnelly and Ritchie, 1994; Endo, 1998b; Lindberg and Scheingold, 1970:93–4; Nugent, 1995) have documented the Commission President’s lack of formal leadership powers and resources, concluding, largely in harmony, that the President’s real leadership capacity boils down to his skill in exploiting opportunities and minimising constraints (Endo, 1998b). But the President’s scope for winning and losing legitimacy is complex since he is not, as we have seen, fully democratically legitimate (being an appointee), and has to juggle many factors in order to gear ‘his’ institution up to functional efficiency. ‘Strong’ and ‘weak’ Presidents alike are in any case in many respects doomed to fall foul of their dubious bases of legitimacy, however well they exploit their formal and informal sources of authority, since they come to embody the contradictions governing, as we have seen, the very life of the Commission. Making the President more accountable to the European Parliament (as per the Maastricht and Amsterdam treaty reforms), or to the ‘peoples of Europe’ (by, for example, the President being directly elected, or elected by the European Council) may well endow the Commission President with more authority, but only time will tell whether or not Jacques Santer’s successors will be able to convert this into a stable and predictable flow of legitimacy for the Commission and its presidency. Historically, therefore, the Commission, has been the site of permanent tension between its ‘bureaucratic’ quality (its right and duty to interpret, implement and safeguard the legal rules and ‘statutes’ that are the treaties; to develop its ‘functional competence’ to achieve integration) on the one hand and on the other, its potentiality (given by the treaties, as we have seen), as a site for the control of this very bureaucracy on the basis of the European general interest, and the link between the Commissioners and the democratic

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representation of Europeans. Studying the Commission as the site of competing claims to legitimacy enables us to develop an understanding of the processes by which Jacques Delors came to be widely perceived both as a political leader of European integration and as an invading bureaucrat; why the Commissions he presided over gained the reputation for being too political and too bureaucratic; and why his leadership was both asserted and contested on both grounds. Such an outcome was a forseeable result of a system in which ‘[t]he bureaucratic character of political leadership in the EU, even under Delors, is more a result of the fact that the European executive has no direct electoral legitimacy’ than because the European civil service ‘represents bureaucratic ballast—a force for inertia and timid action which reduces the scope for politicial initiative’ (Page, 1997:161). Coombes’ (in Sasse et al., 1977:335) nearly 30-year old assessment of this confusion over the Commission’s authority, and so its reputation, is worth citing: What makes the Community bureaucratic is not an excess of authority but a lack of it; its ways seem cumbersome, remote and ineffectual not because they override or ignore the will of the governments, but because their nerves are so exposed to it and because there is no alternative source of political will to support the common interest. The inter-governmental consensus on which the Community was established had suggested that member states were in agreement on a Community system in which they would share authority with the new institutions, as if in a positive-sum game. This was the idealistic, quasi-utopian character of the Community-building exercise. The history of the Community’s development, however, and specifically the evolution of the Commission’s position, attests to the fact that the Community has been seen by member state governments (often France and Britain; particularly Britain under Thatcher’s premiership) as a zero-sum game. In this game, the Commission’s authority challenges their own, and in response they devise methods of strengthening the ‘intergovernmental’ procedures for decision-making and leadership (Lindberg and Scheingold, 1970:94), thus raising ever more questions relating to the Commission’s legitimacy, and building up to the ‘crisis’ of the 1990s, which emerged at a time when a ‘strong’ Commission President—Delors— contributed to revealing the logic of the Community system more starkly than had previously been the case. Commission presidents before Delors (Cini, 1996; Endo, 1998b) had demonstrated that, within the limitations of the prevailing circumstances, they could affect the Commission’s fortunes and, specifically, its legitimacy to provide leadership of the Community system. The Commission and its President in historical perspective As early as 1957, the Commission of the European Communities had less political authority than its immediate predecessor, the High Authority of the

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ECSC. This reduction was evident in superficial ways such as the downgrading of the term ‘High Authority’ to the more bland ‘Commission’, and in more important ways, such as the need for agreement between the Commission and the Council of Ministers before the Commission’s proposals could proceed, (the High Authority had been able to bind the Council by its decisions) and in the reduction in length of the presidential term from six to two years (Coombes, 1970:84–5; Davignon, 1979:465; Endo, 1998b:67–8; Featherstone, 1994:158–9; Lapie, 1960:51). Furthermore, the appointments procedure for the High Authority had provided stronger ‘guarantees of greater independence’ than that for the Commission, in that the mandate of the High Authority’s members was longer (six rather than four—later five—years), and there was a treaty provision for the cooptation of a ninth member.13 Finally, the authority and responsibilities of the President of the High Authority were specifically mentioned in the ECSC treaty14, which was not the case for the EEC Commission President.13 These differences represented an early shift in the implementation of the Community model, from an emphasis on formulating the general interest of the Communities to the accommodation of national interests, and as such seemed to run counter to the internal logic of the Community system. The founders of the Community model, according to Haas (1968), had not anticipated that the Community’s claim to define the general interest would be contested by national leaders; that, in other words, the Commission would be challenged both on the grounds of its legal authority (the treaty texts themselves), as well as on that of its more nebulous link to political authority in the sense of representing European ideals, goals and ultimately, peoples. But the first major disruption to the Community method, when French President Charles de Gaulle contested the Commission’s authority in 1965, represented precisely such a double challenge. From Walter Hallstein to Charles de Gaulle The clash between de Gaulle and the Commission’s first President, Walter Hallstein (7 January 1958 to 9 January 1966) amounted to a challenge by de Gaulle of the principles of the Community system as I have outlined them above, provoked by President Hallstein’s overtly political manner of implementing the Commission’s powers. 16 In the Treaty of Rome’s provisions for the transitional programme by which the Community would establish a customs union, the Commission had been granted authority in the form of a specific programme (a set of tasks) and a specified timetable in which to complete them: The Hallstein Commission was provided from the outset with a relatively detailed action program and a corresponding timetable to be observed in respect of all its essential features. The overall objective of

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Between 1958 and 1965, the Commission had enacted that authority with the effect of accelerating the timetable for completing the customs union. It had also acted in other areas of the integration process, such as the Common Agricultural Policy, and ‘[t]his emphasis on goal-setting, the construction of ambitious new policies and the visionary manner in which many officials and leaders came to see their tasks, marked the early years [1958–62] of the Commission’s life.’ (Cini, 1996:43). When de Gaulle challenged the Commission’s set of proposals for further integrative action in 1965 by refusing to allow the French government to cooperate in EEC business for six months (the ‘empty chair’ policy), his challenge concerned both the Commission’s authority to complete the transitional programme and beyond, and what he perceived as the Commission’s intent to establish itself as a political institution. The Commission made a set of proposals in 1965 ‘designed to affirm the irreversibility of the integration process and to strengthen the Community system’ (Poullet and Deprez 1977:188–9). De Gaulle rejected the manner in which the proposals were linked, as well as the fact that they were presented to the European Parliament before being taken to the Council of Ministers. By his action, de Gaulle was marking his disapproval of Commission proposals to link a settlement of the financing of the Common Agricultural Policy, of which the French approved, to increased control for the European Parliament over this financing, to which the French were opposed. The intervention, however, can also be read as a protest against the implementation of widespread majority voting within the Council of Ministers, as provided for in the Treaty of Rome. De Gaulle, finally, was also reacting to a climate which appeared to tolerate, if not favour, a more politicised role for the Commission. One feature of the outcome of the empty chair policy was effectively to question the nature of the Commission’s role in political issues. The so-called Luxembourg Compromise, which succeeded in bringing the French government back into the Community system, provided subsequently, in practice, for a prolongation of the unanimous

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voting procedures which were supposed to have given way, according to the treaty, to more widespread majority voting. But the consequences of de Gaulle’s clash with the Commission were more insidious and long-lasting: the habit of unanimous voting in the Council of Ministers (or of not voting at all, in order to avoid potentially divisive votes) became engrained. This reduced the likelihood of the Commission having its proposals endorsed by the Council of Ministers, and thereby distorted the Community method as it had earlier been interpreted and enacted. The development also contested the Commission’s place in a Community system which had anticipated and provided for European politics being carried out, or at least significantly influenced, by European institutions. Furthermore, de Gaulle was contesting the Commission’s right to act as if it had a political will and identity of its own, and he invoked the legitimacy of national sovereignty in doing so. He considered that Hallstein, having linked the proposals on his own initiative and unveiled them to the member states by appealing first to the European Parliament, and in his discourse surrounding the proposals had made a political act, claiming to represent European interests and goals. There were other manifestations of the Commission’s tendency, as de Gaulle saw it, to claim political authority: in Hallstein’s federalist discourse; his diplomatic recognition of overseas ambassadors and his claim to the pomp and ceremony usually reserved for national leaders (such as de Gaulle). The situation at the beginning of 1965 was highly favourable as far as the Commission was concerned. Lindberg noted that in the spring of 1965: The Commission was at the height of its powers: its preponderant role in the integration process was generally accepted, the Common Agricultural Policy was all but realized after great struggle, and speaking of all this to American journalists, Walter Hallstein, President of the Commission, said he could be considered as a kind of Prime Minister of Europe. (cited in Poullet and Deprez, 1977:188). It was thus the Commission presidency of Walter Hallstein which provided the pretext for de Gaulle’s intervention. Hallstein habitually represented the Commission to its external constituencies—national leaders within and outside the Community, organised interests, the European Parliament and beyond the Parliament to European people—in a manner which suggested the leadership of a national premier. Hallstein maintained and promoted a discourse of European unity, and drew on the intergovernmental consensus which had drafted the Treaty of Rome as his basis of authority. He emphasised the Commission’s political role in the integration process: ‘Walter Hallstein has vigorously affirmed the political character of the Community undertaking, repeating on various occasions that the Community is not in business but is in politics.’ (Spinelli, 1966:133).

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Within the Commission, Hallstein invented working methods and procedures, and instituted a working climate which overcame some of the Commission’s internal rigidities (its hierarchical and compartmentalised administration, compounded by differences of language and culture and by national and partisan affiliations which existed despite the Commission’s independent, European character; [Poullet and Deprez, 1977:170–1]). Internally, under Hallstein’s presidency, the Commission was able to deliver the programmatic-type performance required to implement the transitional programme.17 Hallstein had the advantage of being the first Commission President, and so to some extent could control the size of the Commission, and keeping the administration small was one of his priorities. Similarly, he presided over the Commission before it became the Commission of all three Communities (EEC, Euratom and ECSC) and before the Community’s first enlargement which included, among others, the large member state of the UK. Even so, Hallstein closely controlled the organisation of the Commission’s work, much as Monnet had done as first President of the High Authority (Cassese and della Cananea, 1992:86; see also Morgan, 1992; Reuter, 1953; Spierenburg and Poidevin, 1994), and this enabled the Commission to function internally in such a way as to achieve the tasks set out for it by the treaty: Personal qualities, such as skill, imagination, energy and a nose for what is politically feasible, seem to be relevant. In this respect, the personal qualities of the leadership of the Commission stands out. The Commission President and the Secretary General of the Commission are both determining the functioning of the Commission to a high extent. The manner in which they run the Commission, and the way they guide the Commission in the decision-making process, is crucial for the Commission’s effectiveness. (Michelmann, 1978:54; see also Vahl, 1992/3:303.) Moreover: The intellectual vigour and the will-power of one man shaped the mould and long after his, Hallstein’s, departure, the whole thing grew enormously within the same mould, in spite of the passage of so many Presidents and Commissioners and in spite of such profound changes and changing circumstances. (Ionescu, 1982:37–8) It has also been noted (Cini, 1996:51; Interview with Delors, 15 July 1999) that Hallstein’s style of leadership had to some extent exacerbated tensions over the Commission’s authority Hallstein’s leadership was one of the main factors in ensuring the assertiveness and activism of the Commission in its

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first embodiment from 1958–1967. But Hallstein must also take much of the blame for the crisis that marked the beginning of a more reactive and cautious stage in the Commission’s history. (Cini, 1996:51) Endo 1998b: 87) also echoes these doubts about Hallstein’s political judgement. Delors, thanks to his authority inside the Commission based (as with Hallstein18 ) on factors such as personality, personal experience and knowledge and ‘political capital’ (Endo, 1998b:95–7; 121–5), as we shall see in the following chapters, also presided over a Commission which, particularly in the first four years of his presidency, produced strategic, programmatic output despite the bureaucratic structures of the Commission which inherently inhibited that process. In this respect, Delors’ experience confirmed the signficance that the Commission President can, historically, have within the Commission. Delors, like Hallstein, employed idiosyncratic ‘management’ methods. In 1999, a rash of newspaper and academic articles discussing Santer and Prodi’s management challenges and styles described the shortcomings in Delors’ leadership in these respects. Whatever his methods for organising the work, Delors did assist the Commission in producing the sort of strategic plans and programmes that it had initially produced under the first years of Hallstein’s presidency (and Delors considered that he made a significant contribution to the growth of the Commission by imparting a strategic dimension to its role on his arrival).19 By the late 1960s the reality of European integration was therefore such that the federalist-functionalist beliefs in the relevance of the supranational level of politics centred on the Commission were increasingly challenged by views that marginalised this supranational, central level of activity, pointing as evidence to the ‘proof provided by de Gaulle that national leaders could, if they wished, interpret and distort the founding texts in order to withhold authority from the Commission, and decide principally amongst themselves on the course of future integration. In contesting Hallstein’s authority,20 de Gaulle contested the logic of the system and, for many years, slowed down the growth of the system itself. He refused to accept that the Commission could claim the responsibility of defining a Community interest: who were Hallstein, or the Commission, representing, and how? Hallstein was not even elected.21 Hallstein’s ‘premature’ unveiling of the 1965 proposals to the EP was for de Gaulle, misplaced, because he refuted the Commission President’s link, however tenuous the treaties had made it, to representative politics. What was the Community’s nebulous ‘general interest’ in comparison with France’s centuries of national tradition, and its universal values? Hallstein, on the basis of a claim to the spirit of the Treaty of Rome as well as its letter, had emerged as a potential form of leader of the Community, as the logic of the system dictates, but does not ensure (Combat 30 October 1962).

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After de Gaulle: reduced Commission authority? Following de Gaulle’s intervention in the Community system, the Commission’s authority was reduced on several grounds. Its legal base had shrunk, in the sense that certain of the treaty provisions had been fulfilled, thereafter reducing the scope of the Commission’s formal, incontestable authority to initiate policy. Second, one effect of de Gaulle’s challenge had been to alter the Community system—to delay majority voting—with the effect of reducing the Commission’s capacity to enact what formal, legal authority it had. Third, in challenging Hallstein and then blocking his renewal as President, de Gaulle had challenged the Commission President’s right and ability to claim authority on the grounds of the President’s position or, more importantly, of his personal qualities (such as his legitimacy within the Commission, his personality, his vision of European integration and so on). De Gaulle’s action had demonstrated the fragility of the intergovernmental consensus that had created the Community—fragile because exposed to many factors which could undermine it, such as changes in domestic political majorities, leadership and priorities; divergent national policies in response to common external factors such as economic difficulties—and that the Commission’s legitimacy was clearly a problematical area in the politics of integration. The ‘phenomenon of a de Gaulle’ had had the effect of making space in the political and scholarly arenas for dissenting voices; that is to say, for those who opposed the dominant philosophy underlying European integration: the desirability and inevitability of European unification; for those who saw it largely as an ‘act of faith in a kind of modern saint-simonisme, as appealing and as erroneous as Saint Simon’s gospel in his days’ (Hoffmann, 1964:94). In such circumstances, the potential for the Commission President to enact what authority the Commission did have was limited, although not entirely curtailed, and the personality and leadership skills of the Commission President remained a factor that influenced the Commission’s legitimacy in the Community system. Jean Rey was Hallstein’s successor as Commission President (6 July 1967 to 1 July 1970) during the first years of the ‘merged’ Commission, when it became the executive for the ECSC and Euratom as well as for the EEC once the Brussels Treaty (the ‘Merger Treaty’) of 8 July 1965 entered into force on 1 July 1967. The merger presented internal problems for the Commission, as it adjusted to the increase in staff and reorganisation of tasks and roles (Coombes, 1970:264– 71; Rey, 1970). It was of this period, moreover, that observers wrote of an ‘exodus from the treaty’, meaning that the Commission’s specifically defined tasks, as laid out in the Treaty in the form of the transitional period, were coming to an end, leaving in their place articles of a more general character which required, on the part of the Commission, initiative and influence with the member states (Cassese and della Cananea, 1992:87–8; see also Noël, 1973:128; Poullet and Deprez 1977:235–6). Furthermore, Rey’s position as

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Commission President had itself suffered from the manner in which he had been appointed: as the compromise candidate following de Gaulle’s refusal to renew Hallstein as Commission President. For several reasons, therefore, pertaining both to the Commission’s treaty-based and political forms of authority, President Rey’s Commission was seen as restricted in its legitimacy, and thus in its scope for leadership (Cini [1996:52] reports press comments at the time of a ‘lack of leadership’ by Rey’s Commission). Similarly: The attitude adopted by the Rey Commission illustrates perfectly the nature of the relations existing between different forms of legitimacy. The intrinsic legitimacy of the Commission had become considerably weakened since the crisis of June 1965, when the French government directly attacked the Commission. Furthermore, the end of the transitional period deprived the Commission in a large number of fields of the restraining support afforded by the treaties. The Commission then pursued the trend towards a kind of rational legitimacy. The prevailing Community climate was unpropitious, however, for the member states were lacking in good will and even sound and worthwhile proposals failed to enlist their support. Barring some new development, this could have brought about a stalemate situation. At this point the Rey Commission endeavored to compensate for its lack of legal authority and the inefficiency of its rational authority by drawing upon the resources of its moral authority and prestige. President Rey’s speeches especially urged that the Commission should play a prophetic role within the Community system and that it should revive European ‘faith’ and ‘hope’. (Poullet and Deprez in Sasse et al., 1977:195–6). The authors do not define what they mean by ‘intrinsic’, ‘rational’ or ‘legal’ legitimacy, or ‘moral’ authority, but they appear to use legal and rational to refer to the Commission’s treaty-specific tasks; and to take instrinsic and moral authority to mean what I have called the Commission’s political, and less tangible authority to claim action on the grounds of the spirit of the treaty and the general interest. The integrative decisions that were taken during Rey’s presidency related, accordingly, to the remaining specific treaty provisions for Commission action, such as in the field of common agricultural policy.22 President Rey, in retrospect, moreover, was seen to have addressed the internal functioning and efficiency of the Commission (its capacity as a bureaucracy), while accepting the status quo in which the Commission’s political authority in the Community system was contested, and not to be accentuated.23 During Franco Mario Malfatti’s Commission Presidency (2 July 1970–13 March 1972), the Commission was considered to have been weakened by internal problems, including the ineffectual style of its President:

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‘Expectations were too high…and the Malfatti commission failed to deliver what it had promised’ (Cini, 1996:54). Malfatti was not considered to have sought to bolster or enhance the capacity of the Commission to enact its various forms of authority. His decision to resign from the Commission presidency before the end of his mandate in order to return to Italian politics was, in this context, seen as damaging to the Commission’s authority and reputation within the Community system. ‘As if to underscore its [the Commission’s] seeming unimportance, in 1972 the outgoing President, Franco Malfatti, left office early in order to stand for election to the Italian Parliament.’(Dinan, 1994:93; The Guardian 12 October 1971). He was replaced temporarily as President by Sicco Mansholt (14 March 1972 to 5 January 1973; see Cini, 1996:54–5), who was succeeded by François-Xavier Ortoli (6 January 1973 to 5 January 1977). By the time of Ortoli’s presidency, the Community had enlarged for the first time to include Denmark, the United Kingdom, and Ireland (CondorelliBraun, 1973; Dinan, 1995:13–16). At the Paris summit of October 1972 the heads of state had declared their intention to complete Economic and Monetary Union by 1980, and to proceed towards European Union by the same date, and had expanded the range of the Commission’s legally-defined tasks by ‘assigning to the Commission responsibility for establishing programs in various fields [in particular regional, environmental and energy policy]’, which ‘did confirm its [the Commission’s] role of initiator in the matter of Community policies and thereby defined a new area of Commission intervention.’ (Ortoli, 1976; see also Poullet and Deprez, 1977:200; Pryce, 1973:188–97). In legal (treaty) terms, therefore, the Commission had gained in authority in relation to its predecessor. Furthermore, Ortoli was considered to be an effective President, with the skills and personality to lead an institution; and his Commissioners were described as bringing to the Commission a measure of ‘political capital’. (Condorelli-Braun, 1973:139; Poullet and Deprez, 1977:162). However, in the circumstances of the time (a western European energy crisis; the failure of the EEC member states at the summit of Copenhagen, December 1973 to agree to further integration; the continuation of the practice of unanimous voting), the Commission was seen to be unable to bring this combination of skills to bear on the Community system in any significant way: ‘The experience of the Ortoli Commission shows, however, that the personal standing of the members of the Commission is not sufficient in itself to enhance the political legitimacy of that institution to any perceptible degree.’ (Poullet and Deprez, 1977:234.) During the 1970s the Commission operated in a Community system characterised by the inability of the member states to agree on the goals or pace of further integration; by the creation of institutional arrangements parallel to those of the treaties in the form of the European Council, and the strengthening of the presidency arrangments, whereby the member states had informally claimed the right to share the ‘power of initiative’ reserved by

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the Treaties for the Commission (the European Council, created in 1974, is the most obvious example of this development; another is the development of the rotating presidency [Dewost, 1984]). Under these circumstances the Commission’s forms of authority were limited by external factors, even when the Commission President was of the charismatic type. During Roy Jenkins’ presidency (6 January 1977 to 5 January 1981) in contrast, and to a large extent as a function of his individual leadership skills (his political experience; his personal qualities; his relations with constituencies within and outside the Commission), the Commission, when backed by an intergovernmental consensus, was able to take significant and authoritative initiatives. As Commission President, and despite opposition from the French President, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing (and the French Foreign Office), Jenkins won the right for the Commission President to attend the newly-created forum of the G7 summit (Jenkins, 1989:20–2; Cini, 1996:61– 2 outline the incomplete nature of this ‘victory’). He also personally relaunched the idea of a European Monetary System, which was subsequently taken up and supported by the French President and German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt (Cini, 1996:61; see also Dinan, 1994:103–9; Jenkins, 1989:22–4, 197–9; 1990:53). Jenkins represented the Commission externally to EC and world leaders by maintaining frequent contact; he toured the EC capitals, visiting the national governments, at least twice during his presidency, including a first tour when he was president-designate. He was in fact the first Commission President to be appointed six months ahead of his mandate, and therefore to benefit from a ‘president-designate’ period in which he attempted to influence the selection of his commissioners, not entirely successfully.24 Within the Commission, moreover, Jenkins exercised some personal authority over the allocation of portfolios between Commissioners-designate (Jenkins, 1989:668; The Economist 3 July 1976; The Guardian 18 November 1986); and innovated in a number of ways to alter the Commission’s internal procedures and methods.25 In these respects, Jenkins’ personal leadership skills were significant in raising the profile and the authority of the Commission President and of the Commission itself, and in setting a precedent for a politically respected and experienced Commission President who re-established recognition of the Commission as a central Community institution (Russell, 1980:6). Edwards and Spence generously note (1994:2) that: Roy Jenkins when President, sought to re-establish the Commission, and its Presidency, as the primary motor of integration through the setting of new goals and proposals such as that on monetary union, and as representative of the European interest—or at least as representative of the European Community. Nevertheless, in a set of circumstances and a conjuncture marked by deepening disagreement amongst the Community’s member states over such

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substantial issues as the Community budget and the Common Agricultural Policy, the effects of these developments were limited in terms of the integration process itself: ‘One has to realise that the highlights have been matched by moments of obvious difficulty for Roy Jenkins as an Englishman, since even a European President cannot fully escape his national background, nor is he meant to.’ (Russell, 1980:6.) 26 Nor had the Commission, in the ‘economic and political conditions facing the Community’ (Edwards and Spence, 1994:3), gained any significant new scope for ‘initiatives on the detailed guidance of the treaties’ (ibid.: 3). Gaston Thorn (6 January 1981 to 5 January 1985), did not preside over improved circumstances and, moreover, was perceived as a ‘weak’ Commission President, producing reports of a Commission whose authority had reached its lowest point in the history of the Community. Thorn’s nomination to the Commission presidency in July 1980 was, like Jenkins’, subject to initial French disapproval. Giscard d’Estaing had blocked Thorn’s nomination at the June 1980 Venice G7 summit, although he later gave way. This initial objection, as well as the fact of Thorn coming from the Community’s smallest member state, were factors which did not enhance the new President’s de facto authority in the Community or its international environment. Furthermore, despite Thorn’s numerous calls for improvement in the Community’s decision-making, such as his appeals for the Luxembourg compromise to be abandoned; for a ‘new language’ of integration and progress; and his insistence on the Commission’s political role;27 as well as the Commission’s active response to the tasks with which it was faced (to study reform of the CAP and budget—the so-called 30 May mandate [Agence Europe Documents 1159, 27 June 1981]; the common fisheries policy), Thorn’s style of presidency attracted considerable criticism from the very beginning of his presidency. Criticisms concerned the distribution of portfolios (depicted as a struggle for Thorn to establish his authority); difficulties in intraCommission relations; accusations of Commissioners not behaving independently; and of problems of co-ordination within the Commission. By the time of the London European Council in December 1981, after one year of Thorn’s presidency, Thorn was reported as lacking the confidence, or will, to tackle the member states or to force them to take the Commission’s mandate seriously: In Gaston Thorn’s presidency (1981–1985), the barons continued to rule.…it would be wrong to ignore the importance of the Thorn period for the subsequent relaunch of the Community under Delors, but the achievements of these years owed more to the political skills of Commissioner Davignon and some of his colleagues than to those of President Thorn. (Ludlow, 1991:91; see also Cini, 1996:66; The Financial Times 5 December 1983)

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During Thorn’s presidency, nonetheless, groundwork was accomplished within the Commission that contributed to the successful internal market programme of the Delors’ Commissions. During Delors’ presidency, and in a specific set of Community circumstances, as we see in the following chapter, the Commission reclaimed the authority to initiate internal market proposals, with significant and celebrated impact. Conclusions: Delors’ inheritance The founding treaties of the Community instituted a system in which the Commission was granted two kinds of authority. First, it had authority in the ‘policy’ (Wallace, 1993) politics of rational economic management and bureaucratic administration. Second, it also had the framework and justification (in the manner of the appointment of the College of Commissioners; the provision for a Commission President; the concept of the general interest; the spirit of the Treaty of Rome) for authority in the ‘polity’ politics of political identity, character, and leadership. From a proEuropean perspective: While the Commission does possess many of the attributes of bureaucracies and while it is committed to impartiality and remaining au dessus de la mêlée, it cannot advance integration unless it does have a political vision of the possible and realistic view of the medium-term goals of European integration. In exercising its functions, it no longer simply executes the Rome Treaty. It interprets the spirit of the Treaty in a far bolder manner. (Lodge, 1989:38). Within a decade, however, the Commission’s authority to enact the treaties in both these respects had been contested by member states, especially by France, and diminished by the practice of the Luxembourg Compromise. One reason why authority had been contested in this way was because the first Commission President, Walter Hallstein, had simultaneously begun to draw on the founding treaties’ provisions for a form of European leadership, in the political sense of ideologically-informed (i.e. pro-European), representative (of pro-European) politics. Such behaviour was not explicitly provided for by the treaties, which prioritised and emphasised the collective, consensual rationality of functional, utilitarian politics, but it was a logical possibility. The Commission had attracted competition from the ‘rescued’ member states (Milward, 1994) with whom it was required to balance its interests and vision. One of the reasons why the Community was established in the way it was (with many provisions for collective or collegial leadership, such as in the Commission and the Council of Ministers) was precisely and deliberately to inhibit scope for personalised leadership. It is no coincidence, given the

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experience of the inter-war years and the Second World War, that the brave new world of the Community experiment was institutionalised in such a way as to inhibit, if not prevent, a significant role for invididuals. Jean Monnet’s model of building institutions for the new Communities was, after all, based on a philosophical belief in the rationality, durability, stability and agency of institutions in contrast to the changeability of men and their actions (a perspective refined much later by the ‘new institutionalist’ accounts of European integration: Bulmer 1994). Nevertheless, the Community’s provision for a Commission President, and the wording of the preambles to the Community’s various founding treaties and texts, when they call for, at some unspecified point in the future, ‘federation’, ‘ever closer union’ and so on, suggest a basis for the legitimation of a more focalised, personalised authority in the EU. Although the Community was a new departure in European politics, and therefore could not in itself lay claim to collective memories or to ancient ties of kinship or loyalty, the founding fathers’ emphasis on the Community’s role in securing peace, in ending FrancoGerman rivalry, in guaranteeing a better standard and quality of life for the citizens of its members states, was intended to forge the shared values, goals and principles which would cement loyalties between the new member states and their peoples. The emphasis on specifically European values and interests and goals, furthermore, was to serve as a binding principle and, logically, potentially to be articulated by the Commission: Only the Commission can legitimately claim to be acting solely in the interests of the emerging ‘new Europe.’…This gives the Commission the possibility of appealing to all groups who perceive any stake, whether economic, political, or symbolic, in integration. To do this it must express and symbolise specific proposals and technical arrangements in terms of the broader goals of integration…. Unless they are cast in a broader context of an emergent European common interest, they will be relevant to only a narrow range of experts and interest group representatives. (Lindberg and Scheingold, 1970:172.) In these respects, we can say that the manner in which the new Communities were established provided potential for the development of new loyalties and ties to a shared yesterday, as well as the formulation of an eternal tomorrow. This mythology of European integration and institutions, however, has never gone unchallenged. Not only is it liable to be seen as self-fulfilling propaganda promoted by the Community’s institutions, especially the Commission; it is also rivalled by the existence of the ‘modernist myths of rationalization’, upon which functionalism is based (Hansen and Williams, 1999:233). The difficult co-existence of a myth of origin (Obradovic, 1996) on which a European (Union) identity could form, and a myth of rationality, is a further dimension of the legitimacy dilemmas highlighted throughout

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this chapter. Moreover, by the mid-1980s, the notion that national leaders, let alone national electorates, could sustain a belief in the validity of Europe’s ‘eternal yesterday’ or commit themselves to ‘European’ individuals claiming personalised authority—or even to more European legal authority (the disdained Brussels bureaucracy)—seemed increasingly remote, as the future of European integration became a contested and divisive issue between and within the EU’s member states. By the end of Delors’ decade, the Commission’s political, normative functions—‘the normative aspect of the European idea—indeed the European idea itself (Christiansen, 1998:99) had not so much become ‘lost from view’ (ibid.) as contested, as had the ‘functional’ and ‘utilitarian’ method of integration itself (ibid.). In the terms of Coombes’ original argument, the legitimacy of both the Commission’s ‘bureaucratic’ and ‘political’ personalities had been brought into question during the period of Delors’ presidency, as we see in the following two chapters. Altiero Spinelli considered that the Commission largely ignored its potential to provide European political leadership, and failed to draw on the forces in favour of integration, such as the various European movements, in support of such a role (Spinelli, 1966:194–5). In its 1965 proposals, however, calling for ‘financial independence of the Community in respect to the member states; transformation of the Commission into a real economic government; and authentic parliamentary control’ the Commission appeared to have turned towards ‘the subject of constructing a united European democracy.’ (Spinelli, 1966:208.) We can see de Gaulle’s challenge to the Commission’s and Community’s authority at that time as a manifestation of a view that the nation-state, for many reasons (including the fear of totalitarianism, political monoliths, and hegemonies), is the most appropriate site for the exercise of political authority and of democracy, and that the Commission’s potential for such authority was unacceptable: Until the mid 1960s the Commission gained political strength from the broad acceptance within the member countries of the original ‘European’ goals. The change in view presaged by President de Gaulle tended to leave the Commission searching for a role. (Henig, 1980:63) Hallstein’s presidency presented us with evidence that the character of the Commission President had, or could have, a significant impact on the Commission’s ability and capacity to claim authority and convert it to legitimacy within the Community system. The Commission presidencies of Walter Hallstein, François-Xavier Ortoli and Roy Jenkins, moreover, all contributed, as we have seen in this chapter, to maintaining and exercising a minimum of Commission authority (through the action of the individual on the institution), and in certain cases demonstrated that the Commission could also claim and sustain prestige and acknowledgement—factors of

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legitimacy—within the Community. Furthermore, the Maastricht and Amsterdam provisions for a Commission President more accountable to the European Parliament, taken with the future possibility of reducing the number of Commissioners in an enlarged EU, can be antipicated to enhance the potential authority and influence of the Commission President within the Commission, even if they simultaneously render his position at large more exposed to the vagaries of the EU system than ever: In such a quasicollegial system, the President will play an increasingly important role. The practice of Parliamentary approval of the Commission President-designate, introduced in the Maastricht Treaty and first used…at the time of Jacques Santer’s nomination, has the potential to strengthen the presidential office. (Dinan, 1995:15) We have also seen, however, that the Commission President’s authority is confined by the limitations of the Community system; or, more precisely, by the balance of forces for and against further integration at a given point in time: ‘prevailing circumstances will severely limit the Commission’s options for the forseeable future.’ (Dinan, 1995:15).28 I explore in the following chapters further examples of the interaction between the Commission President and the politics of legitimacy in the Community, by focusing on the ways in which President Delors responded to the renewed inter-governmental consensus of the mid-1980s—that the Community’s low politics of economic integration should be relaunched— by re-activating the Commission’s authority, in part through a deliberate restatement of the ‘general interest’. I consider the effects of his activity on the politics of legitimacy in the European Union, by virtue of his impact on his own position and post as Commission President, and the implications this had for the Commission as a body. The Delors years demonstrate that the Commission President can and does play a determining role in articulating the collective interest, and in determining its impact. Notes 1 To borrow from the title of Nugent’s edited volume of research on the Commission (1997); also Louis and Waelbroek’s study (1989). 2 Academic interest in the Commission was renewed from the mid-1980s onwards. Overviews include Edwards and Spence (1994), Cini (1996), Cram (1997) and Nugent (1997). A focus on the extent of the Commission’s autonomy from, for example, a principal-agent, rational choice institutionalist perspective can be found in Pollack (1997, 1999). Cram (1993, 1994) has offered insights into the Commission—a ‘multi-organization’—as a ‘purposeful opportunist’ and policy entrepreneur, successful (1994:196) in ‘expanding the scope of its competence with no basis in the founding Treaties, or with only the most tenuous claim to legal justifications’. From a broader perspective of decision and policy-making in the EU policy, Moravcsik (1991, 1993, 1999)

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and Sandholtz and Zysman (1989) arrive at very different conclusions about the extent of the Commission’s role in the integrative advances of the 1980s–1990s. Article 211 of the consolidated Treaty on European Union (ex Article 155): ‘[In order to ensure the proper functioning and development of the common market, the Commission shall:]—formulate recommendations or deliver opinions on matters dealt with in this Treaty, if it expressly so provides or if the Commission considers it necessary’. But it is a dimension which has been gradually strengthened during and since the Delors decade. See Peterson (1995) on the transparency programme introduced during Delors’ presidency; visit the EU’s website, EUROPA for examples of the Prodi Commission’s intentions vis-à-vis openness (for example: the issuing of questionnaires to the commissioners-designate and the publication of their written responses on the website). Interview with Delors, 15 July 1999. Delors has, perhaps unsurprisingly, defended his record in respect of the Commission’s internal organisation, saying that he considered it impossible— morally and ethically—to refuse the new tasks which arose from the rebuilding of a united Europe after the fall of the Iron Curtain in the late 1980s (such as the administration of aid to the countries of East and Central Europe), even though the performing of these tasks placed the institution under strain. He has suggested that with time he would have prioritised the ‘management’ dimension of his presidential leadership. (Interview with Delors, 15 July 1999). The Paris and Rome Treaties both cite the ‘general interest’ of the Communities: ECSC Treaty Article 9; Consolidated Treaty Article 213 (ex Article 157). The wording of the article is virtually the same in both cases. ECSC Article 9: ‘The members of the High Authority shall exercise their functions in complete independence, in the general interest of the Community.’ Consolidated Article 213 (ex Article 157): ‘The members of the Commission shall, in the general interest of the Communities, be completely independent in the performance of their duties.’ Monnet’s original plans for the ECSC’s institutions included neither an assembly nor a council of ministers: ‘In his original project for the European Coal and Steel Community Jean Monnet envisioned a High Authority endowed, in limits to be fixed by the treaty, with considerable independence and tied neither to a parliament nor to a council of representatives of member states. From the very beginning of long negotiations, however, he realized that it was necessary to accept these two supplementary institutions, the first because of a certain democratic necessity and the second because of the jealousy of the governments for their own sovereign rights.’ (Spinelli, 1966:27). ‘The members of the High Authority shall exercise their functions in complete independence, in the general interest of the Community. In the fulfillment of their duties, they shall neither solicit nor accept instructions from any government or from any organization. They will abstain from all conduct incompatible with the supranational character of their functions. Each member State agrees to respect this supranational character and to make no effort to influence the members of the High Authority in the execution of their duties.’ Treaty of Paris, Chapter 1, Article 9. ‘The High Authority shall be composed of nine members designated for six years and chosen for their general competence.’ Treaty of Paris, Chapter I, Article 9. ‘The High Authority shall act by a vote of a majority of its membership.’ Treaty of Paris, Article 13. ‘It [the High Authority] may institute study Groups and specifically an economic study Group. Within the framework of general organizational regulations

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Jacques Delors established by the High Authority, the President of the High Authority shall be responsible for the administration of its services, and shall ensure the execution of the acts of the High Authority.’ Treaty of Paris, Article 16. The term ‘supranationalism’ was also used in the Treaty of Paris but was not carried forward to the Merger Treaty of 1965. It was used in the Treaty of Paris with regard to the duty of member state governments to allow the members of the High Authority to work in independence (Taylor, 1990:111). See note 12. The 1997 Amsterdam Treaty reversed this trend to some extent, at least in principle, by stating (EC Treaty Article 219 [ex Article 163]) that: [the] ‘Commission shall work under the political guidance of its President’. This clause provided formally for more presidential input into the appointment of individual commissioners than was previously the case. It formalised the President’s right and duty to define the Commission’s general political guidelines. Furthermore, a Declaration included in the Final Act, stated that the ‘President of the Commission must enjoy broad discretion in the allocation of tasks within the college, as well as in any reshuffling of those tasks during a Commission’s term of office’. This treaty development occurred in the context of the ‘Commission’s intention to prepare a reorganization of tasks within the college in good time for the Commission which will take up office in 2000.’ (Dehousse, 1998:11–13.) Cini (1996:43) notes that the ‘first real political crisis faced by the European Commission’ came in January 1963, when de Gaulle unilaterally suspended enlargement negotiations for UK membership of the EEC. She notes the Commission’s ‘pride’ in surviving the crisis. Lindberg (1965) too was responding to the development of the Community’s institutions following de Gaulle’s veto, in his study of the EC’s emerging ‘political system’. Emile Noël’s recollections of the first Commission of the EEC under Hallstein’s presidency provide detail of Hallstein’s personal stamp on the organisation of the institution (Noël was the Executive Secretary of the Commission of the EEC from 1958–67 and Secretary-General of the Commission of the European Communities 1967–87.) (Ionescu 1982; Noël, 1992:150, 157–8). Amongst the factors enhancing Hallstein’s authority was the fact that he had chaired the German delegation at the ECSC negotiations, and had been German Foreign Secretary before taking up the Commission presidency (Cini, 1996:38; Endo, 1998b:95–6). Interview with Delors, 15 July 1999. One of de Gaulle’s conditions for returning to the EEC institutions was to downgrade the Commission’s right to receive foreign visitors on behalf of the Community with pomp and ceremony; see The New York Times 9 July 1966, ‘De Gaulle Forces Commission to Drop Ceremony of Ambassadorial Kind’. Mrs Thatcher’s views on Delors loudly echoed de Gaulle’s remarks about Hallstein. The 1968 ‘Mansholt memorandum’, however, was considered ‘political’ because of the force of Mansholt’s character and his personalised responsibility for the memorandum (Lindberg and Scheingold, 1970:172; Noël, 1973:129; Poullet and Deprez, 1977:195–6; Rosenthal, 1975:22–6, 79–100). Rey’s Commission was still considered to have suffered from problems instrinsic to the Commission’s internal organisation, such as the lack of central coordination and planning structures: (Agenor 13 November 1969:55–8). See also Herald Tribune 8 May, 1967; The Economist 29 July 1967; The Economist, 1 March, 1969. German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt did not go along with Jenkins’ preferences, for example. See the Financial Times 12 September 1984.

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25 Endo (1998b:95) notes Jenkins’ creation of a ‘new resource’, the Central Advisory Group (a precursor of Delors’ Cellule de Prospective, set up in 1989). 26 The British Conservative government elected in 1979, with Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister, followed the previous Labour government’s attempts to renegotiate the terms of the UK’s EEC membership with a long and hard-fought battle over the size of the UK’s contribution to the EEC budget. This disagreement between the UK and its EEC partners blocked progress which might have been in the ‘general interest’ of the Community. 27 The Herald Tribune 3 July 1980, reports Thorn as saying, at the time of his appointment: ‘We must find a new language to explain why European unity is necessary…. And time is running out. If we don’t find a new language, political apathy and even neutralism, which already is starting to appear, will accelerate in Europe…. I’m one of the last of the wartime generation in Europe, and we’ve been walking in the shoes of Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman. I see that we need to change them before it is too late.’ 28 Dinan (1994:202) provides a table of Commission presidents classified by ‘type of leadership’—active or passive. Hallstein, Jenkins and Delors are listed as active; Rey, Malfatti, Mansholt, Ortoli and Thorn as passive. Such a table reflects the desire felt by virtually all researchers of the Commission to somehow account for (and if possible measure) the impact of individuals, particularly the President, on the institution and the environment; this was particularly true of the earlier Presidents when the structures of the Commission were still relatively fluid.

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Delors the pragmatic visionary? The White Paper on completing the internal market, 1985

Introduction: a strategy for change? 1984–8 The period between 1985 and 1988 was one of intense activism within the Commission, which far exceeded and outlived the turbulence typically associated with a change of President and College. This was a time of virtually continuous reform and review which, by 1999, was still ongoing, and had by then come to be accepted as the most natural characteristic of the European polity-in-the-making. In 1985, treaty updates, institutional reform, substantial policy deepening and widening were relative novelties for elite actors and public opinions; as Delors said, there had not been an intergovernmental conference for twenty-eight years (Gazzo, 1986:83). Yet within four years of Delors’ arrival at the Commission in January 1985, the Community’s member states were locked (albeit voluntarily and informally) into an eight year programme to complete the internal market. They had revised their treaty base (the Single European Act) and financial structures (the Delors Paquet I) specifically to meet the challenge of doing so, and had embarked on an open-ended and divisive process of institutional reform and debate: The Treaty itself was no longer taboo and amendments were discussed on virtually the whole range of Community activities and on the powers of its institutions’ (Corbett, 1989:267). In general terms, this four year period irrefutably raised the political and public profile of the Commission (and its status as an object of academic interest), and brought the Commission President, Jacques Delors, into the limelight, with the result that images and perceptions of the Commission and its presidency were thereafter and irrevocably altered. The White Paper of 1985 triggered this process. In the context of my own perspective on the Delors years, and the historical development of the Commission’s activities and role as described in the previous chapter, in this chapter I explore a specific example (the 1985 White Paper on Completing the Internal Market) (CEC 1985) of Delors’ role in activating and harnessing the Commission’s authority to drive the integration process (which can be compared with the efforts of his predecessors, as set out in the previous chapter). Generally, during the period 78

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1985–8, Delors appeared to combine pragmatic working methods, visionary (but not Utopian) goals, and political tactics into a formula for forward movement. He succeeded in converting his pragmatism and his goals into a strategic framework for Commission activity, while weaving his tactics into a formula for mobilising existing and potential intergovernmental agreements. Delors’ pragmatism and tactics were dependent on his own intuition, and on the continuous collection and absorption of vast quantities of information, intelligence and feedback. His sense of strategy derived, we can assume, from a combination of the circumstances, his analysis of them (based on his underlying pessimism about Europe’s will and capacity to perform economically), and his own public persona. It is in fact very hard to imagine Delors adopting a desultory or short-term approach to the post of Commission President (or to any post, for that matter), given what we know about his past. Nevertheless for me, the precise extent, parameters and content of Delors’ strategic intentions on arrival in Brussels in 1985 will remain something of an unknown quantity; indeed, I consider them to be inherently and inevitably ambiguous. I am uncertain as to the existence of concrete, realistic expectations and intentions, and schemes for the future (near and distant), as opposed to an evolving, hopeful, and in some respects abstract vision of European strength-through-unity, intended to serve as a guide-rail. Given what we know about Delors’ labours for the previous forty years to bring about a ‘new society’, it is not surprising that he has been suspected of arriving in Brussels with a ready-made plan for a ‘European society’ along the lines of the nouvelle société he had worked towards in France. These lines, in summary, covered questions of governance (decentralised and transparent decision-making); values (social democracy) and principle (a ‘personalist’ philosophy of a society based on contract and pacts—between individuals, the individual and the state, rulers and the ruled). For anyone familiar with his journey through the French establishment it was not entirely unforeseeable that Delors would bring a vision of some sort to the post of Commission President. It is inconceivable that he would fulfil any role without constructing a conceptual framework to lend meaning to his action. Nor was it necessarily undesirable or illogical that Delors as incoming Commission President should have a global view of how an ‘ever closer union’ might be organised; indeed Commission presidents are expected, in the abstract, to bring such qualities to their post. There in any case is the root of the Commission’s dilemma as we explored it in the previous chapter: in theory, Commission presidents should be visionary (hence freeing the Commission’s inner ‘protagonism’ and ‘conscience’); but in practice a visionary Commission President stretches the structuration of authority in the EU, already under high tension, to breaking point, in many respects simply by doing the job to the best of his abilities. President Delors, nevertheless, was judged in large part on the basis of images of the vision and strategy ascribed to him, which is why it seems important to give the issue

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more than a cursory consideration here. We also return to the question in our next chapter, which covers a period 1989–93, when images of Delors as an inflexible and possibly dangerous ideologue were at their most intense. Perhaps it is only in retrospect that we can consider that any ‘Delorist’ blueprint for a ‘new European society’ must in real terms have evolved and taken shape in the making, even if only in response to shifting intergovernmental constraints and as Delors’ familiarity with the scope and potential of intergovernmental agreements grew. It emerged in real terms by a process of experimentation and the probing of limits and limitations. What this means is that images of Delors as intent from the outset on intransigently implementing a fixed and pre-prepared version of social organisation at the European level are necessarily over-simplistic, or over-rationalised; it may also be wishful thinking by either supporters or detractors of an unquestionably famous Commission President. Delors may well, in 1984, have hoped to move the member states towards a coherent economic ‘space’, and from there to an Economic and Monetary Union. But right up to the end of his presidency, he found it as difficult as any national leader to design a fooproof constitutional and institutional blueprint for an expanding ‘Europe’, although he did give his imagination free rein in this respect. It should be remembered in this context, moreover, that in 1986, doubts were raised in the press about Delors’ sense of direction: did he actually have one? (Economist 23 August 1986; Independent 30 October 1986). We should also remember that in part Delors owed his appointment as Commission President in 1984 to the fact that he seemed to represent a compromise between differing political, ideological and national ‘visions’ of society. In many respects, Delors’ own telling and re-telling of his presidency (as recorded in his various speeches, interviews, articles, books and so on), has particular value, since it effectively conveys the pragmatism and sense of compromise which has always ultimately underpinned his action, if not his réflexion or vision. Furthermore, despite the fact that he has stuck remarkably consistently to a single ‘script’ in writing and speaking about the years since 1985, inconsistencies do exist. These concern, for example, and significantly, the extent to which the choice of the single market initiative in 1984–5 was in fact a grudging compromise for a man who had greater ambitions for Europe. On occasions Delors has represented himself as a man forced to ‘settle for’1 the idea of the single market; on others (Liberation 14 September 1992; The Poisoned Chalice BBC2, 23 May 1996) as primarily determined to focus member states’ minds onto the question of Europe’s economic competitivity, via the 1992 idea. The reality is simply not clear cut, in part because Delors the visionary and Delors the pragmatist, both in Delors’ self-image and apparently in reality, were and are in a relationship of inherent tension to one another. In any case, and at the very least, notions and assumptions of Delors ‘state-building’ (Ross, 1995) tend to underestimate the rhetorical function of appeals, by leaders, to ‘new societies’ and other such visions. I suggest that at

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one level they exist as a motivating incentive for the actors involved, who must surely remain aware that visions, almost by definition, are ideal types, and function as such as much as anything else. It is also simply unreasonable to picture Delors and his closest collaborators imagining, other than in their most intense, closeted moments, that they could implement a fixed (-ish) blueprint in a zealous and unopposed fashion, particularly since Delors is known to be a skilful and realistic negotiator of change. Although he clearly infused his supporters with strong preferences regarding the definition of the general interest of the Community, which guided their action (and their rationalisations) thereafter, Delors’ own summary (Delors, 1994b:388) of his approach to public life points to a more abstract ‘itch’—to improve the established order—as the driving force of his action. Alongside this, the excesses for which he became known (‘le caractère parfois trop audacieux de mes propositions, …les cris que je pousse dans des situations où cela ne paraît pas opportun’2) are best seen as exceptions rather than the rule, the rule being a nagging and constant sense of resignation to the imperfections and inadequacies of his action: feelings familiar to the life-long idealist. Strategies of legitimation In this and the following chapter, I study in some depth the ‘stories’ of the White Papers with which Delors’ presidency began and ended. At its most basic, the White Paper was in each case a vehicle designed to carry, for its authors, the meaning and intent they had invested in it; it was not intended to have particular intrinsic value, other than as a fixed, textual, visual reference point, or as a weapon to remind the member states of their commitments. Both White Papers were in this sense simply devices seized upon by a President and his supporters, in a hurry to influence the agenda of European integration. Taking this caveat into account, we can nevertheless also read the White Papers as a more deliberate reflection of the Commission’s (in these cases, largely Delors’) strategies for exercising influence and winning legitimacy in the circumstances of the time. The White Paper of 1985, the subject of this chapter, attempted to optimise the ambient economic optimism and dynamism of the time. That of 1993, the subject of Chapter Five, was indeed intended to depict a model of European society, a vision long associated with Delors, as we have seen, but one which by 1993 was tempered by Delors’ own experience of the realities of his decade, and spun with the specific intention of galvanising member states into the habit of co-ordinated economic policy-making, despite their inabilities to fix the habit into a permanent constitutional settlement. In retrospect, we can also see how the White Papers are linked elements of the global and, again, relatively abstract ‘triptych’ of reform that guided Delors’ action. The 1985 White Paper was a above all a question of economic competitivity; whereas the 1993 White Paper attempted to bolster the co-operation (between economic actors) and the solidarity (reconciling

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diversity with union) upon which—and Delors was convinced of this— depended the future of a ‘European’ (as opposed to American, or Japanese) way of socio-economic life.3 In what follows, we first review the events of 1984–8 as a whole, from the perspective of the surge in perceptions of the Commission’s authority; second, we reconstruct the ‘story’ of the White Paper to illustrate Delors’ strategies of influence and legitimacy at the outset of his, the longest presidency. Reclaiming the Commission’s legitimacy In his first four years at the Commission, Delors was without question pivotal in mobilising and directing the Commission’s capacity to play out its multiple identities. He thereby inevitably contributed to the deepening of the Commission’s legitimacy ‘dilemma’ which, we saw in Chapter Three, is the outcome of the Commission’s impossible quest to reconcile its split personalities, and their different obligations. Where the Community’s general interest was concerned, (the Commission’s community legitimacy as supranational entrepreneur), Delors’ team in the 1984–8 period extracted from the member state governments the areas in which they were most likely to accept further integration, foremost of which was the completion of the internal market, as we see later in this chapter. Armed with this sense of the intergovernmental consensus (which, he might have assumed, and certainly hoped, represented a supranational societal consensus), Delors, in order to mobilise the Commission and enhance its status, drew on a number of sources of legitimacy. These included, alongside the original treaty provisions for a common market, a sense of continuity with the past (such as the work of the Thorn Commission, and the outcome of the June 1984 Fontainebleau summit); his own credibility; and the Commission’s treatybased, albeit vague, authority to be ‘protagonistic’ in the general interest and in favour of further integration. Delors’ understanding of the general interest in this period centred, broadly speaking, around the strengthening of the EC’s economic potential in a climate of intensifying international interdependence. This led him to propose, alongside the narrower goal of completing the single market, a greater focus on Europe’s economic and industrial competitiveness (including deeper monetary and technological co-operation), whilst simultaneously protecting those dimensions of Europe’s ‘model’ of economic development—a mixed economy and social welfare provision, for example—which ‘humanised’ the European version of capitalist society. Where the Commission’s ‘diplomatic’ and ‘parliamentary’ sources of potential legitimacy were concerned, this was a question, as we saw in Chapter Three, of the Commission’s duty to respond to national, sectoral and social diversity. In Delors’ terms, this amounted to being an accoucheur de compromis—a midwife of compromise—and demonstrating a sense of accountability to the Commission’s various ‘constituencies’.4 Here Delors

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demonstrated considerable skill (and has described the difficulties in doing so, and his tactics in overcoming them: mainly listening and explaining well; playing devil’s advocate; and more listening).5 He quickly succeeded in reconciling national interests in pursuit of a common objective, ‘1992’, in part through his tactical, systematic wooing of the European Council as the prime site for meaningful intergovernmental compromises. He also demonstrated respect for the European Parliament’s role in the European policy-making process (by calling on their informal approval of his agenda, and by his availability for the parliament), however tactical this approach might have been, and without committing Walter Hallstein’s error of enlisting the Parliament’s support before that of the member states. Delors also re-activated hitherto relatively peripheral or dormant Commission constituencies. This activity took various forms, for example, the ‘social dialogue’ between European-level industry and labour, which he relaunched within weeks of taking up office (Bulletin EC 5–1987:10); or his exchanges with European industrialists (Cowles, 1995). The purpose of these approaches was to inform and support his proposed agenda. Delors also helped accelerate the membership of new national constituencies— Spain and Portugal—thereby diversifying the Community’s membership and problems. He proposed and/or channelled initiatives designed to draw together the Community’s various parts, and to reduce disparities between them. These initiatives included the repackaged Integrated Mediterranean Programmes (IMPs), for which Delors maintained responsibility throughout 1985 by controlling the porfolio for the co-ordination of the structural funds (Smyrl, 1998; Bulletin EC 2–1985:11–14); the concept of cohesion in the Single European Act; and the ‘Delors I’ financial package (CEC 1987) 100; Bulletin EC, Supplement 1/87). In each case, Delors’ approach was both strategic, in that individual initiatives were conceived as parts of a bigger policy programme; and tactical, in his reconciling of member state interests, opportunity and circumstances (Smyrl, op. cit.).6 Within the Commission, and in large measure thanks to his ‘personal equation’ (Cerny, 1988), combined with the surprise factor of a sudden change of pace and style sprung upon the Commission’s services, Delors appeared able to impart a sense of momentum and to inspire collective optimism in the future. Within the College, he behaved authoritatively regarding the initial distribution of portfolios amongst Commissioners. This was a process which Delors saw as vital in stamping his independence vis-àvis the member states, in winning authority within the College, and in marking his intention to balance the various interests he had to ‘represent’ (Times 19 November 1984; Financial Times 10 December 1984). For example, he tried to break certain member states’ ‘traditional’ stranglehold over favourite portfolios; his clash with the French commissioner Claude Cheysson was the most cited illustration of Delors’ determination to be ‘his own man’ (e.g. The Economist 15 December 1984). Delors also operated

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tactically in this respect insofar as was possible, assigning himself, for example, the monetary portfolio for future reference. He demonstrated the connectedness of the various parts of his vision, within and outside the Commission, by trying coherently to bring them together (including a potential for EMU) in the Single European Act.7 To all constituencies, including those within the Commission, he attempted to apply his pedagogical methods, consisting of the exemplary nature of his hard work; his emphasis on diffusing his thinking and analyses within the College and the services (Ross, 1995); his visible abilities to inspire and drive like-minded individuals (principally within his cabinet); his impressive readiness at important moments and junctures, such as at European Council meetings; and his use of the Commission’s porte-parole and information services. By successfully drawing on its various sources of authority, between 1984 and 1988 the Commission was in many respects acting in textbook (Coombes!) fashion, firing on all cylinders in pursuit of further integration in the shape of the internal market. Coombes’ concerns of bureaucratic lourdeur dampening the Commission’s political initiative did not appear to come true; or, rather, any such constraints were successfully circumvented by the President (with the belated consequences for the internal management of the Commission referred to in Chapter One). The immediate outcome of activating the Commission was unquestionably to raise Delors’ authority (primarily with elite constituencies) as President, and the institution’s legitimacy as a semi-autonomous, entrepreneurial actor in the integration process (Sandholtz and Zysman, 1989). However, since the history of the Commission before, during and since Delors has demonstrated that it is the Commission’s fate in unpropitious circumstances, simultaneously (and somewhat paradoxically) to attract popular dissatisfaction with the course of European integration and the Europeanisation of national life, and sporadic elite rage at the unpalatable and indigestible limitations of national power, it is not surprising that the middle phase of Delors’ Commission presidency (1989–92) coincided with more negative assessments of the Commission, and raised question marks over Delors’ personal and presidential legitimacy. In its third and final phase (1993– 5), Delors’ Commission, in part through the 1993 White Paper (as we see in Chapter Five), led to more balanced assessments of the Commission’s potential and authority for shared leadership (Endo, 1998b) of the integration process, and of the desired ‘strength’—authority—of its President. Finding the formula for relaunching integration By drafting a White Paper in 1984–5 that was designed to guide the completion of the internal market, the Commission succeeded in reproducing a formula which in the past had underpinned restarts of the integration process. The very founding moment of the EEC in 1957, coming after the failed attempts in the mid-1950s to establish a European Defence or

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Political Community, was the product of a combination of factors. First, from the Messina reunion of foreign ministers of June 1955 and the work of the Spaak committee, had emerged an intergovernmental consensus to continue and to expand the integration process (Gerbet, 1983:199–203). Second, this consensus had led to the drafting and signing of the Treaty of Rome, which subsequently became the founding text of the Community and contained provisions authorising the Commission to propose and take measures towards the creation of a Community customs union. Third, as a direct result of the leadership of President Hallstein, exercised on constituencies within and outside of the Commission, the Commission implemented, accelerated and completed the provisions of the treaty in this respect. We can therefore define the situation which brought about a relaunch of the integration process in the late 1950s in terms of the following ‘formula’, in which the various elements carried different weight, the intergovernmental consensus being the most crucial, but in which the presence of all elements were instrumental to the result: Intergovernmental consensus + founding text + ‘strong’ Commission President = relaunch of integration8 The Commission’s White Paper of 1985 was one of the elements of the formula which, in the mid-1980s, produced the most significant relaunch of European integration since 1958; we can even go as far as to say that 1958 and 1985 were the two founding moments of the Community. In 1985, the breakthroughs and agreements reached at the European Council in Fontainebleau in June 1984 were the equivalent of the 1955 Messina intergovernmental consensus. The text, the second item in the 1958 equation, was, nominally, the Treaty of Rome and its as yet only partially filled provisions for the completion of an internal European market. Unlike the situation in 1958, when the Treaty of Rome was a very recent text, in 1985 it was almost 30 years old. In these circumstances, and in the conditions described below, the significance of the Commission’s 1985 White Paper was that it effectively renewed the textual component of the 1958 equation, first in the form of the White Paper itself, and second as the Single European Act, a new founding text. The Paper also acted as a carrier and focal point for President Delors’ authority. The 1985 White Paper drew upon and optimised an emerging consensus between the member states of the EC that economic integration needed to be revived. It took the form of a list of approximately 300 measures required in order to complete the internal market. Appended to the list was a timetable

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outlining in which year each measure was to be proposed (or, in the case of existing proposals, when it had first been proposed); and when it was to be adopted by the Council of Ministers. The Paper set the list in its broader context—the progress achieved by previous Commissions towards completing the internal market, and the commitments made by the Heads of State and Government of the member states to the goal of an internal market—and organised the measures to be taken into three categories: physical, technical and fiscal barriers. In this respect, the Paper represented a break from the previous emphasis in constructing the Common Market on the distinction between ‘tariff and ‘non-tariff barriers, and capitalised on the growing interest within the Community for the ‘mutual recognition’ rather than ‘harmonisation’ of standards (Cockfield, 1994:17–59). The White Paper was designed as a package of measures to be taken as a whole. The Commission insisted strongly on this aspect of its document, much as the Hallstein Commission had insisted on the global quality of the transitional programme: The proposals in the White Paper programme are a coherent whole. You cannot pick what you like and discard what you do not. Unless the internal frontiers and frontier controls are abolished, the benefits of the Single Market cannot be achieved. (Cockfield, 1988:67) The White Paper had the effect of reaffirming the Commission’s authority to guide the integration of the member state economies to a level and within a timescale specified in the White Paper. The Paper itself did not have the legal status of the Treaty of Rome; nevertheless, it gained a comparable status, in terms of its acceptability to member state governments and organised interests, and in that it directly led to the Single European Act (1987), in which the implications and consequences of the White Paper, such as institutional reform, gained legal—treaty—recognition (although even in the Single European Act, the commitment to completing a single market by 1992 was not legally binding, but declaratory: Corbett, 1989:261). The White Paper of 1985 consequently had the result of reclaiming and updating, for the Commission, the task of completing what had by then become known as the internal market—the logical extension to the customs union, the Community’s external market—and which had been provided for in the Treaty of Rome’s provisions for the free movement of goods, services and people throughout the EEC.9 The Commission, by means of the White Paper, reinstated its own authority to direct the economic integration process, an authority apparently characterised by its non-ideological, ‘low’-politics quality. In what follows I describe and assess in detail how the White Paper had the effect of enhancing the Commission’s legitimacy, and what the role of President Delors was in this process. I examine in turn each part of the

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formula for integration as I have defined it above: first, the intergovernmental consensus; second, the founding text itself, the mode of its production, and its main characteristics; third, the role of the Commission President in supporting and promoting the text. As explained in Chapter One, I am not seeking to establish a causal explanation and chronology of events à la Moravcsik (Moravcsik 1991, 1998, 1999), but to view the document, in the broadest sense, from the perspective of the strategies of legitimacy and legitimation which fed and altered images and expectations of the Commission and its President thereafter. The emerging intergovernmental consensus Much has been written about the conditions under which Delors’ Commission took office in January 1985; here I will summarise the most significant events and developments, with the intention of describing the consensus which was emerging between the member states of the EC at the time, the way in which President Delors built upon this consensus, and its implications for the type of document which emerged as the 1985 White Paper: Delors and his colleagues deserve much credit for making this consensus operational in the way that Hallstein did in the 1960s, but the basic elements of the consensus were in place before 1985, and can be found strewn through the conclusions of the European Council since the early 1980s. (Ludlow, 1991:112; see also Cameron, 1992). When Jacques Delors was appointed President of the Commission by the then ten Heads of State and Government in July 1984, the prospects for the Community’s future were brighter than they had been for some time: the ‘toile de fond’—the canvas (de Ruyt, 1989:25)—had qualitatively and significantly improved in favour of further integration. Compared with earlier years, there was a wave of opinion (admittedly amongst elites rather than public opinions) in favour of moving towards more ambitious goals of European unity. This wave was illustrated by the initiatives which had emanated from the Council of Ministers (the Genscher-Colombo ‘Draft European Act’ concerning EC decision making, and external relations [Bonvicini, 1987; see also de Ruyt, 1989:32–3; Weiler, 1983]); from the Heads of State and Government (the 1983 Stuttgart Solemn Declaration on European Union [Bonvicini, 1987; de Ruyt, 1989:34–9, 345–54]); and from the European Parliament (the Draft Treaty establishing the European Union; [Moravcsik, 1998:357–8; Schmuck, 1987]). Furthermore, individual Heads of State and Government had also demonstrated fresh enthusiasm, or at least support for ‘more’ Europe, for reasons largely linked to national domestic politics (Cameron, 1992:56–7, 59– 63). Margaret Thatcher’s British government, for example, seemed willing to

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make a fresh start after the resolution of its budget rebate; and, just as significant if not more so, France’s President Mitterrand was looking for a European framework for French economic policy at a time which also coincided with the French presidency of the EC (January—June 1984).10 The French presidency was marked by the French President’s activism and desire to seek solutions allowing European integration to move ahead, and culminated in a set of agreements at the Fontainebleau European Council meeting which addressed a number of long-standing problems (the ‘family quarrels’, as Delors saw them), notably the EC budget and the accession of two new Mediterranean states: Spain and Portugal (Bulletin EC, 6/84; see also Denton, 1984; de Ruyt, 1989:49–50; Drake, 1994:42–5; Krause, 1991: Chapter 3; le Monde, 28 June 1984:1 and 3). At the summit itself, national leaders reached agreement on the need for more co-operative and productive relations between them within the EC, and ‘formally pledged themselves to “the creation of a genuine economic union”. Their first priority would be to strengthen the internal market.’ (Cameron, 1992:34.) Their second and third priorities were to establish two working committees to investigate institutional reform (the Dooge Committee; Keatinge and Murphy, 1987) and a people’s Europe (the Adonnino Committee; McAllister, 1997:168– 70).11 There are several explanations for the more favourable climate towards integration in the mid-1980s (Allen, 1992; see also Krause 1991:76–8; McAllister, 1997:162–4; Sandholtz and Zysman, 1989; Wallace, 1999:511). The most significant of these were economic. Europe was falling behind in global competitiveness, unemployment was rising and was higher than in competitor countries (especially the US and Japan). Europe, moreover, had also dropped behind in high-technological development, and business circles—and more significantly, business leaders—were calling for concerted action: The 1992 program was much more strongly affected by events in the world political economy outside of Europe—especially by concern about international competitiveness—than it was driven by the internal logic of spillover.’ (Cameron, 1992; see also Colchester and Buchan, 1990:26–7; Cowles, 1995; de Ruyt, 1989:25; Keohane and Hoffmann, 1991:5–6; Krause, 1991:23, 73–4; Tsoukalis, 1991). It was the convergence of economic rationale and political will against the backdrop of a formally renewed political commitment to the completion of a European Union in the form of the Stuttgart Declaration (however ambiguously the term ‘Union’ may have been defined) which, by the time of the Fontainebleau summit, provided a context more favourable to further integration than had been the case for several years.12 Furthermore, under Delors’ predecessor Gaston Thorn (Commission President 1981–4), the Commission had begun to take a number of steps towards completing what had by 1983 become known as the internal market. Unlike the Delors Commission’s White Paper, these steps had not constituted a coherent plan of action; nor had they made any notable impact

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upon the integration process: ‘they had not yet been put together in a package that would be politically attractive to the leaders of the Community.’ (Cameron, 1992:34.)13 Moreover, in the early 1980s the Commission was an institution whose legitimacy in the Community system had been adversely affected by the application of the Luxembourg compromise, by the challenges of enlargement, and by the member states’ difficulties in agreeing to further integration: it operated in a climate in which the member states were not sufficiently committed to seeking European solutions to perceived national problems (Dehousse and Majone, 1994:95). The work undertaken by the Thorn Commission towards completing the internal market subsequently formed part of the context from which the White Paper emerged (Cameron, 1992:52–3; see also CEC 1984:11–14; de Ruyt, 1989:22–30, 150; Europe Documents 1159, 27 June 1981; Europe Documents 1161, 17 July 1981; Europe Documents 1198, 15 April 1982; EC Bulletin 11, 1982:17–19.): It was Thorn’s report to the European Council in Copenhagen in 1982 that outlined the largest obstacles to the free movement of goods, services and capital in the European market; elaborated, for the first time, the core of what would subsequently become the internal market initiative…. Indeed, it was during Thorn’s tenure as President of the Commission (1981–1985) that most of the proposals eventually included in the 1985 White Paper were discussed and drafted in DGIII, the Directorate-General in charge of the internal market…. The Thorn Commission also encouraged businesses to pursue Europeanwide economies of scale. Thorn’s Commission had, therefore, begun to draw upon the emerging intergovernmental consensus, for example as displayed in June 1981, when the European Council had Voiced, for the first time, its concerns about the state of the internal market in the Community and, in so doing, initiated the policymaking process that was to culminate several years later in the 1992 initiative.’(Cameron, 1992:31–3; see also Cowles, 1995.) It is impossible to test how Thorn’s Commission might have converted the situation which developed in mid-late 1984: Thorn was not renewed as Commission President at Fontainebleau, and Delors was appointed to take his place.14 What interests us here is to identify how the Delors Commission drew on the opportunity presented to it by the decisions and solutions reached in 1984 by the Heads of State and government, and by the broader context as outlined above. The first significant steps were taken in the months following Delors’ appointment and before the new Commission, under his presidency, took up office. Accounts of the months when Delors was President-designate of the Commission (July–December 1984) point to the significance of Delors’

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personal actitivity and influence, and of his decisions, in formulating the internal market strategy that would subsequently become the Commission’s priority for the following eight years. These were the first indications of the leadership skills that he brought to bear on the rules of his office and those of its broader environment: By mid-December 1984 there was a feeling abroad that the Delors Commission in Brussels would be made of more sterling stuff than the rather lacklustre outgoing commission of Gaston Thorn. Delors had taken much care in allocating the jobs among his almost entirely new team of commissioners, and the traditionally tense day of appointments passed off smoothly. (Colchester and Buchan, 1990:28.) The President-designate Delors’ appointment as President of the Commission was announced in July 1984, shortly after the Fontainebleau European Council in June. Once it had become clear that since Germany, whose informal ‘turn’ it was to find a suitable appointee for Commission President, would decline to do so, the responsibility fell to France (Attali, 1993:658–9). Delors’ name subsequently emerged as a candidate acceptable to all, and particularly to German Chancellor Kohl.15 His appointment coincided with François Mitterrand’s reshuffling of his government under the new Prime Minister Laurent Fabius; in the reshuffle, Delors had resigned as France’s Finance, Economy and Budget Minister, as we saw in Chapter Two (and Dinan, 1994:201–3; see also Agence Europe, 3895, 20 July 1985 [editorial]).16 By his and others’ accounts, Delors spent much of the six month period as President-designate visiting the capital cities of the member states, consulting with Heads of State and government and the leaders of organised interests and opinion, including those in the European Parliament.17 The purpose of these consultations was to build upon the political consensus which emerged at Fontainebleau, and bolster it with support from the leaders of what Delors himself referred to as les forces vives (roughly speaking, civil society): primarily business and labour leaders.18 In the case of both of the White Papers under study here, and more generally throughout his presidency, Delors’ ability to win support from such circles, on the basis of which he gained or reinforced mandates from national leaders for Commission action, was a keystone in his strategic planning for the Commission. It has been suggested that Delors was in any case the first Commission President to ‘tour the capitals’ after his nomination specifically in order to win support and agreement for a Commission strategy; other President-designates (Roy Jenkins, for example) had made similar ‘tours’, but for other, more limited purposes, primarily to discuss the allocation of portfolios in the College of Commissioners.19

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All accounts of this period relate how Delors proposed to his interlocutors three possible objectives which Europe could set itself in order to relaunch integration: a common defence policy, Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), or institutional reform. The only area in which the consensus held was a fourth, that of further economic integration; specifically, to complete the single market. Leaders of the business community in particular were active and vocal in persuading national leaders and the Commission that this was the course of action to take: ‘…empirical data reveal that business leaders from the ERT [European Round Table of Industrialists] largely were responsible for relaunching and setting the agenda of the single market programme in the early 1980s.’ (Cowles, 1995:503; see also Moravcsik, 1991:22–3.) Those close to Delors recount how his personal preference was for more ambitious goals, such as those promised in the Stuttgart Solemn Declaration (EMU, social Europe, a strong European Parliament); goals with which he became closely associated in subsequent years. In this case we can note the significance of his tactical ability to restrain (but not conceal) his ideals at this stage, in order to work within the limitations set by the member states and the intergovernmental consensus.20 The President-designate period was, therefore, a stage marked by Delors’ personal role in the relaunch of integration: his face-to-face contacts with key decision-makers in the member states; his subsequent assessment of the state of intergovernmental relations and the implications of these for integration; and his personal analysis of and diagnosis for integration, which underpinned his conversion of the political will for integration into a mandate for the Commission. Furthermore, Delors brought with him to the presidency in January 1985 the conviction that Europe required a ‘big idea’ full stop in order to take the next integrative step; and that he should fight against what he called the unfavourable ‘air du temps’ (the sign of the times) to relaunch integration.21 He subsequently said of that period: ‘L’idéalisme européen revivait…. Il manquait un ciment. Ce ciment, ce fut celui de la nécessité. En effet, notre prospérité et notre autonomie étaient menacées …,’22 (Delors, 1995b; see also Libération 14 November 1989; Rollat, 1993:260–3). We can see in such personal conviction and analysis certain of the ingredients of what, in 1985, would be his claims to legitimacy on behalf of the Commission. Significantly, Delors had also established a reputation with key national leaders and governments (Mitterrand, Thatcher, Kohl) as a trustworthy and realistic European. He had been seen—as MEP from 1979–81 as Economic and Monetary Committee chair, and as French government minister (1981– 4) largely responsible for the ending of the initial ‘romantic socialism’ (Northcutt, 1996) period of Mitterrand’s presidency—as a rational, hardheaded European who was pro-integration to the extent that this was in France and Europe’s best interests, rather than because of prior, deep-seated convictions about the ideal state of international relations; or about the future of the nation state (Rollat, 1993:258).23 Such a position was critical in

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securing Delors’ appointment as Commission President, and reminds us of the irony both of his lasting reputation, by the 1990s, as a full-blooded federalist, and of the fact that in reality over time he became increasingly vocal about the necessity of a federal approach to European integration. As early as February 1985, in fact, in a radio interview in France, Delors expressed a vision of a ‘Federation of European states’.24 The text of the 1985 White Paper 25 Accounts of the precise origins of the idea that the intergovernmental consensus in favour of completing the internal market, which Delors had identified during his ‘capitals tour’, should be translated by the Commission into a single document detailing a coherent programme of measures within a specified timeframe—the White Paper format—vary: as do those of the choice of ‘1992’ as the deadline for completion of the programme and the allocation of responsibilities within the Commission. Certain accounts identify Delors as personally having been behind the idea of a White Paper, suggesting he drew on his experience as an MEP in 1980 (Ross, 1995:30 [note 51]); others place more responsibility for the original idea, as well as for the drafting process itself, with the Commissioner appointed to the internal market and industrial affairs portfolio (DGIII): Arthur Cockfield (Cockfield, 1990:3; see also Colchester and Buchan, 1990:29; de Ruyt, 1989:151). Lord Cockfield certainly played a major role in the choice of White Paper as the format for the 1992 project, and for the form it took.26 Delors made the White Paper the Commission’s priority in the first months of his presidency. In less than six months it had been published, presented to and approved by the Heads of State and Government at the Milan European Council of June 1985.27 Within the Commission, Delors and the members of his cabinet had exercised close control over the drafting process, which had itself been delegated to DGIII (Arthur Cockfield, his cabinet and services [Cockfield, 1994:42; Colchester and Buchan, 1990:30–1]);28 and Delors reserved the right to arbitrate on the precise contents of the Paper where there were differences between his advisors (Ross, 1995:30). The Paper was rarely discussed in full sessions of the Commission (after two initial full Commission meetings at which Cockfield addressed the College about the White Paper, the first full debate of the College then occurred in late May 1985 (Agence Europe 4098, 30 May 1985), only two weeks before the White Paper was adopted by the Commission and published29). Accounts suggest nevertheless that the task of producing the Paper infused the Commission with a sense of purposeful activity (and Delors organised a ‘weekend de réflexion’ from 31 May to 2 June at which the College focused on the White Paper). Delors’ personal role and influence within the Commission in the first months of his presidency, and specifically his exemplary and now legendary pace of

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work, were critical to the speed with which the Paper was produced, and to the precise nature of its contents.30 A second significant point about the White Paper itself is that it employed a rational discourse of pragmatic, if not technical, policy initiative. The focus on the internal market was strong, but not exclusive, in that it was placed in its broader socio-economic context. It reserved its more rhetorical appeals for the concluding paragraphs of the document, where ‘its authors put the White Paper in historical perspective, proclaim the venture’s political significance, and allow free rein to their hortatory impulses.’ (Cockfield, 1990:4; see also Dinan, 1994:139).31 For the most part, however, ‘[t]he document [the White Paper] contained little Europeanist rhetoric, no phrophetic visions, and no high phrases hinting at spillovers. It eschewed anything likely to inflame anyone’s particular passions’ (Ross, 1995:31). Whether by accident or design, this was a choice (of tone) which is generally assumed to have facilitated intergovernmental agreement by its practicality, and apparent evasion of highly charged, ideological debates and differences (Sandholtz and Zysman, 1989:115; Tsoukalis, 1991:57). The Paper drew on work prepared by the Commission during the presidency of Delors’ predecessor, Gaston Thorn, and, by definition, on the Treaty of Rome itself, where the original provisions for the completion of the internal market were made. The White Paper innovated to the extent that it represented a break with the former emphasis, in completing the internal market, on tariff and non-tariff barriers, substituting for this nomenclature the categorisation of the remaining 300 or so intra-Community barriers to the free movement of goods, people, services and capital into physical, technical and fiscal barriers.32 But in the Paper’s promotion of the method of the mutual recognition of standards rather than harmonisation for the elimination of barriers (17–23), it represented a continuation of an approach which had begun to emerge at the end of the 1970s: The White Paper also introduced a new approach to the elimination of NTBs [non-tariff barriers] arising from different national rules and regulations. Instead of the old, time-consuming, and highly ineffective attempt to harmonize at the EC level, …the White Paper proposed that the Community should rely as much as possible on the principle of mutual recognition…. The idea was simple but also revolutionary; it built on indications of a more favourable political climate in national capitals, and some earlier judgements of the European Court…. (Tsoukalis, 1991:56; see also Ross, 1995:30–1) The opening page of the White Paper was given up to extracts from the conclusions of four European Council meetings (Copenhagen, December 1982; Fontainebleau, June 1984; Dublin, December 1984; Brussels, March 1985), which recalled the member states’ growing and public commitment, in the early 1980s, to completing the internal market. This was a tactic by

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which Cockfield sought to remind the member states of their commitments and to draw on them as a first source of legitimacy for the White Paper. The following twenty three point Introduction to the White Paper then built on these commitments in more detail by outlining the Paper’s pedigree in the Treaty of Rome, and in the emerging intergovernmental consensus which we described above; and in introducing the Paper’s approach to the removal of remaining barriers to the four freedoms of the Rome Treaty. The pragmatism of the Paper is clear in these introductory pages, in terms of its statements of its limited scope (Cockfield conceded, under pressure from Delors, and mentioned broader issues and obstacles, notably the need to strengthen the European Monetary System, and convergence, but these were not priorities in this paper). It is also visible in its practical implications and intent, and its systematic approach. The following extracts serve as brief examples of these points (the numbers are those given in the Paper to its introductory points): 3. Given the European Council’s clear and repeated commitment to the completion of the common market, the Commission does not intend in this Paper to rehearse again the economic and political arguments that have so often led to that conclusion. Instead the Commission, which wholeheartedly shares the Council’s commitment and objective, sets out here the essential and logical consequences of accepting that commitment, together with an action plan for achieving the objective. 7. The time for talk has now passed. The time for action has come. This is what this White Paper is about. The following forty five pages of the Paper set out, in three parts, the details of the Paper’s commitment to removing the remaining physical, technical and fiscal barriers to the completion of the internal market. In each case the existing situation was summarised; the Commission’s approach and scope explained and justified; problem areas identified and addressed; its intended legislative proposals summarised; relevant figures provided (as in Part Three: The Removal of Fiscal Barriers); and the globality of the Paper and its measures emphasised and illustrated (for example: Part One: The Removal of Physical Barriers, point 27: ‘Our objective is not merely to simplify existing procedures, but to do away with internal frontier controls in their entirety’; Part Two: The Removal of Technical Barriers, point 59: The Commission is fully aware that this strategy implies a change in habits and in traditional ways of thinking. What is needed is a radical change of attitude which would lead to new and innovative solutions for problems—real or apparent—which may appear when border controls no longer exist.

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Following a page of Conclusions to the main text of the Paper, to which Cockfield has since drawn attention (1990:4), the final section of the document was an Appendix—the Timetable for Completing the Internal Market by 1992: The Commission’s White Paper sets out the essential and logical consequences of accepting the European Council’s repeated commitment to completing the Internal Market by 1992, together with an action programme of the meaures needed to meet that objective. This Annex to the Paper sets out the detailed timetable for implementing the Commission’s proposed programme. (Appendix, Introduction, p.I). The Appendix was effectively a detailed list of proposed and existing measures in tabular form, following the three part structure of the Paper’s approach to removing barriers to an internal market, showing the date on which each proposal should be adopted in order to complete the internal market by 1992: The White Paper spelt out with remorseless logic the consequences of the political commitment to eliminate all remaining intra-EC barriers. It included a long list of measures (279 precisely) and a timetable for their adoption, extending to 31 December 1992. The completion of the internal market provided the unifying concept for a set of very disparate measures. (Tsoukalis, 1991:55) The purpose of the Appendix was to lay out the ‘milestones along the path to completion of the Internal Market [which will] give some indication of the progress and benefits the Commission would wish to see.’ (Annex, Introduction, p.I). In this respect the Paper had built into its strategy the measures and criteria for its success; in this sense too it offered a global and complete approach, and focused attention on key target dates by which ‘ordinary’ people might notice the beneficial effects of an open market (such as the easing of border controls). The 1985 White Paper was, in all these respects, the expression of the Commission’s perception of the scope of its authority to complete the single market, as laid down in the Treaty of Rome and as reaffirmed by the intergovernmental consensus to relaunch integration in the mid-1980s. Its vocabulary of functional politics, and its direct, readable, assertive style, despite its specialised register, was in strict accordance with the Commission’s original mandate, contained in the Treaty of Rome, to complete the single market. Once approved by the member state governments on these grounds, it became the founding text according to which the relaunch was initiated, programmed and accomplished:

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‘Comprehensive as the White Paper’s strategy is, its fields of action form a single entity.’ (Schmitt von Sydow, 1988:89.) Applying the formula The choice of the format of the Paper, the manner in which it was produced inside the Commission, and the speed and efficiency of its production were initial indications that Delors’ influence within the Commission as President was highly instrumental to the strategic production of the White Paper. He had begun to exercise, within the Commission, a presidential authority that had distinguished him from his predecessors. His personal input to the White Paper and its impact was, however, most in evidence in relation to the constituencies which lay outside the Commission and on whose support Delors and the White Paper were most dependent. Delors’ ‘charismatic’ style of presidency was a significant factor in securing support from the member states, not only for the White Paper but for its logical implications, of which the most significant was the acceptance of extended qualified majority voting in the Council of Ministers. Taken together, the White Paper and the Single European Act, which provided for the change in voting procedures and habits, had the effect of legitimising and reinforcing the Commission’s authority within the Community system, and the President’s activity was a significant factor in this development and in its aftermath. The President In addition to shaping the work of the Commission and the organisation of the White Paper drafting process, Delors personally took responsibility for the promotion and explanation of the White Paper to groups and constituencies outside the Commission. This activity was significant in ensuring the success of the White Paper and in altering perceptions of the Commission and its legitimacy. I have already discussed the importance which Delors attached to dialogue (in French, concertation) with what he saw as elements of civil society; principally the two sides of industry as part of a working method which he had developed over many years of political and related activity. Much of this corporate contact was undertaken during his President-designate period, where it was instrumental in shaping certain of the decisions of the White Paper, such as the notion of a fixed deadline. It also extended to his decision to re-activate the so-called social dialogue at the European level, which had been more or less been dormant since the 1970s: ‘the driving hand of Jacques Delors was apparent in the so-called “Val Duchesse” talks…bringing the so-called “social partners” together to discuss the employment implications of macroeconomic policy, the single market and new technologies.’ (Wise and Gibb, 1993:148). These authors pointed to the limitations of these talks in ‘such a rarified setting’, given the ‘fundamental differences between the two sides’. Delors, however, attached

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considerable importance to the initiative as a gesture towards the involvement of such interests in the co-ordination of European-level economic activity; and took pride in the fact that the social dialogue is enshrined in the SEA.33 The true significance of these initiatives can and has been contested (Wise and Gibb, 1993:150), although other assessments are more measured (Cram, 1997:39), and its relevance to Delors was in any case in part a question of principle and idealism.34 On becoming President, Delors prioritised his relationship (and that of the Commission) with a further ‘constituency’, that formed by the Members of the European Parliament. Throughout his presidency, Delors emphasised the relationship between the Commission and the EP, the democratically representative forum of the Community system of institutions. His interest in this relationship can be interpreted both in institutional terms—the Commission needed the EP as an institutional ally in pro-integration legislative proposals—and, more significantly, in political terms, whereby the Commission’s accountability to the EP was intended to be more meaningful (to Europeans) than had previously been the case. Delors initially established this relationship by means of a speech to the EP two weeks after becoming President, in which the completion of the internal market was presented as one crucial part of the Delors Commission strategy to relaunch European integration. This first speech to the EP was an important part of Delors’ presidential strategy on taking office in January 1985, and an illustration of his use of public discourse as a strategic means. Subsequent studies have highlighted how the speech broke with the traditions and norms of Commission presidential discourse since the beginnings of the ECSC (Deroubaix and Gobin, 1994). I have studied the speech in some detail elsewhere (Drake, 1996); here I will summarise its most significant features in order to illustrate how Delors’ claims to authority on behalf of the Commission formed part of the process whereby the Commission reestablished its legitimacy as a leading institutional actor in the integration process in the mid-1980s.35 It was in this speech (in which Delors was addressing not only the MEPs, but, indirectly, heads of states and government, the media and other interested parties) that the intent and content of the White Paper was first publicly aired. Delors delivered his ‘inaugural’ speech to the European Parliament on 14 January 1985, as spokesperson of the Commission, one week after taking up office as Commission President (Delors, 1992:27–49; Bulletin des communautés européennes. Supplement 1/85:5–17).36 It was approved the following day by an overwhelming majority of the MEPs: 208 votes in favour, 34 against, with 37 abstentions. Delors used this maiden speech to the EP to launch the substance of his Commission’s priorities, not simply for the coming year, but for the next eight years (two Commission terms of four years each). He was the first Commission President, moreover, whose opening speech would be put to the vote. It had become a convention by 1985 for the incoming Commission President to present his Commission and

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its programme to the EP, but not in the sense of a vote of confidence, as was the case with Delors.37 The speech was therefore significant as an appeal for support—and, more specifically—for legitimation of ‘1992’ and its broader context. Delors’ emphasis on the long-term was an indicator of his boldness as incoming Commission President. This is where he launched the idea of ‘1992’ as a deadline for the completion of the Single Market. It was to become a successful slogan, although the ‘1992’ message as such was not at the heart of his address. Delors used the speech more generally, in the manner of a state of the union speech, to introduce his ‘legislature’. He saw this as an occasion to deliver his analysis of Europe’s problems and to propose a method for addressing them. He was thus setting the tone for a Commission ready to reclaim its rights and duties as guardian of the founding treaties, and thus as initiator of Europeanlevel policy. In this way he provided the backdrop and justification for the White Paper that followed. Within the first few paragraphs of his speech, Delors evoked the humility appropriate to the role of Commission President in relation to the European Parliament, since the latter is directly elected by the electorates of the EC member states (‘The Commission sees its presence in this House, before the respresentatives of the people of Europe, as an extension of the solemn undertaking that each member will be giving before the Court of Justice, the symbol of Community law’). He indicated his personal knowledge of Europe’s problems, and his personal experience of the difficulty of tackling these problems. He delivered a diagnosis based on this knowledge and experience, and pointed to a remedy based on the Commission’s hard work and good service (‘I believe that the engineers of European integration are fumbling not over “what has to be done”, but rather over “how to go about it”’). These were the terms within which Delors raised the question of the legitimacy of his presidency of the Commission. The remainder of the speech was marked by this emphasis on defining and applying the right method (‘…my theme is, and will continue to be, “how to go about it?”…. This, and the search for greater credibility, are the essentials.’) In this respect, the statement was an accurate predictor of one of the features which characterised Delors’ presidency of the Commission. He defined his method as the seeking out of consensus, and the securing of political agreement between the leaders of the Community’s member states, which is implied in the treaties, as we saw in Chapter Three. What was more novel was his intention to broach the subject of institutional reform during his presidency in order to exploit such agreement. Delors first mentioned the possibility of institutional reform immediately after announcing his notion of method, and returned to the theme in more detail in the closing part of his speech, calling for a clear distinction between where the rules and provisions of the Treaty of Rome were sufficient, and where it was necessary, for renewed integration, to go ‘beyond the Treaty of Rome’; to distinguish both the limitations of pragmatism, and the dangers of imaginative vision for its

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own sake: ‘We must steer a course between the twin traps of limited pragmatism and precipitate action.’ In this statement of intent lay the heart of the Delors remedy for the Community’s situation in early 1985: a recognition that both pragmatism and imaginative vision had their limits; that a combination of both was required. The Commission itself had to be realistic in its proposals, and act in permanent concertation with the other institutions; in sum: ‘the Commission should, as it were, play the key role of engineer on the European construction project’. Within eighteen months of his presidency and on the basis of the White Paper Delors did play a significant role in altering the balance between the EC’s institutions, an alteration which subsequently allowed for progress to be made on the completion of the internal market. As Commission President, Delors had no mandate to reform the institutions of the EC, and he succeeded in doing so by winning national leadership support for the task. Part of his way of gaining support was to depict forcefully, in this inaugural speech, what was at stake if Europe did not resolve its internal difficulties. Most critical was the completion of the Single Market—the creation of a barrier-free Europe by 1992—to restore the EC’s credibility with its citizens, the outside world and organised interests, particularly because, as we mentioned above, the MEPs and the Heads of State and Government had already said that they wanted a Single Market, and the previous Commission had proposed the consolidation of the Single Market during its term. Delors used his speech to remind his audience of what had already been promised but not delivered, which had harmed the Community’s credibility. In this way, he prepared his audience for the action to be taken by his Commission in the field of the completion of the Single Market, and in particular for the emerging White Paper. The mention of the 1992 objective in this speech was brief but precise, and in Delors’ (and his collaborators’) perception, was a founding act of subsequent developments. In the remainder of the speech, Delors spoke of the need for action in order to set Europe back on course; action led by the Commission, under Delors’ leadership: ‘It is my responsibility to stimulate discussions’. There was a guiding principle to the Commission’s programme of action: So all things are interconnected, whether in a situation of renewed dynamism or one of slow decline. It is up to us all to demonstrate, over the coming months, that interdependence and solidarity entered into with full awareness of the consequences are infinitely preferable to the present situation. Delors concluded his speech, as noted above, by raising the possibility of reforming the Treaty of Rome, and by summarising the three challenges facing the Community as he saw them: to devise a workable approach to further integration; to enhance the Community’s influence in the world; and

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to protect Europe’s ‘civilization’—the values it upheld. By the end of the speech he had, therefore, invoked his knowledge, experience and understanding of Europe’s problems in order to present a method, or approach, which would guide the action to be followed by his Commission, and form the basis on which it should be judged. He delivered this message in a speech containing a practical analysis of the situation, and proposing action within the prescribed method. In laying down the goals of European integration during his presidency, and the reaction that this required from the Commission, Delors launched an appeal to the EP and his wider audience to support him in his programme. In this speech, Delors had attempted to create a space, rhetorically at least, in which he could act legitimately. Whatever he subsequently did or embraced was thus both legitimate, and ‘his’. This entailed pushing outwards the boundaries of the Commission’s role; of defining what the Commission President would do, and why. It stressed, most significantly, the importance of the method by which to implement political objectives, and with which to exploit political will. The legitimacy on which this was based derived, on the one hand, from the relationship that Delors was establishing with the European Parliament, who directly represented Europe’s citizens; and on the other, from the commitment of the Commission, under Delors’ leadership, to define the task to be accomplished, to devise a method for accomplishing it, and accomplish it to the best of its ability. Competence and commitment—as intended by the founding treaties—would be the criteria on which its legitimacy could be judged. Delors’ discourse in 1985 represented a Delors on the offensive—a charismatic Delors—defining the balance of political power between the Commission and the other institutions of the EU according to the founding constitutional texts of the Communities (insofar as these were sufficient), and acting as if he were the leader of these institutions, in the sense of providing the means to progress from good intentions to concrete and positive action. Deroubaix and Gobin (1994, Vol. 1, passim) noted that Delors’ 1985 speech introduced into the corpus a significant number of new lexical terms, many of which Delors used again in his ‘inaugural’ speeches at the beginning of his 1989 and 1993 presidential mandates. The 1985 speech departed from the norms established until then, notably in its programmatic and volontarist quality; hence in its emphasis on terms such as ‘Europe’, and ‘society’ (representing large-scale objectives, as opposed to the narrower referent,‘European Community’); in the dynamism it attributed to Europe (‘Europe’ was the subject of verbs: ‘Europe’ wants, must, can, etc); and in its use of structures and vocabulary designed to convince, and construct an argument. Delors frequently, for example, used the term ‘deputés’ (MEPs) to address and engage his audience directly; he was the first Commission President to employ the term ‘deputé’ to refer to the MEPs, a term which emphasised their quality as directly elected members of the Parliament, and so enhanced their quality as members of a federal-type polity. He also

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frequently used ‘nous’ (us) to refer to the Commission+the European Parliament. The authors suggested that such uses were intended to mark the close relationship which Delors hoped to establish with the EP. We should also note here that although Delors was making a speech on behalf of the Commission as its spokesperson and primus inter pares, he delivered a speech marked strongly by his personal analysis of the situation, and the solutions required. Through his speech he presented himself as a Commission President with a personal vision of Europe’s objectives, strengths and weaknesses, and with a personal set of solutions, and method, for addressing the situation (Deroubaix and Gobin, 1994: Vol. 1, 6). This approach to the presidency was such that by 1993 Delors’ name had become almost synonymous in the public eye with the Commission and the integration process alike. The text: the Single European Act On 12 March 1985, Delors returned to the European Parliament with the Commission’s work programme for the four years of its mandate.38 This programme built on the work undertaken thus far by the Commission on the White Paper. In his speech presenting this work programme to the EP, Delors indicated that the Commission intended to seek the approval of the Heads of State and Government for the White Paper and its objectives directly: ‘we will be asking the European Council to make a formal statement on this commitment to a large market and on intermediate steps along the way.’ He also reminded his audience of the Commission’s intention to draw ‘…on the amalgam of idealism and realism underpinning the ambition I explained to you last time round, namely to serve with you as guardians of the European public interest.’ In his intention to appeal to the Heads of State for a mandate to implement the White Paper, Delors signalled a key element of his presidential strategy: to seek the highest-level national political support and commitment for Commission initiatives, which would themselves (the support and commitment) act as a basis for the Commission’s authority. In the case of the 1985 White Paper, the leaders’ support was less problematic than the case of 1993, which we discuss below, because the existing but uncompleted Treaty provisions in themselves gave the Commission authority to take the initiative, and there was an emergent intergovernmental consensus that economic integration should be relaunched. At the Brussels European Council of 29–30 March 1985, the Heads of State and Government asked the Commission to prepare a programme for the internal market: ‘At its Brussels meeting in March 1985 the European Council again called for “action to achieve a single large market by 1992, thereby creating a more favourable environment for stimulating enterprise, competition, and trade”.’ (Cameron, 1992:34; see also Moravcsik, 1991:40). In April and May 1985, the final phases of the drafting process were completed within the Commission. The document had therefore been

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In its external presentations of the White Paper during this time, the Commission stressed the 1992 timetable and its effects; mutual recognition not harmonisation for the convergence of standards; the rejection of solutions amounting to maintaining border controls, and the global nature of the programme, intended to create a unified, single, economic space. On 14 June 1985, the White Paper was adopted by the Commission, less than six months after the Commission presided by Delors had begun work on the ‘1992’ programme (Agence Europe 4111, 17–18 June 1985:7–8; 4112, 19 June 1985: editorial). At the European Council held in Milan on 28–9 June 1985, the European Council expressed its favourable response to the White Paper (Moravcsik, 1991:40–1), and the Council was told to act upon it: The European Council provisionally approved both proposals [the White Paper and the report of the Dooge Committee] and recommended that the Council of Ministers convene an extraordinary intergovernmental conference of the member states to consider the proposals in detail, decide which elements should be adopted, and then draft the necessary amendments to the treaties that govern the Community. (Cameron, 1992:23; see also Agence Europe 4121 (special edition), 30 June 1985:1–10) The Intergovernmental Conference was itself structured around the Commission’s proposals, contained in the White Paper, for completing the internal market: This [the internal market] was a centrepiece of the talks, for reasons both fundamental and tactical. It was an area in which the basic aim of the existing treaties was still not acheived. Its importance was generally recognised and it was an issue which could entice the UK. (Corbett, 1989:245; see also Cini, 1996:78–9) Commission plans were also taking shape to influence the member states’ emerging consensus that the Community’s institutions required reform, in order to overcome the stalemate of the Luxembourg compromise voting rules.39 The institutional reform that Delors had alluded to in his January 1985 EP speech became central to the Commission’s contribution to the internal market programme’s progress through the Community’s

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institutions. Delors essentially advocated a two-stage process of reform which prioritised the extension of qualified majority to specific treaty articles governing the completion of the single market, before moving to broader objectives such as co-decision with the EP. Cameron noted, for example (1992:51), how Delors was instrumental in the decision taken at Milan to hold an IGC on institutional reform and the White Paper: In proposing to the European Council at its Milan meeting in June 1985 that an intergovernmental conference be convened to consider both the White Paper on the internal market and the Dooge Committee’s report on insititutional reform, Delors may have increased the initiative’s chances of being adopted. By broadening the range of issues to be discussed at the conference, Delors created the possibility for bargains, trade-offs, and alliances to be struck across the issues of market reform and institutional reform. Moreover, in proposing an intergovernmental conference on the two subjects of reform, Delors and his Commission succeeeded in giving the internal market initiative the aura of progressive, democratizing reform. By the time of the Luxembourg European Council meeting of 2–3 December 1985, and the final meeting of the IGC convened at Milan on 17 December 1995, certain of the Commission’s proposals for treaty reform had been adopted by the member states; the notion of an espace sans frontières proposed by the Commission had been retained,40 and EEC Article 100 had become article 100A, with its relaxing of the rules on unanimity, and prospects for qualified majority voting on the bulk of the proposed internal market legislation (Cameron, 1992:24; de Ruyt, 1989:70–1). Delors’ ‘policy guidelines’ (Bulletin EC 9–1985:7) were seen to have served as a reference for many ministers in their statements, particularly concerning the idea of a single act, and his call, in his speech to the opening of the IGC on 9 September 1985, for clarity in the revised treaty text (to cast ‘a little light in the shadows’) was not entirely ignored, since the Single European Act is, by subsequent standards, a remarkably lean and spare document (and Delors took personal pride in this). Although Delors was and remained publicly sceptical about the extent of the institutional reform represented by the SEA (he asked for his reservations to be included in the final proceedings of the IGC),41 and although he questioned its decision-making and operational capacity to enable ‘1992’ to come to fruition (he was critical, for example, of the allowable exceptions to QMV within single market legislation and of the limits to the EP’s role in future decision-making), progress towards the implementation of the White Paper had undeniably been achieved, and Delors committed the Commission to optimism. The Commission’s next efforts would focus on capitalising on this progress by, first, formulating the proposals outlined in the White Paper. Two-thirds of these measures were proposed by the Commission by the end

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of 1987, by which time the Council of Ministers had approved 67, with 126 still under discussion; 90 per cent of the measures were proposed within three years. Second, attention was focused on ensuring the proposals’ progress through the legislative process; this was done by maintaining pressure on the Council of Ministers and the European Council (and the European Parliament)42 reminding them of their commitment to the White Paper and, more broadly, to the 1992 initiative. In February 1987, the Commission adopted what became known as the Delors Paquet I: a composite of financial and other consequences of the decision to proceed with ‘1992’, which subsequently became instrumental to the success of the implementation of the ‘1992’ programme, when it was eventually adopted by the member states in February 1988: ‘The document was the Commission’s strategy for addressing Community finances. It proposed to reorient budget priorities and increase resources to enlarge the impact of the Community.’ (Johnston, 1994:82).43 Getting this package accepted by the member state governments was seen by Delors as a significant personal achievement, and possibly as the highest point in his ten year presidency, in terms of his own legitimacy with the member states and his success in shaping policy. A further example of the Commission’s commitment to the ‘1992’ programme was its publication in 1988 of the report it commissioned on the ‘costs of non-Europe’, which, in its own view, provided scholarly sanction of the idea of completing the internal market, and drew considerable attention to the ‘1992’ programme, idea and momentum.44 The Commission subsequently produced annual reports to the Council and the EP on the state of the implementation of the 1985 White Paper. When the Commission delivered the first of these reports in 1988, it was able to report that over 50 per cent of the programme’s directives had been adopted by 1988. At the Hanover European Council of June 1988, half-way through the ‘1992’ timetable, the ‘1992’ objective was deemed to have reached the phase of ‘irreversibility’ anticipated by Delors. By 1991, nearly 85 per cent of the White Paper’s measures had been approved and passed by the Council, and by 1992 itself, 95 per cent of the White Paper’s 282 proposals had been adopted, of which 77 per cent had come into effect, with the result that: ‘Uecheance du 1er janvier 1993 prevue dans l’Acte unique fut respectée, après des efforts substantiels pendant la dernière année de préparation du marche unique’. 45 The Commission thereafter established a strategic programme for ensuring that the remaining measures were addressed, and the single market adequately managed. 46 In the Commission’s own assessment of the significance of the White Paper in December 1992 on the eve of the deadline for the completion of the single market, it was stated that the White Paper had ‘fundamentally changed the face of Europe’ and had revealed a political truth about the Community, ‘that the Twelve gain in sovereignty when they exercise it together’.47

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Conclusions De Ruyt’s account of the Single European Act underlined the importance of the Commission’s White Paper in ensuring the success of the SEA negotiations, and so in taking the Community into a new phase of integration: Elle [la CIG] disposait, heureusement, d’un ouvrage de reference providentiel, le fameux Livre blanc de la Commission. Même ceux qui par principe ne voulaient pas l’admettre, devaient bien reconnaître, suite aux ‘fresques’ de la Commission et aux travaux du Comité Dooge, que realiser l’objectif du Livre blanc imposait le passage de I’unanimité à la majorite qualifiee.’48 De Ruyt emphasised the significance of the White Paper in persuading member states such as the United Kingdom, who were least committed to institutional reform per se but favourable to market integration, to agree to a revision of the Treaty in order for such integration to be relaunched; but this was a revision which simultaneously provided for dimensions additional to market integration: economic and monetary co-operation, and economic and social cohesion, with a critical link having been established between the completion of the internal market, and institutional reform (Dehousse and Majone, 1994:100). De Ruyt pointed to the role of President Delors and his colleagues, specifically his cabinet, led by chef de cabinet Pascal Lamy; Arthur Cockfield and his cabinet (especially his chef de cabinet Adrian Fortescue and advisor, Michel Petite49) in maintaining the momentum of the initiative they had taken (in part through sustained hard work and effort) and also by combining political realism and idealism in the Commission’s part in the negotiations. As Commission President, Delors personally played a significant role in optimising the favourable climate towards integration which existed in 1984–5. He claimed authority inside the Commission (the imposition of a strategic programme, the organisation and control of his cabinet, and of the College of Commissioners); and, equally significant, in the Community system (the EP, national leaders, organised interests) and with its interlocutors50. He specifically used his public discourse as a vehicle for these claims, and as a way of conveying his public persona and image.51 This approach been described as part of a ‘public relations coup’ (Cameron, 1992:51), but such descriptions simplify Delors’ (and Cockfield’s) personal and strategic input into the White Paper output, since: Careful attention to feasibility conditions and the long process of ‘softening up’ of elite and public opinion apparently made the critical difference between the prompt approval and smooth implementation of the internal market programme, and the uncertainties and delays of the process of ratification of the Maastricht Treaty. (Dehousse and Majone, 1994:99)

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The 1985 White Paper reproduced the situation experienced in 1958, through the production of a founding text providing the Commission with restored community legitimacy. It thereby revived the Commission’s capacity to act as a supranational institution charged with furthering the general interest on the basis of its treaty authority. In succeeding in linking institutional reform to the success of the single market programme, the Commission significantly influenced the outcome of the reform process. Thus: ‘In essence, what is at issue is a new version of the founding fathers’ original project. The objective plainly belongs to the sphere of high politics; the means have to do with low politics.’ (Marquand, 1989:212). This was a strategy which fitted and drew on the prevailing intergovernmental consensus, although indirectly it implied, in the political commitment it required from national governments, a significant political development in integration. In this respect the Commission had taken a ‘daring decision’ which took ‘political courage for which the Commission deserves praise’ (Pelkmans, 1988:360).52 The political nature of the relance was, however, not emphasised at the time, a factor itself contributing to the success of that relance. Lord Cockfield, writing in 1988, urged the member states to continue in this vein: progress without divisive and lingering debates on the future (la finalité) of the European Community: We must not allow debate about the future, important though it is, to divert us from the task in hand. There is a long way to go before the paths divide. So for the moment the visionaries and the pragmatists can go ahead together. Let us never forget what our primary objective is. It is to promote the well-being, the prosperity and the employment of the peoples of Europe. If we keep that objective firmly in mind, we shall neither fail nor lose our way. (Cockfield, 1988:74) Where the internal functioning of the Commission was concerned during the drafting of the White Paper, Delors’ leadership consisted of organising the Commission’s work in such a way as to prioritise and favour the role of experts, such as Lord Cockfield (Krause, 1991:79); to call on a small team of these and to involve the College of commissioners and the Commission’s administration only to the extent that this was absolutely necessary. Furthermore, the Commission sustained its effort throughout the SEA negotiations, with Delors taking many individual initiatives (including, when deemed necessary, the threat of a Commission boycott) to ensure that the commitment of the member states to a relaunching of integration was fulfilled. The dynamic process which led from the White Paper to the institutional reform of the SEA was a condition of the White Paper’s success, and was pursued with conviction by Delors and his team of negotiators in the SEA IGC, despite the fact that the Commission itself had no formal mandate for such reform. The Commission under Delors’ presidency did not

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hestitate to follow through its initial initiative, the White Paper, to its logical conclusion, institutional reform, which subsequently was so significant in enabling the Commission to fully play its role of initiative. This ability to to see matters through to implementation was, moreover, a characteristic of Delors’ Commission leadership not associated with that of certain of his predecessors, and one emphasised by several interviewees and observers (Dinan, 1994:201; Ross, 1994). Delors drew on his personal standing and credibility with national leaders (and on the credibility which the post of Commission President had begun to accumulate over recent years) in order to prise from them a renewed mandate for a Commission initiative, and he maintained pressure on those leaders through a mixture of political pragmatism, and the invoking of the Community’s ideals and long term goals. Delors himself described his external strategy as the process of appealing to the various elements of civil society for support and commitment. This was his approach to securing the Commission’s diplomatic and parliamentary legitimacy: the reconciliation of interests.53 In this respect, we could say that he treated the Community system as if it were a polity-in-themaking, with citizens and representatives of those citizens (and their interests) in some form of relationship to the Commission, a relationship mediated through the Commission President. A characteristic of Europe’s ‘would-be polity’, then and now, is that it has yet to develop the components such a polity would contain, such as a European-wide public opinion; strong trans-European political parties with a sense of identity; a well-established and active European citizenship or, more broadly, a European political culture (in the sense of shared values and expectations about the nature and goals of European integration and Union, or in the form of a set of political traditions, myths and references). Delors’ optimistic and relentless treatment of his and the Commission’s environment as if it were an emerging polity was characteristic of his presidency, and had significant effects on the Commission’s legitimacy in the Community. The Commission may not have gained power in the Community system, formally speaking, as a direct result of the Single European Act. But it did gain in relevance, prestige and influence under the leadership of a visible and assertive president. (Ehlermann: 1990:69–70). Furthermore, the potential ‘spillover’ of the ‘1992’ objective was never hidden, and Delors has described the outcome of the 1985–9 period as providing ‘un contenu qui permettait de progressed (the stuff of progress).54 The effects of this style contributed, as we see in our following chapter, to a situation in which the 1993 White Paper differed significantly in tone, content and intent from that of 1985. The Paper expressed an altered view and enactment of the Commission’s authority in the Community system, and addressed the effects of the evolution, in the intervening years, of Delors’ presidential style, from the pragmatic visionary of 1985, towards the more politicised, personalised European leadership implied logically by the founding texts and principles of the Community.

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Notes 1 Interviews with Delors: 28 April 1997; 3 September 1997. 2 ‘the sometimes too daring nature of my proposals; the fuss I make in situations where to do so is deemed inappropriate’, ibid. 3 Smith (1999:30), from the perspective of the 1993 White Paper, explores the Commission’s attempts to reconcile market efficiency (the core of the 1985 White Paper) with social equality, which he sees as being at the heart of the 1993 Paper. 4 Interview with Delors, 3 September 1997. 5 Interview with Delors, 3 September 1997. 6 In an interview with Delors (3 September 1997), Delors referred to his approach to the IMPs as a ‘laboratoire du changement (an experiment in change), with which he hoped to ‘accustom governments and the Commission services to think programmatically’. 7 Delors was pleased with the form and functionality of the SEA. Lionel Barber (Financial Times 23 January 1995) noted: ‘Mr Delors was later to describe the 1986 act as his finest achievement: a slim treaty, with plenty of muscle and no fat which laid the foundations for a united Europe.’ 8 Moravcsik (1991:48) has defined the formula as: ‘the convergence of national interests, the pro-European idealism of heads of government, and the decisive role of the large member states.’ In reality this is a formula for an intergovernmental consensus, not a relaunch of integration, which involves ‘supranational entrepreneurs’ such as the Commission. 9 EC Treaty Article 3: ‘the activities of the Communities shall include... an internal market characterised by the abolition, as between Member States, of obstacles to the free movement of persons, services and capital.’ This process of rehabilitation was described by one interviewee as Delors having ‘opened tunnels and windows in the Treaty’ through his creativity and political drive. 10 Although Pascal Lamy (Interview, 9 August 1999) suggested that it was more important to get Margaret Thatcher ‘on board’ than it was to secure François Mitterrand’s approval. 11 The Dooge Committee’s formal title was the Ad Hoc Committee for Institutional Affairs; the Adonnino’s, the Ad Hoc Committee for a Citizen’s Europe. 12 Although Moravcsik (1991:33–4) plays down the significance of the Stuttgart Declaration as an expression of an emerging consensus. 13 The White Paper (page 7, Point 16) refers however to the previous Commission’s ‘Consolidation Programme’ (COM (84) 305 final of 13 June 1984), which had identified ‘a series of proposals to be adopted by the Council in 1984 and 1985’ (CEC, 1984). The White Paper of 1985 was intended to ‘pursue this effort in a wider perspective and with a view to completing the Internal Market by 1992. It therefore comprises the essential items of last year’s paper without expressly repeating the Consolidation Programme which still remains valid.’ 14 Nor is it within the scope of this study to discuss in any detail the reasons why the Thorn Commission was unsuccessful in relaunching the single market itself, although we have already mentioned in passing the role of circumstances, and of the internal dynamics of the Commission during that period, including the relative weakness of its President. Cameron (1992:51–2) emphasises the significance of the Thorn Commission’s initiatives towards completing the single market for Delors’ subsequent 1992 success story. 15 Apparently, Delors was the only French candidate acceptable to Kohl. We can see Delors’ appointment as an interesting twist of fate. Mitterrand only casually

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agreed to his appointment; it was not a critical issue for him, and he had been considering nominating his former Foreign Minister, Claude Cheysson. Margaret Thatcher thought Delors would suit her government’s preferences for a liberal Community trading area. It seems likely that only Kohl got what he had hoped from Delors: a conduit to political union. (Rollat, 1993:256–7) The announcement of the composition of the new Commission was made by the Irish Premier Garret Fitzgerald, presiding the EC, on 25 July 1985. Agence Europe followed Delors’ progress through his President-designate phase, including his capitals tour, as well as his participation in some Commission and EP meetings and debates, and gave some indications of his plans, preparations and intentions. See for example Agence Europe 3931, 20 September 1984:3 where ‘un document politique au véritable sens du mot’ (a political document in the true sense of the term) is predicted as the programme Delors would present to the EP in January 1985. Also Agence Europe 3933, 22 September 1984:3; 3973, 28 September 1984:3; 3942, 5 October 1984:4; 3973, 21 November 1984, editorial ‘Jacques Delors prepare sa présidence’; 3986, 8 December 1984:5, which covers the informal meeting at Royaumont (Belgium) on 7 December of the newly appointed College of Commissioners, where Delors presided over the allocation of portfolios. The significance of Delors’ understanding of ‘civil society’/les forces vives in his strategy as Commission President was raised by several interviewees. This comment was made by one interviewee, a senior official in the Commission closely associated with the 1985 White Paper. Pascal Lamy (Interview, 9 August 1999) recounted how, during the President-designate period, Delors focused on what Lamy termed the ‘ideological’ and ‘intellectual’ dimensions of his preparations for taking office, as well as working out how (ideally) to distribute the portfolios. Along with Lamy, Jérôme Vignon and Jean-Michel Baer, Delors drew inspiration from a number of sources: first, his own experience of and writings on the EC; second, relevant Commission work (with the particular help of Emile Noël and Jean-Louis Lacroix (the head of Thorn’s ‘think-tank’ within the Commission), Jean Durieux, Thorn’s chef de cabinet, and, amongst the Commissioners, Etienne Davignon and François-Xavier Ortoli); third, his capitals tour (when he visited not only national leaders, but figures from ‘civil society’). Jean Monnet was a fourth source of inspiration to Delors, according to Lamy, which led to Delors’ notions of the ‘spillover’ potential of completing the internal market. On the President-designate period, see too: Endo (1998b:134); Grant (1994a: 66). Radio interview: RTL-le Monde-Grand Jury (1985):6. ‘European idealism had come back to life…. What was missing was something to fix onto, and that something became necessity: Europe’s prosperity and autonomy were threatened.’ One interviewee, a senior Commission official with a lengthy record of service, described Delors on his arrival as a ‘competent, prudent, rigorous and calm European’, and said that the Milan summit had been the moment of his own conversion to a more federalist conviction. Radio interview: RTL-le Monde-Grand Jury, 5 February 1985. He said: ‘il faut aller vers une union des pays d’Europe où l’on partage entierement notre sort, à la limite une federation d’États’. (We have to move towards a union of the countries of Europe where our fate is fully shared—perhaps a federation of States). The White Paper transmitted from the Commission to the European Council in June 1985 was entitled ‘Completing the Internal Market’, and was published as COM (85) 310 (CEC 1985).

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26 Pascal Lamy (Interview, 9 August 1999) described Cockfield’s approach to the White Paper in terms of a meticulously planned route map—and route march. 27 For documentary evidence of the period leading up to the Milan summit, see Gazzo, 1985. 28 One interviewee, closely associated with Cockfield on the 1985 Paper, described how all the Commission directorates linked to the internal market were instructed to tell Cockfield’s chef de cabinet, Adrian Fortescue, of any blockages, problems and complaints associated with the incomplete market; these were then sieved by the cabinet and cut back considerably in volume. The same interviewee stressed that Delors and Cockfield did not develop a ‘cigar and whisky’ relationship, or meet ‘out of school’ on the White Paper. See also Endo(1998b:82). 29 Delors frequently called on and enforced the A-points rule, or written procedure, whereby Commission decisions are made by circulating written proposals which, in the absence of objections, are deemed approved. 30 Many interviewees mentioned Delors’ pace and volume of work. 31 Although even here, in the Conclusions, the paper draws explicitly on the founding Treaties for its primary source of legitimacy: ‘What this White Paper proposes therefore is that the Community should now take a further step along the road so clearly delineated in the Treaties. To do less would be to fall short of the ambitions of the founders of the Community, incorporated in the Treaties; it would be to betray the trust invested in us; and it would be to offer the peoples of Europe a narrower, less rewarding, less secure, less prosperous future than they could otherwise enjoy.’ 32 Point 59 (page 17) of the White Paper, on the removal of technical barriers by the process of mutual recognition, states that: The Commission is fully aware that this strategy implies a change in habits and in traditional ways of thinking. What is needed is a radical change of attitude which would lead to new and innovative solutions for problems.’ 33 Article 22 of the SEA, which amended the EC Treaty in the form of Article 118B, which read: ‘The Commission shall endeavour to develop the dialogue between management and labour at European level which could, if the two sides consider it desirable, lead to relations based on agreement.’ The Amsterdam Treaty amended this (in Article 139) to read: ‘Should management and labour so desire, the dialogue between them at Community level may lead to contractual relations, including agreements.’ 34 See also Arnaud (1997); Endo (1998b:135). 35 For a further analysis of the speech, see also Agence Europe 4007, 16 January 1985, editorial and 5–8; McAllister (1997:165–7). Endo (1998b:9) has questioned the validity of my attention to Delors’ speeches such as this since, in Endo’s terms, ‘it is not clear why and how his [Delors’] particular style of French language should appeal to European audiences with different mother tongues.’ I am not seeking to make a specific point about the impact of Delors’ speech on, say, the broader European population, or even the MEPs; nor do I assume that the chamber was full, or that those present were necessarily listening. Delors’ discourse, at the level at which I have chosen to pay it attention, is for me evidence of his intentions regarding European union; of his tactical use of discourse and audiences; and, probably most importantly, of his own emphasis, throughout his entire career, on the significance of explanation and justification, written and verbal, in the political and democratic process. 36 The full title of the speech is: ‘Declaration sur les orientations de la Commission des Communautés européennes, faites devant le Parlement européen par le president Jacques Delors’ (The Thrust of Commission Policy. Statement by Jacques Delors, President of the Commission, to the European Parliament). I

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have also consulted the English language edition of the Bulletin, from which my translations are taken. The situation of the ‘inaugural’ speech is explained in the introduction to Deroubaix and Gobin (1994). This work is a study of all the ‘inaugural’ speeches, including Delors’, of all the Commission and High Authority Presidents to the European Parliament between 1952 and 1993. The study was commissioned by the Commission (DG5, Information, Public Opinion) and is based on quantitative methods of measuring lexical terms and their frequency, although the authors categorise their approach as ‘political sociology’ and not linguistics. The authors explain (vol. I: 8–9) how since René Mayer, the second president of the High Authority, the presidents of the EC executive (i.e. the High Authority of the European Coal and Steel Community, ECSC, and later the Commission of the European Communities) had been accustomed to presenting their new Commission to the European Parliament. In 1984, the European Parliament called for a new procedure: to put the incoming president’s speech to the vote. At this time, the procedure was a symbolic gesture of control over the Community executive. The Maastricht Treaty finally turned this procedure into an obligation. ‘Programme of the Commission for 1985. Statement by Jacques Delors, President of the Commission, to the European Parliament and his reply to the ensuing debate’, Strasbourg, 12 March 1985, Bulletin EC Supplement 4/85. On 26 June 1985 the Commission adopted a draft communication to European Council called ‘Marché intérieur, note institutionnelle’ (COM (85) 352 final[CEC, 1985]). This covered the fact that under existing practice, threequarters of the White Paper proposals needed unanimity; that the proposal made by the British in early June 1985 to improve decision-making without reforming the treaty was unlikely to work; that EC Treaty Articles 57–2, 99, 100 and 235 (as they were then) should be modified by the Spain and Portugal accession treaty; that the consultative committee could be used more widely for execution of single market measures. The Commission did not send this document to the European Council, but it formed the basis of Delors’ proposals to the Milan summit. Delors, in his contribution to the Milan summit, insisted on treaty reform rather than rely on declarations of intent to drop the veto. For reports of the Milan summit see: ‘Conclusions of the European Council’, Bulletin EC 6/85; de Ruyt (1989:59–65); le Monde 30 June to 1 July 1985:1 and 5; Gazzo (1986); Endo (1998b:137). Endo (1988b:144–5) describes how this was initially dropped, then reinstated thanks to the ‘Bonn-Paris axis’. SEC (85) 2008. In March 1990 Delors threatened to resign over the MEPs’ blocking of 100 or so pieces of Single market legislation (Guardian 14 March 1990:7). Johnston (1994:94–7) underlines the importance of the package formula in achieving, eventually, a consensus on the Delors Package I; and suggests that the Commission could also draw on the ‘automatic legitimacy’ bred of the Commission’s record since 1985. The Delors Package I took the initial form of a Communication from the Commission to the Council (COM 87/100) (CEC, 1987) entitled Making a Success of the Single Act: A New Frontier for Europe (see too Bulletin EC supplement 1/87; Commission Marché intérieur, annexe 1 [see note 45 below]; de Ruyt, 1989:298–304; Allen, 1992:26; Hooghe and Marks, 1999:94). Extracts of the book were published for public consumption, for example: Cecchini (1988). The full report, produced by a committee chaired by Cecchini, a Commission senior official, was a multi-volume work published by the Economic Affairs directorate of the Commission: ‘The Economics of 1992’.

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45 (The deadline of 1 January 1993, as laid out in the Single Act, was met following substantial efforts made during the final year of preparations for the single market.) Internal unclassified, unreferenced Commission document from the Commission Secretariat-General: Marché intérieur, annexe 1. 46 See Making the most of the internal market (COM (93) 632); Reinforcing the effectiveness of the internal market and Towards a strategic programme for the internal market (published together in June 1993 as COM (93) 256) (CEC, 1993), cited in CEC 1994 London, Background Report. Making the most of the internal market—the Commission’s strategic programme, ISEC/B8/94, 25 February 1994. 47 From an internal unclassified document made available by one interviewee. 48 Luckily, the Intergovernmental conference had at its disposal a reference document: the Commission’s White Paper. Even those who were opposed in principle to majority voting were forced to recognise, thanks to the Commission’s work and that of the Dooge Committee, that achieving the goals of the White Paper meant moving from unanimity to majority voting. De Ruyt (1989:149). 49 Both interviewed for this research. The Commission’s part in the SEA negotiations was also the work of the Commission’s legal services, with Adrian Fortescue representing Lord Cockfield in the task of identifying the articles in the Treaty of Rome which needed reform in the light of the single market programme. 50 Delors made his first official visit to the United States in April 1985. See Agence Europe, 4075, 22/23 April 1985. 51 Vice-President Cockfield also had responsibility for publicising the White Paper to external constituencies, such as the Confederation of British Industry (CBI). See Agence Europe 4099, 31 May 1985:10. 52 Pelkman’s assessment of the White Paper strategy, moreover, was largely positive. He judged that it had motivated the Commission, aimed accurately at the intergovernmental consensus, and succeeded in mobilising broad support for the initiative. 53 Interviewees emphasised this aspect of his strategic formulation of the general interest. 54 Interview with Delors, 3 September 1997.

5

Towards a new European society? The 1993 Commission White Paper on growth, competitiveness and employment

Introduction: a would-be transforming leader? 1989–92 When in 1988 Lord Cockfield urged the ‘visionaries and the pragmatists’ to ‘go ahead together’ towards European union for the forseeable future, he could not have imagined the rapid collapse of the Central and East European order which began barely one year later. One of the consequences of this startling transformation, however, was to shake the foundations on which all entrenched attitudes towards European integration were based. Delors was one political actor amongst many others, all of whom shared a duty to respond as rapidly and decisively as possible to the events whose course was, by very definition, unpredictable and unique: Delors and the Commission were simply ‘caught by surprise—as was everybody—by developments in Eastern Europe’ (Dehousse and Majone, 1994:109). It should not, however, have come as a surprise to anyone that Delors would produce a response or that this response would be bold and would address the question of the role of the European institutions—at the heart of which is the Commission—in the ‘new’ Europe; that he would immediately set about reorganising his intellectual picture of Europe and its future; and that this picture would be shaped by emotional as well as purely rational and pragmatic factors. The background to the White Paper of 1993 is precisely the nature of Delors’ response to Europe’s transformation, and its consequences for his image and legitimacy. We review this context in some depth below, before exploring the production of the White Paper itself in the same manner as that of 1985: by examining the state of the intergovernmental consensus, the production of the text, and the personal role of President Delors. The ubiquity of Delors’ public and political persona in this period of great flux was an integral part of the the new situation, in which the traditional roles of the member states, of the EC’s institutions—including the Commission—and of key political leaders (particularly Mitterrand and Kohl) were cast adrift. In important respects, the future of the Commission and the fate of the internal market programme were at stake as a result of the potentially limitless consequences of the opening of borders between East 113

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and West Europe, which would inevitably alter if not reverse previous policy priorities. It is not unreasonable to assume that at the time Delors sincerely believed himself to be uniquely responsible for proposing a possible future for the Commission, and solutions for the preservation of the acquis and for the governance of future European integration more generally; the Commission is after all bound to guard and defend the spirit of the original treaties. We can plausibly construe the boldness for which Delors became notorious in the period 1989–92—notably his experimentation with daring ideas and terminology for the future shape of the EC—more as the product of his sense of moral obligation and duty than as the outbursts of a Commission President intent on increasing his own power base. On several occasions during this period, moreover, Delors lamented the pragmatism which he felt he had been forced to discard in the face of new events and circumstances (Delors, 1992:210),1 since ‘l’urgence oblige à être plus audacieux’ (emergencies call for boldness). However one wishes to interpret such claims, there was in his actions during this period an undeniable, if relentless, logic and predictability. Delors’ initial responses to the events of the late 1980s marked a new phase in his ongoing quest for influence and legitimacy, as a leader in his own right, and on behalf of the Commission. He was renewed as Commission President in mid-1988, at a high point (in his own view, and objectively speaking) in his presidency; the French news-magazine le Point had in December 1988, for example, voted Delors as ‘Mr Europe’, and the ‘man of the year’ (26 December 1988). The Delors Package I had finally been accepted by member states in early 1988, and by mid-June 1988, Delors had been appointed chair of the committee thereafter usually known as the ‘Delors Committee on Economic and Monetary Union’,2 whose unanimous report, published in April 1989, brought a form of legitimacy to the Commission President’s role in this domain (Dyson and Featherstone, 1999: Chapter 16). Delors’ previous Commission, moreover, had proved its ability, and acquired a certain legitimacy born of success. In the altered circumstances of the late 1980s, the boundaries of the Commission’s legitimacy would yet again be a question of trial and error, attack and counter-attack. This was a situation which brought national interests into stark juxtaposition, and tested the will and capacity of existing member states to reach joint agreement on the general interest, and, significantly, how to extend it to would-be new members of the EC/EU. The Commission’s abstract duty to be ‘partisan’ and ‘protagonistic’ in pursuit of the general interest would obviously be just as contested as at other critical moments in the Community’s history, if not more so under these circumstances; and its task of mediating diversity in union would automatically be more problematic, and dramatic. In this context making the Commission ‘useful’—Delors’ mantra—was in many respects a thankless task.

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Deepening the Commission’s legitimacy dilemmas Protecting the general interest In retrospect, and with reference to the Commission’s legitimacy ‘dilemmas’ as discussed in previous chapters, Delors and the Commission were in fact relatively successful in the 1988–92 period in maintaining the momentum of spillover (i.e. in securing the Commission’s ‘community’ legitimacy). The Commission generally maintained the movement towards a single European market, and became associated, in large part thanks to Delors’ personal role, with the accelerated timetable and plan for Economic and Monetary Union, which was in Delors’ mind at least, given events, the last and final stage of economic ‘spillover’. Delors personally, and with the support of the Commission and other central institutions, notably the EC’s Economic and Social Committee, pushed forward the agenda for a so-called social Europe, in other words for the shaping of capital-labour relations at a supranational level. The Social Charter was signed by eleven out of twelve member states at the Strasbourg European Council meeting in 1989, and the signing by the same eleven of the Social Chapter to Maastricht was perhaps the only substantial victory that Delors salvaged from the 1990–1 Intergovernmental Conference on Political Union. In this way, and also by means of the ‘Delors II’ package of financial reform (COM (92) 2000), adopted by member states at the Edinburgh European Council meeting in December 1992, Delors attempted and largely succeeded (albeit not without considerable difficulty, as we see below), in maintaining the Commission’s role in balancing the Community’s policy agenda between negative and positive integration, and in converting member states’ commitments to the ‘general interest’ into tangible outcomes. Delors also worked to maintain the integrity of the Community acquis with respect to the imminent and prospective enlargement of the EC/EU. These efforts took a number of forms. First, in July 1989, the Commission convinced the member states to entrust it with a new role in the distribution and co-ordination of economic and humanitarian aid to Poland and Hungary (Bulletin EC 7/8 1989, Point 1.1.1; Cini, 1996:83). This was a role which Delors later felt obliged to defend in moral terms (in the face of criticisms of his record of managing these new tasks): ‘How could I refuse?’, he enquired.3 Second, the Commission, and Delors personally, also played a lead role in the management of German unification, and the integration of the new Germany into the EC.4 He took considerable pride in this fact: ‘Je suis l’homme qui a compris les Allemands’, he said.5 Third, there was Delors’ proposal for the European Economic Area, agreed upon in October 1991. Delors also felt obliged to defend this idea years later, again in the face of criticism, as having been a successful transitional phase for EFTAns seeking full EC membership of the European Union (Preston, 1997), and as a logical response in the context of the main task of the Commission as he saw it,

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namely the implementation of the Single European Act. Fourth, and at some personal cost to Delors’ own authority within the Commission, he presided over the resolution of the CAP reform and GATT agendas in 1992–3 (Webber, 1999). Where Delors’ public persona and visibility were concerned, the task of protecting and promoting the general interest also took the form of his assuming responsibility—moral and political—for addressing Europe’s role, mission, identity and boundaries in a Europe tranformed. He became notorious for doing so, and was often portrayed in this respect as a serious irritant in the laborious task of reaching an intergovernmental consensus on European union. In this respect, the period 1989–92 is particularly instructive, in my view, of the extent to which media representations of Delors in the heat of the moment contributed to a distortion and sensationalisation of his image. Again in retrospect, it is striking how much of the media coverage of this period in fact reflected more than anything else the uncertainty of the times, with the effect that the speculation characteristic of the press was intensified.6 It was nevertheless thanks to the media, principally, that Delors became such a public figure during this period, that images were formed, and motivations and intentions ascribed to the Commission President. In particular, much emphasis was placed upon his discourse: the terms he employed, the rhetorical and emotional pleas made by him, and the frequency of his appearances. By way of example we can cite some of the more notorious of Delors’ ‘intrusions’ into the public consciousness. In 1988, Delors had already drawn attention to himself by predicting, in a speech to the European Parliament on 6 July (see The Economist 16 July 1988), that in ten years time, 80 per cent of economic legislation, and perhaps tax and social legislation too, would emanate from the European Community. In an interview with le Monde later that year (on his fifty-third birthday: 20 July 1988), he called for a strong Commission—a ‘germ’ (amorce) of a European government. This was followed on 8 September of the same year with an address to the British Trades Union Congress (TUC), which was deemed instrumental in encouraging a more pro-European outlook on the British left. This stung Prime Minister Thatcher into making her notorious ‘Bruges’ speech, of which Delors said that she had unravelled the ‘marriage contract’ of the SEA (FT 24 September 1988). In January 1989, ‘investing’ the Delors II Commission, Delors talked to MEPs of the possible need for a ‘federal structure’ for European central banks (Delors 1992:116–48), and emphasised his efforts in favour of a ‘social Europe’. The following month, the US Newsweek dubbed Delors the ‘Czar of Brussels’ (6 February 1989).7 In Bruges, on 20 October 1989, Delors claimed that the ‘acceleration of history’ brought about by the events of 1989 called for a ‘saut qualitatif (usually translated as ‘a quantum leap’) in the member states leaders’ thinking about the institutions and responsibilities of the EC; now was the time, he claimed, for the member

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state governments to define their ideals for the future Europe, and not restrict themselves to immediate matters of pure ‘necessity’; a deepening of European integration was essential. His proposals included references to a ‘federal method’ of integration, of which subsidiarity was the cornerstone (Dinan, 1994:187). To the European Parliament on 17 January 1990, Delors floated the idea of a stronger European Parliament and Commission (Delors 1992:194–219). The thrust of his argument on this occasion was that in the circumstances (and as dictated by the ‘logic of the fathers of the Treaty of Rome’), the EC needed a stronger external presence, and a more efficient decision-making capacity. His preferred solution was to transform the Commission into ‘un véritable exécutif responsable’ (a real, accountable executive body). The Commission in this scenario would be accountable to the ‘democratic institutions of the future Federation’ and its members be democratically appointed. Delors also seemed to suggest, however, that the powers of such a body would be limited to providing impetus (‘un rôle d’im-pulsion’); he also claimed, later in the year (le Monde 12 October 1990) that he was not necessarily recommending such a solution for the immediate future, but depicting a logical scenario. Later in the same month (le Monde 26 October 1990), speaking to the French Socialist Party, Delors stated that he had reached the ‘limits of his legitimacy’. In November 1990, the British Sun newspaper memorably headlined its front page ‘Up Yours Delors’, in response to Delors’ hand in furthering Economic and Monetary Union. In March 1991, Delors addressed the London-based International Institute for Security Studies on a subject— European security—which previously had been considered out of bounds to the Commission (Delors 1992:290–309). Here he suggested a ‘form of political union’, to incorporate a common external relations and security policy which would forge a European ‘political personality’ for the EU. In November 1991, Delors made public his dissatisfaction with the draft treaty provisions for Political Union (primarily concerning a Common Foreign and Security Policy—again an area traditionally lying outside the Commission’s scope). Negotiating diversity in union The common denominator in all Delors’ interventions during this period was his insistence that his duty was to ‘parler clair’: to speak up; to speak the truth (as logically he saw it) about the new circumstances and their potential consequences; to imagine and convey the alternative futures for the Community post-1989 (see le Monde 14 February 1990). He went so far as to call upon member state populations to look to their leaders for a surge of audacity, for evidence of a ‘fertile imagination’ and a ‘clear commitment’ to make the Community both a fact of life and an ongoing ambition (at Bruges, 17 October 1989: Delors 1992:338). He was not

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always entirely consistent, and with hindsight it is not hard to identify the experimental and tentative quality of at least some of his proposals. Nor is it hard to reconstruct how his uncontrollable urge to clarify matters which member state governments had themselves barely had time to digest exposed him to charges of inappropriate and potentially damaging tactics. Delors’ role in enabling the Commission to perform its delicate duty of facilitating intergovernmental agreement on the general interest (what we have called the Commission’s diplomatic legitimacy) was effectively more elusive as a result of clashes on several occasions with the sense of the emerging intergovernmental consensus. Over the shape of political union in the 1991 IGC (and in some respects concerning EMU too), Delors’ position was deemed too ‘maximalist’ (Cini, 1996:87; Endo, 1998b:170–90), and his difficult relations with the Luxembourg presidency in 1991 were noted and much publicised: he was against the pilliar structure of the Luxembourg draft treaty, and particularly critical of the practicalities of its provisions for a CFSP (Cini, 1996:89). He was seen as endangering the ratification of Maastricht, for example in Denmark, by ‘speaking clearly’ at the wrong time.8 Over the timetable for enlargement, and over the contents and reach of the Delors Package II he was similarly seen as unnecessarily ambitious. Ultimately, as suggested above, the Commission did play the role of facilitator and negotiator, for example in the case of the Nordic enlargement (where Delors considers he and the Commission played an honest broker’s role,9 and the social protocol at Maastricht),10 but the difficulties the Commission encountered in shaping the general interest through the astute and timely management of intergovernmental agreement were considerable. Within the Commission, moreover (the so-called Delors II Commission of 1989–92), collegiality—the triumph of union over diversity—was harder to achieve than in the first Commission from 1985–8. Delors experienced challenges to his authority from other Commissioners (the college contained more political heavyweights than before); and the headaches of internal management and organisation, which came to dog the reputations of the Commissions of the Delors decade, had begun to make themselves felt. (Cini, 1996: Chapter Six; Krause, 1991:28–30.) Delors nevertheless maintained sufficient authority with the member states to be renewed, in June 1992, for a further two years; and he eventually sacrificed his personal preferences (deemed by many as French preferences) on the Uruguay GATT deal in order to restore collegiality, and so facilitate the final accord in 1993 (Endo, 1998b:193). Delors has also suggested that on all other key occasions (such as in relation to the IGC on political union), the College was supportive of his position.11 In 1989, Delors created the Cellule de Prospective, a thinktank within the Commission, answerable to him, and which he employed to try and extend the Commission’s role in involving civil society, particularly intellectuals, with European policy making; he also intensified his contacts with European religious and intellectual communities during this period, as

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part of a process of rebuilding the new Europe around renewed interests, ideas and debate (Delors 1994a). Finally, as part of his response to the uncertainties governing the Commission’s authority in the new Europe, Delors developed and publicised the experimental twin (and linked) concepts of subsidiarity and a ‘federal approach’. He embraced subsidiarity, according to Endo (1998a), in the spirit of the ‘art of retreat’, this in itself being a sign of leadership qualities, in Endo’s view.12 The concept was also resonant, howeover, of Delors’ earlier interests in the idea as a means of ordering society in accordance with personalist beliefs: a case of back to the future. Nor was subsidiarity a new concept in the European Community; it had been included, for example, in the European Parliament’s 1984 Draft Treaty on European Union; and Dinan (1994:187) reminds us how it was present in Delors’ discourse in 1985. Federalism for Delors was a question of ‘who does what?’, rather than an issue of ideological dogma, and his concept of a ‘European Federation of Nation States’ (which he had voiced as early as 198513) was intended to clarify and convey Delors’ ongoing belief in the relevance—politically, economically, historically, philosopically and socially—of the nation and the nation state, however many competences might ultimately be delegated to the EC/EU institutions (Delors, 1994:239). Such pronouncements are probably best read as both ‘tactical retreat’ (Endo, 1998a) and sincere experimentation on Delors’ part. Polity-making? Defining the new Europe Delors has claimed that for him personally, 1992 was the most uncomfortable and bruising year of the Delors decade. His determination to replace diplomatic ambiguities with ‘clear speaking’ meant that he had by default come to personify an imagined political entity—some federal form of ‘Europe’—whose legitimacy was contested. He had come to be seen and portrayed as as central a figure in the aftermath of 1989 as François Mitterrand, or Helmut Kohl, or John Major. Delors’ claims that he felt obliged to maintain such a high profile are not particularly far-fetched when viewed from the perspective of his ‘moral’ approach to political life. Delors clearly did not emerge from these times as a catalyst for an explosive change, in the manner of a de Gaulle in 1958 (Cerny, 1988:141); nor even as a ‘midwife’ coaxing irrestistible forces for change into a brand new political system. But he was a prominent figure of the period, although he had hoped to play a more decisive part in the shape of the European Union that emerged from the Treaty of Maastricht in 1991–2. But in 1989–92, the initiative for taking transformative decisions in a transforming Europe rested with the member states, who demonstrated the limits of their capacity to reach consensus, as well as the problems of managing supranationality without a central source of leadership. Schematically speaking, the Maastricht Treaty was a product of bilateral and

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intergovernmental deals, and in many respects represented the old order of things between France and Germany, just as much as a rhetorical and institutional departure to the future. It was also probably the only deal that could have emerged from the circumstances, given the particular constellation of leaders and power relations between the member states in place at that time. It was also, as has been amply observed, an imperfect settlement: the member states themselves acknowledged this when writing into the treaty a provision for it to be updated five years later. The transformation of the Community had added an extra dimension to the Commission’s legitimacy dilemma: the management of its political coming of age, and of the transformation of its President into a statesmanlike figure. Was Delors a flawed statesman, or were his ‘outbursts’ more a reflection of the flaws of the Commission presidency? The events of 1989 brought in their wake a Europe transformed, but a leader—Delors— constrained by the novelty of the situation, and not simply by a lack of authority in principle. Since this time, after all, the Commission President has been granted more, not less, political authority over his colleagues, and vis-à-vis the member states. The Commission as a body has acquired additional sources of ‘parliamentary’ legitimacy in the shape of its formalised grillings by European parliamentary committees. The experiment with a ‘weak’ President—Jacques Santer, diminished by being a compromise candidate—ended badly in 1999, with the first en masse resignation of the Commission in its history. This event ushered in a new Commission obliged to adopt an unprecedented focus on the internal management and, in general terms, ‘accountability’ of the Commission, with special attention to questions of financial probity, efficiency and effectiveness; and in this process, the spotlight is on the Commission President. In the intervening years, and in the final phase of Delors’ presidency (1993–5), Delors provided the member states with an additional piece of the puzzle that he thought they had yet to solve: how to organise ‘Europe’, whatever its new boundaries turned out to be, in a way which would guarantee its economic relevance and strength as a regional entity, and simultaneously preserve and promote the quality and diversity of life of its citizens. Much of his feverish activity of the previous four years, reviewed above, was the result of Delors’ efforts to formulate intellectually, for himself and for his ‘constituencies’, the identity of the ‘new European society’ post1989, and specifically to devise a balance between the nation and Europe; and between the deregulation of the single market initiative, and the solidarity and cohesion he saw as more vital than ever in the ‘new’ Europe. With his initiative for a White Paper on Growth, Competitiveness and Employment, Delors both returned to a problem that had driven him through nearly half a century of public service—how to build a ‘new’ society capable of ongoing renewal in circumstances of interdependence and rapid change—and addressed the future.

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In what follows I portray the 1993 White Paper as both a reflection of and a response to the Commission’s changed fortunes. President Delors could have chosen to do nothing in his final years in Brussels, to launch no new initiative bearing his name. This would have been out of character, but not inconceivable. His decision to raise his head above the parapet once more can be seen as the act of a driven and conscientious individual who still wanted to make a difference to the influence his post could bring to bear, whatever the personal cost.14 The 1993 White Paper did go some way to rehabilitating Delors’ authority within the Commission, and the Commission’s legitimacy within the Community system, although its immediate impact is perhaps best seen as neutral. In the longer term, this initiative was certainly not harmful to the Commission’s reputation, and it was one (but by no means the only) source of the momentum, which in 1997 brought the issue of employment into the 1997 Amsterdam Treaty in its own right. It can also be seen as Delors’ final statement, as Commission President, on the Commission’s—and so the EU’s—ultimate dilemma: how to reconcile the diversity of Europeans with a unity of European purpose, in the collective interest, legitimately? The state of the intergovernmental consensus: a Europe transformed In many respects, then, by 1993, the European Community had itself been transformed, with numerous apparently positive effects. The Single Market was virtually completed, and on time, and was scheduled to develop into an economic and monetary union by 1999 at the latest. The European Community was now one ‘pillar’ of the European Union established by the Maastricht Treaty after decades of dead-end plans and projects for political union. The waiting list of applicants to join the European Union was growing longer, as many countries of Eastern and Central Europe in particular looked to EU membership as a desirable stage in their transition to democracy and the market economy. The EU was beginning to look like a region close to full economic integration, and an attractive pole—a model— of democracy and shared political decision-making. In political terms, however, integration had become more complex and problematical. The scope of the integration process had extended into areas such as defence and security, domains of national sovereignty in which earlier attempts to integrate Europe’s member states (such as the European Defence Community of the 1950s) had failed. The reasons why European integration had become more politicised relate in large part to the ending of the Cold War order in Europe which began in the late 1980s, and which encouraged certain member states, principally France and Germany, to review and renew their commitment to fuller economic and political European integration, particularly in the context of economic recession. The Maastricht Treaty was the first step which the Community took towards a revised European order. The complexity of the Treaty—in particular its

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socalled pillar structure—reflected the fact that member states were united in their understanding of the need to reform the Community to take account of changing European and world circumstances, but divided over the extent of such reform and the means by which to accomplish it. The provisions of the Maastricht Treaty for an Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) by 1999, for a common social policy, and for moves towards a common foreign and security policy for the newly-instituted European Union, were specific grounds on which the member states differed in their attitudes towards both the goals and means of European integration. Two countries—Britain and Denmark—negotiated opt-out clauses regarding EMU15; Britain’s objections to a social policy forced the social provisions out of the Treaty text proper, and into a protocol appended to the Treaty and signed by the other eleven member states. Furthermore, in many EU countries, particularly France and Denmark, where referenda were held to ratify the Treaty, but also in Britain, the content of the Maastricht Treaty exacerbated differences within political parties and governing majorities over the principles and methods of European integration. One consequence of the acceleration in integration was therefore, somewhat paradoxically, to emphasise the significant and serious differences between member states over the integration process itself. The intergovernmental consensus that had led to the Maastricht agreement in the first place was revealed to be volatile by the realities of agreement itself, and particularly by its promise—or threat—of even further and even deeper integration. The situation was in fact even more complex than this description would suggest, in that there existed several intergovernmental consensuses, none of which extended to include all the member states, or which coincided exactly in their membership. France and Germany appeared jointly committed to EMU (although for different reasons and with different preferences regarding the implementation of a single currency union); France and Britain shared reservations regarding the EC’s and EU’s common institutions; other member states were grouped in agreement around specific aspects of the Maastricht agreement (such as the eleven member states on the social protocol). Furthermore, this was a situation in which the highly publicised difficulties of these intergovernmental relations themselves, as well as the extension and acceleration of the integration process since the mid-1980s, had created a higher level of popular awareness of integration in many member states. The process of completing the Single Market had inevitably attracted the attention and focus of various constituencies—labour, employers, media—with the result that the integration process reached more tangibly into the lives of ordinary people. Popular consternation with the integration process was expressed most forcefully in the referenda held in Denmark and in France; in Britain, the parliamentary vote on Maastricht was an intense challenge to the authority of John Major’s government, and exacerbated divisions on Europe in the Conservative Party; and in Germany,

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the effective taboo on criticising European integration that had characterised German political and popular attitudes to the EC for 40 years had begun to be breached, provoked specifically by the prospect of losing the Deutschmark to a single European currency. In this context, the Commission’s role in the integration process was also the object of greater awareness, although not necessarily understanding. To a considerable extent, the Commission came to symbolise popular discontent with integration, in that it appeared to be the institution both responsible for measures deemed unpopular in some constituencies, such as EMU, and to have acquired a vast range and scope of tasks, affording it thereby an extensive reach into ordinary daily lives.16 The reasons for which the Commission was often portrayed and perceived as a scapegoat in this way are complex, because they related in part to member state governments’s attitudes to European integration and the transmission of these attitudes to their electorates, and their distortion by a range of medias. In part, however, they were linked to President Delors, whose actions and pronouncements, as reviewed in our introduction above, attracted greater attention in this time of flux than had previously been the case, to the extent that he considered that he had come to personify ‘Europe’ by default. Although, therefore, in 1993 as in 1985, the Commission was part of a situation in which there had been a recent demonstration of an intergovernmental consensus to proceed with deeper integration, and although there was a text providing for that development (the Maastricht Treaty)—two elements of our ‘formula’ for integration thus being in place— the scope encompassed by that consensus, as discussed above, in a general climate of elite and public scepticism and uncertainty regarding the future of Europe, undermined the consensus itself. Specifically, the consensus questioned the Commission’s authority to participate in the next phase of the integration process, and raised doubts about Delors’ legitimacy. The 1993 White Paper on growth, competitiveness and employment17 In such circumstances, it was not obvious what the focus of the ‘Delors III’ Commission’s activity should be. The Commission’s response to the situation was to publish a bold statement designed to stimulate debate and action in one area—employment—where the Commission had perceived it was in the EU’s general interest to think and act in a concerted fashion. Thus, the preamble to the White Paper began: This White Paper sets out to foster debate and to assist decisionmaking—at decentralized, national or Community level—so as to lay the foundations for sustainable developments of the European economies, thereby enabling them to withstand international competition while creating the millions of jobs that are needed. (Bulletin EC Supplement 6/93:3.)

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One of the gravest of the EU’s problems in the 1990s, and that which Delors perceived as an area in which the Community had failed in its tasks, was that of enduring unemployment, in double figures in many EU member states; highest in Spain, Ireland, France and the UK; and higher in the EU than in other major economies such as the US (Scott, 1994). Employment—and unemployment—policy was, however, a field of action which remained, for the most part, in the remit of national governments, and for which the founding treaties had made no specific provision for Community-level action. There were, in fact, some precedents and provisions for common Community action in matters relating to employment and unemployment, and some role, therefore, for the Commission. In a broad sense, the goals of the Community and the Union in respect of economic union and development implied a commitment to address these matters jointly.18 More specifically, action taken in the field of a common social policy (the Social Charter; the Maastricht Treaty protocol on Social Policy), suggested an emerging common approach to the field of employment, with a limited role for the Commission. Article 103 of the Treaty on European Union (now Article 99) provided for Commission proposals in the general area of ‘broad guidelines of the economic policies of the Member States and of the Community’, within the context of achieving EMU, and the Commission itself cited this Article in its presentation of an analysis of Europe’s problematical economic development at the Copenhagen European Council of June 1993, which led to the 1993 White Paper (see below).19 Furthermore, by the mid-1990s, the EU’s member states had begun to demonstrate a desire to address such problems, and to recognise their significance. At the December 1992 European Council in Edinburgh, the Heads of State and Government had launched a ‘growth initiative’, a loan package designed to respond to the enduring and worsening dilemma of unemployment, in which ‘two of Delors’ ideas’ had been finally accepted by the UK presidency (Endo, 1998b:194) concerning EU-level backing (in the forms of loans and guarantees) to infrastructure and private sector projects: ‘In response to the continuing economic recession, and in particular to the continuing high levels of unemployment, the Community had launched a growth intiative at the December 1992 Edinburgh Council meeting’ (Nugent, 1994:3; see also Scott, 1994:90).20 The Commission’s White Paper the following year was part of its response to this specific initiative; more generally, however, it was a document intended to address the complicated, and challenging context of the short to medium term. In comparison with 1985, therefore, the Commission in 1993 could only draw on a broad and fragmented base of authorised Community action in economic policy and EMU as grounds for any authority in employment matters, rather than on any specific and closely-defined Treaty authority to propose Community action in this field (other than the Maastricht Treaty provisions for Community action in trans-European infrastructure networks (Articles 129b, c and d (now Articles 154, 155 and 156)). The perception by

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the Commission that it lacked precise and formal authority in the area of employment policy (and this in the era of subsidiarity and the screening of Community proposals for their salience) in itself spurred the Commission to demonstrate the costs of ‘non-Europe’ in this field. Delors in particular (as we shall see) played upon the fact that the White Paper did not ask for new authority, but demonstrated the dangers of a lack of action and leadership, in this way making ‘a modest success of exercising agenda-setting leadership.’ (Endo, 1998b:191.) This represented a dilemma, however, since the Commission and its President perceived the need for Community-level analysis, if not action, in this field; yet the Commission itself had no formal mandate to exercise its right of initiative. The solution Delors found was to produce a document which, first, related to an issue—unemployment—which was of great importance for all member states individually, and so would find resonance in the member states; and, second, which explicitly invited the member states to reflect upon the problem and commit their thinking in writing to a joint document—the White Paper—orchestrated by the Commission. The 1993 White Paper, in its form, in the manner in which it was presented and promoted to member states, in its language, and in its provisions, reflected the different distribution of authority—in comparison with 1985—between the Commission and the Community on the one hand, and the member state governments, themselves in a sometimes critical relationship with their public opinion, on the other. Importantly, in the eyes of the member state governments, the 1993 White Paper was ostensibly a ‘non-zero-sum exercise’ (Endo, 1998b:205) in regard to the distribution of authority in the EU system. The text and the President: persuading the heads of state and government The Commission’s 1993 White Paper was therefore the culmination of a set of steps taken by the Commission in reaction to the Union’s moves towards addressing Europe’s unemployment problem in the broad context of the long term, and the establishment of Economic and Monetary Union by 1999. In this respect, the Commission’s White Paper drew for what legitimacy it had on a growing mood in the Union—that something had to be done. In September 1992, on the heels of the ratification of Maastricht in France, Delors had talked of the need for a ‘big programme of support for noninflationary economic activity’ (Guardian 22 September 1992). In December 1992, at the Edinburgh European Council, the Union had negotiated a financial package proposed by the Commission (the so-called Delors II Budget Package), which raised the Union’s revenue ceiling, and which was linked to a number of other issues: The budget question was intimately and inextricably linked with a series of non-budgetary issues. Without a settlement on future financing, there

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In this respect, ‘…the Delors II debate of 1992 is but a first foray into a debate on the need for clearer ground rules for the operation of the Community.’ (Shackleton, op. cit.: 25.) At the same summit, ‘against a background of rising joblessness and mounting political pressure…discussion concerning mechanisms for tackling Europe’s acute unemployment crisis [had] moved to the top of the EU agenda…’ (Scott, 1994:89), and the Heads of State Launched the European growth initiative, which was intended to provide an immediate fillip to economic activity with a view to increasing employment in ways that would both be non-inflationary and would contribute to the longer-term growth potential of the European Union economy. (ibid.) The Commission responded to the Edinburgh Growth Initiative in early 1993 by setting out ‘the range of measures that could be implemented under the growth initiative and the employment results which were likely to result.’ (ibid.)21 But it was at the Copenhagen European Council in June 1993 that the Commission produced the larger-scale analysis of the causes and remedies of Europe’s unemployment, which subsequently evolved into the 1993 White Paper. Delors presented the outcome of his personal analysis of the situation to the EU Heads of State and Government at the Copenhagen European Council of June 1993, where he stated: We must…recover the momentum to take us into the 21st century, on the basis of economic and monetary integration, the as yet untapped potential of the single market and the new wave of technological advances and innovation. We can do it because we know how to do it.22 The recommendations made in the presentation covered eight ‘orientations’: • • • • • • • •

Staying on course for Economic and Monetary Union; The Community as an open and reliable partner in the world; Increased co-operation in the field of research and development; An efficient network of transport and telecommunications infrastructure; Common information and the new technological revolution; Profound changes in our education systems; Towards a new model of development; More active policies towards the labour market.

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In response to this presentation, the national leaders asked the Commission to prepare a written document stating the Commission’s analysis of the causes, forms and consequences, and possible solutions to the EU’s unemployment problem. This became the mandate for the White Paper, which was presented to the member states at the following European Council in Brussels, December 1993, where it was welcomed by them as a ‘lucid analysis of the present economic and social situation in the Union and (as constituting) a reference point for future work’ (European Council Presidency Conclusions, 1993 cited in Nugent, 1994:4): a statement typical of the diplomatic, if not anodyne, language of summit conclusions, and not necessarily spelling the promise of action, as we see below. Delors himself placed great emphasis on the intentions and tactics behind his presentation to the Cophenhagen summit (Delors, 1994b:293), as has been acknowledged by observers: No one who read the White Paper could fail to be impressed, in particular when the Commission’s effort was contrasted with other programmatic contenders on the field. Moreover, no one familiar with Europe’s recent history could overlook that its vertabrae were trademark ideas of Jacques Delors. (Ross, 1995:225). In speaking later of his tactic at Copenhagen, Delors spoke of how he set out to scare and impress the Heads of State by appealing to the problem which they all shared—unemployment—by underlining its gravity, and the threat of its consequences (Delors, 1994b:293).23 Delors’ specific tactics in influencing the agenda of the Copenhagen summit itself, through alliancebuilding with Chancellor Kohl, the European Parliament and the presidency, have also been noted for their efficacy (Endo, 1998b:195–6). Delors’ presentation of the Commission’s analysis of Community unemployment to the Copenhagen European Council was therefore the means by which he secured, for the Commission, a mandate to issue recommendations in a field in which the treaty provides the Commission with no specific authority: The 1993 White Paper Growth, Competitiveness, Employment would point European Union to a post-Delors future. Delors chose the Copenhagen European Council in June 1993 for his first move. By force of intellect and surprise Delors convinced the heads of state and government that business as usual was not enough, and that a White Paper outlining a new medium-term development strategy was needed. (Ross, 1995:223) In his preface to the French book version of the White Paper, Delors justified the Commission’s initiative as an invitation to the member states jointly to resolve their problem:

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Jacques Delors Pourquoi, se demandent certains, lancer cet appel depuis Bruxelles? Ne serait-ce pas une tentative de subordonner les pouvoirs nationaux sous couvert de la gravité de la situation? Non, le Livre Blanc n’est aucunement la traduction d’une volonté d’étendre les competences communautaires. Il affirme d’ailleurs clairement que la tâche principale de lutte contre le chômage incombe aux Etats membres. Il ne propose pas un programme législatif communautaire, mais veut débroussailler le terrain et ouvrir des pistes pour des solutions à mettre rapidement en œuvre…. Reste que la dimension européenne est indispensable la où les problèmes excèdent le cadre national. (Delors, 1993:VI)24

The Copenhagen presentation is one illustration of a moralising and deliberately persuasive strand to Delors’ discourse on the White Paper. Delors also employed, in speaking and writing about the White Paper, a discourse of limited responsibility (Drake, 1996, 1997), as seen above, to convey his recognition of the Commission’s lack of formal mandate for such a Paper, and to justify it none the less, by indicating to the member states where their responsibilities lay; it was a discourse of chiding and chastising. Delors described his attitude at Copenhagen as ‘severe’, in a situation in which, he said, he had ‘nothing to lose’ (Delors 1995b:9). The Conclusions of the Copenhagen summit recorded that ‘The European Council heard an analysis by the President of the Commission on the competitive situation of the European economy. It fully endorsed his diagnosis.’ (bulletin EC 6/93:10.) The text and the President: writing the White Paper As in 1985, therefore, when the Commission received from the Brussels March 1985 Council the mandate to prepare a document on completing the internal market, the Commission in 1993 created a similar situation regarding its authority in relation to the member states, in the form of a formal request from the European Council. While this request and the mandate it implied was a significant—and necessary—part of the Commission’s strategy regarding its White Paper, it was not a substitute for the formal authority of the Treaty. The 1993 White Paper is to be interpreted in this context as an appeal to the member states to recognise the consequences of Community inaction in low politics. The White Paper did not itself request additional powers or competences for the Commission in the field of employment policy, but had the effect—and intentionally so—of demonstrating to the member states the consequences of the lack of such authority. Part A: the President’s analysis The results of Delors’ personal analysis were distilled into the Preamble and Part A of the White Paper, for which he was largely personally responsible

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(as well as for Chapter 10 of Part B: Towards a New Development Model’). Part A was the text of the White Paper proper, and entitled as such; Part B was the ‘preparatory work’: ‘the conditions of growth, competitiveness and more jobs’.25 This was the first way in which the 1993 White Paper differed significantly from its 1985 predecessor, which in practice had been written principally by Lord Cockfield and members of his directorate-general, as we saw above. Unlike the 1985 Paper, that of 1993 was also more resonant of Delors’ own ideals for and vision of a ‘European model of society’: We are convinced that the European economies have a future. Looking at the traditional bases of prosperity and competitiveness, Europe has preserved its chances. It possesses assets which it has only to exploit— assets such as…the soundness of its social model, and the virtues of cooperation between the two sides of industry. (CEC, 1993a) (Commission, (93) 700, Preamble: 3.) Moreover, many of the themes which Delors presented in Part A of the 1993 Paper can be found in his earlier discourse and writings, such as the concept of the choice facing Europe between survival or decline: addressing unemployment was part of the appropriate response. There was also Delors’ notion of a blueprint for European economy and society, based on European values and history, and encapsulated in a threefold framework, or model—a ‘triptych’—of co-operation (between the social partners, such as in the social dialogue), competition (in the market, such as the dynamic of the internal market) and solidarity (through redistribution and ‘positive’ integration, such as the Delors Paquet I).26 At the heart of the triptych itself is the philosophical question of the appropriate balance to be struck between individual, state and market. The 1993 White Paper was designed to redress the balance within the triptych in favour of co-operation and solidarity, competition having been a priority of the internal market programme. He had, moreover, been building up to this emphasis from 1989 onwards, once the Single Market was well under way. Delors appeared to believe that while there may be no such thing as European society as such, there was nevertheless a European entity, which should not be left to operate in a neutral or indifferent manner, but should be organised to reflect what was distinctive about the member states’ priorities in economic policy-making.27 This to me is a clear example of how certain of Delors’ more abstract notions, in this case, a ‘European model of society’, were intended to function as a guide to action (and to la réflexion), and not as a tangible goal. Delors himself described in the same interview how the EU contained a diversity of co-existing models of society (Nordic, Latin, Anglo-Saxon). His initiatives, in this case the 1993 White Paper, were not so much intended as to replace such diversity with a single model, but to demonstrate (primarily through the art of analysis and exposition) how member states might themselves reach a highest common denominator and

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in so doing distil, somehow, an ‘essence’ of Europeanness in a global environment. Such a notion can be simultaneously read as defensive and pessimistic (of Europe’s economic strength and competitiveness; of the lifequality of individual Europeans); or as open-minded (to new challenges, opportunities, developments etc.), and so optimistic. This was a combination which had linked virtually all of Delors’ initiatives in public life since the 1940s, as seen in Chapter Two. The 1993 White Paper began with a ‘high-profile political objective: to adopt corrective measures to resolve the current crisis and create at least 15 million jobs by the year 2000.’ (Economic and Social Committee, CES 750/ 94:5). In his presentation of the White Paper to the press on 8 December 1993, however, Delors said that it was neither a spending plan, nor a plan for a relaunch of integration, but a plan of action, with all stops pulled out.28 In the opening paragraphs of Part A of the Paper, moreover, the text emphasised the Paper’s status as a collaborative document to which the Member States had themselves contributed, while nevertheless indicating the desirability of joint Community action: With national situations being so different, any proposal has to be presented with sensitivity and caution. That being so, the Commission does share the view, expressed by many Member States, that joint responses would strengthen the hand of each player, and therefore of the European Union. (CEC, 1993a) The remainder of Part A (13 pages in total) ruled out a ‘miracle cure’ for unemployment (such as protectionism, which it deemed ‘suicidal’), summarised the Community’s relatively weak competitive position vis-à-vis its competitor partners, and outlined its analysis of the three types of unemployment: cyclical, structural and technological. It then traced the ‘ways forward into the 21st century’. This is where the Paper launched its target of ‘creating fifteen million jobs by the end of the century’, and outlined the characteristics of the economic policy framework within which such job creation should take place. Part A concluded that it would call for a ‘sustainable development model’ (page 20), while deeming it preferable ‘not to formulate the possible solutions in unduly concise terms’ (page 21). It introduced Part B as ‘the basis for work in the various specialized meetings of the Council of Ministers’, and as summarising the areas in which ‘Community action proper’ (page 21) was proposed in the form of ‘a new impetus…in accordance with five priorities’ where Community competencies existed, such as in ‘creating the major European infrastructure networks’. Proposals for these networks, in information technology, transport and energy, were then developed over several pages of analysis, graphs and maps, together with a call for a public borrowing programme, costing approximately twenty billion ECU per year. In these respects, ‘Le

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role de la Commission européenne, en I’espèce, consiste surtout à comparer les politiques nationales, à faire connaître les expériences les plus novatrices, parfois a favoriser certaines d’entre elles.’ (Delors, 1993:VII).29 Part B: inside the Commission Part B of the Paper, which accounted for roughly sixty per cent of the total Paper’s length, was a series of chapters representing the Commission’s preparatory work on the ‘conditions of growth, competitiveness and more jobs.’ This was the part of the Paper in which the outline and philosophy of Part A were developed in detail, in three parts—growth, competitiveness, and employment—and summarised in the fourth and final part: ‘towards a new development model’, which emphasised the structural and fundamental thrust of the Commission’s Paper: The nature of the structural change the Community is going through needs to be recognized and addressed. It is important to develop a societal model for a higher quality of life in the Community, which can motivate people and hence can generate the required human energy. (CEC, 1993a:166) The format of the Paper raises a number of points concerning the means and mode of production of the Paper within the Commission, and concerning Delors’ personal role and discourse in promoting and identifying with the Paper. First, the ‘pioneering’ Commission of 1984–930, for example, had been succeeded by a more ‘reflective’ one, and what has been referred to as Delors’ ‘kitchen cabinet’.31 His own cabinet, for example, was joined in 1993 by the Forward Studies Unit (la Cellule de Prospective), both groups deliberately housing and promoting individuals committed to integration and to thinking innovatively about integration. Second, the production of the 1993 White Paper was characterised by procedures designed to centralise and plan the work of the services. This took place under the control of the Commission’s Secretary-General, David Williamson, and drew in particular on the services of the Directorate-Generals for Industrial Affairs and Information Policy (DGIII) and for Employment, Industrial Relations and Social Affairs (DG V), and this in a more deliberate and controlled way than had been the case in 1985. One interviewee described the mode of production of the 1993 Paper as drawing ‘wide and deep’ in the Commission, while another said that the 1993 White Paper drew on more research, material and documentation than any other previous Commission initiative he had known. Fewer people were involved than in 1985, but they were drawn from a wider net within the College and the Commission services.

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The process was Delors-centred, and Delors-inspired. Delors drew on his cabinet and the Cellule de prospective for input, and also on the contributions of the Commission’s services co-ordinated under so-called chefs de file—the Commissioners in charge of the various parts of Part B of the paper. These individuals sent nominees to a ‘core group’ chaired by Secretary-General David Williamson (Endo, 1998b:198–9). Delors was perceived by his collaborators as having become more mindful of the internal organisation of the Commission, and as having taken initiatives to improve the Commission’s internal functioning generally. There was also the fact that the Delors III Commission contained politically powerful Commissioners prepared to act as counterweights to Delors (such as Leon Brittan and Martin Bangemann, reappointed from Delors’ second Commission; also Hans van den Broek and Joao de Deus Pinhero, previously senior national government ministers (Dinan, 1994:206)). Delors also drew on outside expertise in drafting the White Paper. True to his favoured strategy in this respect, the process involved, for example, consultation with representatives of ‘civil society’: the leaders of many large corporations were invited to contribute and comment, as well as individuals from organised labour, and international organisations such as the OECD. Pascal Lamy has emphasised his own hand in the drafting process, as well as the difficulties encountered in striking the right notes in the White Paper in order to appeal to a broad spectrum of interests.32 He has described how discussions also took place with members of Bill Clinton’s new administration, including vice-president Al Gore, for example on questions of the ‘information society’ (the Guardian 22 January 1993 also reports on how the Commission was set to ‘woo’ the new US administration). Hix (1995:547) points to the input from the ‘European employment initiative’ (the Larsson report) adopted by Socialist Party leaders on 9 December 1993. This initiative was ‘drafted in parallel to the Delors White Paper on Employment’, and it was ‘not by chance’ that the White Paper, as adopted at the Brussels summit in December 1993, ‘contained many of the proposals from the Larsson report’. These developments, taken with a general climate in which the Commission was more exposed to media interest than in 1985, were considered to have imposed on Delors a more consensual approach to the taking, drafting and deciding of initiatives such as the 1993 White Paper. This method had provided a mechanism for reconciling fact-finding, analysis, and Delors’ personal convictions, some of which he was persuaded to drop, but most of which found their way into the Paper in some form. One interviewee described the 1993 Paper as a ‘vehicle’ for Delors’ ideas. A dynamic tension persisted nevertheless, in the production of the White Paper, between the Commission’s formal structures on the one hand, and the political, idiosyncratic input of Delors and his kitchen cabinet on the other, and the division of the Paper into Parts A and B is one reflection of this dynamic tension.

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Although the 1993 Paper emerged from a more democratic internal process, where there was less call and opportunity for the secrecy of 1985 (in part as a result of the emphasis, post-Maastricht, on subsdiarity and transparency, in which context the Commission became more self-reflective and scrutinising (Dinan, 1994:205–6; Fitzmaurice, 1994; Ross, 1993), it has still been described as the work of the ‘plume de Delors’, in place of the ‘plume de Cockfield’ that had penned the 1985 Paper.33 The aggressive leadership style of 1985, whereby Delors had imported a startling new style of behaviour for the Commission and its President, was still in evidence in 1993, although subject to countervailing forces, within the College of Commissioners itself; within the Commission more generally; and within the Community system at large, with the advent and application of subsidiarity. Delors’ public justification and explanation of the 1993 initiative provides a helpful illustration of his strategy underlying the production of the White Paper. What we can learn from his discourse on this occasion is the extent to which he strongly emphasised the demarcation of responsibilities and authority in the EU, and the Commission’s position in this setting (Drake 1996). Delors combined the discourse of a visionary President with that of a President-craftsman applying his skill to tasks set by his masters; this was a discourse of limited responsibility and of personal claims to vision and conscience. On both counts, he was laying down the markers of his personal legitimacy: he was competent and dedicated to executing the tasks he was given, and such competence and dedication would be wasted if he did not know how to apply it. But Delors also claimed to know what Europeans did and did not want, and he implicitly drew on this knowledge to justify his action. Such claims to knowledge, as we saw in our analysis of his inaugural speech in 1985, were based on Delors’ personal experience and his analytical talents, and were delivered in a pedagogical style which reinforced the claim. Delors’ inaugural speech to the European Parliament in January 1985 had consisted in creating a space in which he could thereafter act legitimately (reclaiming the Commission’s authority after a ‘lean’ period). His discourse on that occasion represented a Delors on the offensive, defining the balance of political power between the Commission and the other institutions of the EU according to the founding constitutional texts of the Communities, insofar as these were sufficient; and claiming more Community authority where they were not. In 1993, Delors’ discourse was more defensive, in the style of a President being called upon to justify a political legitimacy and presidential authority which he had earlier claimed (which in many respects was indeed the case). In 1993, Delors’ defensive response was to emphasise the precise contours of his and the Commission’s relationship with the member states; to stress what the Commission was supposed to do and called upon to do, and the obstacles it encountered in fulfilling its role as a result of those boundaries. He stressed his and the Commission’s competence and expertise (the craftsman analogy), and the fact that they served the member states, their masters. He underplayed, in other words, the elements by which

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the Commission could be accused of arrogating political legitimacy: he did not pretend to speak directly to the citizens of Europe; he pointed to national politicians as being those responsible for making political power more palatable to their citizens; he confined the Commission’s role, and indicated the extent to which it was a victim of political circumstance. The aftermath and impact of the White Paper of 1993 Although initially enthusiastic, the response of the member states to the 1993 White Paper’s call for action dwindled to very little concrete action, even though it remained prevalent in the discourse of the Commission during the remainder of Delors’ presidency, and grew increasingly into a priority of Delors’ successor, Jacques Santer. The special European Council of 29 October 1993, on the eve of the entry into force of the Treaty on European Union, urged the Commission to pursue its work on the White Paper, recognising that ‘a situation in which the Community has 17 million unemployed workers and where a majority of the population is cut off from the labour market on a long term basis, is intolerable and every effort must be undertaken, as a matter of priority, to remedy that situation.’34 The following European Council meeting, in Brusssels on 10–11 December 1993 was where the member states formally acknowledged and welcomed the Commission’s White Paper, although commentators questioned the level of their commitment to its suggestions, since: The European Council expressed support for the White Paper but it appeared to stifle the plan’s core, the borrowing programme to finance the trans-European networks, by referring to the EcoFin Council the question of borrowing internationally the 8 billion ECU necessary to arrive at the 20 billion ECU budget for investment in the networks. The figure of 15 million new jobs posited in the White Paper was abandoned and instead the European Council speaks of ‘reversing the trend and then, by the end of the century, significantly reducing the number of unemployed’, without pledging specific goals. The Council also showed little enthusiasm for making any concrete commitment to embark on the projects or carry out other parts of the programme relating to job creation.35 Delors, furthermore, has described the occasion as a ‘sacré bagarre’ (a scrap)36 to get his Paper adopted without it being emasculated. Endo (1998b:197–204) has provided a systematic description of Delors’ exploitation of the support of the Belgian presidency (and Prime Minister, Jean-Luc Dehaene), and his out-manoeuvring of Ecofin, in order to keep the White Paper on the agenda of the European Council. At the December 1993 Brussels European Council, specifically, national leaders adopted a plan of social and economic action on the basis of the Paper, whose approach was to

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become an annual exercise: ‘In the light of the White Paper, it [the European Council] adopted a short and medium-term action plan whose implementation it will itself monitor’ (Bulletin EC 12/93:7). The plan laid out guidelines for measures to be taken by member states within a broad Community framework, and some Community-level measures in the fields of trans-European networks, research, training, and investment, generally, in human capital (Economic and Social Committee, CES 751/94:1) (CEC, 1994). At subsequent European Council meetings in 1994, the White Paper remained high on the national leaders’ agenda, but ‘it [the Commission] is generally disappointed with the response to the White Paper in this respect and the miminal achievements so far.’ (Redmond, 1995:55–6). In the view of the Community’s Economic and Social Committee, interest in the Paper waned in the absence of concerted political will (Economic and Social Committee, CES 750/94) (CEC, 1994). The Commission for its part set up two committees (the Bangemann group and the Christophersen Group, named after the Commissioners responsible) to pursue the White Paper’s proposals for Community-level work on trans-European networks for information technology, transport and energy, and presented their proposals to the member states in the course of 1994. The Bangemann report was presented to the Corfu European Council on 24–5 June 1994 (Bulletin EU Supplement 2/94). At this summit, the leaders emphasised that responsibility for the ‘IT challenge’ lay primarily in the hands of the private sector, with the member states and the Commission developing ‘the political impetus and creating the right regulatory and market conditions for the IT revolution’ (CEC, 1994). The Commission also made proposals to the Essen European Council in December 1994 with respect to labour market flexibility, to which the member states’ responses were judged disappointing. At the Essen European Council in December 1994 a medium-term strategy for employment was outlined, including a mechanism for monitoring employment in the member states. Endo (1998b:204) has described this as the White Paper being ‘translated into a multiannual job creation scheme’. This strategy was confirmed in Cannes in June 1995; and the Madrid European Council, 15– 16 December 1995 confirmed in its conclusions that ‘the fight against unemployment and for equal opportunities is the priority task of the Community and its Member States’. The leaders at Madrid also noted a convergence of views and priorities between the Community institutions (specifically, Council and Commission), and between the social partners and the Community institutions, and reaffirmed unemployment as a priority task of the EU and the member states. Delors himself continued to call for the action on employment that had formed the centrepiece of the 1993 White Paper, and continued to attempt to transcend the controversy over which level of governance should do what (Delors, 1995a:14: ‘Je ne parle pas de politique européenne pour l’emploi, je parle d’action européenne pour l’emploi.’37)

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Under the leadership of Delors’ successor, Jacques Santer, the Commission followed up the White Paper with further work: ‘Jacques Santer, in particular, seized on employment as the grand projet mobilisateur of his Comission Presidency’ (Federal Trust, 1996:8). Santer’s speech to the European Parliament on 31 January 1996 was headed ‘For a European Confidence Pact for Employment’, and the first chapter of the Commission’s 1996 Work Programme was entitled ‘Action for Employment and Solidarity’. This was endorsed by the Florence European Council meeting in June 1996, where agreement was reached on a macro-economic framework for action, 38 but where there was no discussion, for example, on the financing of trans-European transport networks. Generally speaking The European Council of Heads of State and government repeatedly has endorsed the analysis of the 1994 White Paper…. These commitments to restrain wage growth and dismantle labor-market rigidities have been reiterated at each subsequent European Council meeting. (Smith, 1999:30) At the special meeting of Heads of State and Government held on 20–1 November 1997, there was ‘more concrete achievement, with member states agreeing to adopt guidelines on the coordination of annual employment action programmes to be monitored by the European Commission.’ (Smith, 1999:39).39 By this time, moreover, the Amsterdam Treaty had made provision for employment as a ‘common concern’, hence explicitly expanding the Community’s ‘general interest’, and updating the Treaty of Rome’s original bargain in this respect. The broad intergovernmental consensus responsible for this development (despite some rhetorical differences), considered ‘employment’ more as a question of practical measures of co-operation between member states, linked to EMU, than as a question of a distinct ‘model’ of economic development; the Commission’s 1997 Work Programme (COM (96) 507), however, retained a reference to the Commission’s wish to ‘build a Europe of solidarity with a human face, faithful to its own model of society’. By 1999 the ‘common concern’ with employment was still high on member states’ agenda, with the Cologne European Council in June of that year adopting a ‘European Employment Pact’ to strengthen the coordination of the economic policies of the member states—especially of the eleven within ‘Euroland’. Conclusions The 1985 White Paper had responded to an emerging intergovernmental strategy on the future of integration which, along with the Treaty provisions for an internal market, provided the Commission with both supranational authority and intergovernmental support. The 1993 equivalent had no such counterweight in the form of intergovernmental strategy or vision, and

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risked disappearing into a vacuum of leadership. The 1985 Paper was entrenched with Community credentials, as expressed by Arthur Cockfield after the event: The White Paper setting out the Programme for the Completion of the Internal Market is important not just because it detailed some three hundred legislative measures which were needed but also because it was and remains one of the best expositions of Community policy, Community philosophy and Community aspirations. (Cockfield, 1990:4)40 The Commission in 1993, through the voice of its President, was again fulfilling its functions of ‘mémoire and provocateur’ (memory and provocateur)41, and its role as ‘ingénieur de la construction européenne’ (engineer on the European construction project, the expression Delors used in his January 1985 speech to the EP). It was acting in this way in order to cast the Union’s most pressing economic problems into a new mould, and to attempt to change ‘mindsets’ on unemployment, its causes, consequences and solutions. The 1993 White Paper was a work of moral conscience too, whereby the Commission reclaimed its community legitimacy—to define the general interest—by drawing attention to the limitations of what he called the ‘marriage contract’ between the member states and the Commission (Delors, 1994b:293). This is why the document was bold in its content and recommendations, and in Delors’ presentation of it: The White Paper advocates abandoning some of the approaches used in the past. It is innovative in the form and substance of its discourse on jobs and unemployment’42. This also explains why it was a major task for the Commission for several months, and why the Commission worked hard at ensuring it was followed up with the action requested in the Paper: ‘The White Paper was Jacques Delors’ last big gamble, or perhaps, as a British journalist aptly labeled it, “something of a last will and testament.” What its consequences might turn out to be were anyone’s guess….’ (Ross, 1995:225–6.)43 The 1993 White Paper, in Delors’ mind, marked out primarily the territory of the ideal, whereas its 1985 predecessor had revealed and enacted first and foremost the terrain of the necessary. In 1985, Delors’ personal ideas and preferences took second place to expediency, to produce an action plan for 1992 that will, however, provide his epitaph. In 1993, Delors’ personal ideas, blueprint and intuition for a societal model overlapped with what he frequently referred to as ‘l’air du temps’ (the sign of the times—a focus on employment), but not with a firm intergovernmental consensus on goals or methods. It was a document which Delors saw as central to the wider debate about Europe’s economic, political, social and moral future and identity (Delors, 1994b:297); which would alert decision-makers to the economic dangers facing the Community; and stir up thinking on the moral and philosophical content of the next integrative steps (‘il fallait un discours

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où apparaisse un peu plus les valeurs’).44 The Paper was deliberately stronger on la réflexion than on action, in an attempt to redress a balance which Delors saw as having gone astray since the ‘acceleration’ of history, triggered by the fall of the Berlin Wall in autumn 1989 (an ‘external shock’ which Delors compared to the Suez events of 1956).45 In respect of this balance, which favoured the power of thought over the details of implementation, the Paper is strongly characteristic of the ‘Delorist’ approach to political reform, as we saw in Chapter Two. In terms of the formula for integration that we used above (intergovernmental consensus+founding text+charismatic Commission President= relance), the 1993 White Paper, and Delors’ role in producing it, had the effect of highlighting the flaws in the intergovernmental consensus, and the gaps in the Maastricht Treaty (the most recent ‘founding text’), whereas the 1985 Paper had corresponded more closely to the minimum elements of the consensus of that time. Delors’ response to this situation in 1993 was to call increasingly in his discourse for strong European leadership, claiming that his own Commission presidency had come to offer by default a personalised European leadership, within but especially outside the Community (with representatives from politics and civil society alike). He had, he said, filled a vacuum of leadership (Delors 1995a:14). In exercising the personalised leadership that he did, in 1993, despite having no formal authority to do so and in relatively unforgiving circumstances, Delors paradoxically revealed how the logic of the Community system, with the calls in the founding texts for ‘ever closer union’ and a ‘federation of Europe’ provided, potentially, for such a leadership. The same logic, however, simultaneously made the Commission President an undemocratic candidate for such a ‘post’ and, as we said in Chapter Three, led to a system designed to prevent strong leadership by individuals. Delors suggested on many occasions, in order to bridge this gap between Community ideals and reality, a Commission President personally accountable to the European Council (Delors, 1994b:304) and, one day perhaps, directly elected by the peoples of Europe.46 In this sense, the 1993 White Paper has been depicted as Delors’ ‘bittersweet last major act’ (Ross, 1995:240), in which Delors compensated for the Commission’s reduced authority by means of personalised claims to an authority which he knew he could not democratically exercise, in the institutional framework of that time, but which was written into the logic of the Community system, however ambiguously or unintentionally; and for which there was a functional need. Delors’ discourse in 1985, and the White Paper itself, expressed the Commission’s confidence in its legal bases of authority. In 1993, the Paper and its presentation expressed a Commission uncertain of its role and authority in the emerging European Union, but certain of the dangers of the limitations of this role. Delors’ unique contribution was to draw attention to and highlight this situation, and its potential implications for the ‘new’ Europe.

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Where Delors’ leadership within the Commission was concerned, both White Papers demonstrated that he practised an idiosyncratic presidency, characterised by the concentration of power in the person of the President, particularly in respect of the Commission’s external profile, prestige and identity. He exercised his authority in order to establish what has been referred to as a ‘légitimité de l’efficacité’ (a legitimacy of efficiency),47 and others have referred to Delors’ intense and zealous pace of work, and the high demands he placed on his collaborators in this respect (Ross, 1994:503– 4). The conclusive impact of Delors on the Commission presidency and the Commission in this respect was to have demonstrated how the post could be interpreted and enacted as powerful, political and prestigious. These developments were particularly significant in respect of the relationship Delors developed between the Commission and the European Council. This was a relationship which focused on his own presence, performance, intellectual and discursive skills at the European Council meetings. Given that the European Council was itself a significant actor in the integrative steps of the 1980s, Delors’ ability to secure European Council commitment and support for Commission initiatives, and to encourage the European Council to formally bring such initiatives about (by providing the Commission with a mandate to act, as in 1985 and 1993), must be seen as one crucial dimension of his leadership skills (Cameron, 1992:63–4). The ‘stories’ of the White Papers of 1985 and 1993 illustrate how the conventions and norms of legitimacy in the EU evolved between 1985–95, the extent to which Delors’ presidency contributed to these changes, how he responded to them and with what effect. He himself saw his decade, from this perspective, as a sequence of developments which forced (or tempted?) him to stray from the leadership of influence towards the leadership of power and its constraints, in part to fill a void of leadership at the heart of the Union. Institutionally, this deepened the authority and legitimacy dilemmas which Delors inherited on arrival in Brussels in 1985. The history of the Commission presidency has always been one of experimentation, trial and error, and one consequence of Delors’ experimental ‘laboratoire du changement’48(laboratory of change) was to take the Commission into the realms of identity and ‘polity’ politics in an era of ambient ‘social scepticism’ (Weiler, 1997a:253) regarding European integration. Upon leaving the Commission in 1995, Delors trod a path which tested out yet more versions of the uneasy balance which characterised his public life: between la réflexion and action, pragmatism and vision, and influence and power, all in the endless pursuit of a ‘new’ international society. Notes 1 In Delors’ speech to the European Parliament on 17 January 1990. 2 The Committee for the Study of Economic and Monetary Union. 3 Interview with Delors, 15 July 1999.

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4 Moravcsik (1998:360–1) sees Delors’ role in integrating the former East German Länder into the EC as one of three exceptions to Delors’ ‘general ineffectiveness’ in this Maastricht period; the other two exceptions being the ‘Commission President’s successful rearguard action to defend the Commission’s unique right of proposal…’; and ‘Delors’s last-minute intervention [which] crafted a two-track social policy within the EC.’ 5 Interview with Delors, 19 October 1998. 6 In my research I consulted predominantly British and French (and some Belgian and German) press sources. 7 The same news magazine used the same expression in its issue of 30 May 1994:24–6. 8 The specific problem concerning the Danish referendum on ratification was, by all accounts, a controversial paper which was leaked from the Commission. This paper, which Delors would have presented, but did not, to the June 1992 Lisbon European Council meeting, addressed the question of institutional reform in an enlarged EC/EU. It apparently crystallised some of his earlier pronouncements on a radically reformed executive body, and seemed to undermine the weight of smaller countries—such as Denmark. See: The Guardian 1 May 1992 and 12 May 1992; Endo (1998a:390, citing the Financial Times 4 June 1992); and Grant (1994a:214–5). For Delors’ own contrite reflections on his overly defensive role in France during the campaign for the ratification of the Maastricht treaty, see Kahn, 1993:192. 9 Interview with Delors, 19 October 1998. 10 Interview with Delors, ibid. 11 Interview with Delors, ibid. He cited the Commission’s opinions on Political Union and Economic and Monetary Union, published in late 1990, as cases in point. Middlemass (1995:225) reinforces this point. 12 See also Delors’ speech of 21 March 1991 to the EIAP in Maastricht (reproduced in Delors, 1992:163–76) for his explanation of subsidiarity. 13 See for example le Monde 5 February 1985, reporting on Delors’ radio interview RTL-le Monde-Grand Jury, in which he said: ‘Il faut aller vers une union où l’on partage entièrement notre sort, à la limite une fédération d’États européens’ (We must move towards a union where our fate is shared, possibly in a Federation of European states). 14 Some might say that all along, Delors was preparing himself to run for the French presidency in 1995, and that his actions should be interpreted in the light of that interest. These views were ultimately proved wrong. Nor was Delors excessively ascetic, and, as we saw in Chapter Two, sacrificed many other activities and interests in order to dedicate himself to public life. 15 In the case of Denmark, after its population had initially rejected the Treaty by referendum. 16 In summary, the Maastricht Treaty added to the Commission’s functional scope responsibility for the following additional areas: the environment, education, health, consumer affairs, the development of trans-European networks, R&D policy, culture, and economic and monetary union. In the specific context of the 1990s, it also acquired responsibilities for aid and development programmes in third countries. Finally, under the terms of the Maastricht Treaty the Commission was associated with the intergovernmental activities under the socalled pillars two (Common Foreign and Security Policy) and three (justice and home affairs). 17 The White Paper was published as: The White Paper on growth, competitiveness, and employment. The challenges and ways forward into the 21st century, COM (93) 700 final (593) December 19 1 (CEC, 1993a); in Bulletin EC: Supplement, no. 6, 1993; also in book form in France: (Delors,

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1993). The French book version is prefaced by Jacques Delors: this preface is more detailed and more personalised than the preamble to the official version of the White Paper. In a very similar manner to Delors (1988b), where Delors recounts how ‘he’ came to the 1992 idea in 1985, it provides Delors’ account of the genesis of the 1993 White Paper idea, and reads like a justification of the idea itself, and of Delors’ and the Commission’s responsibility for it. Preamble EC Treaty: ‘Affirming as the essential objective of their efforts the constant improvement of the living and working conditions of their peoples.’ Article 2 EC Treaty (non-consolidated): ‘The Community shall have as its task, by establishing a common market and progressively approximating the economic policies of Member States, to promote throughout the Community a harmonious development of economic activities, a continous and balanced expansion, an increase in stability, an accelerated raising of the standard of living and closer relations between the States belonging to it.’ Article B of the Maastricht Treaty (now Article 2 of the Consolidated Treaty on European Union) had added: ‘The Union shall set itself the following objectives:—to promote economic and social progress which is balanced and sustainable, in particular through the creation of an area without internal frontiers, through the strengthening of economic and social cohesion and through the establishment of economic and monetary union, ultimately including a single currency in accordance with the provisions of this Treaty.’ The Commission was nevertheless subsequently criticised for not drawing formally on the full range of possible sources of legitimacy for its 1993 White Paper. See: the Economic and Social Committee’s Opinion (Official Journal, 37, 295, 22 October 1994: C295/58): The Committee regrets that that no reference is made in the White Paper to the Treaty of Rome, and particularly its Title III which is crucially important on the matter of employment and social rights.’ Title III of the Treaty of Rome covers the ‘Free movement of persons, services and capital’. The Commission was also criticised for not explicitly linking the proposals of the White Paper to existing or previous policies, ‘either to affirm the continuity of the action, or to demonstrate the need for a change in direction. This would enhance the credibility of the proposals in the eyes of public opinion.’ The ‘growth initiative’ was published by the Commission as: Promoting economic recovery in Europe (The Edinburgh Growth Initiative), COM (93) 164 final (22 April 1993) (CEC 1993b). In March 1993 the Commission published a paper ‘outlining the concrete measures to be implemented as the Community’s part of the [growth] initiative, together with proposals already put forward’ (Thomson and Mitchell, 1994:136). The document was published by the Commission as: Communication on the implementation of the Community measures of the growth initiative, OJ C60, 3 March 1993, pp.2–4 and as COM (93) 54, 10 February 1993 (CEC, 1993a). Endo (1998b:194–5) describes the Cellule de Propective’s involvement in first, drafting ‘a report on the European model of sustainable development’, then later, launching ‘a detailed study focusing on Europe’s unemployment problem.’ Taken from the document supporting this presentation that was made available to me by an interviewee in Delors’ cabinet: Entering the 21st Century. Prospects for the European Economy. The recommendations made in the presentation form a second, related document: Orientations for Economic Renewal in Europe. The remainder of this document was composed of relevant extracts from the Treaty on European Union, and of eleven charts underpinning the analysis and recommendations of the document. See Scott (1994:90.) Interviews with Delors’ collaborators confirmed this version of events.

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24 ‘Some might ask why this call has come from Brussels, and whether it is not an attempt to undermine national political power on the grounds of the seriousness of the situation. In matter of fact the White Paper is far from being an attempt to extend Community competences. It states clearly that the main task of combating unemployment falls to the member states. It does not put forward a Community legislative programme but seeks to clear the ground and open up possibilities for solutions which can be put into place quickly. It is still the case, however, that the European dimension is indispensable in cases where problems go beyond the national framework.’ My emphasis. 25 Part C, in a separate volume, contained the contributions of the member states. 26 Delors briefly explained this model to interviewer Dominique Wolton in reference to the single market programme (Delors, 1994b:222): ‘Au total, je voulais reposer la construction européenne sur trois piliers: la competition qui stimule; la cooperation qui renforce; la solidarité qui unit.’ (I wanted to base the building of Europe on three pillars: competition which stimulates, co-operation which strengthens, and solidarity which unites). He cited the Integrated Mediterranean Programmes as an experiment in solidarity. 27 Interview with Delors, 16 December 1997. 28 ‘Le Livre blanc n’est pas un plan de dépenses, ni un plan de relance, mais un plan d’action, tous azimuts.’ (The White Paper is neither a spending plan, nor a plan for a relaunch, but an action plan with all the stops pulled out.) Reported in Les Echos 10 December 1993:31. 29 The Commission’s role, in the case in point, consists above all in comparing national policies and creating awareness of the most innovatory experiences, sometimes prioritising certain of these.’ 30 A term used by one interviewee. 31 A term used by one interviewee. 32 Interview, 9 August 1999. 33 Term used by an interviewee from the Cellule de Prospective. 34 Conclusions of the presidency, cited in Common Market Law Review (1994) 31:1–6. The summit also ‘decided to strengthen the growth initiative decided on in Edinburgh by extending the Edinburgh financial mechanism to projects in the fields of transport, energy production and urban renewal.’ Bulletin EC 10/93:7. 35 Common Market Law Review (1994):4–5. 36 Interview 16 December 1997. 37 ‘I am not talking about a European employment policy, but about European action on employment.’ 38 The European Council considers that job creation is the principal social, economic and political objective of the European Union and its Member States, and declares its firm resolve to continue to make every effort to reduce unemployment.’ (European Council, Madrid, 15–16 December 1995, cited in Federal Trust, 1996:1). 39 Delors himself, under the aegis of his think-tank, Notre Europe (see Chapter Six), participated in the preparation of this summit meeting. 40 An interviewee described the 1985 White Paper as having ‘impeccable treaty credentials.’ 41 An expression Delors used in an interview with le Monde on 20 July 1988. In his so-called Bruges speech to the College of Europe the following year, in October 1989, he took up the same theme of the Commission as memory (Delors, 1992:320): ‘La Commission européenne, sorte de mémoire militante de la construction européenne, est là pour rappeler, non pas dans le secret désir d’accroître ses prerogatives, mais avec le sentiment impérieux que ce qui a été décidé en commun doit être réalisé. La vigilance est d’autant plus de règle que le projet est ambitieux.’ (The Commission is a sort of activist memory of European

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integration. It is there to act as a reminder, not out of some secret desire to extend its own prerogatives, but because of an urgent feeling that that which has been decided in common must be carried out. And the more ambitious the project, the more vigilant we must be.) The Economic and Social Committee, Opinion on the Social Aspects of the White paper on Growth, Competitiveness, Employment, Official Journal no. C295/57, vol. 37, 22.10.94. A member of Delors’ cabinet in 1993 described the Paper as Delors’ Valedictory statement’; as ‘his framework for the future.’ Interview with Delors, 16 December 1997. ‘We needed an approach where values featured a bit more’. Interview with Delors, 19 October 1998. In an interview with Liberation 20 February 1987:12, Delors had already suggested a timeframe for a more democratic system of installing a Commission President: ‘il serait élu par les Parlements nationaux et le Parlement européen. Puis dans cinq à dix ans, il serait élu au suffrage universel. Les candidatures se feraient sous forme de trio avec un président et deux vice-présidents. Les élus choisiraient alors neuf commissaires dans les autres pays. Ce serait plus efficace et plus realiste.’ (He would be elected by national Parliaments and the European Parliament. Then in five to ten years’ time, he would be directly elected. Candidates would stand on a ticket: one president and two vice-presidents. The elected trio would then choose nine commissioners from the remaining countries. This would be more efficient and realistic.) Interviewee. Interview with Delors, 28 April 1997.

6

Jacques Delors: Perspectives on a European leader

Introduction: ‘wise man’ of Europe? By the time of his seventy-fourth birthday on 20 July 1999, Delors was poised to make yet another career move. He had been invited by the Secretary-General of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to act as his special advisor on a part-time basis. For Delors, this invitation offered him an opportunity to indulge his prediliction for ‘intellectual work’. Just as importantly, he would be able to pursue directly his life-long preoccupation with questions relating to the international management of global economic interdependence. Somewhat more ambitiously, he harboured hopes that his activity at the OECD might contribute towards the rehabilitation of an organisation whose role he considered to have entered a period of decline. In the event, Delors decided in autumn 1999 to postpone his decision to join the OECD. The reason he gave was the pressure and volume of work arising out of existing commitments, and other future projects. The most significant of these projects was the planned launch (in early 2000) of a new body: the Comité d’Orientation européenne (COE) (the ‘European steering committee’). In Delors‘ presentation of this initiative,1 the new group was explicitly heir to Jean Monnet’s Action Committee for the United States of Europe. 2 Its membership (by October 1999, of approximately forty) was drawn predominantly from the political elites of the member states, but also from the leaders of ‘civil society’ and corporate life in these countries. Expertise from the European Commission, past and present and future, was well-represented. Politically, and unsurprisingly, the common denominator was the pro-European outlook of all its members, although the membership represented a spectrum of intensity of pro-European positions and beliefs. The COE had, by Delors’ account, been two years in the making, and he deemed the year 1999–2000 as finally ripe for its launch. The Committee’s brief, broadly speaking, would be to act as a form of pressure group upon the ‘European debate’ in the EU member states in much the same fashion, we can assume, as its predecessor, the Jean Monnet Action Committee, which was formed as a vehicle for 144

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Monnet to maintain pressure in the member state capitals for a societal and political consensus in favour of further integration. Neither Delors’ inclination to proffer advice to the head of the OECD, nor the intensity of his efforts to set up the ‘Jacques Delors Action Committee’, came as entirely surprising developments in his public life. As we saw in earlier chapters, Delors’ national, European and international reputation was built upon his self-styled role as a one-man pressure ‘group’. In this role he offered (nearly always loudly) a voice of reason and logic, as he saw it, to his political ‘masters’ (French governments, French Presidents, EU Heads of State and Government, political party leaders, United States Presidents, heads of international organisations, leaders of civil society…). This voice started out its life as a nagging consciousness that French, European (and ideally global) capitalism could be organised more competitively, more cooperatively, and more equitably. It was the broad-based ambition of that inner voice that had held Delors back from early or sustained commitment to the cause of a specific political party machine per se, and pushed him instead towards an experimental variety of posts in which he believed he could serve ‘his’ cause. Once Delors convinced himself that this economic competition, co-operation and solidarity could efficiently occur at the European level, and at the same time dissolve political emnities between European nation states, his support and passion for European integration was virtually a foregone conclusion. His appointment as Commission President in 1984 was in this respect an ‘accident’ waiting to happen, both to him and to the European Community, whose structures, as we saw earlier, contained spaces from which a ‘Mr Europe’ might one day emerge. Running through Delors’ public life were a quest for a measure of political independence (of mind at least), and a technocratic streak. In combination, these characteristics added up to a fairly close fit between Delors and the role and image of a ‘sage’—a ‘wise man’. In the history of public policy and specifically of European integration, ‘wise men’ have periodically been called upon to bring their wisdom, experience and personal integrity to bear on questions of political and technical complexity and stalemate. Although by the end of the ‘Delors decade’ this image might well have seemed at odds with an individual marked for life (at least for some—most of whom are in the UK) by his association with the ‘evils’ of federalism, it did form a thread which ran through much of Delors’ Commission presidency, and which underpinned his activity on leaving Brussels. After Brussels—preparing the future Delors had begun to groom the next generation of pro-Europeans before leaving his post as Commission President in January 1995. In France, before and during his years as Commission President, Delors had maintained the momentum in favour of European integration (as he saw it), in the form of his patronage of political and para-political clubs and groups such as

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Témoins and Echange et Projets. Although clubs such as Témoins were at the time of their creation generally assumed (by much of the French media, for example), to represent political ‘stables’ from which would emerge Delors’ favoured front runners for high French political office, their actual influence tended to be confined to the maintaining of Delors’ presence, and the currency of his ideas, in the pro-European camps of French politics; he said on more than one occasion that he saw his mission in France to be a European first, and Socialist second. Nevertheless, he took on the role as chair of Lionel Jospin’s campaign committee in 1995 when the latter stood as Socialist party candidate at the French presidential election of that year. Delors also fed ideas and support into the Socialist party after its victory at the 1997 French general election from his status as ‘invite’ on the party’s leadership committee (le bureau national: le Monde 16 February 1995:1), having previously, in January 1996, participated in the Socialist party’s special ‘Europe’ committee and conference, which produced the party’s position paper on European integration. To the European Socialist parties more broadly, Delors was available for advice and expertise, and was made honorary President of the Party of European Socialists in 1997. Alongside the role of paternal sage to the would-be Europeans of the future, Delors devoted a great deal of time whilst Commission President, to other roles requiring his patronage and/or expertise. Whilst still in Brussels, for example (and as noted in Chapter Five), he cultivated the growth, within the Commission, of the Cellule de Prospective (CDP) (the Forward Studies Unit) which undertook amongst other things the task of co-ordinating the meeting of minds in a number of different forms.3 One major initiative, for example, took the form of the ‘crossroads’—les Carrefours—between science and culture. In this venture, Delors and a handful of members of the CDP invited individuals from the worlds of European intellectual, spiritual and scientific thought to to focus their collective mind on the benefits for and significance of the European level of their activities, and on the meaning of ‘Europe’. Delors attached considerable importance to this series of meetings, which he attended in person.4 A different form of influence exercised by Delors whilst still at the Commission arose from the position he accepted in 1996 (and prepared for whilst still at the Commission) as Chair of the UNESCO International Committee on Education for the Twenty-First Century. Issues of access to life-long learning had preoccupied Delors throughout his career (cf. his legacy in France in the form of legislation on vocational and continuing education, as seen in Chapter Two), and he described the invitation from UNESCO as an offer he simply could not refuse.5 The work culminated in a publication (Delors, 1996), to which Delors’ personal contribution (13–35) was entitled ‘Education: the necessary Utopia’, and culminated in a call for ‘broadening international co-operation in the global village’. Delors’ conviction, which grew throughout his decade in Brussels, that economic interdependence and a ‘new society’ called for better international

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governance (but not government) was as much pragmatic as Utopian in quality, and on leaving the Commission in 1995 Delors wrote publicly (for example in the French weekly news magazine le Nouvel observateur) on several occasions of the need, as he saw it, for better-structured internationally co-ordinated economic governance. For example, with relation to Economic and Monetary Union, he proposed a better balance between the ‘Maastricht criteria’ emphasis on monetary and financial convergence on the one hand, and the co-ordination of economic policy—which he says he tried to emphasise in the 1989 Delors Report on EMU—on the other. These efforts intensified around the time of the November 1997 European Council summit devoted to ‘Employment’, and at the following December 1997 Luxembourg European Council meeting. Delors’ argument was that EMU must ‘walk on two legs: a monetary leg on one side, and an economic leg on the other’ (Grant, 1998:14), and to this end he proposed a ‘Pact’ for the coordination of the Euro-11 economic policies, and the constitution of a ‘pôle économique: the institutionalisation of political responsibility for the consequences of EMU. Delors had already, before leaving the Commission, expressed his interest in a form of international Economic ‘Security Council’ (by analogy with the UN Security Council)6 to prevent and cure the potential ills of unregulated global monetary speculation and currency flows. On leaving the European Commission, however, Delors’ principal outlet for his analyses and diagnoses of European and global economic activity was the Groupement d’Etudes et de Recherches (‘Research and Policy Unit’) Notre Europe. Delors created this organisation and took its chair in August 1996, and it formally began its work in January 1997. In Autumn 1999, the group underwent its first major change of personnel, when Delors (whilst remaining President) became more involved in the CEO, and the association’s secretary-general, Christine Verger (a former member of Delors’ cabinet at the Commission) became secretary-general of the Socialist Group in the European Parliament. The group’s objective is ‘the study of Europe— its history and civilisations, path to integration and future prospects’.7 It aims to reach this objective by participating in public debate, which it considers it does in two ways; first, by ‘publishing internal research papers’ (grouped under the title of Problématiques européennes [European issues]); and second, by ‘collaborating with outside researchers and academics to produce contributions to the debate on European questions’. Notre Europe also acts as a platform from which Delors has given scores, if not hundreds of speeches in his own right, to a broad spectrum of audiences in many member states of the EU. The organisation has also organised a handful of European-wide conferences (on EMU, economic convergence and employment, industrial relations in the EU and National Employment Pacts), and ‘organises meetings and conferences in association with other institutions and press agencies’. The links between Notre Europe’s publications and Delors’ Europe are not hard to establish. By way of example, and in the Problématiques

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européennes series, the think-tank has published papers on Germany and EMU, and on a ‘new model of development’. Subjects covered by the ‘Research and Policy Papers’ series—the contributions by external experts— include the questions of ‘closer co-operation’, as in the Amsterdam Treaty (de la Serre and Wallace, 1997), and the intellectual debate in Britain on the European Union (George, 1998). Notre Europe’s publications are ‘aimed at a limited number of policy-makers, politicians, socio-professionals, academics and diplomats in the different countries of the EU’, although it has been noted (European Voice 9–15 July 1998:17) that ‘Notre Europe’s undoubted strength lies in the membership of its 21-strong board. It is a list which would open doors almost anywhere in the Union.’ The board’s members include former prime ministers such as Felipe González and former European Commissioners such as Viscount Davignon. The board’s voice was heard, for example, in 1998, in the proposal of one of its members (Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, also a member of the European Central Bank) that each European political family should, in the 1999 European elections, ‘campaign behind their preferred candidate for the post of European Commission president’ (European Voice ibid.; also le Monde 20 May 1998:4). This suggestion chimes with Delors’ oft-repeated view that the EU needed a public persona. The board had perhaps more influence when it subsequently backed Romano Prodi as the Commission president to succeed Jacques Santer. The establishment of the Comité d’Orientation européenne is in many ways a next stage in the development of the board’s membership and activities, and the CEO is seen by Delors in any case as the overseer of Notre Europe’s ongoing brief to produce and disseminate applied research into European issues. At the centre of Notre Europe’s capacity to fulfil this role is a small (generally six-strong) and hand-picked team of young researchers drawn from the EU member states. One of the team has always been a graduate of the College of Europe in Bruges, a training ground for young European minds, and of which Delors is President. Through both its contacts with present European leaders, and via its encouragement of the next generation of pro-Europeans, therefore, Notre Europe has acted as a vehicle for Delors’ ideas and his supporters on the questions of European policy, polity-making and governance which drove him through his years as Commission president. Some may see Delors’ public activities on leaving the Commission as a compromise falling short of his true ambitions. In this view, Delors will have regretted passing up the chance to stand for election as French President in 1995, and will perhaps have experienced some bitterness that he was not called upon as a ‘wise man’ in the tradition of the EC/EU’s sages, formally to influence the reform of the EU’s institutions, for example during the 1996–7 Intergovernmental Conference, or since.8 It is impossible to judge Delors’ own feelings about his fortunes post-January 1995 until (or unless) he chooses to record and publish them (although he has spoken publicly of his disappointment with the outcome of the 1996–7IGC and the Amsterdam Treaty: Delors, 1998b).

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Even then we would be left with the usual problem of memoirs substituting for memory in the form of a personal and inevitably selective rendering of events, however faithfully the diary form might be followed. It is in any case relatively easy to assume that in many ways, public life for Delors after Brussels took him full circle, and willingly so: back to the spheres and circles of influence through ideas and networks of like-minded people which characterised many of the years of his life before Brussels; and away from the summits of power to which he had been drawn and exposed as Commission President. Winning the French presidency in 1995 could well have prevented him from pursuing the strong Europe with strong institutions that he thought vital for France and the EU: the most plausible of the political reasons for Delors not standing as the Socialist party candidate for the presidential election was ‘his realization that the EU had passed the “Delors moment”.’ (Ionescu, 1995:108.) Removed from political power, Delors both made way for France to have a more ‘Delorist’ government than he could have hoped to appoint (Grant, 1998:16), and reverted to his more familiar methods of exerting influence. ‘L’unité d’un homme’?9 Running the risk of superimposing a wishful linearity and coherence onto a varied fifty-year political life, sociologist Dominique Wolton asked Delors, in 1994, about the thread which drew together the different parts of his life (Delors, 1994b:388). Delors replied, in kind, that it was a permanent urge to question the established order of things. Elsewhere, but responding to similar requests (Delors 1995b), Delors said that he hoped that historians would judge his public life (or at least the part of it spent in Brussels) as a passionate exercise in innovation, and as an ‘engineer on the European construction project’ (as he said of himself in his 1985 inaugural speech to the European Parliament, in Chapter Four above) who had a method by which to reach goals set by others. From a different perspective, as seen in Chapter One, Delors has also described his public life as a quest for the post which would allow him to wield legitimate influence. By all or any of these standards, Delors would appear to have achieved his own aims and objectives, and to have reached the pinnacle of his public life in these terms during his decade as Commission President. From Brussels, Delors’ was certainly a strident voice advocating what were invariably innovative, and variably timely or untimely proposals for reaching the goals which the Heads of State and government had set themselves (on occasions when nudged to do so by Delors). He rarely failed to challenge the status quo, and certainly demonstrated signs of the ‘insatisfaction qui me taraude’ (the ‘dissatisfaction which plagues me’), that he had also shared with Wolton in the above exchange. It is hard to contest, furthermore, that Delors succeeded in influencing European integration during his decade as Commission President. Our studies of the White Papers of 1985 and 1993 have provided a number of lessons in this respect.

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The White Papers themselves were (and it is relatively easy to see this with hindsight) linked components of the sense of strategy with which Delors maintained the Commission’s momentum, at some cost to its internal organisation and morale. The strategy was abstract and Utopian, in the sense of wishing to provide a conceptual and visionary framework—a model of society—for existing and future intergovernmental agreements; and pragmatic and political in its various proposals that were made to the Heads of state and government. The 1992 initiative, encapsulated in the 1985 White Paper on Completing the Internal Market, was influential in that it marshalled existing trends and work in favour of a concrete and relatively uncontroversial goal. It was probably decisive in setting the pace and timing of the reforms which ensued. In the case of the 1993 White Paper on Growth, Competitiveness and Employment, the Commission—and Delors—were far less decisive in setting an agenda for future EU-level action; but influential in maintaining the visibility and momentum of a set of policy ideas. Beyond the White Papers themselves, my overview of the different phases of the Delors years associated with each of the White Papers point to Delors being instrumental in the taking shape of key intergovernmental agreements (for example on Economic and Monetary Union; on the financing of the EC/EU’s policy commitments) through his various roles as technical expert, ‘policy entrepreneur’ and ‘ingénieur’ providing ‘cognitive leadership’ (Dyson and Featherstone, 1999:691–745), or as broker of the common denominator (the case of the Delors I and II budgetary reform packages). In policy terms therefore, Delors’ impact as European leader was variable, but primarily operated in the form of ‘conscience’ or ‘memory’, ‘entrepreneurship’ or ‘agenda-setter’, rather than a more decisive goalsetting role. He adopted different tactics in changing circumstances, and on occasions demonstrated himself to be brittle in the face of change. Nonetheless he did not break (by resigning, or withdrawing his labour), and maintained the momentum of the Commission throughout his decade in the presidency. The explanation for the variability of Delors’ influence during his decade lies in the limitations of the Commission presidency, and it was the combination of Delors’ personal skills with those limitations that forged Delors’ lasting contribution to the post, and to the would-be polity that he inherited. This combination was accidental (like most accidents, a confluence of factors waiting to collide), and its impact on the politics of legitimacy in the EU constitutes Delors’ lasting European legacy. Delors brought to the post of Commission President a ‘personal equation’ which in 1984 was far from obscure or unknown to those who appointed him by ‘common accord’, and which, without much stretching of the imagination, could have been construed back then as likely to act as a catalyst upon the norms and structures of the EC. Cerny10 has defined the ‘personal equation’ as ‘the coincidence of several factors…which will condition the individual actor’s potential effectiveness in different

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leadership situations’ (1988:132–3). Cerny somewhat reluctantly (given the vagaries of ‘personal leadership’ and its measurement) invents a scale in order to measure a leader’s ‘personal equation’, using the poles of ‘passive/ reactive’ and ‘active/anticipatory’. It is not hard to demonstrate or to accept that Delors arrived in Brussels in January 1985 with a reputation for scoring very highly on both the ‘active’ and ‘anticipatory’ measures, and his role in bringing the 1985 White Paper to fruition provided initial evidence of these dimensions to his leadership persona. Throughout his public life, Delors had demonstrated the urge to ‘be useful’—active—and to take initiatives—to anticipate—often in an idiosyncratic direction when compared with the mainstream of the French governing elites. He had not exercised formal, institutional leadership roles, but had offered to those interested a form of leadership by ideas, and thus the inspiration to work towards shared goals. As Cerny also noted, a leader’s personal equation, however active or anticipatory, is activated ‘only in so far as opportunities for action are appropriately structured’ (ibid.); in other terms, leadership occurs through the interaction of a leader’s skills or ‘personal equation’ with the rules of leadership: the structures and norms within which it operates. These opportunities lie in the prevailing circumstances; in the ambient ‘body politic’ or ‘political nation’ (Cerny’s terms for the various interests and their representatives with which the leader must relate); and in the leader’s relationship to the ‘State’ (defined as the ‘legal and conventional characteristics’ of the ‘formal hierarchy of state offices’; the external relations of the State as a whole, and the ‘ideological aspects of the state—its pattern of legitimacy, its cultural image and structure, its myths’ (ibid.: 134)). In Delors’ case, we can take the ‘body politic’ to mean the diversity of national, sectoral and political interests which it is the Commission’s duty— and dilemma—to reconcile; and the ‘State’ to refer, first, to the identity of the EC/EU as an actor in both international and domestic member state politics; and second, to the power relations between its various institutions, at the heart of which is the Commission. A Commission President is expected simultaneously to act autonomously of the various interests represented in the ‘body politic’ of the EU in pursuit of a ‘higher’ general, collective, community European interest; and to forge unity from the diversity of interests contained in the ‘body politic’ of the EU, by means of timely policy proposals. This is one of the Commission’s legitimacy dilemmas as explored in earlier chapters, and one where Delors was influential in rehabilitating the Commission’s reputation and institutional weight in the Community system. One of the ways in which he did so, however, was to alter the rapport de force that had traditionally prevailed between the Commission and the rest of the Community system; i.e. the status of the Commission and its president within the EU ‘State’. In this respect, earlier chapters have demonstrated that Delors disturbed a balance and flawed logic which had become facts of Community life avant-

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Delors. By applying his force of character to the potential of the post of Commission presidency’, he converted the presidency into a post in which he was treated as an equal—if an idiosyncratic and dissimilar equal—by the heads of State and government. Since Delors’ departure, the Commission presidency has become more, not less, political in this respect, in a number of ways. The combined political ‘weight’ of the members of the College has not become any lighter. The Commission appears to be allowed to consider itself as a ‘government’ (to use Romano Prodi’s term), with the political and ethical accountabilities to the ‘state’ and citizens that are characteristic of modern political executives. The founding treaties are gradually providing for more, not less, decision-making by qualified majority voting, in which the Commission’s institutional prerogatives are preserved and extended. The Commission President is expected to carry political status, and has been granted formal authority over his commissioners regarding both their initial appointment, and the shape and relative prestige of their individual workloads. Where the other ‘state’-like qualities of the EU are concerned (its ‘pattern of legitimacy, its cultural image and structure’), the extent and timescale of Delors’ impact is still unknown. Since leaving the Commission he has elaborated his ‘theory’ of a non-exclusive ‘European Federation of nation states’ within a second, wider European space, in which citizens know ‘who does what’, institutions are efficient and democratic, and the nation states retain their vitality and diversity. Moravcsik might see such notions as fallout from the ‘bitter lesson Delors drew from his difficult experience in the Maastricht negotiation’—the ‘persistence of national power’ (1998:472). Delors’ belief in the ongoing European ‘rescue’ of the nation state (Milward 1994) may have been sharpened by the Maastricht experience, but Delors’ parler clair in these respects, during and after the Delors decade, has at least set some of the parameters for present day debate. In this respect, the wise men’s report written for the Commission in October 1999 follows Delors’ lead in advocating a bold, transparent and fast resolution of these dilemmas.11 Similarly, Delors’ conviction that in the absence of a directly-elected European President (a scenario he raised as a logical possibility rather than as a personal ambition), member state leaders were primarily responsible for the successful management of the Europeanisation of domestic politics and government, in part through developing a ‘pédagogie de la réforme (Delors, 1998a:204–5), still seems valid. Likewise, Delors’ proposals for the survival and renaissance of a ‘new left’, social democratic ‘model’ of socio-economic development have not disappeared from the agenda of EU business; if anything they climbed closer to the top, in 1999, than at any time during Delors’ decade, with a stronger emphasis, in EU orthodox rhetoric at least, on the ‘fixed values’ (Delors, 1998b) which should guide future European integration (‘peace, prosperity, non-discrimination, pluralism, democracy, economic freedom, solidarity and social cohesion’).

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In these respects, Delors can lay some claim to a reputation as a transforming leader à la Monnet in the history of la construction européenne. It took Jean Monnet and his political allies to build new institutions, a succession of national leaders to shape the limitations of these institutions, and Monnet’s successors—the statesmen of interdependence, foremost of whom was Delors—to inject meaning and significance into these institutions periodically by disrupting their routines in the manner of Max Weber’s ‘charismatically-legitimated’ leader (Gerth and Mills, 1948). As Alain Juppé, the French Foreign Minister then presiding the EU institutions, said in January 1995 on Delors’ departure, the decade 1985–95 had been characterised by the Delors ‘mark’ and ‘method’ (Agence Europe 6404, 23– 4 January 1995:6). The function and impact of charisma is to disrupt continuities, usually but not always in the teeth of crisis, and it cannot generally be institutionalised, or ‘routinised’. In the case of the Commission presidency, however, the gradual raising of its political quality and status (and of expectations of the Commission’s standards of behaviour) would suggest that the assumed benefits of a ‘strong’ Commission president have been institutionalised, but in exchange for promises of greater efficiency, transparency and accountability—the weaknesses of Delors’ Commissions. Jacques Santer, Delors’ immediate successor, was chosen in part because he held out the promise of the antithesis of the Delors style. This development suggests that Delors’ legacy was not to impose on the Commission presidency a blueprint of Community leadership for his successors. Instead, Delors’ unique contribution to the politics of European integration was to highlight the complexity of the EU leadership puzzle, and to offer, by a combination of chance, logic and ambition, a demonstration of a new leadership option for a new Europe. He acted out the contradictory claims to legitimacy laid upon the Commission by the founding treaties, demonstrated the extent to which the member states are complicit in maintaining this state of affairs, and highlighted the disadvantages of this situation for an EU which, during Delors’ decade, increasingly ‘had to find its legitimacy in itself (Benoît, 1997:151). This study of Delors’ contribution to the process of legitimating ‘Europe’ began with an interest, part scientific and part personal, in the individual leader and his or her influence in the political process. Influence in this context is understood not only as something measured by success or other results, but as the grey areas of expectations, image, perceptions, iconography and proxy. Delors brought the Commission presidency to the public attention, and thereby heightened the contradictions of the post, the contested nature of the EU as a polity, and the ambiguities in his own public life—the discontinuties and blindspots in the ‘unitary’ Delors. Studying the leadership of political characters remains fraught with difficulties of conceptual, empirical and methodological orders. Frameworks which offer a systematic and comparative analysis of leadership resources (Cole, 1997, 1998; Elgie, 1995; Endo, 1998b)—of the ‘interplay of structure and agency’,

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the ‘balance between resources and constraints, the ‘performance of leadership roles’, and the ‘relationship between leadership and power’ (Cole, 1998:122–3) are generally most convincing in isolating and evaluating the personal factor from structural and other variables, although they by definition minimise what is most immeasurable in the personal factor. Approaches which alternatively focus on the uniqueness of ‘great men’ or on the ‘charisma’—the gift of grace—of individual leaders tend to underplay what is constant in the structures of stable contemporary democratic politics. My focus on Delors’ sources of legitimacy, the legitimation strategies he adopted, and the images which were part of his impact as leader, is intended to offer an additional perspective on the condundrum of personalised politics in the democratic age. Notes 1 Interview with Delors, 15 July 1999. 2 ‘Jean Monnet’s Action Committee was founded in 1954 to mobilize support for the Common Market and Euratom treaties. Mr. Monnet’s goal was to unite in one organization the leadership of all political parties and interest groups sympathetic to the cause of European unity.’ (Lindberg and Scheingold, 1970:33.) 3 Delors also says that he saw this unit as a tool to bypass bureaucratic inertia within the Commission. 4 The first results of this venture were published in 1994 as Les Carrefours de la science et de la culture, En Quête d’Europe. In this book, Delors wrote (1994a: 11–12) that his reason for setting up these meetings was to invite ‘philosophers, historians, political scientists and scientists’ to lend meaning to the notion of ‘Europe’ following the ‘shock’ of 1989. He went on to describe how, having made personal contact with the representatives of Europe’s ‘grandes families religieuses et morales’, he set up the Carrefours: meetings of one and a half days held three times a year between intellectuals, and Delors and a small number of his collaborators at the Commission. Meeting in places of historical significance for Europe, Delors and his colleagues questioned their different guests on the questions which dominated life in the Commission. Delors described the activity as a sort of ‘extra-mural’ university for the twenty-first Century from where he hoped would emanate decisive reasons and rationales for European unity. 5 Interview with Delors 15 July 1999. 6 Agence Europe 7 June 1994, reported Delors as expressing his support for such an initiative to ‘open debate’, citing him as saying that: ‘The Economic Security Council should bring together the major economic powers and vertical organisations in order to gradually develop “rules of the game” for the world as a whole, for the global village.’ See too the Herald Tribune 30 August 1993. 7 Taken from Notre Europe’s mission statement. The organisation can be contacted at 44, rue Notre-Dame des Victoires, 75002 Paris, France. Telephone: 00 33 1 53 00 94 40/41; Fax: 00 33 1 53 00 94 44; email: [email protected]. 8 In Spring 1998 there was talk of appointing Delors to head a wise men’s committee on institutional reform. The idea probably came from French President Jacques Chirac. It came to nothing. See: Sunday Times 10 May 1998; FT 13 June 1998; le nouvel Observateur 14–20 May 1998:25.

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9 Delors (1994b) was published under this title, which he says was chosen jointly by his publishers, Odile Jacob, and his wife (Interview, 28 April 1997). It translates, literally, as the ‘unity of a man’. 10 I thank Laura Cram for reminding me of Cerny’s framework. See Cram and Drake (1996). 11 Von Weizsäcker et al (1999).

Appendix: List of people interviewed for this book

These interviews were all conducted between 1993 and 1999. Where no dates are given for the title or function of the interviewee, the title or function given is that of the post held at the time of interview. The interviewees are listed in alphabetical order. Marc Abélès, Professor of social anthropology, Conseil national de recherche scientifique (CNRS): 27 October 1994, Paris. Chris Boyd, Member of Delors’ cabinet, 22 November 1994, Brussels. Fernand Braun, Director-General, DGIII (1985 White Paper), 22 November 1994, Brussels. G.Ciavarini-Azzi, Secretariat General, European Commission, 23 March 1993 and 7 December 1994, Brussels. Fraser Cameron, Secretariat General, European Commission, 24 March 1993, Brussels. Lord Cockfield, Vice-President, European Commission (1985–8), 22 March 1995, London. Mme. Collonval, Historical Archives of the European Commission, 23 November 1994, Brussels. David Coyne, Member of the cabinet of Sir Leon Brittan, 29 November 1993, Brussels. Françise de la Serre, Professor of Political Science, Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris, 18 October 1994, Paris. Jacques Delors, President of the European Commission (1985–95), President of the Groupement d’Études et de Recherches Notre Europe, 28 April 1997, 3 September 1997, 16 December 1997, 19 October 1998, 15 July 1999.

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Appendix

Bruno Dethomas, Spokesman, European Commission (1989–95), 15 December 1994, Brussels. Klaus Ebermann, Secretariat General, European Commission, 22 November 1994, Brussels. Claus-Dieter Ehlermann, Legal Services (1985), Spokesman (1988), European Commission, 15 December 1994, Brussels. John Fitzmaurice, Secretariat General, European Commission, 25 March 1993. Brussels. Adrian Fortescue, Chef de cabinet to Lord Cockfield (1985–8), 7 December 1994. Brussels. Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, President of the European Commission (1977–81), 6 June 1995, London. François Lamoureux, Member of Delors’ cabinet, 16 December 1994, Brussels. Pascal Lamy, Delors’ chef de cabinet (1985–94), 9 August 1999, Paris. Theodius Lennon, Deputy chef de cabinet to Bruce Millan, Commissioner, 2 December 1993, Brussels. Christian Lequesne, Professor of Political Science, Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris, 25 July 1994, Paris. Anna Melich, DGX, chef d’unité, European Commission, 23 March 1993, Brussels. Emile Noël, Secretary-General of the European Commission (1958–87), 14 November 1994, Paris. Michel Petite, Member of cabinet to Lord Cockfield (1985–9) and Jacques Delors (1992–5), 15 December 1994, Brussels. Jean-Louis Quermonne, Professor of Political Science, Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris, 8 November 1994, Paris. George Ross, Professor of Sociology, Brandeis University, 1 July 1995, Bath University. Christine Verger, member of Jacques Delors’ cabinet (1986–93), 25 October 1994 and 2 March 1995, Paris. Jérôme Vignon, member of Jacques Delors’ cabinet (1985–8), Cellule de Prospective, European Commission, 24 November 1994, Brussels. David Williamson, Secretary-General, European Commission (1987–97) 3 March 1995, Brussels.

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Index

acquis 114, 115 administration 5, 9, 52, 55, 59, 64, 71, 106 Adonnino Committee 88 affaires sociales see industrial relations agency: human 3, 23, 51, 153 agenda/s 2, 15, 16, 20, 26, 83, 126, 150 Amsterdam Treaty see Treaty of Amsterdam artisan 17, 32, 133 autodidact 15, 27, 32 Bangemann, M. 132, 135 Banque de France 30, 31–3, 37 Barre, R. 28 barriers (to trade) 86, 93–5 Brittan, L 132 Bruges: College of Europe 148; speeches at 116, 117 cabinet: Delors as government minister 45; Delors as President of the Commission 84, 105, 131–2; Delors in Chaban-Delmas’ cabinet 38–40 CAP (Common Agricultural Policy) 62, 63, 70, 116 catholic 30 Catholicism 30, 47 see also church Cellule de prospective (Forward Studies Unit) 45, 118 131–2, 146 CES (Conseil économique et social) 32 CFDT (Confederation française démocratique du travail) 32 CFSP (Common Foreign and Security Policy) 17, 117, 118, 122

CFTC (Confederation française des travailleurs chrétiens) 31–3;37 Chaban-Delmas, J. 38–40 charisma 153, 154 Cheysson, C. 83 Christian-Democrat 14 Christophersen, H. 132 church 17, 29, 30; Catholic 31, 134 Citoyens 60 33, 36, 37 civil servant (French): Delors as 19, 27, 30, 36–40 civil society 96, 107, 132, 144; see also intermediaries Clermont-Ferrand 30 Clichy: Delors, mayor of 43 Clinton: administration 21; President 132 Cockfield, Lord 21, 92, 94, 105, 106, 113, 129, 133, 137 cohesion 83, 105, 152 collegiality 19, 118 Comité d’orientation européenne (CEO) 144 Commissariat du Plan see French Planning Commission Commission of the European Communities: as a bureaucracy 9, 52, 54, 55, 59, 67; College of Commissioners 9, 10, 12, 59, 71, 78, 83, 84, 90, 92, 105, 106, 131, 133; commissioners 9, 10, 56, 59, 64, 70; Directorate-General III (Internal Market and Industrial Affairs) 21, 92, 131); legitimacy: ‘community’ 82, 105, 114, 137; crisis 6, 7; deficits 8; dilemmas 8, 51, 53, 72, 82, 114, 120, 139,

181

182

Index

151; ‘diplomatic’ 10, 55, 82, 107, 118; ‘parliamentary’ 10, 55, 82, 107, 120; portfolios 69, 70, 83–4, 90;porte-parole 84; Presidentdesignate 69, 74, 90–2, 96; Secretariat-General 64, 131; services 12, 59, 83, 84, 131–2 Common Market 62, 86 Community system ix, 8, 11, 19, 20, 51, 58, 96, 105, 107, 121, 133, 138 constituency/-ies 9, 12, 15, 16, 21, 63, 82, 83, 84, 85, 96, 97, 120 Convention des Institutions républicains (CIR) 36 Council of Ministers 4, 12, 37, 41, 44, 56, 61, 62, 63, 71, 86, 87, 96, 102, 104 craftsman see artisan customs union 61, 85, 86 Dauphine (Paris University) 40 Davignon, Viscount 70, 148 de Gaulle, C. ix, 3, 4, 8, 34, 35, 37, 61– 66, 73, 119 decentralisation 18, 33, 41 Defferre, G. 36 Dehaene, J.-L. 134 delorism 38, 43, 46 delorist 80, 138, 149 Delors Committee on Economic and Monetary Union (The Committee for the Study of Economic and Monetary Union) 2, 114, 147 Delors Paquet I 83, 104, 114, 150 Delors Paquet II 115, 118, 125, 129, 150 Delors, L. (Delors’ father) 30 Démocratic 2000 34 discourse 4, 15, 16, 17, 20, 22, 24–5, 63, 93, 97, 100, 105, 119, 128, 129, 133, 137, 138 Dooge Committee (Ad Hoc Committee for Institutional Affairs) 88, 102 Echange et Projets 40–1 Economic and Social Committee (EC/ EU) 115, 135

ECSC (European Coal and Steel Community) 36, 57, 58, 61, 64, 66 EDC (European Defence Community) 36, 84–5, 121 education 14, 18, 27, 30, 32 EEC (European Economic Community) ix, 4, 36, 57, 64, 66, 68, 84 empty chair 62 EMS (European Monetary System) 44– 5, 69, 94 EMU (Economic and Monetary Union) 11, 68, 80, 84, 91, 115, 117, 118, 122, 123, 124, 125, 147, 150; see also Delors Committee on Economic and Monetary Union ENA (I’Ecole normale d’administration) 27, 40 enlargement 1, 64, 115, 118 ERT (European Round Table of Industrialists) 91 Euratom 64, 66 European Central Bank (ECB) 148 European Council: Delors and 12, 41, 44, 55, 83, 138, 139; Fontainebleau (1984) 89; Brussels (1985) 101, 128; Milan (1985) 102–3; Luxembourg (1985) 103; Hanover (1988) 104; Strasbourg (1989) 115; Edinburgh (1992) 115, 124, 125; Copenhagen (1993) 124, 126, 127; Brussels (1993) 127, 132, 134, 135; Corfu (1994) 135; Essen (1994); Luxembourg (1997) 147; general 13, 59, 68, 69, 135, 136 European Court of Justice 98 European Economic Area 1, 115 European Federation 10, 117, 138 European Federation of Nation States 18, 92, 119, 152 European Parliament: de Gaulle and 62, 63, 65; Delors and 12, 16, 41, 83, 90, 91, 97–101, 105, 116, 117, 133–4, 149; Delors member of 42, 43, 91; Draft Treaty establishing the European Union 87; general 6, 9, 10, 53, 55, 56, 74, 87 Europeanisation 152 Fabius, L. 42, 90

Index FDGS (Federation démocratique de la gauche socialiste) 36 federal approach 92, 119 federal method 117 federalism 16, 18, 145 federalist: Delors as 17, 92 federalist-functionalist 56, 65 Federation of Nation States see European Federation of Nation States Federation see European Federation Fifth French Republic 14, 19, 26, 28, 34–47 forces vives see intermediaries and see civil society formula 84–5, 96, 138 Fortescue, A. 105 Forward Studies Unit see Cellule de prospective founding fathers ix, 106 founding texts 10, 65, 72, 85, 86, 95, 100, 138 founding treaties ix, 7, 8, 10, 71, 72, 98, 152, 153 Fourth French Republic 31–5 French Communist Party see PCF French left 18, 29, 34–5 French Planning Commission 32, 36–8 French presidential election: Delors as non-candidate 23, 46, 146, 148, 149 Front républicain 35 Gandhi, M. 2 GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) 14, 116, 118 general interest: European 10, 14, 20, 22, 29, 53, 54, 57, 58, 59, 61, 65, 67, 71, 74, 82, 105, 114, 115, 116, 118, 136, 137, 151 Genscher-Colombo ‘Draft European Act’ 87 Giscard d’Estaing, V. 8, 69, 70 Gonzalez, P. 148 Gore, A. 132 governance 29, 51, 52, 56, 79, 148 government minister: Delors as 43–5, 47, 90 Great Britain 6, 64, 105

183

growth initiative 124, 126 Hague Congress: and Delors 29 Hallstein, W. ix, 61–6, 71, 83, 85, 86 harmonisation: of standards 86, 93, 102 Heads of State and Government see national leaders High Authority 19, 57, 58, 60–1 image/s 1, 2, 3, 8, 12, 13, 15, 16, 23, 87, 105, 113, 117, 153, 154 industrial relations 36, 38–9, 42 influence x, 2, 3, 4, 8, 11, 12, 18, 19, 20, 28, 51, 81, 82, 89, 99, 107, 114, 139, 146, 153 Integrated Mediterranean Programmes 83 Intergovernmental Conference 7, 78, 102, 103, 106, 115, 118, 148 intergovernmental consensus: Delors and 22, 74, 82, 87–90, 91, 92, 95, 101, 113, 116, 118, 121–3, 137; formula including 85; general 19, 55, 60, 66, 69 intermediaries 16, 17, 18, 38, 90; see also civil society internal market 2, 21, 70, 78, 84–5, 88, 89, 92, 93, 94, 95, 97, 99, 102, 103, 104, 113, 129, 137; see also single market interviews: method xi-xii; format and Delors 17 Jacques, R. (Delors’ pseudonym) 31 Japan 88 Jean Monnet Action Committee for the United States of Europe 144 Jenkins, R. 13, 69–70, 73, 80 Jeune République 35 Jospin, L. 146 Juppé, A. 153 Kohl, H. ix, 6, 13, 90, 91, 113, 127 Lamy, P. 12, 21, 27, 40, 56, 57, 105, 132 language 16, 29, 64, 70, 125

184

Index

leader: European 16, 59, 71; Europeanwide 10; supranational 11, 28 leaders see national leaders leadership: cognitive 150; European 1, 10, 28, 73, 137; personal 23, 138, 151; skills 3, 11, 51, 66, 68, 69, 82, 89, 139, 150, 151; systemic 52; transforming 2, 113–4; transactional 2 Left: France see French left legitimation x, xi, 4, 15, 20, 56, 72, 81, 87, 98, 154 Luxembourg Compromise 62, 70, 71, 89, 102 Maastricht Treat see Treaty on European Union Major, J. 119, 122 Malfatti, F.-M. 67–8 Mansholt, S. 68 Massé P. 32, 36 Mauroy, P. 44 May 1968 37 media x, xi, 1, 12, 15, 97, 116, 122, 123, 146; national 3, 12, 16, 53 memory xi, 13, 18, 72, 137, 149, 150 Mendès France, P. 35, 38, 43 MEP (Member of European Parliament): Delors as 29, 43, 47, 91, 93 Messina 85 Messmer, P. 40 militant (activist): Delors as 43 miners’ strike (1963) 37 Mitterrand, F. ix, 6, 8, 13, 26, 27, 34– 5, 37, 40–4, 87, 90, 91, 113, 119 model of society 26, 40, 81, 82, 129, 152 Monnet, J. ix, 2, 3, 12, 19, 42, 58, 64, 72, 144, 153; method 2, 10; see also Jean Monnet Action Committee for the United States of Europe Moravcsik, A. x, 3, 152 MRP (Mouvement républicain populaire) 31, 35 mutual recognition 86, 93, 102 myth/s 7, 8, 72, 107, 151

mythology 72 national leaders 6, 7, 9, 12, 13, 16, 17, 18, 29, 63, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 99, 101, 124, 149 new institutionalist 72 new society 38–40, 47, 78, 80, 120, 139, 146 Noël, E. 54 Nora, S. 38 Notre Europe 147–8 nouvelle société see new society OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) 41, 132, 144 Ortoli, F.-X. 68–9, 73 Padoa-Schioppa, T. 148 parti communiste français (PCF= French Communist Party) 34, 41 parti socialiste français (PS=French Socialist party post-1971) 26, 29, 34, 35, 36, 38, 40, 41, 43, 45, 117, 146, 149 parti socialiste unifié (PSU) 35, 36 Party of European Socialists (PES) 146 personalist 14, 78, 119 Petite, M. 105 Pinhero, J. 132 political science 2, 3, 10, 15 polity x, 3, 11, 15, 16, 51, 53, 107, 139, 150, 153; contested x, 8; polity-idea 8, 15 Pompidou, G. 38, 39, 40 power x, 2, 4, 8, 11, 13, 14, 19, 28, 30, 34, 38, 51, 107, 128, 133, 134, 139, 149, 151, 152, 153 Prodi, R. 3, 148, 152 public persona x, 7, 15, 17, 29, 43, 51, 53 qualified majority voting (QMV) 62–3, 66, 96, 103, 152 relaunch 20, 85, 91, 95 Rey, J. 66–7 rhetoric 15, 17, 93, 152

Index Rocard, M. 28, 35, 36, 40, 42 Santer, J. 3, 11, 55, 59, 120, 134, 136, 153 Schuman, R. 10 Schumann, M. 38 Sciences Po (I’Institut d’Etudes politiques de Paris) 27 semi-presidentialism 14, 27, 28 Single European Act (SEA) 2, 6, 13, 78, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 96, 97, 101–4, 105, 106, 107, 116 single market 2, 21, 80, 86, 91, 95, 97, 99, 103, 104, 105; see also internal market Social Chapter 1, 112, 115 Social Charter 2, 115, 124 social democratic 14, 152 social dialogue 83, 96 social Europe 91, 115, 116 social-delorism 38 see also delorism socialism: French 29, 30, 34 see also parti socialiste français Socratic method and Delors xi Spaak Committee 85 spillover 88, 93, 107, 115 Spinelli, A. 18, 57 statesmen 11, 23, 120, 153; European x, 48; of interdependence ix, 2 structural funds 83 Stuttgart Solemn Declaration 87, 88, 91 style xi, 12, 15, 17, 64, 67, 70, 96, 107 subsidiarity 16, 18, 34, 40, 117, 119, 125, 126, 133 supranational entrepreneurs 2, 3, 82; entrepreneurship 4 Témoins 132 Thatcher, M. ix, 6, 8, 13, 44, 60, 87, 91, 116, 119 think-tank 23, 32, 118 Thorn, G. 11, 70–1, 82, 88, 89–90, 93 timetable 21, 61, 62, 85–6, 102, 104

185

trades unions 27, 29, 31, 38, 47 Treaty of Amsterdam 8, 10, 53, 59, 74, 121, 136, 148 Treaty of Rome ix, 21, 54, 61, 62, 63, 71, 85, 86, 93, 94, 95, 98, 99, 117, 136 Treaty on European Union (Maastricht Treaty) 6, 14, 16, 51, 53, 59, 74, 118, 121, 123, 124, 138 triptych 81, 129 TUC (British Trades Union Congress) 16, 116 UK see Great Britain unanimous voting 62–3, 103 unemployment 18, 88, 124, 125, 126, 127, 129, 137 UNESCO 146 Union de la Gauche (PS-PCF electoral pact in the 1970s) 34 Union de la gauche socialiste (UGS) 35 Uruguay Round see GATT USA 12, 34, 88 Val Duchesse see social dialogue values xi, 8, 10, 13, 27, 72, 78, 100, 107, 152 van den Broek, H. 132 Verger, C. 147 Vie nouvelle 32, 33, 35 Vignon, J. 45 vision 2, 6, 12, 16, 66, 78, 80, 81, 93, 98, 101, 136, 139 Weber, M. 59, 153 White Paper: on Completing the Internal Market (1985) 20, 78– 107, 150, 151; on Growth, Competitiveness and Employment (1993) 81–2, 84, 113–39 Williamson, D. 131–2 wise man 144, 148, 152 Wolton, D. 149