Reluctance in France and Britain kept the commitment to political unity weak. Still, four countries — Austria, Norway, Finland and Sweden — have Mr. Joined the union when Delores was president.
Mr. Delores married Marie LeBile in 1948. He died in 2020. Their son Jean-Paul died of leukemia in 1982. Their daughter Mrs. Aubrey was a prominent socialist politician and longtime mayor of the northern city of Lille. France. Apart from her, Mr. Delores' survivors include a granddaughter.
At the end of his tenure, Mr. Delors was seen as arrogant in asserting the EU's power over its member states. Critics say the rise of a school of Eurosceptic politicians in France, Britain and Denmark in the 1990s was a reaction to his excesses and part of his legacy.
However, he was popular in France. In 1994, he declined to run for president, even though opinion polls put him comfortably ahead of eventual winner Jacques Chirac.
He was held up nostalgically by some in Europe as a model of leadership in the depths of the euro crisis.
“If Delors was in charge in Europe, Mitterrand in France and Kohl in Germany,” Greece's Deputy Prime Minister Theodoros Pangalos said in 2010, “things would not be the same.”
Paul LewisFormer European correspondent for The Times dies in 2022. Landon Thomas, Aurelian Breeden and Herbert Buxbaum contributed reporting.
