ADEKEYE ADEBAJO: The success of Jacques Delors, architect of the EU, was unparallelled
He turbocharged the creation of a supranational union in the 1990s as the only way to compete with the US and Japan
18 March 2024 - 05:00
Given how crucial regional co-operation is to Africa, where intraregional trade is a paltry 14%, there was a surprisingly muted response to the recent death, at 98, of one of the last century’s greatest architects of regional integration: Jacques Delors.
Delors served as France’s economics and finance minister under Socialist Party president François Mitterrand between 1981 and 1984. He demonstrated his determination to forego ideological straitjackets to find practical solutions by stabilising the falling franc and implementing an austerity budget while seeking to promote social welfare...
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