Jacques Delors Quotes

If we are really on the way towards a political entity with a common foreign policy on basic issues, then I consider that France's nuclear force should be available to serve that policy.

The crux is the reform of the treaty which would lead to common action. There must be a will to defend the central interests of Europe. If there is no majority voting, then the same level of impotence will continue.

Europe will have 30 million unemployed by the end of the century if the continent's competitiveness and employment patterns are not rapidly changed. ... Europe's economic performance against America and Asia was declining and that the Community was faced with a choice between further decline and survival.

He thinks I am the man of the past but I am still here. He is the man of the past.

Cars are free to circulate but still there are speed limits, therefore I do not see why, at the international level, we should not study ways to limit monetary movements. Bankers cannot act at will. ... Why should we not draw up some rules of the game?

The spirit of the Right is dominated by scepticism towards the possibility of profound change in society and above all towards the idea that man can achieve progress over himself. On the Left, on the other hand, there exists a belief in human and social progress.

Federalism is a guideline, not a pornographic word, you can speak it out loud...We have been focusing too much on a country that has said no, no, no!

My feeling is that we will not be able to take all the decisions which will be necessary from now until 1995 unless there is the embryo of a European government in one form or another.

If we do not succeed with political union...then the historic decline of Europe which began with the First World War will resume.

[Greek voices] must not only be heard claiming their due but also contributing to the European Union.

Socialism had defeated her brand of ultra-liberal economics. ... [Margaret Thatcher believed that] the law of the market could be applied in the place of politics. She underestimated the dignity and grandeur of politics, which is an attempt to combine, an attempt to convince, an attempt to listen to others, to try to find a society which is not better but less bad than the one in which we live today.

According to [<nowiki/>John Major], the issue now is to build a greater Europe around a single market and some areas of co-operation, notably in the environment. Everything else is flexible. I call that Europe à la carte. This is not my thesis. Mine is: the fathers of the Treaty of Rome wanted not just peace among us, but also that Europe should be able to continue existing in a world in which they sensed profound change in the wind, without being able to describe it. In consequence, if we want our nations to keep their universal capacity together, they must unite politically, without nostalgia for the old order.

The Americans should stop insulting us, I'm not going to be an accomplice to the depopulation of the land. It's not up to the Americans to tell us how to organise our farm policy and the balance of our society. Their attitude is to treat the EC as if it had the plague and then encourage the rest of the world to join in.

Europe is a commercial giant and an economic power of the first rank, but it is a political dwarf. Political cooperation in the Community will grow. The question is whether the supply services will follow.

Socialism was not the socialization of losses and the privatization of profits.