Jacques Delors Quotes

[I criticise those] countries that used currency devaluation as a lever to win jobs. I would refer you to one member state of the Community without name it. Those who devalue in an extreme way will find health at the expense of the rest of the Community. It's like three people shipwrecked—one person floats for the sake of the other two going under.

Farmers have their dignity, just as others do. It is fine to make efforts to make them react to markets, but you cannot then tie their hands and take away their choices. That is putting them in a straitjacket. ... I have always felt that the Community should be able to say 'No' to its big brother [America].

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.

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!

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.

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

It is not sufficient to have a strong economy to influence events. You also have to political and military power. ... A community limited to a big market refusing to resume its responsibilities and ambitions in the world will not be peaceful, will not be able to assure its children that they will live in security. [If Europe is to have political personality it would have to have] a common foreign policy in certain domains and military co-operation that will lead, before 1995, to the creation of a multilateral rapid intervention force.

The social and human balance of our societies depend on the farming world.

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.

My objective is that before the end of the millennium Europe should have a true federation. The Commission should become a political executive which can define essential common interests...responsible before the European Parliament and before the nation-states represented how you will, by the European Council or by a second chamber of national parliaments.

It is impossible to build Europe on only deregulation...1992 is much more than the creation of an internal market abolishing barriers to the free movement of goods services and investment...The internal market should be designed to benefit each and every citizen of the Community. It is therefore necessary to improve workers' living and working conditions, and to provide better protection for their health and safety at work...Europe needs you.

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.

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

I take what is good where I find it. I am for what the Anglo-Saxons call a 'policy mix' in the context of a mixed economy. ... I would simply say...without wishing to offend anyone, that you appreciate the distance which separates British Leyland from Renault. We want to have more Renaults. It is the difference between an industrial policy which succeeds and one which does not.

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.