The former President of the EU Commission and key figure in the creation of the euro currency, Jacques Delors, has been confirmed dead.

Delors’ demise was confirmed by his daughter, Martine Aubry, on Wednesday, December 27.

Delors, who was 98, died in his sleep in his Paris home on Wednesday, she said.

The former EU Commission President, a Socialist, had a high-profile political career in France, where he served as finance minister under President Francois Mitterrand from 1981 to 1984.

But he declined to run for president in 1995 despite being overwhelmingly ahead in the polls, a decision he put down to “a desire for independence that was too great”.

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“I have no regrets. But I’m not saying I was right,” he said about that decision later.

He headed up the European Commission from 1985 to 1995, a decade that saw major steps in the bloc’s integration.

These included the completion of the common market, the Schengen accords for travel, the Erasmus programme for student exchanges, and the creation of the bloc’s single currency, the euro.

French President, Emmanuel Macron, on Wednesday, called Delors “a tireless creator of our Europe”.

Posting on X (formerly Twitter), Macron said: “His commitment, his ideal and his rectitude will always inspire us.”

Delors was “a statesman with a French destiny”, Macron added.

The Star