"Mr. Europe" Leads the Way

If Western Europe's plane ride toward market unity in 1992 has finally reached cruising speed, that is due in large measure to the skillful maneuvering performed by the craft's chief pilot, Jacques Delors. It was the shrewd but sometimes prickly Frenchman, shortly after he became the European Commission's President in 1985, who selected 1992 as the target date for eliminating trade barriers among the Community's twelve members. And it was Delors, 64, who conducted a nonstop p.r. campaign on behalf of the plan. His efforts have earned him the nickname "Mr. Europe" and comparisons to the late Jean Monnet, his fellow Frenchman and the architect of the postwar European movement.

When Delors arrived in Brussels, the Community had experienced more than a decade of drift, along with some unpleasant jolts brought on by two international oil crises. Even though the establishment of the Community in 1958 had resulted in the removal of some tariffs, Delors found that others still persisted and that customs requirements and manufacturing regulations remained rampant. The new E.C. chief quickly realized that the elimination of such impediments could not be accomplished within one four-year term of office, so he chose the end of the following term, 1992, as the deadline. At the time, Delors did not know that he would be reappointed to office and would preside over the transition to a new Europe.

The son of a messenger for the Banque de France, Delors is very much a self- made man. After graduating from high school, he worked for his father's employer by day and acquired degrees in law and economics at night. Politically, he has operated both sides of the fence. From 1969 to 1972 he worked as an adviser to Gaullist Prime Minister Jacques Chaban-Delmas, and from 1981 to 1984 he served as Socialist President Francois Mitterrand's Economy and Finance Minister. When in Paris, Delors lives with wife Marie in a five-room apartment near the Gare de Lyons. They have one married daughter Martine; their only son Jean Paul died of cancer several years ago. Delors's passions other than work are jazz, movies, soccer and the annual Tour de France, which he has twice observed as a commentator on French television.

For a bureaucrat who serves at the pleasure of a dozen bosses, Delors can be short-tempered and occasionally imperious. During one memorable speech last year, he accused a British representative on the 16-member European Commission of being "a lackey of the Labour Party" and referred indelicately to West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl as "fat-assed." His blithe contention that eventually E.C. officials would preside over 80% of the national economic and social decision making now conducted by individual countries infuriated Britain's Margaret Thatcher. So does his next major goal: replacing each nation's currency with a unified European monetary system. Delors rarely takes on Thatcher directly (surely a wise decision), but he does go right on talking. "We must build Europe every day," he says. "We must go all the way."