It was with great emotion that we learned of the death of Jacques Delors, to whom we would like to pay a special tribute since our paths, and those of Franck Biancheri in particular at the very begining of his European path, crossed in the course of European history.
In 1985, Jacques Delors – a 60-year-old French politician and Minister of Finance and the Economy (1981/1984) – was appointed President of the Commission of the European Communities (a post he held until January 1995), and was to be a fundamental builder of the Europe we inherit today;
That same year, 1985, Franck Biancheri, a 24-year-old French student (old enough to be his son, or even his grandson), founded the EGEE association (Association des Etats Généraux des Étudiants d’Europe, which is still active today), and in April 1985 organized its very first congress, which welcomed some 350 European students to Paris, under the high patronage of French President François Mitterrand and the patronage of Commission President Jacques Delors (see archives EGEE).
Franck Biancheri would leave these first meetings with a mission: to launch the ERASMUS program, which would also be one of Jacques Delors’ first battle horses, enabling him to score one of the first victories in the tug-of-war between the European Commission and member states.
- If, “the arrival of Jacques Delors marked new ambitions for this cooperation program” … it was “supported by the Association des États Généraux des Etudiants de l’Europe (AEGEE) created in 1985 around Franck Biancheri” declared in 2016 Elisabeth Guigou (then, General Secretary of the Comité interministériel pour les questions économiques de coopération européenne (SGCI), reporting to the Prime Minister and Finance Minister J. Delors).
- “In early 1987, AEGEE members met successively with Dutch Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers, Belgian Prime Minister Wilfried Martens and Helmut Kohl’s advisors. In addition to this European tour, François Mitterrand grants them a meeting during which the President proposes to support the creation of the Erasmus program.” (source: Melchior, 2016).
The other meeting point was the Euro.
Here too, for Jacques Delors, a purely economic, monetary and financial tool to carry the power of “Europe”. For Franck Biancheri, an instrument, the greatest political challenge the EU has ever faced, and the opportunity to create a vast community democratic space where citizens, and not just institutions, can take ownership of the EU, through voting and choice, as always in a democracy. (In “Tomorrow the Euro” – From a Euro-currency to a Euro-citizenship – Franck Biancheri, 1997).
For both Jacques Delors and Franck Biancheri, this crossroads will go down in the history of Europe on the one hand, and of Euro-citizens on the other.
While Jacques Delors worked on the techno-structural economic completion of European construction, Euro, enlargement, Schengen, the single market, subsidiarity in reverse, and so many other achievements… , Franck Biancheri worked on its democratization and on giving the citizens of Europe the indispensable tools for its governance: evaluation of community programs, defense of European languages, trans-European citizens’ think tanks, trans-European political parties, trans-European media, trans-European online elections, and so many other commitments…
RIP Jacques Delors ✞
In memory of Franck Biancheri, prematurely deceased in 2012, eurocitizenly yours,
The friends of Franck Biancheri
