FORMER EU leader Jacques Delors died in Paris on Wednesday aged 98. 

As president of the European Commission between 1985 and 1995, Mr Delors led efforts to tear down barriers that prevented the free movement of capital, goods, services and people across the EU.

He previously served as French finance minister in Francois Mitterrand’s Socialist Party government.

Mr Delors was the prime mover behind greater economic and monetary union, which led to the creation of the European Central Bank and the euro currency. He courted trade union support with promises of a “social Europe” embedding pro-worker policies in his capitalist super-state.

Communist Party of Britain general secretary Rob Griffiths explained that Mr Delors’s single market was “based on the free movement of business, capital and cheap labour, with monetarist policies dictated by an unaccountable European Central Bank.” 

He added: “Tragically, the British trade union movement fell for his cunningly anti-socialist illusion of a ‘social Europe,’ thereby handing the banner of democratic sovereignty from Nye Bevan and Tony Benn to the likes of (Nigel) Farage and (Jacob) Rees-Mogg, much to the relief of the New Labour clique.”