Death of Jacques Delors: why did he give up the 1995 presidential election? Jacques Attali’s analysis

The death of Jacques Delors, who died on Wednesday at the age of 98, moved the entire continent. The day after his death, European leaders paid tribute to a great builder, president of the European Commission and former minister of François Mitterrand. He will also remain the man of a political twist: in 1994, and while he was the favorite, he gave up running in the presidential election the following year. An announcement that the politician made on television, during the show 7 out of 7presented by Anne Sinclair.

Jacques Delors had never envied the position of head of state, explains Jacques Attali, former special advisor to President François Mitterrand, at the microphone of Europe 1.

“He had the feeling that the French would not have wanted a policy of major reforms”

“I talked about it a lot with François Mitterrand, who summed it up very well: ‘Don’t be under any illusion, Jacques Delors has no desire to be elected President of the Republic, he wants to be appointed’ . Jacques Delors had a lot of difficulty with universal suffrage, because he was first and foremost a high official and a servant of the Republic.”

Faced with Anne Sinclair, Jacques Delors assured that he “would not have the means to implement his policy”. According to Jacques Attali, this is explained by the fact that “he had the feeling that, as always when he had been minister, that the French would not have wanted a policy of major reforms, a policy of efforts that were necessary. Unfortunately, Jacques Chirac did not accomplish it, neither in his first nor in his second mandate”, analyzes the former special advisor to François Mitterrand.