With two wars raging on its borders, a world retreating from free trade and globalisation, strong migratory pressure on its southern shores, rising rightwing populist movements clamouring for national, not European, solutions and Donald Trump looming on the horizon, Europe is facing an extraordinary set of global challenges.

At the start of an election year that could also propel Eurosceptic nationalists into a strong position in the European parliament, the death of Jacques Delors, the most effective president the European Commission has ever had, reminds us of the era when EU integration made its greatest strides, delivering peace and increased prosperity for hundreds of millions of people. Delors, in many ways, made the EU the envy of the world.

In a decade in Brussels from 1985 to 1995, Delors built the European single market, launched the Schengen open-border area, prepared the way for the euro single currency, created budgetary funds to reduce the wealth gap between the richest and poorest regions, expanded the EU’s social legislation and initiated the Erasmus student exchange programme.

A former Christian trade unionist and French finance minister under Socialist president François Mitterrand, but who was never an elected national leader, Delors used his power of persuasion and the commission’s right of initiative to propose those policies – not to impose them. He was able to demonstrate that Europeans sharing sovereignty and working together strengthens us all, and strengthens democracy.

Delors’ unique skill lay in identifying ideas whose time had come, drawing up the required technical measures and working with national leaders to break down the barriers to a closer, more integrated union. Those leaders initially included not just Mitterrand and Germany’s Helmut Kohl, but........

© The Guardian