Jacques Delors interview: Euro would still be strong if it had been built to my plan - Telegraph
He also seems to think globalization threatens our way of life.
He also seems to think globalization threatens our way of life.
Jacques Delors is a master of all the technicalities of the argument, and all the Byzantine structures of the institutions, and speaks confidently in their jargon, but his mind seems burdened by deeper thoughts, too. He sees the crisis of the euro as part of something deeper and wider even than the credit crunch itself. He believes that the main social and economic “players” have their doubts about European policies.
“You hear it every day. You hear it in the markets. This is reinforced by populism in certain countries. Whether we like it or not, we are part of the West, and the West could possibly lose its leadership, and it is important that we preserve the values that matter not only to Europe, but to Britain and the United States — the values that are Judeo-Christian in origin — Greek philosophy and Greek democracy and Roman law, and the Age of Enlightenment and the French Revolution.”
Yet obviously, at the same time, we cannot “tell the President of China what to do. Other peoples want to preserve their values, and we want to preserve ours. This is the great challenge.”
So the crisis of the euro is all part of a crisis of the Western way of doing things? “Oui, c’est ça.”
“You hear it every day. You hear it in the markets. This is reinforced by populism in certain countries. Whether we like it or not, we are part of the West, and the West could possibly lose its leadership, and it is important that we preserve the values that matter not only to Europe, but to Britain and the United States — the values that are Judeo-Christian in origin — Greek philosophy and Greek democracy and Roman law, and the Age of Enlightenment and the French Revolution.”
Yet obviously, at the same time, we cannot “tell the President of China what to do. Other peoples want to preserve their values, and we want to preserve ours. This is the great challenge.”
So the crisis of the euro is all part of a crisis of the Western way of doing things? “Oui, c’est ça.”
Comment