He always called me ma petite ("my little one"). I was 31, two decades before #metoo, and coming from him, it was full of tenderness and kindness. This very private mention is the first thing that comes to my mind as I write this tribute to Jacques Delors, the great master builder of the European edifice, of a grandeur and farsightedness that we miss so much today.

Many people have worked with and for Delors much longer than I have. As far as I am concerned, it was only for three years, between 1996, when the Notre Europe think tank was created in Paris, just after he departed from the European Commission, and 1998. But it was during this short period that, in retrospect, I feel I learned everything about Europe. A Europe of a time that no longer exists.

Delors' Europe was warm and welcoming. He would have loved the slogan "A Europe that protects," which we often heard in May 2019 before the last European elections. But he would have spontaneously associated it with European social protection, so close to his heart, and not protection in the sense of closure, of a besieged European fortress.

Architect of the internal market through the Single European Act of 1986 and of the common currency, established by the Maastricht Treaty of 1992, he also conceived the European Social Charter of 1989, which, of these three projects, was probably his favorite "baby." But this one was stillborn. The UK having refused to sign, the text of the Charter remained at the stage of a declaration of intent, expressing much goodwill but containing nothing that was legally binding.

At 25, I was too naïve to appreciate the importance of what was at stake. But later, in Paris, once with Delors, I often heard him bemoan the fate of this Social Charter that nobody wanted. The European Union does indeed, since 2004, possess a "European Company" statute, enabling certain companies to operate with a single legal status in all member states, but not a statute enabling the organization of co-determination or employee participation.

The "European company" has thus become a perfect European outfit, enabling a company to sidestep its national social obligations. Those are the single market imperatives. I don't know if anyone was more saddened by this situation than Delors himself, silently wondering whether he had not contributed to abandoning European workers to a single market devoid of the protections of the social Europe for which he had fought.

Delors' day-to-day life was above all about three things: L'Equipe, the unions and the Church. The sports daily L'Equipe was the first newspaper he read in the morning, and in the summer, he would study the results of the Tour de France in depth. The unions, for he was a great fan of Mitbestimmung ("German co-management"). He often spoke of it, and his public statements and writings abounded with references to European trade unionism, co-management and how it could be transposed to a European level. In short: for Delors, no Europe without trade unions and without the Church! In other words, no Europe without social justice and spirituality.

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