Jacques Delors, architect of the modern EU and ‘Mr. Europe,’ dies aged 98

Jacques Delors, a Paris bank messenger’s son who became the visionary and builder of a more unified Europe in his momentous decade as chief executive of the European Union, has died in Paris, the Delors Institute think tank told The Associated Press Wednesday. He was 98.

For many, the owlish but hard-driving Socialist and Catholic was simply “Mr. Europe.” The EU, which stretches these days from Finland to Portugal and is home to more than 500 million people, was dubbed “the house that Jacques built" by a popular biography.

Under his 1985-1995 tenure at the head of the European Union’s bureaucracy in , member countries agreed to tear down barriers that prevented the free movement of capital, goods, services and people.