Attracting the interest of socialist leaders: a challenging proposition

During the 1980s, democratic socialism encountered significant hardships. At the national level, socialist governments, particularly in France and Southern Europe (Greece, Spain and Portugal), failed to lastingly implement alternative economic and social policies. They quickly endorsed austerity measures and prioritised curbing inflation as a means of vying with the US and Japanese economies. Some scholars have concluded, somewhat hastily, that these decisions pushed the socialists in office to ‘embrace neoliberalism’.¹² While in no way disregarding the current debate over the role of ‘neoliberalism’ in the radical transformation of Western capitalism (and social democracy) in the past decade,¹³ the prevailing mood among socialist leaders at the time was one of resignation rather than enthusiasm. In 1983, when the French Socialist government officialised its conversion to austerity – a turn it had discreetly initiated from late 1981 onwards¹⁴ – socialist heads of state and government held a series of meetings organised by the French Socialist Party. Confidential records from these meetings highlight the growing doubts of socialist party members about the possibility of building a socialist alternative in economic and social policy. The concerns expressed by the French Prime Minister Pierre Mauroy and his Swedish and Greek counterparts, Olof Palme and Andreas Papandreou, resoundingly echoed the cool, straightforward analysis of Mario Soares, the Portuguese president. Soares proclaimed (in fluent French, which he learned in exile in Paris under Salazar’s dictatorship):

In southern Europe, we came to power not through expansion (as in the North), but in crisis and because of the crisis. The problem is then how not to disappoint and to retain power.… In Portugal, we had a revolution, but it veered in the direction of a popular democratic type of regime. The Socialist Party opposed it. [We] reintroduced market-based elements into a quasi-collectivised economy. As a result, we were unable to either conduct a social policy or satisfy the capitalists. We regained power because the conservatives failed! We are going to defend the mechanisms that we denounce (such as the IMF [International Monetary Fund]). How can this contradiction be reconciled?¹⁵

At the turn of the 1990s, this mentality prevailed among central socialist leaders and experts in Northern and Southern Europe, most of whom accepted the 1986 Single European Act (SEA) and EMU, which were founded on pro-market principles. In France, the then Prime Minister Pierre Bérégovoy relentlessly professed his faith in a hard currency as the architect of the politique du franc fort, which prioritised economic policies that favoured a balanced budget and decreased inflation over full employment.¹⁶ In Sweden, the administration of Olof Palme initiated a major shift in economic policy in 1985. Palme’s objective was to curb inflation, but the tools he deployed marked ‘the beginning of a set of austerity budgets’ that transformed employment ‘from a social citizenship entitlement to a market variable’.¹⁷ The Soares and Felipe González administrations in Portugal and Spain endorsed similar policies to avert economic crisis, characterised by the rampant protectionism championed for years by Salazarism and Francoism. The political scientist Cornel Ban described the policies implemented by González and his aides as ‘embedded neoliberalism’.¹⁸

Although most socialist politicians and experts contended that the SEA and the Maastricht Treaty ‘removed the option of national Keynesianism’,¹⁹ a minority refused to renounce Keynes’s ideas. Most of these actors were affiliated with the CSPEC and/or the Socialist International. In conjunction with the meetings of the Acteurs du changement (Agents of Change), Joop den Uyl, the CSPEC president and the leader of the Dutch Labour Party (PvdA) from 1966 to 1986, informed his comrades at the Bureau that a working group chaired by Willy Claes intended to address mass unemployment in the EEC. The group’s members supported a ‘Euro-Keynesian’ approach to economic policy that differed significantly from the austerity policies being put in place by Socialist national governments. The Claes group appeared to be the most active of the CSPEC’s working groups during the 1980s. Its first responsibility was to draft the article that addressed economic and social issues for the manifesto presented by the CSPEC for the 1984 European elections. The document endorsed what experts in the Claes group called the ‘3Rs’: ‘a selective and planned recovery’; the restructuring of national economies ‘through the modernization of the European framework based on the development of research and the diffusion of technological advancements’; and ‘radical redistribution of work and wealth’.²⁰ In other words, economic recovery required a concerted relaunch coupled with the regulation of multinational firms and an improvement in annual working time.²¹ Although these principles were updated to reflect an increasingly globalised and Europeanised economic framework, they underscored the clear connection between the intellectual roots of the Claes group’s experts and ideas espoused by left-leaning members of the British Labour Party and French Socialist Party in the 1970s.²² Although there were huge differences in terms of institutional structures, political culture, electoral trends and governmental experience, the economic programmes designed by both parties in the early and late 1970s developed very similar analyses of the capitalist crisis and the solutions to get out of it. On the economic and social levels, the strong similarities between the Alternative Economic Strategy (AES) developed by the left wing of the Labour Party and the Programme commun de gouvernement concluded by the French Socialist Party and the French Communist Party in June 1972 were striking.²³ Both documents called to radically reshape capitalism through the reinforcement of the public sector, stronger economic planning in which the trade unions should play a prominent role, and the setting up of self-management within private and public firms.²⁴ The common cultural background of the experts who wrote these political programmes undoubtedly contributed to this unexpected convergence. Their common readings – notably the US neo-marxists like Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy as well as John Kenneth Galbraith – and their socialist engagement also led them to call for the introduction of harsh regulations to control multinationals at the national and European levels.

The Claes group strove to promote an updated version of this legacy. The ‘3Rs’ failed to gain an audience outside of CSPEC circles, as illustrated during an informal meeting of European socialist elites a few days before the 1984 elections. At the conclusion of the meeting, the leaders issued a statement asserting their faith in a concerted economic relaunch facilitated by EEC member states to overcome mass unemployment. Confidential recordings of the meeting provide a conflicting account, however. Security issues were the central topic of the meeting, whereas economic issues were scarcely addressed. Joop den Uyl expressed frustration at the uncooperativeness of the Danish and British Socialists. Tensions escalated when the topic of Euromissiles was broached. Neil Kinnock, the new Labour Party leader, argued that a Labour administration would facilitate the removal of missiles from the United Kingdom to which Mario Soares abruptly replied: ‘We speak foreign languages. If Labour must withdraw the cruise missiles, then I prefer that they lose the election’.²⁵ These divergences between socialist leaders’ priorities on the national level and the Bureau of the CSPEC demonstrate why ‘More Jobs for Europe’ failed to influence European social policy.

By 1993, the political climate among socialist elites had shifted radically. Socialist Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) and their CSPEC colleagues felt a need to rejuvenate their approach to social Europe, which had reached a stalemate, as the president of the Socialist Group in the European Parliament (SGEP), the French Socialist Jean-Pierre Cot, stated during a meeting between the group and the CSPEC in May 1992.²⁶ Having previously supported rapid ratification of the Maastricht Treaty, which was unpopular among the citizens of member states (as illustrated by its defeat in the Danish referendum), MEPs called for ‘a political response to social injustice, unemployment, and growing regional imbalances’ at a European level to address inequalities perpetuated by the single market.²⁷ In this atmosphere of uncertainty, the speech that Allan Larsson delivered to the SGEP in Stockholm sparked significant interest.²⁸ Larsson’s growing influence in European socialist circles can be attributed to this speech and his work as both a politician and an expert within SAMAK.²⁹

In early September 1993, the PES leadership held a two-day conference in Arrabida, Portugal. The persistent issue of unemployment was the central focus of debates. The Spanish Prime Minister Felipe González suggested that the PES establish a high-level working group for the purpose of developing a socialist employment initiative. His proposal was widely welcomed by his comrades.³⁰ Socialist leaders formally asked the Swedish Social Democratic Party (SAP) to draft a working paper addressing the following objectives: reducing unemployment, creating new jobs, preserving European competitiveness and modernising social protections for workers. The SAP leader, former Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson, delegated the task to Allan Larsson, his former finance minister.³¹ Whereas Larsson benefited from broad PES support, his Belgian counterpart Willy Claes had navigated a considerably weaker and more divided institutional framework a few years earlier.

The triumph of politics over expertise in the (Euro)party

Despite their mutual political affiliation, the Claes and Larsson groups operated within two different organisations. The archives of the CSPEC highlight perpetual internal conflicts throughout the 1980s, not only between the Bureau and the national leaders of the Socialist MEPs, but also within the Bureau. Accordingly, the Claes group’s recommendations failed to appeal to a wider audience beyond socialists who already subscribed to these principles. As Edgard Pisani noted in an impassioned speech to the members of the Bureau: ‘Where is the obstacle? It is in the presence of the British; not because they are nasty, but because they are different and the Group did not attempt to make the necessary synthesis among the different European socialisms’.³² Although most members in European socialist circles expressed their concerns less abrasively than Pisani, all of them acknowledged how problematic the Labour Party’s approach to European issues was. The situation remained relatively unchanged until 1987; without being the sole cause, Labour’s rampant Euroscepticism nurtured persistent divisions within the CSPEC as well as the Socialist Group in the European Parliament, which prevented them from weighing in on European affairs. Regarding the Spanish Socialist Enrique Barón’s initial defeat in the presidential election of the European Parliament, Joop den Uyl decried the ‘general weakness of social-democracy’ – albeit in a more diplomatic tone than Pisani.³³

Throughout this period, the Claes group was weighed down by an internal political lack of cohesiveness. A few days after the Bureau ratified what its members considered the final draft of ‘More Jobs for Europe’ in March 1984, the Labour Party sent a telex calling for numerous amendments. Unlike the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and the European Monetary System (EMS), which British Labour staunchly opposed, employment policy did not figure prominently in the Party’s grievances. Nevertheless, their points of disagreement with the original document were significant enough for the Bureau to convene a special meeting to address the challenges posed by the Labour Party’s position. Increasingly irritated by internal CSPEC divisions, the French Socialist Party leader, Lionel Jospin, decided to personally attend the meeting. The participants failed to reach an agreement on the Claes text, however, and chose to exclude the report from the forthcoming CSPEC Congress, while encouraging Claes to further develop ideas as a ‘basis for an extraordinary conference, a workshop, a special meeting of the Bureau, or the setting up of a “conference of workers”’.³⁴ In other words, the members of the Bureau ‘elegantly’ stripped the document of political legitimacy. Shortly after the ‘disguised funeral’ of the Claes report, Jospin fiercely criticised the incompetence of the CSPEC:

I believe that the first observation we should make, on the eve of the Congress of the Union of EEC Socialist Parties, is that the union of our parties is not up to its task. I wish to say it clearly because this is our sentiment. The European Economic Community is very important for our countries, and I would even say increasingly important … But the Union of EEC Socialist Parties is not considered by us as an important political organization. I believe that it is best to be honest with ourselves: in any case, this is how we, in the French Socialist Party, see it.³⁵

Lamenting the failure of the Party and the SGEP to influence European policymaking, Jospin contended that until radical structural reforms were initiated by the CSPEC, the documents produced by the organisation would remain confidential. The CSPEC could continue to uphold the status quo or submit to new guidelines:

A number of meetings, bilateral or between several leaders, have allowed for often-exciting political exchanges, focused on the most important problems. I am thinking, for example, of the meetings of Southern Europe where leaders saw each other during two days and compared their internal political situations, discussed the problems of socialism in Italy, in Greece, in France, in Spain, in Portugal, and had the highest-level political exchanges centred on the main issues. These were meetings that we always found very, very useful and very exciting.³⁶

Jospin’s intervention sparked a lively debate. Joop den Uyl again denounced the British and Danish socialists for undermining the CSPEC. Nevertheless, few changes in the CSPEC occurred following this meeting. The situation that Jospin described in 1985 remained at an impasse until the birth of the PES in November 1992. Although European socialists relentlessly called for a ‘Social Europe’, their positions on the topic remained ambiguous throughout the 1980s.³⁷

The creation of the more structured PES signified an improvement in relations between elite party members, fostering an ‘intimate atmosphere’ that was propitious to ambitious initiatives such as the EEI.³⁸ Like Delors, the PES advocated for ‘the shaping of capital-labour relations at a supranational level’, one of the goals supported by promoters of a socially oriented European framework.³⁹ Larsson was especially shrewd in capitalising on the opportunity afforded by the founding of the PES. The preliminary stages of the EEI demonstrated that Larsson took particular care to inform socialist leaders and the Delors cabinet of each development.⁴⁰ By contrast, the CSPEC had been unsuccessful in establishing a close working relationship with the Delors cabinet, socialist commissioners, or socialist leaders of European nations. The reconfiguration of the party contributed significantly to the growth of a large coalition among European socialists. Nevertheless, these new developments would not have occurred if the Larsson group had supported the ‘Euro-Keynesian’ approach promoted by the Claes group in the previous decade.

A farewell to ‘Euro-Keynesianism’

The Claes group consisted of approximately thirty experts but only two members of the German Socialist Party, probably due to significant ideological divisions within the organisation,⁴¹ whereas the French Socialist Party, the Belgian Flemish Socialist Party, the Spanish Socialist Party and the British Labour Party were represented by four or five experts. The archives of the working group offer historians insights into the experts’ principal intellectual influences. Paradoxically, although the British Labour Party had rejected numerous recommendations of the Claes group, the analytical framework of ‘More Jobs for Europe’ was chiefly inspired by British economists close to the left wing of the party. These individuals had played a central role in the architecture of the Alternative Economic Strategy, which the Labour leadership reluctantly endorsed during Wilson’s term in the early 1970s – and championed more enthusiastically under the leadership of Michael Foot after Labour’s 1979 electoral defeat. The academic ‘Euro-Keynesian’ economist and British MP Stuart Holland acted as an intermediary, connecting the analysis developed by the ‘Out of Crisis Project’, an informal research group he created in the late 1970s, with the CSPEC and the Socialist International, which began drafting their reflections on economic crisis at the same time.

The volume published by the members of the ‘Out of Crisis Project’ in 1983 synthesised ten years of research. In his preface, Holland highlighted the foundation of the group’s economic approach: ‘Several members of the group had criticised Keynesian analysis for its failures to account for changes in the supply structure of capital some time before the new “supply side economics” emerged from the monetarists’.⁴² He also noted that most members of the group – among them Delors⁴³ – were now ministers, MPs, executive party members or advisers to top socialist leaders. Holland also emphasised the persistent faith of group members in planning economic models. Like the left wing of the British Labour Party in the 1970s and early 1980s and later the Claes group, the ‘Out of Crisis Project’ advocated an economic alternative founded on the ‘3Rs’ – reflate, restructure, redistribute – to counter the trend towards ‘beggar-thy-neighbour’ deflation. The design of the ‘3R’ strategy suggested recourse to econometric models, particularly the model forged by the Cambridge Economic Policy Group (CEPG).⁴⁴ These scholars, who worked closely with the left-wing experts of the British Labour Party, offered support to the architecture of the AES, whose neo-protectionist philosophy was inspired by Nicholas Kaldor’s work.⁴⁵ Like Holland and Kaldor, some of the scholars themselves (such as Wynne Godley and Francis Cripps) were committed to the left wing of the Labour Party.

The influence of this Labour Party economic faction, which was discernible in the Party manifesto for the 1983 general election, rapidly declined after their overwhelming electoral loss to Margaret Thatcher. Stuart Holland presumably responded to his intellectual marginalisation within the party by moving towards more receptive European socialist circles. He relied on close contacts within the CEPG when he began working for the Socialist International a few months after the publication of the ‘Out of Crisis Project’. The Socialist International had indeed decided to propose an economic and social alternative to austerity at the same time as the formation of the Claes group. In April 1983, the Albufeira Congress of the Socialist International recognised the need for a set of policies aimed at recovery and reform of the world economy. To this end, the Bureau established the Socialist International Committee on Economic Policy. Michael Manley, President of the People’s National Party in Jamaica, was elected chairman, and Oscar Debunne, International Secretary of the Socialist Party of Belgium, became secretary. The Committee’s inaugural meeting began at the Socialist International Bureau meeting in Brussels in November 1983.⁴⁶ The Manley group endorsed the political recommendations issued in a series of documents drafted between the mid-1970s and the early 1980s: the declaration for a new international economic order adopted by the UN General Assembly dominated by the G-77 in May 1974; the Charter of Economic Rights and Duties for States adopted in the same arena in December 1974; the report on Common security issued by the Palme Commission in 1983; and above all, both reports issued by the Brandt Commission in 1980 and 1983.⁴⁷ Their common goal was to reshape the existing economic international order within which mass poverty and inequalities were increasingly growing. Like the Brandt Commission,⁴⁸ the Socialist International strove to find a third way between the neoliberal order defended by the Ronald Reagan administration and the radical ‘new international economic order’ the G-77 at the United Nations called for in the middle of the 1970s.⁴⁹ In 1985, the Socialist International presented an alternative to monetarism and the international economic order embodied by the so-called ‘adjustment policies’ that the IMF required of Southern countries in exchange for loans.⁵⁰ This report, entitled Global Challenge, was based on the reflections developed within the Manley group. The document urged the Reagan administration to break with its monetary policy based on overvalued dollar and high interest rates induced by the famous 1979 Volcker Shock. Far from limiting itself to economic and social issues, this document conflated and closely linked the three main preoccupations of the Socialist International since Willy Brandt took its presidency in 1976: common security, North–South dialogue and human rights.⁵¹ The internal debates of the Manley group, however, showed that its members were worried about their ability to weigh in on the policymaking of West European socialist parties in office. As Manley’s opening address to the Kingston meeting in Jamaica illustrated, distrust was the dominant feeling – and the Jamaican leader openly emphasised their disappointing record.⁵² These concerns were founded. Global Challenge failed to arouse any attention among Western European national socialist elites.

Nor did it really spark the interest of the CSPEC. Despite common concerns, the Claes group did not develop any renewed ideas about the transformation of the economic international order. Its members remained clearly focused on the issue of mass unemployment within the EEC. Regarding the global challenges, especially the relationship with Southern countries, they only endorsed the recommendations of the Brandt reports. A few months before the elections to the European Parliament in June 1984, the Claes group published a pamphlet entitled ‘European Solution to the Crisis’, which was a contribution to the common electoral manifesto adopted at the end of the Conference of the CSPEC in Luxemburg on 8–9 March. Only half a page out of fifteen specifically dealt with the issue of solidarity with Southern countries, whereas the conclusion of the document very succinctly called for a new monetary international system inspired by the recommendations inserted into the second Brandt report in 1983.⁵³

An ‘epistemic community’⁵⁴ subsequently emerged from the collective research of the New Cambridge School, the ‘Out of Crisis Project’, the Manley group of the Socialist International, and the Claes group. Experts such as Jan Pronk and Stuart Holland circulated easily from one group to another, conveying a set of economic and social ideas based on the ‘3Rs’. Both played a crucial role in the design of Global Challenge. In a similar vein, Oscar Debunne’s nephew, Georges Debunne, played a prominent role in the Claes group at the time, composing an article on flexibility and the reduction of working time that was inserted into an updated version of ‘More Jobs for Europe’.⁵⁵

These groups all met in Brussels, strengthening the ties between politicians and experts. One of the most active experts in the Claes group, the Belgian economist Ludo Cuyvers, acknowledged his debt to the FERE (Fédération européenne de recherches économiques) working group, ‘Europe in the World Economy’, whose research used

a neo-Keynesian (Kaldorian) model originally developed by the Cambridge Economic Policy Group (Department of Applied Economics, University of Cambridge, UK), which encompasses the world economy as a closed system and in which real income and spending in the nine world blocs of countries are linked to each other via changes in the international trade flows.⁵⁶

Similarly, ‘More Jobs for Europe’ explicitly referenced the 1985 Manley report produced by the Socialist International to rationalise the socialist appeal of a concerted relaunch.⁵⁷

Strictly speaking, the working papers produced by the different supranational socialist organisations endorsed the same analytical framework that was formalised by the experts of the ‘Out of Crisis Project’. As previously mentioned, this body of work failed to gain an audience outside the narrow circles of ‘Euro-Keynesian’ politicians and experts. The prevailing economic culture among European socialist leaders and their aides – not to mention the senior civil servants implementing economic policy at national and EEC levels – was simply too dissimilar for a dialogue to be initiated. The pleas for a concerted relaunch and structural reforms to capitalism were brushed aside.⁵⁸ Like many other initiatives, ‘More Jobs for Europe’ was dismissed primarily because its call for flexible employment policy was inserted into a broader proposal to radically reform capitalism.

Nevertheless, ‘Euro-Keynesianism’ remained influential within the PES when Larsson was appointed as a lead expert. Despite the warm reception that socialist leaders gave Larsson’s ‘active employment policy’, the Nordic approach to the labour market did not immediately become dominant in European socialist circles. In December 1992, the PES had created a working group on economic and social issues co-chaired by the French Socialist Gérard Fuchs (a close colleague of the former Prime Minister Michel Rocard and a vice-president of the PES) and Mario Didò, a senior member of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) who had just regained his seat as an MEP.⁵⁹ The Southern European Socialists were considerably more influential in the group than its Nordic members. According to the list of affiliates, only two of the thirty members belonged to a Nordic social democratic party. In August 1993, the group issued a paper entitled ‘Eight Recommendations for Growth and Employment’. The document characterised its analytical framework as a derivative of ‘communitarian Keynesianism’, largely inspired by the European Growth Initiative adopted by member states at the Edinburgh European Council meeting in December 1992. The Fuchs–Didò group supported a voluntarist industrial policy, which echoed the ‘neo-mercantilist’ initiatives developed by the European Commission in the early 1980s.⁶⁰ In light of protectionist Japanese and US industries, the report’s authors called for a significant increase in the EU budget to support large-scale investment in research and development. This return to neo-mercantilist principles was coupled with a call for the adoption of the principle of préférence communautaire, or community preference, in the EU commercial policy, that is, giving priority to member states when a non-EU country failed to provide minimal social protections for its workforce.⁶¹ Moreover, the working group raised the controversial issue of working time reduction, which was strongly opposed by the British Labour Party and the Greek Pan-Hellenic Socialist Movement, PASOK. Symbolically Larsson, who was supposed to attend, never attended a meeting of the group.⁶² In September, the Fuchs–Didò document was submitted to the socialist leadership in Arrabida, but it failed to spark their interest; Larsson’s ideas prevailed.

Consequently, the Fuchs–Didò group was abruptly sidelined in favour of the Larsson group, whose members promoted an approach to employment policy that the leaders considered more practical within the EMU framework and closer to their own vision of economic policy. From Larsson’s perspective, Europe would be well advised to follow the precedent set by Japan, which had succeeded in combining strong economic growth with a decrease in unemployment and inflation in the 1980s. Although Larsson understood that Japanese employment policy was not replicable in a European context, he nevertheless called attention to the European labour market’s contrasting inability to create numerous jobs despite economic expansions. Larsson’s analysis addressed three challenges: the rigidity of the European labour market, the growing shortage of skilled labour that created a ‘mismatch’ between supply and demand, and the insufficiency of the EMU for providing jobs and welfare for all Europeans. To resolve these issues, Larsson encouraged European leaders to closely study the Japanese model of youth education and training. He called for an active and developing employment policy, for which Nordic – from his perspective, Swedish – and Japanese models could provide vital inspiration. The Swedish MP underlined the need for increased flexibility – a taboo word among the European socialist milieu – in the labour market, coupled with improvements in the welfare of workers.

Although the Larsson group had the advantage of working within a more efficient organisation, its chairman was keenly aware of the necessity of proposing a social alternative that did not challenge the macroeconomic and monetary framework of the EMU. This strategy enabled ‘Put Europe to Work’ to gain credibility outside socialist circles, particularly at the head of the European Commission.

The key role of Jacques Delors and his cabinet

Shortly before assuming the leadership of the European Commission, Delors was cordially welcomed at a CSPEC meeting. Addressing the attendees, he underscored the deep divisions between member states on a wide range of topics. During the debate, Delors claimed that the Commission would propose a challenge to ‘Reaganism’ and the Japanese export industries through the creation of a large European internal market. He stressed that this concept of a common market would be inextricably linked with the promotion of ‘an original social model’ and that the CSPEC could count on the support of the socialist commissioners. Willy Claes seized this opportunity to mention the activities of his working group and asked Delors whether a close collaboration over socio-economic issues would be possible. The President of the European Commission responded favourably to Claes’s call.⁶³

Despite his many obligations, which included the implementation of the SEA, Delors honoured his commitment. Presenting the activities of his group at a Bureau meeting in December 1985, Claes informed his colleagues that the head of the European Commission had sent him a working paper suggesting six axes to restore competitiveness in the EEC. Joop den Uyl congratulated Claes on his new-found cooperation with Delors, although their amicable relationship never resulted in a firm partnership.⁶⁴ In 1987 and 1989, Christine Verger, a new representative of the Delors cabinet,⁶⁵ attended the CSPEC Congresses in Lisbon and Brussels. Her analysis of both was consistent: the resolutions supported by the ‘Europarty’ were ambiguous and were significantly weakened by internal conflicts between the British Labour Party and other member parties.⁶⁶ As a result, Verger dismissed the documents as politically unviable. Her summary of the manifesto designed by the CSPEC for the 1989 election to the European Parliament crystallised the grievances of the Delors cabinet towards the organisation:

The proposed Manifest developed under the leadership of E. BARON has been the focus of several difficult meetings that have resulted in a 24-page text with 78 points, extremely dense, and in any case scarcely usable for the outside … the sum of compromises in nearly every area, some of its passages remain highly controversial, particularly for the Danes and the British.⁶⁷

Relations between the CSPEC and the Commission were similarly a disappointment for European socialists, as noted by the SGEP president, SPD member Rudi Arndt, during a meeting of the Bureau.⁶⁸

This cordial but ineffective partnership between CSPEC and Delors resulted in three interconnected developments. First, the positions adopted by the ‘Europarty’ were deemed too radical and vague to be inserted into the Commission’s own work. As Moschonas stated, many ‘socialists and social democrats want a powerful, more left-oriented Europe’ through a strong social policy, particularly regarding employment, but ‘they do not possess the requisite institutional and political means, perhaps not even the ideas, for refocusing integration’.⁶⁹ Moreover, the Delors Commission prioritised the establishment of Economic and Monetary Union over employment policy and the broader conception of a ‘Social Europe’ throughout its first term.⁷⁰ Last, the working papers that Delors sent to the Claes group were again greeted with scepticism by the British Labour Party. Although it conceded the fact that an agreement could be reached concerning five of the six axes to restore European competitiveness as proposed by Delors, its representatives remained firmly opposed to his approach to the European internal market. From their perspective, the SEA would exacerbate regional inequalities, severely limit the macroeconomic flexibility of national governments by preventing them from enacting a voluntarist industrial policy and inviting a general movement towards deregulation. Their statement on the matter was openly disparaging of Delors:

The internal market is a political mechanism intended to extend the field of action of market forces and weaken the role of government and labour unions. We reject the free-market principle on which it is based, and, at the same time, we believe that the concrete effects of these proposals would be extremely pernicious.⁷¹

The President of the European Commission nevertheless maintained his ambition that ‘the new architecture of Europe pivoted on a triptych: competition-cooperation-solidarity’.⁷² Following his celebrated speech to the Trades Union Congress in Bournemouth in 1988, Delors at last succeeded in rallying the Labour Party and British trade unions to his cause.⁷³ His initiative contributed to the accelerated reshaping of Labour’s European policy initiated by Labour leader Neil Kinnock one year earlier, when he launched a general ‘Policy Review’. According to Patricia Hewitt, the Review’s coordinator, Kinnock aimed at making Labour ‘a modern European democratic socialist party’.⁷⁴ At the turn of the 1990s, Eurosceptic supporters did not vanish within the Labour Party, but they had been sidelined by the leadership. Kinnock’s European turn thus greatly facilitated the participation of British Labour members in supranational initiatives.

Two years later, the Larsson group benefited from improved relations with the British Labour movement by establishing a strong working relationship with Delors based on their shared affinity for the Nordic approach to employment policy, which promoted increased flexibility and security within the workforce. The Delors cabinet thus welcomed the Larsson initiative with enthusiasm. As Chris Boyd wrote in a note to Delors after a trip to Sweden, during which he met with Larsson and Ingvar Carlsson, ‘Larsson is taking very seriously his task of writing the paper on employment for the Socialist leaders. All are pleased that he was asked to do it and wish it to complement the Commission’s White Paper’.⁷⁵ The leader of the Commission was amenable to supporting Larsson’s efforts, as his own diagnosis of the structural crisis of the EU and his approach to employment policy were compatible with those promoted by the Swedish MP. Several members of the Delors cabinet were closely involved with the Larsson group. In early November, Jérôme Vignon, the chair of the Forward Studies Unit and one of Delors’s closest advisers, addressed a series of comments that were inserted into the final draft of the text.⁷⁶ Numerous records of the correspondence between Delors’s aides and members of the Larsson group are contained in the archives of the Forward Studies Unit.⁷⁷ Conversely, the EEI exerted a tangible influence on the social chapters of the Commission White Paper, although the document was never officially cited. Jacques Delors wished to avoid potential criticism of a supposed partiality in favour of European social democracy.⁷⁸ Nevertheless, and although the final version echoed numerous elements of the EEI, the White Paper should not be interpreted as a direct translation of the document. In the interest of adopting a single currency by the late 1990s, the Commission adhered to the macroeconomic criteria established by the Maastricht Treaty and opposed substantive changes to the strict regulation of the budgetary policies of member states, whereas the EEI adopted a more voluntarist approach in its call for a ‘New Deal for Europe’.⁷⁹

The contents of the Commission’s White Paper nonetheless show that Delors partially fulfilled his expressed goal of using ‘his office to implement at least parts of a Social Democratic agenda’.⁸⁰ The arguments about employment policy contained in the White Paper affirmed the proximity of Larsson’s and Delors’s viewpoints: ‘Both the White Paper and the Larsson report can be seen as efforts towards a coherent Social democratic strategy against recession and unemployment which would not question the only recently ratified Maastricht Treaty’.⁸¹ Both documents called for a supply-side economic relaunch through private and public investment rather than through consumption, which would induce inflation due to wage increases. Both underscored the necessity of increased flexibility in the labour market of member states. The break with ‘Euro-Keynesianism’ was thereby officialised.

Conclusion

Contrary to popular belief, European socialist movements did not unanimously convert to austerity policies in the 1980s, nor did Keynesian approaches to economic and social issues vanish during the decade. Nevertheless, as illustrated by the Claes group of the CSPEC and the Manley group of the Socialist International, the proponents of these alternatives remained circumscribed to narrow circles in supranational organisations that lacked the political leverage to influence European policy making, which was then dominated by an ‘ordoliberal’ approach to economic and social affairs. The defence of free enterprise ‘anchored in framework treaties, with a primary focus on ensuring respect for property and contracts, protecting free competition, and honouring monetary prudence’ largely prevailed.⁸² As several scholars have astutely observed, the SEA and the Maastricht Treaty monopolised the political discourse of the time, rendering alternatives to the set of macroeconomic and monetary constraints it had created obsolete. Socialist leaders at the national level were aware that they had helped shape this dynamic. Like Jacques Delors, however, they were willing to reconceptualise their approach to the European community. One of the key objectives of the Larsson group was to mediate these complexities by proposing a Nordic approach to employment policy that was fully compatible with the Maastricht framework. The skill of its Swedish chairman in navigating the complex maze of European institutions facilitated his appointment as Director General of DG V (the Directorate General for Social Affairs) in 1995.⁸³ European socialists thus succeeded in regaining a voice in European policy making. The strategies they used to achieve this, however, caused them to embrace a moderate ‘Third Way’ that could be regarded as a precursor to more radical ideological projects such as Tony Blair’s ‘Third Way’ and Gerhard Schröder’s Neue Mitte that emerged in the second half of the 1990s.

Notes

1. 1.  Working group on economic policy of the CSPEC, ‘More Jobs for Europe’, 26 March 1985. Archives of the CSPEC, Centre of Socialist Archives at the Fondation Jean Jaurès in Paris (below CAS-FJJ), Archives of the CSPEC, 50 RI UPSCE 1985.

2. 2.  Allan Larsson, speech at the meeting of the Socialist Group of the European Parliament, 2–3 July 1992. Alan Larsson, ‘En havstang till arbete’, 21 April 1992, Swedish Labour Movement Archives and Library in Stockholm (below SLMAL), Archives of the Arbetarrörelsens nordiska samarbetskommité (SAMAK), 1213/F/1/5. Allan Larsson, ‘Put Europe to Work’, Report over the European Employment Initiative to the Leaders of the member parties of the PES’, 3 December 1993, CAS-FJJ, Archives of the PES, PS 50 RI – PSE 1993.

3. 3.  European Commission, Growth, Competitiveness, Employment: The Challenges and Ways forward into the 21st Century. White Paper (Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, 1994).

4. 4.  Karl Magnus Johansson, ‘Tracing the Employment Title in the Amsterdam Treaty: Uncovering Transnational Coalitions’, Journal of European Public Policy 6, no. 1 (1999), 85. This employment title pointed out that employment was ‘a matter of common concern’ and called for member states and the EU to ‘work towards developing a co-ordinating strategy for employment’.

5. 5.  Donald Sassoon, One Hundred Years of Socialism: The West European Left in the Twentieth Century (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2014 [1996]), 649.

6. 6.  Andreas Aust, ‘From “Eurokeynesianism” to the “Third Way”: The Party of European Socialists (PES) and European employment policies’, in Social Democratic Party Policies in Contemporary Europe, ed. Giuliano Bonolli and Martin Powell (London and New York: Routledge, 2005), 182.

7. 7.  Gerassimos Moschonas, ‘Reformism in a “Conservative” System: The European Union and Social Democratic Identity’, in In Search of Social Democracy, ed. John Callaghan, Nina Fishman, Ben Jackson and Martin McIvor (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009), 170.

8. 8.  Simon Hix, ‘Parties at the European Level and the Legitimacy of EU Socio-Economic Policy’, JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 33, no. 4 (1995); Robert Ladrech, ‘Political Parties and the Problem of Legitimacy in the European union’, in Legitimacy and the European Union: The Contested Polity, ed. Thomas Banchoff and Mitchell Smith (London: Routledge, 1999).

9. 9.  Knut Heidar, ‘Parties and Cleavages in the European Political Space’, ARENA working papers, WP 03/7, 2003, p. 3, https://www.sv.uio.no/arena/english/research/publications/arena-working-papers/2001-2010/2003/wp03_7.pdf [accessed 28 July 2021].

10. 10.  The Centre for History at Sciences Po Paris possesses a digital copy of these sources, the originals of which are preserved by the European University Institute in Florence.

11. 11.  Frode Forfang, ‘Annual meeting of SAMAK, 21–22 January 1993’, Oslo, 30 November 1992, 1 p., CAS-FJJ, PS 50 RI PSE. Formally founded in 1932, SAMAK is a joint committee including the autonomous islands of Greenland, Faroe Islands and Aland.

12. 12.  For a presentation of this argument see Ashley Lavelle, ‘Explanations for the Neo-liberal Direction of Social Democracy: Germany, Sweden and Australia Compared’, in In Search of Social Democracy, ed. Callaghan et al.

13. 13.  Daniel Rodgers, ‘The Uses and Abuses of “Neoliberalism”’, Dissent, Winter 2018, https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/uses-and-abuses-neoliberalism-debate [accessed 25 July 2021]. Pierre Rosanvallon, Notre histoire intellectuelle et politique 1968–2018 (Paris: Seuil, 2018), 277.

14. 14.  Mathieu Fulla, ‘Quand Pierre Mauroy résistait avec rigueur au “néolibéralisme”’, Vingtième siècle. Revue d’histoire 138, no. 2 (2018).

15. 15.  Mario Soares, Meeting of the Socialist Heads of state and government, ‘Les acteurs du changement’, handwritten report, 18 May 1983, CAS-FJJ, Archives of Lionel Jospin, First Secretary of the French Socialist Party, 2 PS 455.

16. 16.  Antony Burlaud, ‘ “Faire rentrer la justice sociale dans la balance des paiements”. La politique macro-économique de Michel Rocard’, in Michel Rocard Premier ministre: La deuxième gauche et le pouvoir (1988–1991), ed. Alain Bergounioux and Mathieu Fulla (Paris: Presses de Sciences Po, 2020).

17. 17.  J. Magnus Ryner, ‘Neo-Liberalization of Social Democracy: The Swedish Case’, Comparative European Politics 2 (2004), 101. Jenny Andersson and Kjell Östberg, ‘The Swedish Social Democrats, Reform Socialism and the State after the Golden Era’, in European Socialists and the State in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries, ed. Mathieu Fulla and Marc Lazar (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), 336–9.

18. 18.  Cornel Ban, Ruling Ideas: How Global Neoliberalism Goes Local (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 34.

19. 19.  Geoff Eley, Forging Democracy. The History of the Left in Europe, 1850–2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 408.

20. 20.  CSPEC, ‘Final Manifesto of the Confederation of the Socialist Parties of the European Community’, 9 March 1984, 5, CAS-FJJ, 50 RI UPSCE 1984.

21. 21.  Laurent Warlouzet, Governing Europe in a Globalising World: Neoliberalism and its Alternatives following the 1973 Oil Crisis (London and New York: Routledge, 2018), 37–56.

22. 22.  Mathieu Fulla, ‘Partager une culture économique sans le savoir. Les experts socialistes français et britanniques des années soixante-dix’, Ventunesimo Secolo 44 (2019).

23. 23.  On the AES, see Mark Wickham-Jones, Economic Strategy and the Labour Party (London: Macmillan Press, 1996). On the Programme commun de gouvernement of the French Left, see Danielle Tartakowsky and Alain Bergounioux, eds., L’union sans unité: le programme commun de la gauche, 1963–1978 (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2012).

24. 24.  Fulla, ‘Partager une culture économique’.

25. 25.  Handwritten minutes of the dinner of socialist leaders held during the informal meeting of socialist leaders in Paris, 25 May 1984, 1–2, CAS-FJJ, Archives of the CSPEC, 50 RI UPSCE Elections eur. 84.

26. 26.  Jean-Pierre Cot, ‘Projet de procès-verbal du bureau de l’union 14 et 15 mai à Strasbourg’, Brussels, 2 June 1992, 5, CAS-FJJ, Archives of the CSPEC, 50 RI UPSCE 1990–nov. 1992.

27. 27.  SGEP, ‘Provisional Conclusions of the Socialist Group on the Architecture of the New Europe adopted in Vilamoura on 4 June 1992’, 1, SLMAL, Archives of SAMAK, 1213/F/1/2.

28. 28.  Allan Larsson, speech at the meeting of the Socialist Group of the European Parliament, 2–3 July 1992; Alan Larsson, ‘En havstang till arbete’, 21 April 1992, SLMAL, Archives of SAMAK, 1213/F/1/5.

29. 29.  SAMAKS Europagruppe, list of members, August 1992, SLMAL, Archives of SAMAK, 1213/F/1/5.

30. 30.  Axel Hanisch, ‘Note à l’attention des membres du Bureau et des membres du groupe de travail “Larsson”’, 3 December 1993, CAS-FJJ, Archives of the PES, PS 50 RI PSE 1993.

31. 31.  For a detailed account of the reasons that led PES leaders to consult the SAP although it was not yet a member party, see Mathieu Fulla, ‘Put (Southern) Europe to work. The Nordic Turn of European Socialists in the Early 1990s’, in Rethinking European Social Democracy and Socialism: The History of the Centre-Left in Northern and Southern Europe in the Late 20th Century, ed. Alan Granadino, Stefan Nygård and Peter Stadius (London and New York: Routledge, 2022).

32. 32.  ‘Exposé d’Edgard Pisani au bureau de l’UPSCE des 3 et 4 février 1983’, 8, CAS-FJJ, Archives of the CSPEC, 50 RI UPSCE 1983–1984. The French original refers to the British as ‘autres’, suggesting extreme difference, ‘otherness’; Pisani also refers to the British as ‘méchant’, translated here as ‘nasty’, and which also suggests a mean, or spiteful disposition.

33. 33.  Bureau of the CSPEC, ‘Projet de compte rendu de la réunion à Bruxelles le 13 février 1987’, 24 February 1987, 3, CAS-FJJ, Archives of the CSPEC, 50 RI UPSCE 1986–1987.

34. 34.  Bureau of the CSPEC, ‘Projet de compte rendu de la réunion du bureau du 8 avril à Madrid’, 22 April 1985, 2, CAS-FJJ, Archives of the CSPEC, 50 RI UPSCE 1985.

35. 35.  Lionel Jospin, ‘Intervention de Lionel Jospin, le 8 avril 1985 à Madrid, au bureau de l’UPSCE’, 1, CAS-FJJ, Archives of the CSPEC, 50 RI UPSCE 1985.

36. 36.  Lionel Jospin, ‘Intervention de Lionel Jospin, le 8 avril 1985 à Madrid’, 3.

37. 37.  On the failure of European Socialism to promote the cause of ‘Social Europe’ from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, see Aurélie Dianara Andry, Social Europe, The Road not Taken: The Left and European Integration in the Long 1970s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022).

38. 38.  Gerassimos Moschonas, ‘The Party of European Socialists’, in Encylopedia of European Elections, ed. Yves Deloye and Michael Bruter (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007).

39. 39.  Helen Drake, Jacques Delors: Perspectives on a European leader (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 115.

40. 40.  PES, Axel Hanisch, Letter to Jacques Delors, 12 November 1993, and the third version of the Larsson report attached, Historical Archives of the European Commission (Brussels, hereafter HAEC), Forward Studies Unit/346.

41. 41.  James Sloam, The European Policy of the German Social Democrats: Interpreting a Changing World (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 112.

42. 42.  Stuart Holland, Out of Crisis: A Project for European Recovery (Nottingham: Spokesman, 1983), 13.

43. 43.  Stuart Holland, ‘Not an intellectual abdication of the Left. A response to Dani Rodrik’, Polanyi Centre Publications, Advanced Research on the Global Economy, I.2017/WP01, 7.

44. 44.  Francis Cripps, Wynne Godley, ‘A Formal Analysis of the Cambridge Policy Group Model’, Economica, New Series 43, no. 172 (1976).

45. 45.  On Kaldor’s critical analysis of the economic mechanisms of EEC, see Michael A. Landesmann, ‘Nicholas Kaldor and Kazimierz Laski on the Pitfalls of the European Integration Process’, European Journal of Economics and Economic Policies: Intervention 16, no. 3 (2019).

46. 46.  Penti Vaanen (general secretary of the SI), to Bureau members, Bureau circular No. B9/83, July 1, 1983, ‘Work of the Socialist International Committee on Economic Policies’, CAS-FJJ, Archives of the Socialist International, 60 RI (WB) 220.

47. 47.  ‘Socialist International Economic Committee: Review of Work and Proposals for Future Action’, Sheffield, 20 June 1984, 5, CAS-FJJ, Archives of the Socialist International, 60 RI (WB) 220.

48. 48.  On the Brandt Commission, see Bo Stråth, The Brandt Commission and the Multinationals: Planetary Perspectives (London and New York: Routledge, 2023).

49. 49.  There is an important body of literature dealing with the NIEO. See for instance, Mark Mazower, Governing the World: The History of an Idea (London: Penguin Press, 2013 [2012]); Giuliano Garavini, After Empires: European Integration, Decolonization, and the Challenge from the Global South 1957–1986 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 215–30; Vanessa Ogle, ‘State Rights against Private Capital: The “New International Economic Order” and the Struggle over Aid, Trade, and Foreign Investment, 1962–1981’, Humanity. An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development 5, no. 2 (2014); and the special issue edited by Nils Gilman, ‘Toward a History of the New International Economic Order’, Humanity. An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development 6, no. 1 (2015).

50. 50.  Michael Manley, Global Challenge from Crisis to Cooperation: Breaking the North-South Stalemate, report of the Socialist International Committee on Economic Policy (London: Pan Books, 1985).

51. 51.  Michael Manley and Willy Brandt, ‘Breaking the North-South Stalemate’, introduction to Global Challenge reproduced in Socialist Affairs 85, no. 4, 9.

52. 52.  ‘Minutes of the meeting of the Socialist International Committee on Economic Policy, SICEP, Kingston, Jamaica – January 31–February 1, 1985’, 8 March 1985, 4, CAS-FJJ, Archives of the Socialist International, 60 RI (WB) 220.

53. 53.  CSPEC, ‘Une solution européenne à la crise. Contribution du groupe de travail au manifeste de l’UPSCE en vue des élections européennes’, Luxemburg, 8–9 March 1984, 4, 14, CAS-FJJ, 50 RI UPSCE Elections Eur. 84.

54. 54.  Peter Haas, ‘Introduction: Epistemic Communities and International Policy Coordination’, International Organization 46, no. 1 (1992).

55. 55.  Georges Debunne, ‘Flexibilité et réduction du temps de travail’, July 1986, CAS-FJJ, Archives of the CSPEC, 50 RI UPSCE 1986–1987.

56. 56.  Ludo Cuyvers, ‘Macroeconomic Effects of Expansionist Economic Policies: The Case for a Coordinated, Selected and Diversified Reflation in the EEC’, July 1986 (revised and updated version), 28 July 1986, 4, CAS-FJJ, Archives of the CSPEC, 50 RI UPSCE 1986–1987.

57. 57.  CSPEC, ‘More Jobs for Europe’, 8.

58. 58.  For a striking example of this inaudibility, see ‘The Appeal of Amsterdam’, 19 May 1984, CAS-FJJ, Archives of the CSPEC, 50 RI UPSCE Elections eur. 84.

59. 59.  PES, ‘Projet de procès-verbal du Bureau. Edimbourg le 9 décembre 1992’, CAS-FJJ, PS 50 RI – PSE.

60. 60.  Warlouzet, Governing Europe, 123–5.

61. 61.  PES, ‘Huit pistes essentielles pour l’emploi. Projet de rapport du groupe économique du PSE présenté par Gérard Fuchs’, 5 August 1993, CAS-FJJ, Archives of the PES, PS 50 RI – PSE.

62. 62.  ‘Compte rendu de la réunion du groupe de travail “Économique et social” du 29 mai 1993 à Strasbourg, 12 juillet 1993’, 2, CAS-FJJ, Archives of the PES, PS 50 RI – PSE.

63. 63.  Bureau of the CSPEC, ‘Projet de compte-rendu de la réunion du bureau du 6 décembre 1984’, ‘Intervention de Jacques Delors devant le bureau de l’Union des Partis socialistes de la Communauté européenne, le jeudi 6 décembre 1984 (annexe IV)’, 10 December 1984, CAS-FJJ, Archives of the CSPEC, 50 RI UPSCE 1983–1984.

64. 64.  Bureau of the CSPEC, ‘Projet de compte-rendu de la réunion du bureau du 2 décembre 1985 à Bruxelles’, 3 December 1985, 10–11, CAS-FJJ, Archives of the CSPEC, 50 RI UPSCE 1985.

65. 65.  Interview with Christine Verger by Filippa Chatzistavrou, 22 June 2021, 15, Oral history programmes of the EU, https://archives.eui.eu/en/oral_history/INT302 [accessed 29 July 2021].

66. 66.  Christine Verger, ‘Note pour P. Lamy. Objet: Congrès de l’Union des PS, Lisbonne, 4–5 mai 1987’, 5 May 1987, Centre for history at Sciences Po (below CHSP), Jacques Delors Archives, JD 59 (91–93). Christine Verger, ‘Note à l’attention du président. Objet: Congrès de l’Union CHSP des PS (dîner du 9.2 et réunion du 10.2) et votre entretien ce jour avec M. Spitaels’, 8 February 1989, CHSP, Jacques Delors Archives, JD 512 (124–127).

67. 67.  Verger, ‘Note à l’attention du président’, 2.

68. 68.  CSPEC, ‘Projet de compte rendu de la réunion du bureau’, 6 November 1987, 6, CAS-FJJ, Archives of the CSPEC, 50 RI UPSCE 1987.

69. 69.  Moschonas, ‘Reformism’, 187.

70. 70.  Kenneth Dyson and Kevin Featherstone, The Road to Maastricht: Negotiating Economic and Monetary Union (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 691–745.

71. 71.  British Labour Party, ‘Note sur le document de Jacques Delors intitulé: “Compétitivité perdue. Compétitivité retrouvée: l’approche européenne”, rédigé par The Labour Party’, 24 February 1986, 6, CAS-FJJ, Archives of the CSPEC, 50 RI UPSCE 1986–1987. This document is a translation of the original version written in English, which was not held in these archives. The Bureau of the CSPEC used to translate most circulars and working papers in the main languages of the EEC, namely German and French (and sometimes in Italian and Spanish).

72. 72.  Alessandra Bitumi, ‘ “An uplifting tale of Europe”. Jacques Delors and the Contradictory Quest for a European Social Model in the Age of Reagan’, Journal of Transatlantic Studies 16, no. 3 (2018), 212.

73. 73.  Jacques Delors, ‘1992: the Social Dimension’, address by the president of the Commission of the European Communities to the Trades Union Congress, Bournemouth, 8 September 1988, CHSP, Jacques Delors Archives, JD-74.

74. 74.  Patricia Hewitt quoted in Colm Murphy, Futures of Socialism: ‘Modernisation’, the Labour Party, and the British Left, 1973–1997 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023), 68.

75. 75.  Chris Boyd, ‘Note to the file’ about his trip to Stockholm, 14–15 October 1993, 1, HAEC, Forward Studies Unit/351.

76. 76.  Jérôme Vignon, ‘Quelques commentaires sur “Yes, Europe can afford to work”’, 4 November 1993, CAS-FJJ, PS 50 RI – PSE.

77. 77.  See for instance Pascal Lamy, ‘Note pour le président’, Objet: croissance-compétitivité-emploi – projet de Luigi Colajanni, 8 September 1993, 1, HAEC, Forward Studies Unit/351.

78. 78.  ‘Documentation Livre Blanc’, Fall 1993, HAEC, Forward Studies Unit/346.

79. 79.  Larsson, ‘Put Europe to Work’, 20.

80. 80.  George Ross, Jacques Delors and European Integration (Polity Press, 1995), quoted in Andreas Aust, ‘From “Eurokeynesianism”’, 184.

81. 81.  Andreas Aust, ‘From “Eurokeynesianism”’, 188.

82. 82.  Rutger Claasen et al., ‘Rethinking the European Social Market Economy: Introduction to the Special Issue’, JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 57, no. 1 (2019), 6.

83. 83.  Johansson, ‘Tracing the Employment Title’, 94.

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