AFTER General de Gaulle, Francois Mitterrand was, in my, view the most outstanding of French post war political leaders.
He preserved and advanced his country's interests but, unlike de Gaulle, heunderstood that in the longer run France's most fundamental interests lie in the consolidation of a European Union within which Germany's inherent power and dynamism would be safely embedded. He was, accordingly, a great European as well as a great Frenchman. Finally he was also one of the best European friends that Ireland has ever had.
In his own country he was a controversial figure, partly because of some of the twists and turns involved in the process that led him after many setbacks to the presidency of France.
A right wing Catholic in his youth a formation that in our private discussions I could detect even half a century later a resistance fighter who remained stubbornly loyal to friends of his period as a Vichy civil servant and a politician of the centre during the period of the Fourth Republic he was an improbable, but eventually highly successful, leader of French socialism in de Gaulle's Fifth Republic.
And throughout his 50 year political career he was always a master tactician.
His role in the completion of the unification of Europe will, I believe, give him a high place in history. He had the courage and vision to do what his immediate predecessors in the presidency had been unwilling to attempt namely the reversal of de Gaulle's 1965 refusal to allow implementation of the Community's qualified majority decision making.
Twenty years of European stagnation were brought to an end when in June 1984 at the Fontainebleau European Council he proposed that as his successor in office I should establish what became known as the Dooge Committee. His objective was to clear the way for the creation of the Single Market.
The success of the Single Market was further assured by his presentation for the presidency of the Commission of the name of Jacques Delors, as well as that of the legs internationally acceptable, Claude Cheysson.
After I had secured With difficulty in Margaret Thatcher's case acceptance of the Delors" nomination, he confided in me that he favoured Delors to succeed him following what he then envisaged as a single term in, office for himself. In the event he served two terms, and at that much later point Delors refused, the nomination.
This confidence was offered on, the occasion when, with his wife Danielle, his prime minister, Laurent Fabius, and his foreign minister, Roland Dumas, and their wives, he came to stay at the Fort of Bregancon, to which he had invited Joan and myself.
He had just returned from the 40th anniversary celebrations of the Liberation of Paris and kept, us fascinated with his self deprecatory and humorous account of the events of August 1944.
I always felt that this unique" invitation was a mark of Francois Mitterrand's special regard and affection for Ireland. This was a sentiment upon which I found I could always rely, whether it was a, matter of increasing Irish participation in the courses at the famous Ecole Nationale d'Administration or increasing Ireland's super levy milk quota.