“Europe needs an army to fight the resource wars of the twenty-first century.”

— Jacques Delors

Variations of this have circulated among Irish and left-wing Eurosceptic groups. Delors explicitly denied making any such statement in 1992 and 1998 in the leadup to Irish referendums on the Maastricht and Amsterdam treaties. Commentators have found no evidence for it. Attributions: [Facing the threat of Brussels rule at our expense, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1991/1121/Pg014.html#Ar01400, 30 July 2019, The Irish Times, 21 November 1991, 14, subscription, Anthony, Coughlan] [Proinsias, de Rossa, https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/dail/1991-11-29/3/#para_191, 29 November 1991, Dáil Éireann debates, Maastricht Summit: Motion] [Maastricht and neutrality : Ireland's neutrality and the future of Europe, John, Maguire, Joe, Noonan, 1992, Cork, People First/Meitheal, 19–20] [Fox, Carol, Gearing up, 25554848, Fortnight, 1994, 334, 11–12: 12, 0141-7762] [Joe, Higgins, https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/dail/1997-10-16/24/#para_608, 16 October 1997, Dáil Éireann debates, Amsterdam Treaty: Statements (Resumed)] Edward, Spalton, 4 July 2004, (Letter) Fashion statement, Daily Telegraph https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/letters/3608033/Fashion-statement.html, John, Boyd, Campaign Against European Federalism, Europe for Peace Conference, Manchester, 5 March 2005 https://web.archive.org/web/20070809083941/http://www.gmdcnd.org.uk/events/europeconference/amC.htm, [Gibson, Dirk C., Commercial Space Tourism: Impediments to Industrial Development and Strategic Communication Solutions, 2012, Bentham Science Publishers, 9781608052394, 12, https://books.google.ie/books?id=hSkW9TW3omEC&pg=PA12, 21 July 2019] The European Alliance of EU-critical Movements, EU Counter Summit Statement, London, 7 November 2015 http://teameurope.co/statements.html, [The financial cost of signing up to PESCO, https://people.ie/news/PN-178.pdf, People's News, People's Movement, Dublin, 178, 20 December 2017] Morning Star, Macron calls for joint EU army project to step up a gear, 27 August 2018 https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/macron-calls-joint-eu-army-project-step-gear, Refutations: The Irish Times, subscription, 12 June 1992, 12, Colm, Boland, 'Interference' by Delors denounced https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1992/0612/Pg007.html#Ar00701, [30001811, Ireland's Foreign Relations in 1992, Patrick, Keatinge, Irish Studies in International Affairs, 4, 1993, 72 [footnote]] McKenna's case not a Euromyth, 15 May 1998, Patrick, Smyth, The Irish Times https://www.irishtimes.com/news/mckenna-s-case-not-a-euromyth-1.152890, Misattributed

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Aug. 13, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Europe needs an army to fight the resource wars of the twenty-first century." by Jacques Delors?

Jacques Delors22

French economist and politician 1925

Related quotes

“Europe is a landscape; East Asia a seascape. Therein lies a crucial difference between the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.”

Robert D. Kaplan (1952) American writer

Robert D. Kaplan (2014), Asia's Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific. p. 21

“The twenty-first century will be the American century”

George Friedman (1949) American businessman and political scientist

Source: The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century (2009), p. 18
Context: The twenty-first century will be the American century.

“Reducing complexity by order formation is the number one skill needed by all leaders in the twenty-first century”

Peter Kruse (1955–2015) German psychologist

Peter Kruse, Google's Think Quarterly, "Soft Values, Hard Facts" (March 2011) Think Quarterly http://www.thinkwithgoogle.co.uk/quarterly/data/peter-kruse-next-practice.html

“America's business problem is that it is entering the twenty-first century with companies designed during the nineteenth century to work well in the twentieth. We need something entirely different”

Michael Hammer (1948–2008) American academic

Source: Reengineering the Corporation, 1993, p. 30; cited in: Huey B. Long (1995), New Dimensions in Self-Directed Learning, p. 323

“Old institutions have shattered, but new ones have not yet emerged. The twenty-first century will be a period in which a range of new institutions, moral systems, and practices will begin their first tentative emergence. The first half of the twenty-first century will be marked by intense social conflict globally. All of this frames the international struggles of the twenty-first century.”

George Friedman (1949) American businessman and political scientist

Source: The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century (2009), p. 64

“The twenty-first century is, and will remain, the Age of Insecurity.”

Jonathan Sacks (1948) British rabbi

Source: From Optimism to Hope (2004), p. 71

“The twenty-first century has begun with an American success”

George Friedman (1949) American businessman and political scientist

Source: The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century (2009), p. 18
Context: The twenty-first century has begun with an American success that on the surface looks like not only a deafeat but a deep political and moral embarrassment.

“The twentieth century was the bankruptcy of the social utopia; the twenty-first will be that of the technological one.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 31

“[D]isequilibrium will dominate the twenty-first century, as will efforts to contain the United States. It will be a dangerous century, particularly for the rest of the world.”

George Friedman (1949) American businessman and political scientist

Source: The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century (2009), p. 47

“How can Blair fight a war on terror? Terror is not an ideology or an army; terror is a technique.”

David Hockney (1937) British artist

Interview with Jasper Gerard, "Taking the fight to the dreary people" http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-1806962,00.html The Sunday Times (London) 2000s

“Europe needs an army to fight the resource wars of the twenty-first century.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Jacques Delors22

Related quotes

Related topics