Gaston ThornGaston Thorn, the former prime minister of Luxembourg and president of the European Commission, has died aged 78. His lifelong commitment to the cause of European integration was forged as a teenager in the resistance, fighting the Nazi occupation of his homeland and spending time in a German concentration camp.
He took part in a campaign to reject a Nazi census seeking to justify Luxembourg's incorporation into the Third Reich as a German people, which resulted in the great majority of census forms being returned with the words "draimol Letzebueresch" (three times Luxembourgish) scrawled across them.
Although one of the postwar generation determined to build a federal Europe, not least to make further European war impossible, Thorn's term as commission president (1981-1985) coincided with a period of economic and political crisis within what was then the European Community (EC), known as the years of Euro-sclerosis.
His appointment had not been supported by France and Britain, who were suspicious of his federalist views, but he was strongly backed by the smaller member states and by the West German government, not least because of Luxembourg's track record in the building of the EC.
His four-year term was overshadowed by a worsening relationship with the Thatcher administration in the UK, in particular over the prime minister's demands that other countries should compensate Britain for a large proportion of its share of EC budget payments, and by the reservations of other EC governments about Britain's confrontation with Argentina over the Falkland Islands in 1982.
Criticised by some as a weak president, Thorn did not enjoy the wholehearted backing of the French and German leaders. It was this support that enabled Jacques Delors to carry forward some of the plans prepared under Thorn and earlier commission presidents for a single European market, a single currency and other developments which led in subsequent years to a 27-nation European Union.
Thorn in particular supported the notion that the EC had to transform itself into the European Union.
An amiable but shy man, Thorn was a frequent visitor to Ireland, both as a leading Luxembourg politician and during his term as president of the commission.
On the eve of his EC appointment, the then Fine Gael leader, Dr Garret FitzGerald, disclosed to journalists that, in 1973, Thorn had been the then government's choice as chairman of the Sunningdale conference on Northern Ireland, a position that eventually fell to the British prime minister, Edward Heath.
As commission president, Thorn did not enjoy a good working relationship with Ireland's commissioner, Michael O'Kennedy, whom he allegedly found difficult to please. When commissionerships were being handed out, O'Kennedy declined to say what portfolio he wanted, claimed Thorn.
"I cannot take that," O'Kennedy would say, according to Thorn, "because my Irish predecessor did not want that one."
Thorn later claimed to have been misquoted and Kennedy also queried the remark.
Although Thorn started his political career as a militant young socialist, he joined Luxembourg's centre-right Liberal Democrats after his postwar law studies, and was a member of the European Parliament from 1959 until 1969. He served as foreign minister and in other posts between 1968 and 1974, when he became prime minister.
Fluent in several European languages, as commission president he achieved agreement on the common fisheries policy and laid the basis for the accession of Greece, and then Portugal and Spain.
After his presidency ended, Thorn returned to business life, becoming a leader of the Luxembourg-based European media industry and chief executive of CLT Multi-Media. He also served as president of the International European Movement and was a member of the Trilateral commission and the Bilderberg conference.
Thorn was born in Luxembourg city and educated at the universities of Montpellier, Lausanne and Paris.
He is survived by his wife, Liliane Thorn-Petit, whom he married in 1957, and their son, Alain.
Gaston Egmont Thorn: born September 3rd, 1928; died August 26th, 2007