Many European leaders, including Hungarian nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, are expected tomorrow Friday at Paris for the ceremony in his memory Jacques Delorsformer president of the European Commission who died on December 27, aged 98.

THE ceremony will take place in the forecourt of the Palace of Apomachi and the funeral Emmanuel will announce Macron.

The French president is expected to hail the “architect of a united Europe”, without whom France would be “less master of its own destiny”.

According to Elysian sources, Emmanuel Macron will talk about the role played by Jacques Delors in the French political scene since the late 1960s, and also as the economy minister of President François Mitterrand. “France would not have remained a dominant power in Europe as we know it today without Jacques Delors,” the French president is expected to say, according to an adviser who spoke to reporters.

The mayor of Lille, Martine Aubry, daughter of Jacques Delors, was actively involved in the preparations, but will not speak at the ceremony.

The guests and the “innovation” at the ceremony

France has invited all EU heads of state and government to the ceremony, as well as the heads of European institutions, not only the current ones but also those who served in the decade 1985-95, when Delors was president of the European Commission.

So far, about ten leaders have confirmed their presence, including German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Belgian Prime Minister Alexander de Croo. The presidents of the European Council, the European Commission, the European Parliament and the European Central Bank are also expected.

The ceremony will include an “innovation”, directly linked to the European dimension of the event: after the funeral that will be delivered by Macron and the rendition of the Massaliotida, the national anthem, the orchestra of the Republican Guard will play the Ode to Joy, the European hymn, in honor of Delors.

Macron in Berlin for the ceremony in memory of Schäuble

The French presidency also announced today that Emmanuel Macron will go to Berlin on January 22nd for the memorial service for former German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble. The German politician, who embodied the fiscal discipline that Berlin promoted in Europe and, at the end of his political career, became speaker of the German parliament, died just before Jacques Delors, aged 81.