President of the European Commission 1985-1994 Long time Chair of UNESCO Commission on Education for the 21st century from 1993-96 whose final report was published as “Learning: the Treasure within" Honorary member of “The Club of Rome” Honorary member of “A Soul of Europe” Founder and one of the presidents of the think tank “Notre Europe” Laureate of the International Charlemagne Prize of Aachen.

Advisory Board's and Steering Committee's Objective for Awarding Jacques Delors

The members of the Leonardo Award Advisory Board and Steering Committee were in agreement: This award, which was created during times of the hardest economic collapse and significant perplexity with regard to the deciding factors cannot be integrated in the chain of helpless and quantitatively oriented demands for „more education“, „more learning“ and „more knowledge“. Without reflecting on corporate-, society-, and educational policy related issues, many of the new qualitative orientations of the organized learning processes in companies and institutions would be sacrificed to „continue as is“. It was necessary to set a signal that would provide an integral, critical and validated learning process; provide room for organization and orientation on education, is aware of international challenges and faces those confidently. To connect this signal with the honor of the Leonardo Award, it requires, as perceived by the initiators, an initial award winner, who represents this orientation with his life’s work, and a convincing integration of independent personalities in locating future award winners who are familiar with the relevant international knowledge and learning scene and enjoy high international reputation.