The 86-year-old Frenchman’s intervention comes the day after France and Germany took another step towards the creation of a full “fiscal union” within the European Union and David Cameron insisted that Britain must remain a major player in Europe. Mr Delors, who led the commission from 1985 to 1995, played a central role in the process that led to the creation of the euro in 1999. In his first British newspaper interview for almost a decade, he says that the debt crisis reflects a threat to Europe’s global role and even basic Western democratic values.