David Williamson, who was the European Fee’s second secretary-general from 1987 to 1997, serving throughout a lot of President Jacques Delors’ heyday, handed away Sunday after an sickness.
The Rt. Hon. the Lord Williamson of Horton is remembered for working intently with Delors and his chief of workers Pascal Lamy all through his tenure, together with as a sherpa negotiator for the EU’s landmark treaties of Maastricht and Amsterdam.
In a assertion Tuesday, European Fee President Jean-Claude Juncker known as Williamson “a real European, whose years as Secretary-Normal noticed momentous change, because the EU developed the only market, and set the primary steps in direction of financial union and enlargement.”
After retiring from his position because the Fee’s prime civil servant, Williamson re-invented himself as a convenor of the British Home of Lords’ Crossbench Friends (non-aligned Lords) from 2004 to 2007.
Jonathan Faull, a long-time, high-ranking EU official who’s taking up a brand new place accountable for dealing with the Brexit referendum for the Fee, stated Williamson served at a essential time for Europe.
“It was a time of change and optimism,” Faull stated. “Revolutions in jap and central Europe, the only market, the merger regulation. He was an incredible public servant and his recommendation might be missed in as we speak’s difficult occasions.”
David O’Sullivan, the EU’s ambassador to the USA and himself a former Fee secretary-general, paid tribute to Williamson calling him “one of many nice Europeans.”
Williamson was a British civil servant from 1956 till his appointment because the Fee’s deputy director-general for agriculture in 1977. After his first posting in Brussels, Williamson returned to London to as the pinnacle of European secretariat on the U.Okay. Cupboard Workplace throughout Margaret Thatcher’s prime ministership, earlier than returning to take the highest Fee job.
