Costas Simitis, Greece’s former prime minister and architect of the country’s entry into the common European currency euro, has died at the age of 88, state TV ERT reported.
Simitis was taken from his holiday home west of Athens to a hospital in the city of Corinth on Sunday morning, unconscious and without a pulse, Greek media quoted the hospital director as saying. An autopsy will be conducted to determine the cause of death.
The government declared four days of official mourning. Simitis will receive a state funeral.
Heartfelt tributes poured in not only from political allies.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in a Facebook post, “I bid farewell to Costas Simitis with sadness and respect. A worthy and great political opponent.” He also saluted the “good professor and liberal MP”.
Another conservative politician, former European Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos, recalls how as mayor of Athens he had “seamlessly and warmly” collaborated with Simitis in organizing the Olympic Games.
“He served the country with dedication and a sense of duty. … He was steadfast in facing difficult challenges and promoting policies that transformed people’s lives.” [many] Citizens,” Avramopoulos said.
Co-founder of the socialist PASOK party in 1974, Simitis eventually succeeded the party’s founding leader, Andreas Papandreou, with whom he had an often contentious relationship that shaped the nature of the party. Simitis was a low-key pragmatist, while Papandreou was a charismatic, fiery populist. He was also a committed pro-European, whereas Papandreou had relied on strong opposition to Greece’s joining the then European Economic Community in the 1970s, before changing his stance after becoming Prime Minister.
When the first four years of socialist rule from 1981 to 1985 resulted in wasteful spending, resulting in a rapidly deteriorating economy, Papandreou made Simitis Minister of Finance and oversaw a strict austerity program. Finances improved, inflation was partially controlled, but Simitis was forced to resign in 1987 when Papandreou, with an eye on the upcoming election, pursued a liberal wage policy, undermining the goals of the austerity program. Announced.
The Socialists returned to power under Papandreou in 1993, but he was ill and ultimately resigned as Prime Minister in January 1996. Two rounds of tight voting among socialist delegates unexpectedly elevated Simitis to the position of Prime Minister, a post he held until 2004.
Simitis regarded Greece’s entry into the Eurozone in January 2001 as the signature achievement of his premiership. But he also helped secure the 2004 Olympic Games for Athens and predicted a massive program of infrastructure construction, including a new airport and two subway lines, to help host the games. He also helped Cyprus join the European Union in 2004.
Cypriot President Nicos Christodoulides praised Simitis as an “outstanding leader” who has earned a special place in the history of not only Greece, but Cyprus as well.
“His calm political voice was far from populism and his political action was based on a long-term philosophy of modernization and reform,” Christodoulides said in a written statement.
Simitis’s critics on the right and left did their best to discredit his legacy, highlighting a dubious debt swap concluded as an effort to boost debt numbers after the country joined the eurozone.
Finally, determined opposition from his own party, including trade union leaders, to pension reform in 2001 fatally weakened Simaitis’s administration. He decided to resign from his party post and not contest the 2004 election, five months before the Olympics, rather than face certain defeat from the Conservatives.
George Papandreou, son of the Socialist Party’s founder, succeeded him as party leader and in 2008 expelled Simitis from the PASOK parliamentary group after a clash between the two over policies, including Papandreou’s decision to hold a referendum on the Treaty of Lisbon. Proposal was also included. Simitis left parliament in 2009, but not before issuing a warning that fiscal mismanagement would bring the country under the protection of the International Monetary Fund, which would impose harsh austerity. In the end, it was the IMF, together with the EU, that imposed a harsh regime on a bankrupt country in 2010.
Kostas Simitis was born on 23 June 1936, the younger son of two politically active parents. Her lawyer father Georgios was a member of the left-leaning resistance “government” during the German occupation and her mother, Fani, was an active feminist.
Simitis studied law at the University of Marburg in Germany in the 1950s, and economics and politics at the London School of Economics in the early 1960s. He later taught law at the University of Athens. His elder brother Spiros, who died in 2023, was a renowned legal scholar in Germany who specialized in data security.
Simitis is survived by his wife of 60 years, Daphne, two daughters and a granddaughter.