Former Greek prime minister Costas Simitis dies aged 88
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Four days of mourning decreed after death of Pasok party co-founder Simitis, architect of country’s entry into euro. Costas Simitis, the former socialist prime minister of Greece who was the architect of the country’s entry into the euro, has died aged 88.
Simitis was taken to a hospital in the city of Corinth early on Sunday morning from his holiday home west of Athens, unconscious and without a pulse, the hospital’s director was quoted as saying by the Greek media. An autopsy will be performed to determine the cause of death.
The government decreed a four-day period of official mourning. Simitis will receive a state funeral. Warm tributes appeared from across Greece’s main political parties. “I bid farewell to Costas Simitis with sadness and respect. A worthy and noble political opponent,” the prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, said in a Facebook post, also saluting a “good professor and moderate parliamentarian”.
Another conservative politician, the former European commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos, recalled how he, as mayor of Athens, had cooperated “seamlessly and warmly” with Simitis in organising the Olympic Games. “He served the country with devotion and a sense of duty. … He was steadfast in facing difficult challenges and promoted policies that changed the lives of (many) citizens,” Avramopoulos added.
Simitis, a co-founder of the Socialist Pasok party in 1974, eventually became the successor to the party’s founding leader, Andreas Papandreou, with whom he had an often contentious relationship. Simitis was a low-key pragmatist where Papandreou was a charismatic, fiery populist. He was also a committed pro-European, while Papandreou banked on strong opposition to Greece joining what was then the European Economic Community in the 1970s, before changing tack once he became prime minister.
