Costas Simitis, former prime minister of Greece and the architect of the country’s joining the common European currency, the euro, has died at age 88, state TV ERT reported.
Simitis was taken to a hospital in the city of Corinth early Sunday morning from his holiday home west of Athens, unconscious and without a pulse, the hospital’s director was quoted as saying by 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, and not just from political allies.
“I bid farewell to Costas Simitis with sadness and respect. A worthy and noble political opponent,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in a Facebook post, also saluting the “good professor and moderate parliamentarian.”
Another conservative politician, former European Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos, recalled how he, as mayor of Athens, had cooperated “seamlessly and warmly” with Simitis in organizing 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 that shaped the party’s nature. Simitis was a low-key pragmatist whereas Papandreou was a charismatic, fiery populist. He was also a committed pro-European, while Papandreou banked on strong opposition to Greece’s joining what was then the European Economic Community in the 1970s, before changing tack once he became prime minister.
When the profligate first four years of socialist rule, from 1981 to 1985, resulted in a rapidly deteriorating economy, Papandreou elevated Simitis to be finance minister and oversee a tight austerity program. Finances improved, inflation was partly tamed, but Simitis was pushed to resign in 1987 when Papandreou, eyeing an upcoming election, announced a generous wages policy, undermining the goals of the austerity program.
The socialists returned to power with Papandreou still at the helm in 1993, but he was ailing and finally resigned the premiership in January 1996. A tight two rounds of voting among the socialist lawmakers unexpectedly elevated Simitis to the post of prime minister, a post he held until 2004.
Simitis considered 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 presided over a vast program of infrastructure building, including a brand-new airport and two subway lines, to help host the games. He also helped Cyprus join the European Union in 2004.
His critics on the right and left did their best to denigrate his legacy, highlighting a dubious debt swap concluded after the country had joined the eurozone as an attempt to massage the debt numbers.
In the end, it was determined opposition from his own party, including trade union leaders, to pension reform in 2001 that fatally weakened Simitis’ administration. He decided to resign his party post and not contest the 2004 election, five months before the Olympics, rather than face certain defeat to 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 the two men clashed over policies, including Papandreou’s proposal to hold a referendum on the Treaty of Lisbon. Simitis left parliament in 2009, but not before issuing a prescient warning that financial mismanagement would bring the country under the tutelage of the International Monetary Fund, which would impose harsh austerity. In the end, it was the IMF, jointly with the EU, that imposed a harsh regime on a bankrupt country in 2010.
Costas Simitis was born on June 23, 1936, the younger son of two politically active parents. His lawyer father, Georgios, was a member of the left-leaning resistance “government” during the German occupation and his 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 noted legal scholar in Germany, specializing in data protection.
Simitis is survived by his wife of 60 years, Daphne, two daughters and a granddaughter.
