Tributes paid after former Greek PM Costas Simitis dies aged 88

Tributes have been paid to the former socialist prime minister Costas Simitis, who with dogged determination guided Greece into the eurozone and took the vital steps to ensure it was ready to host the 2004 Athens Olympic Games.

News of Simitis’s death at the age of 88 was met on Sunday with outpourings from across the political spectrum, with friends and foes alike voicing admiration for a man credited with overseeing some of the country’s most momentous changes.

“I bid farewell to Costas Simitis with sadness and respect,” the centre-right prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, said in a statement before a four-day period of official mourning was declared.

“A noble and worthy political opponent but also the prime minister who accompanied Greece through some of its great national steps.”

The academic turned politician was pronounced dead after being taken to a hospital in the city of Corinth early on Sunday from his holiday home west of Athens, unconscious and without a pulse, the clinic’s director was quoted as saying by the Greek media. An autopsy will be performed to determine the cause of death and Greek authorities said a state funeral would be held in Athens on Thursday.

In a country with deep faultlines between the left and right, Simitis hailed from a leftist family and actively opposed the military regime that ruled with an iron fist between 1967 and 1974, not least planting bombs in the streets of Athens before being forced to flee.

In exile he became a member of the Panhellenic Liberation Movement (PAK), which sought the overthrow of the dictatorship. Upon the regime’s demise Simitis went on to co-found the Panhellenic Socialist Movement, Pasok, alongside his charismatic fellow academic Andreas Papandreou.

Nearly 15 years after Pasok first won office in 1981, Simitis, who had taught law before assuming ministerial posts including a successful term as finance minister, took over the party’s reigns when ill health compelled Papandreou to resign.

From the outset of his eight-year stint in office in 1996, the politician, a committed pro-European, made modernisation a byword of his tenure. In a country that had long been resistant to change – and had earned international disrepute for the role it played during the Balkan wars – Simitis’s overarching goal was to fix Greece firmly to the west by implementing often unpopular economic changes to ensure the economy would qualify to join the euro. He also focused on securing the Olympic Games, conscious the event would elevate the country’s status internationally.

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 Olympics.

“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.

George Papandreou, the son of Andreas, succeeded Simitis as party leader and in 2008 expelled him from the Pasok parliamentary group after the two men clashed over policies, including Papandreou’s proposal to hold a referendum on the EU’s treaty of Lisbon. Simitis left parliament in 2009, warning that financial mismanagement would bring the country under the tutelage of the International Monetary Fund.

After Greece’s debt rating collapsed in 2010 – and the EU and IMF imposed harsh economic measures – his critics on the right and left did their best to denigrate his legacy.

Simitis strongly defended his record, publishing in 2012 a book criticising the handling of the crisis by Greek politicians and the EU. In that book, called Derailment, he also accused the European Commission of turning a blind eye to overspending by his conservative successor.

Simitis was born on 23 June 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 is survived by his wife of 60 years, Daphne, two daughters and a granddaughter.