Brussels, 01/08/2005 (Agence Europe) - After the death of Willem Frederik Duisenberg on Sunday in southern France, praise has been expressed on all sides for his devotion and determination as the first president of the European Central Bank (ECB), allowing the Frankfurt institution to be independent and the single currency to be credible. On 31 July, Mr Duisenberg, who was aged 70, was found drowned in the swimming pool of his home in France, after apparently suffering a heart attack. His successor at the ECB, Jean-Claude Trichet, recalled in a press release the “decisive role” Mr Duisenberg played in the creation of the European monetary institutions, describing his death as a “terrible loss”. Joaquin Almunia, Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs, states in a press release that “Mr Duisenberg contributed with force and conviction to the success of one of the most significant projects of recent European history”. In another press release, the High Representative for CFSP, Javier Solana, also expressed his “deep sorrow” and said “his death marks the loss of one of the architects of Europe's most tangible signs of integration - the euro”.
In the Corriere della Sera, Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, a former member of the European Central Bank, speaks in the warmest of terms of the “master” and “friend” that he had known from 1980 and whose “just five years of daily contacts at the ECB revealed the special charm”. “Primus inter pares”, that was the “art that I saw Duisenberg use as perhaps no other I have ever known”, Mr Padoa-Schioppa said, explaining that such an art requires distillation of the most refined elements of authority: synthesis, selection, the art of listening, a feeling for decision-making, the parcimonious use of oneself and firmness on what is essential.
Mr Duisenberg, who headed the ECB from 1998 to 2003, did not go to the end of his eight-year mandate, leaving the presidency up to the former governor of the Bank of France, firmly backed for the post by Paris. Before joining the European Monetary Institute (which prefigured the ECB) in 1997, Wim Duisenberg had been governor of the Central Bank of the Netherlands (from 1982), after serving as finance minister.