ROME – Former European Central Bank board member and Italian economy minister Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, an architect of the euro and one of Italy’s most respected figures, died on Saturday evening of a heart attack.
As a top official at the European Commission and the Bank of Italy in the 1980s and 1990s, Mr Padoa-Schioppa played a key part in the creation of the single currency but always believed greater economic integration was needed for it to be successful.
Commission president José Manuel Barroso called him “a great European” and “one of the fathers of the euro”. In August, Mr Padoa-Schioppa (70) became an adviser to Greek prime minister George Papandreou as part of Greece’s efforts to fix its financial problems.
“He was among the first who believed in our efforts to tackle the crisis and spoke publicly on this,” Mr Papandreou said. “We will remember him with love and gratitude.”
ECB board member Lorenzo Bini Smaghi described his predecessor as a “euro-optimist”, who saw the euro zone’s current debt crisis as an opportunity to make progress towards political unity.
As economy minister in Romano Prodi’s centre-left cabinet between 2006 and 2008 he consolidated the public finances.
He created a storm as economy minister when he said in a television interview that taxes were “wonderful”, a remark that went down badly in a nation where tax evasion is almost a national sport.
In an article in yesterday’s Messaggero daily, Mr Prodi said Mr Padoa-Schioppa believed an important task of political institutions was to “tame” often irrational financial markets. – (Reuters)