Wim Duisenberg, the former Dutch finance minister and first president of the European Central Bank, was found dead at his summer home in southern France on Sunday. He was 70 years old.

Duisenberg's lifeless body was discovered in the swimming pool of his villa in the town of Faucon, and emergency personnel were unable to revive him, French authorities said.

Though anchored in his own nation's history as one of the architects of the Dutch economic blossoming of the 1980s, Duisenberg left his greatest mark from 1998 to 2003 as the first president of the Frankfurt-based ECB and as the steward of the newly created euro, the new currency for its 11 founding members.

The ECB's current president, Jean-Claude Trichet, lauded Duisenberg's "considerable role in the construction of Europe" in a statement following news of his death, as did other senior leaders in France, Germany and the Netherlands.

"He played a decisive role in setting up the monetary institutions in Europe, in the successful launch of the new currency, in fostering the credibility of and ensuring confidence in our single currency, the euro," Trichet said.

Coming into the job at a time when European economies began weakening badly, Duisenberg had to a steer the new institution into uncharted waters as he forged policy for an entirely new entity: the euro zone.

Often tripped up by his own penchant for candid, off-the-cuff remarks in a world where central bankers display the utmost discipline, Duisenberg – a highly recognizable figure thanks to his mane of shock white hair and ever-present Marlboro – found himself scorned by financial professionals and politicians for paying to much attention to inflation, too little to economic growth, or quite often, both at the same time.

In an extensive interview with the International Herald Tribune late last year in which he reflected on his stint at the ECB, Duisenberg said he had "no regrets" about his performance and expressed pride in his accomplishments as an institution-builder.

The ECB, whose decision-making apparatus consists of national central bank governors and a six-member executive board based in Frankfurt, had very little precedent to guide it, he noted, but very high expectations to fulfill.

"The thing that I put my stamp on was to reach a consensus among decision-makers," Duisenberg said.

Duisenberg also was proud of his fierce defense of the ECB's independence from elected officials, a status guaranteed by the European treaty that created the euro.

"I'm still surprised about the extent to which markets react when there is political pressure from politicians," he said. "We were never intimidated into a certain direction."

A year after leaving the ECB on Oct. 31, 2003, Duisenberg had assumed a raft of elder-statesman duties from his primary residence in Amsterdam, agreeing to serve on the boards of Air France-KLM, two private companies and a hospital. He was also a fund-raiser for the renowned Rijksmuseum in the Dutch capital, and an occasional conference participant in Frankfurt.

Willem Frederik Duisenberg was born on July 9, 1935 in Heerenveen in the Netherlands. After completing a doctorate at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, Duisenberg went to work at the International Monetary Fund at the age of 30.

Then an adherent of the Keynesian school of economics, which emphasizes the role of government policy in raising output through increased demand, Duisenberg gravitated to politics later in the decade, and became minister of finance under a socialist government in 1973 that presided over an explosion of government spending.

But by the time he became president of the Dutch central bank in 1982, Duisenberg was drifting away from his Keynesian moorings toward a view of monetary policy that emphasized the need to keep inflation low and a currency stable. At the time there was no more stable currency in Europe than the Deutsche mark, and Duisenberg anchored his fortunes, and those of the Dutch guilder, to it.

The bet paid off, and not only because the Dutch economy enjoyed a steady run of growth and low inflation.

As the project to create a common European currency gathered steam in the 1990s, Duisenberg became the favorite of the Germans as their candidate for the post of president of the new ECB. A diplomatic row followed as France pushed its own candidate, and Duisenberg agreed to step down in 2003, before his planned eight-year term was to expire, in favor of Trichet, the Frenchman who now heads the ECB.

Duisenberg's tenure at the ECB, which included the first distribution of euro coins and bills in 2002, was marked by further turbulence as the currency soon plummeted against the dollar, and European economies suffered deep recessions.

The Dutchman's candor, wrapped in a taciturn demeanor, also won him few plaudits. In one interview, he casually revealed the bank's strategy for intervening in currency markets, while in another he took a slap at Britain's relationship with Europe.

He refused to be bullied by politicians. "I listen, but I do not hear," he said after a lecture from one European leader on interest rates.

Still, by the time he handed the reins to Trichet, Duisenberg's critics had quieted down. Although the euro zone, now comprising 12 nations, was still growing slowly amid structural problems, interest rates and inflation appeared firmly under control.

"In his calm way, he helped create and strengthen the crucial foundation of trust among the population in the euro," Finance Minister Hans Eichel of Germany said in a statement.

Duisenberg, an aficionado of fine dining and a rabid golfer, retired from the bank to Amsterdam, where he withdrew from public life for a good year – a "Dutch tradition," he called it. The father of three grown children from a first marriage, Duisenberg's second wife, Gretta, captured more headlines of late than he did in the Netherlands as a prominent activist for the Palestinian cause.

[EuroTracer's Comment: It was later reported that Duisenberg had died of heart failure. See also the speech of Jean-Claude Trichet at a memorial service for Wim Duisenberg on 2005-08-06 in Amsterdam.]

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