The former president of the Italian Republic and central banker, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, died on Friday at the age of 95, the Italian government said.
He died in a hospital in Rome after a long illness, according to Ansa news agency.
Ciampi was president of Italy from 1999 to 2006, playing a crucial role in bringing the country into the European Union’s (EU) single currency market.
He had previously served as head of Italy’s central bank between 1979 and 1993, as prime minister from 1993 to 1994, and as treasure and finance minister between 1996 and 1999.
“Our grateful thoughts go out to the man who has served Italy with passion,” Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said on Twitter.
Other key institutional figures paid tribute to the former president.
“His death is a source of deep grief,” current President Sergio Mattarella said in a statement.
“It is also thanks to men like Ciampi that Italy has gained, and deserved, a leading position at an international level, from which our entire community is now benefitting,” Mattarella added.
His name was linked to the birth of the euro, and to Italy’s “uncertain participation in the leading group” (of the single currency project), the president stressed.
“He was an extraordinary example as an Italian, and as a European,” his immediate successor of the Italian presidency Giorgio Napolitano also said.
Ciampi led Italy during one of its most difficult phases in recent history, when the country was shaken by the repercussions of a huge corruption scandal involving most of the political parties in the 1990s.
He also played a crucial role as treasury minister in stabilizing the country’s financial situation between 1996 and 1999.
A new political framework commonly known in Italy as the “second Republic” overall emerged from that crisis, during his presidency.
Ciampi was also a strong pro-European leader. He guided the country into the euro currency project, despite the doubts shown by some major EU allies about the Italian public finance’s instability.
Former Prime Minister Enrico Letta wrote on Twitter: “If Italy is (still) a great country, the gratitude we owe to Ciampi is huge.”
Ciampi was born in Livorno, on the west coast of Tuscany, in 1920. He joined the Italian partisans fighting against the Fascist regime during the Second World War, and then started working with the Bank of Italy in 1946, after finishing his law studies.
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