Karel Van Miert, one of the most respected European commissioners of the past 20 years, and who spoke for us regularly on Europe and the European Union, has died in his native Belgium at the age of 67. Mr Van Miert died on Monday after falling from a garden ladder at his home south of Brussels.
It was under Mr Van Miert that the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, first displayed signs of turning into the powerful and energetic regulator of global business that it is today. Until his spell in charge, few had thought it possible the Commission would dare take on the likes of Boeing, the aircraft manufacturer, and Coca-Cola, the world's largest soft drinks company.
Mr Van Miert was no free-market ideologue, however. His socialist background and pragmatic streak were on display in decisions that authorised state aid for companies such as Air France, the French airline that came close to bankruptcy in the early 1990s, and Hualon, a Taiwanese textiles manufacturer operating in Northern Ireland.
In 1989 he became a European commissioner for the first time, taking responsibility for transport policy and then moving to competition four years later. In what was perhaps his highest-profile case, he refused to approve Boeing's $16bn purchase of McDonnell Douglas, a deal supported by the Pentagon, until Boeing made concessions that satisfied his concerns about competition.
Mr Van Miert kept the competition portfolio when Jacques Santer replaced Jacques Delors as Commission president in 1995. When the Santer Commission was swept away in 1999 by allegations of mismanagement, fraud and nepotism, Mr Van Miert's personal reputation remained intact - as it did when party funding scandals erupted in Belgium.