PARIS, Aug 25: Former French Prime Minister Raymond Barre, who helped set Europe on its road to a single currency, died on Saturday. He was 83.

Barre was plucked from the obscurity of being a backroom technocrat and thrust into frontline politics when then President Valery Giscard d’Estaing made him prime minister in August 1976, dubbing him “France’s best economist”.

Taking over the premiership from Jacques Chirac, Barre held the post until the victory of the Socialists under Francois Mitterrand in 1981.

His association with Giscard dated back to the 1960s when, as European Commissioner in charge of economic and financial affairs, Barre drew up the first proposal for European monetary cooperation, adopted by leaders at the Hague in 1969.—Reuters