There were not many tributes in Cyprus for the former Greek prime minister Costas Simitis, who passed away on Sunday at the age of 88, even though Greek Cypriots should be eternally grateful to him for the vital role he played in securing the Republic’s accession to the EU.

It is no exaggeration to say that without Simitis at the helm in Greece – he served two terms from 1996 to 2004 – Cyprus would not have been included in the 2004 expansion of the EU.

There was a passing mention of this by three parties that issued short written tributes to the man but no mention in Akel’s announcement, which merely said, that “Simitis had a leading role in several critical and important moments in the modern history of Greece leaving behind a significant legacy.” Diko, Elam and the Greens said nothing, probably because Simitis shunned the hollow nationalistic rhetoric and platitudes of his predecessor, Andreas Papandreou, who specialised in demagoguery.

A political pragmatist with a low-key approach, Simitis was a prime minister who got things done and avoided the big words of the populist Papandreou, who was his exact opposite. Another reason for his lack of popularity in Cyprus, was that when he replaced Papandreou in 1996 he had abandoned the Unified Defence Dogma between Cyprus and Greece, by which Greece and Cyprus had forged a defensive alliance. The Dogma, marketed by a couple of Pasok ministers, had never moved beyond rhetoric but it was incredibly popular among Greek Cypriots, many of whom were under the illusion that the island had come under Greece’s defensive shield.

Simitis’ reluctance to engage in military confrontation with Turkey, was also lambasted by the nationalist camp in Greece, which never forgave him for not going to war with Turkey over Imia – an uninhabited island in the Aegean – in 1996. This was viewed as treason as was Simitis’ pressure on the Clerides government, not to take delivery of the S300 ballistics missiles.

Turkey had threatened to take out the missiles if they were deployed in Cyprus, while at the European Council in December 1998, the French president Jacque Chirac gave Greece an ultimatum – either the missiles or EU accession negotiations. The missiles were taken to Crete in January 1999, while by the end of that year the UNSG Kofi Annan set in motion a new peace process, a Cyprus settlement having been made part of the EU membership parcel.

Greek Cypriots ignore the fact that Simitis was campaigning for Cyprus’ accession to the EU from within the union – Cyprus had nobody else to campaign for it – having threatened to block the enlargement if Cyprus were not included in it. Simitis had set in motion the course for Cyprus’ membership at the Helisinki council in 1999 and secured the green light for accession at the Copenhagen council in December 2002. In April 2003, under Greece’s presidency of the EU, the convention for the accession of the whole of Cyprus into the EU was signed in Athens.

It is thanks to Simitis, who opted for diplomacy rather than sabre-rattling, action rather than rhetoric that Cyprus is now a member of the EU, and it is a shame that we had never offered him the recognition and respect that he so richly deserved. May he rest in peace.