Former Dutch foreign minister Hans van den Broek, who played a key role in shaping the Maastricht Treaty that formed the basis of the European Union, has died at the age of 88.

The Christian Democrat (CDA) politician held the post from 1982 and 1993 in the cabinets of Ruud Lubbers and was seen as a potential successor as party leader.

Prime minister Dick Schoof said Van den Broek “was for many years the personification of the best that Dutch diplomacy has given to the world” in a social media post on Monday.

Born in Paris in 1936, he spent the war years in London, where his father was in charge of the governmment-in-exile’s broadcasting channel Radio Oranje. His daughter, Marilène, married Prince Maurits, the cousin of king Willem-Alexander, in 1998.

Transatlantic relations

The king, queen Maxima and Princess Beatrix, who abdicated in 2013, said in a Facebook post that they remembered Van den Broek as “a man with a great social heart” who worked to strengthen the “transatlantic partnership”.

Van den Broek’s 10-year stint as foreign minister also coincided with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the outbreak of war in the former Yugoslavia, where he was later involved in the peace talks in his role as European commissioner.

“He played an important role in coming to some kind of peaceful solution,” his cabinet colleague Ernst Hirsch Ballin, who served as justice minister, told NPO Radio 1.

“But his preparations for the Treaty of Maastricht in 1991 were his most important work.”

A quotation from Van den Broek is displayed on one of the Stars of Europe, an artwork placed on a roundabout in Maastricht in 1992 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the treaty.

It says: “‘Whatever kind of European you are, whatever kind of Europe you wish, remember the past while shaping the future.”