Belgian ex-Prime Minister Leo Tindemans dies at 92 Published duration 26 December 2014

image copyright AFP image caption Tindemans is seen here in 2001 at the funeral of another former Prime Minister, Paul Vanden Boeynants

Former Belgian Prime Minister Leo Tindemans, whose record support at the first European elections earned him the nickname "Mr Europe", has died aged 92.

The Christian Democrat who led two governments in the 1970s passed away at his home in Edegem, near Antwerp.

In the 1979 European election, he won 983,000 votes, still a record for any election in Belgium.

The president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, paid tribute to him as a "great European".

image copyright AFP image caption Leon Tindemans (left) with other European leaders in Paris in 1974

In the European Parliament, the European People's Party group he once chaired said that it was "deeply saddened" by the death of Tindemans.

His Christian Democratic and Flemish party paid tribute (in Dutch) on its website to an "exceptional statesman who embodied politics for an entire generation".