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Paris. Former French Head of State Valéry Giscard d’Estaing dies. The central politician, who served at the Elysee Palace from 1974 to 1981, died at the age of 94. The environment of the former president confirmed the German press agency in Paris on Wednesday night the information of the corresponding media. Giscard d’Estaing was discharged from the Tours hospital in western France in the middle of the month after a five-day stay.
Giscard d’Estaing was a staunch European and spoke to French audiences about EU problems well into old age. In the 1970s he formed an exemplary Franco-German duo with then-Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt (SPD).
The tall, aristocratic Frenchman outlived his successors François Mitterrand (1916-1996) and Jacques Chirac (1932-2019). At Chirac’s funeral in Paris in September 2019, he still participated, walking hunched over.
Giscard d’Estaing also had a close personal relationship with Germany. He was born on February 2, 1926 in Koblenz in the French-occupied Rhineland. After World War II, he graduated from the elite French ENA university. He then rose to become Minister of Economy and Finance. After the death of President Georges Pompidou, he was elected to the highest office in the state at the age of 48.
Social reforms implemented
Giscard promoted social reforms such as the liberalization of marriage and the abortion law in the Elysee Palace. Towards the end of his term, however, his popularity suffered, among other things due to the affair involving a diamond gift from the Central African dictator Jean-Bédel Bokassa.
Starting in 2002, Giscard led the EU Reform Convention, which presented a draft constitution for the renewal of the European Union. However, when the French and the Dutch voted no in the 2005 referenda, the project failed spectacularly. After that, the EU Lisbon Treaty adopted important provisions from the rejected constitution. In 2003 the European politician Giscard d’Estaing received the Charlemagne Prize from the city of Aachen.
Giscard d’Estaing responded to a sexual harassment complaint against him in June. “Everything is grotesque,” he told French radio station RTL. A WDR reporter had accused him of sexually abusing her. Ann-Kathrin Stracke told the German news agency that she “touched her butt several times after an interview I did with her in December 2018 in Paris.” He confirmed that he had filed a criminal complaint for sexual harassment. The Paris prosecutor opened an investigation.
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