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northIn retrospect, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing spoke of a “golden age” between France and Germany. During his tenure as French president from 1974 to 1981, he and then-Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt pushed Europe forward. For example, both high-level politicians designed the European Monetary System, which from 1979 constituted the framework for monetary cooperation between partner countries. Now Giscard, the third president of the Fifth Republic created in 1958, has died very old at 94, as reported together this Wednesday night by several French media, including the AFP news agency.
The tall, aristocratic Frenchman and the nervous SPD politician, Schmidt, took the same direction on the international stage. They represented the foundation of the summits of the great economic powers. These were initially gathered in the so-called G6 format. The main representatives of Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Great Britain and the United States met for the first time in 1975 in the castle of Rambouillet, near Paris.
The unification of Europe and the Franco-German friendship were part of Giscard’s lifelong work. The Frenchman, awarded the Charlemagne Prize of the City of Aachen (2003), used his office to reform and set the course.
D’Estaing with then Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt (r.) 1977 in the former federal capital, Bonn
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Image: dpa
Born on February 2, 1926 in Koblenz, in the then French-occupied Rhineland, he graduated from the elite ENA university after World War II. He was Minister of Economy and Finance for a long time before being elected to the highest position in the state after the death of President Georges Pompidou at the age of 48.
“VGE”, as Giscard was called, won the second round with only a narrow majority against the socialist François Mitterrand. The sharp-tongued Mitterrand once wryly described his upper-class adversary as a “young old man.”
As president, Giscard pushed far-reaching social reforms such as the liberalization of the marriage law and abortion in the difficult times after the 1968 revolt. At the same time, the death penalty was still applied in France in the 1970s. In 1977 Hamida Djandoubi was the last prisoner to die on the guillotine. He wanted to modernize France “without breaking with its past,” the central liberal politician once said.
With his refined manners and penchant for hunting, he seemed from time to time very distant from his fellow citizens. Towards the end of his term, his popularity suffered, among other things due to the affair related to 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, Giscard was elected a member of the prestigious academic society Académie française, whose members are called “the immortals.” He also wrote several books, including the novel “The Princess and the President.” In it he tells how a French president named Jacques-Henri Lambertye hooks up with Princess Patricia of Cardiff.
D’Estaing, in turn, with Schmidt (left) and German Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD).
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Image: Picture-Alliance
The novel is rich in allusions: all of Paris speculated whether VGE was having an affair with Princess Diana or was simply rich in fantasy. “We don’t want to exaggerate: I knew her a little, we had a trusting relationship,” Giscard once said.
In May, the former president made headlines over the sexual harassment accusation – a WDR reporter accused him of touching her buttocks multiple times after an interview. The Paris prosecutor launched an investigation. Giscard d’Estaing described the accusation as grotesque in an interview.
