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The politician was hospitalized for heart failure in November, according to a statement issued by his foundation, who died this Wednesday of a coronavirus complication at his home in Authon, Loire. According to his will, his burial takes place in a small family circle.
Valéry René Marie Georges Giscard d’Estaing was born in Koblenz, Germany, and his father was a civil servant in the French-occupied Rhineland after the First World War. He was the descendant of a rich aristocratic and political family, his great-grandfather was a minister and his grandfather was a member of Parliament. During World War II, he fought in the resistance movement, graduated in 1951 from the École nationale d’administration and began working in the tax office.
Under the presidency of Charles de Gaulle, he headed the Ministry of Finance and, after thirty years, managed to balance the country’s budget. He was elected head of state at the age of forty-eight, and in 1974 he was the second youngest president of the republic (younger than Charles-Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, later Napoleon III, elected in 1848). then, in 1978, it was established by the centrist Union por la Democracia Française (UDF).
As a representative of the centrist Christian Democratic coalition that rebuilt Europe after World War II, he fundamentally and permanently transformed French society with his policy of reform during his seven-year tenure. During his tenure, the law on the right to birth control and abortion was enacted, the unification of primary education, the date of adulthood and the voting age were reduced from 21 to 18 years. As president, he called for the construction of the TGV (Train á Grande Vitesse), the high-speed railway, the development of the Minitel online service and supported the construction of nuclear power plants. In 1975, he began the creation of the world’s most advanced industrial nations (the current G7 group) and, together with German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, with whom Giscard, who spoke excellent German, had a personal friendship, embraced the plan of union monetary.
However, the oil crisis, which is also affecting the French economy, rising inflation and unemployment are not really conducive to its popularity, as is its aristocratic subspecies, expensive skiing, hunting African elephants and his relationship with the Central African dictator, Emperor Bokassa. He also lost the support of his first prime minister, Jacques Chirac, who was running for president, and was defeated by left-wing candidate Francois Mitterrand in the 1981 presidential election.
However, he did not retire from politics, he was one of the strongest defenders of EU integration as a member of the European Parliament from 1989 to 1993, and from 2001 to 2003 he chaired the European Convention that draws up the EU Constitutional Treaty. . As a former president of the Republic, he has been a member of the Constitutional Council, the constitutional review body for French law, since 1981. He was elected a member of the French Academy in 2003, and since 2008 has been honorary president of the international organization Atomium based in Brussels.
- “Throughout his life, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing has worked to strengthen relations between European nations, successfully modernizing political life and dedicating his immense intelligence to the analysis of the most complex international problems,” wrote Nicolas Sarkozy, former chief of the right-wing State, in a memorial on social networks.
- France has lost a “statesman who chose to open up to the world,” another former president, the socialist Francois Hollande, said in a statement.
- “The European idea has lost one of its founders, and France has lost a president who brought modernity and boldness to it,” said Richard Ferrand, president of the National Assembly.
- Marine Le Pen, president of the far-right National Rally, said that Giscard d’Estaing was “the creator of new freedoms and an enthusiastic supporter of technological progress as president of a France in crisis,” while Anne Hidalgo, the socialist mayor of Paris, laments “convinced Europeans.”
- According to Francois Bayrou, the current president of the UDF, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, for “entire generations” brought the modernization of French society and created “great hope for unity.”
Cover image: Focke Strangmann – Pool / Getty Images
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