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The abortion law, divorce, the age of majority at 18, the end of censorship: Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, who died last night at 94 from Covid, will always remain, for the French, the young president, who left enter the France of the boom of modernity. Emmanuel Macron, 38, stole his record on May 8, 2017, but Giscard’s 48 years in 1974, when he crossed the threshold of the Elysee, the first non-Gaullist, ushered in an epochal revolution. Hospitalized in Tours a few weeks ago for heart problems, after another hospitalization in September for “mild pneumonia”, Giscard died “of complications from Covid,” the family said, at his historic home in Authon, Loir-et-Cher, the region of the castles of the Loire. An aristocrat, Giscard was by birth (he had a natural ancestor, daughter of Louis XV, although his father had added the noble name of Estaing to him in 1922), due to his tall, slim and elegant figure, and therefore a haughty, unmistakable accent, joy of any impersonator.
The last public appearance dates back to September 30, 2019, at the funeral of Jacques Chirac, his former prime minister and also his historic rival. He was born in Koblenz, Germany, on February 2, 1926: his father, Edmond Giscard, was director of finance for the High Commissioner in the Rhineland, a region then occupied by the French army. Reconciliation with Germany will be, with the obsession for European construction, one of the cornerstones of his foreign policy in the Elysee, also facilitated by his friendship with Chancellor Helmut Schmidt. The political rise was dazzling. At the age of 26 he graduated from Ena, the High Administration school, a nursery for presidents, he became a Treasury inspector, at 29 he was director of the cabinet of Prime Minister Edgar Faure, at 30 he was a deputy, and at 36 After various ministerial positions, he is Minister of Finance. In 69, he refused to vote yes in the referendum on constitutional reform that De Gaulle wanted.
The referendum is rejected, the general resigns, Giscard creates the Républicains Indépendants and “invents” the center. In 1974, after beating Gaullist presidential candidate Jacques Chaban-Delmas on the right, he found himself challenging the socialist François Mitterrand to a duel. “You do not have a monopoly on the heart, Mr. Mitterrand,” Giscard tells him during the debate between the first and second rounds, a phrase that has entered the national treasure that every French carries with him. Win with 50.81% of the votes. Bring personalities from civil society to government for the first time, modernizing the image of the president (through the official photography apparatus). In addition to social reforms on abortion (the law championed by the historic Minister of Health Simone Veil), divorce and public television, he was the first French president to go to independent Algeria in 1975.
In the same year he creates the G6 with a meeting in Rambouillet, which will become the G7 the following year. In 1979, however, the scandal that cost him his re-election broke out: Canard enchainé accuses him of having received, as finance minister, diamonds as a gift from the former president of the Central African Republic, Bokassa; his denials are unconvincing and in May 1981 he will have to bow to Mitterrand, the first socialist to enter the Elysee. “Let’s face it – he will say later – I had not imagined a second of losing.”
It will take a lifetime to get rid of defeat, even if decades of intense political life will follow. A convinced European since the years of its formation, Giscard assumed the leadership of the Convention for Europe in 2001, in charge of drafting the European Constitution, which was later rejected by the referendum. In 2003, a brilliant economist and author of several books and treatises, he was elected a member of the French Academy. In 2009, in a novel, he had imagined an idyll between a president (who looked a lot like him) and Lady Diana, last May he was questioned and investigated for the complaint of a German journalist, who was sued for “sexual violence” .
Last update: December 3 at 01:06
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