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- Former French Head of State Valéry Giscard d’Estaing has died.
- The central politician, who served at the Elysee Palace from 1974 to 1981, died at 94, the government confirmed.
- The former president succumbed to the coronavirus, as announced by his foundation.
Giscard d’Estaing was released from the Tours hospital in western France in the middle of the month after a five-day stay. The former president died on Wednesday at his home in Loir-et-Cher, where his condition had deteriorated, due to the consequences of Covid-19, his family announced in a letter to the AFP agency.
Great european
Giscard d’Estaing was a staunch European and spoke to the French public on EU issues well into old age. In the 1970s he formed an exemplary Franco-German duo with then-Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt (SPD).
Former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt (left) and former French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing talk on the occasion of the Hanns Martin Schleyer Prize presentation on April 26, 2013 in Stuttgart.
Keystone / Files
The tall, aristocratic Frenchman outlived his successors François Mitterrand (1916-1996) and Jacques Chirac (1932-2019). At Chirac’s funeral in September 2019 in Paris, he still participated, walking bowed.
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.
Numerous reforms
Giscard promoted social reforms in the Elysee Palace, such as the liberalization of marriage and the abortion law. Towards the end of his term, however, his popularity suffered, among other things due to the matter related to a diamond gift from the Central African dictator Jean-Bédel Bokassa.
Draft European constitution
Starting in 2002, Giscard d’Estaing headed 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 of 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 last June. “Everything is grotesque,” he told French radio station RTL. A WDR journalist had accused him of sexually abusing her.
Ann-Kathrin Stracke told the German press agency that he “touched her butt several times after an interview I did in Paris in December 2018.” He confirmed that he had filed a criminal complaint for sexual harassment. The Paris prosecutor opened an investigation.
