Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, liberaliser and euro founding father, dies
Media reports say he died of Covid-19, but French presidency has not confirmed the cause of death
03 December 2020 - 17:49
byGregory Viscusi
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Former French president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing in Strasbourg, France, January 13 2009. Picture: REUTERS/VINCENT KESSLER
Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, a former president of France who set European monetary union in motion, fathered the first draft of the EU’s constitution and helped create the G8 forum, has died. He was 94.
A spokesperson for the office of the French presidency confirmed his death via a text message on Wednesday night, without elaborating. Media reports said he died of Covid-19.
Giscard, who led the nation from 1974 to 1981, was France’s youngest 20th-century president.
“Let us dream of Europe!” Giscard said in a speech to the convention on the Future of Europe in February 2002. “Let’s imagine a pacified continent, free from its dividing walls and its barriers, where history and geography will finally be reconciled, so as to allow all nations to build up their future together.”
As president, Giscard worked with German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt to launch the European Monetary System, which had fixed pegs between the region’s currencies before monetary union and the euro. The EMS became operative on March 13 1979.
In 1975, he invited leaders from six industrialised nations to Rambouillet, near Paris, to discuss the energy crisis, putting into motion what would become the G8, consisting of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the UK and the US.
‘Desire for unity’
Almost three decades later, he wrote a 1,037-page draft for a European constitution that boosted the democratic legitimacy of regional institutions to satisfy “the desire for unity of the European continent”.
Elected president at the age of 48, he sought to modernise French society by legalising abortion, making divorce easier, dropping the age of majority to 18, and ending censorship of films and television. However, France’s last executions were carried out under his rule.
His reputation was later tarnished by rising unemployment and by his acceptance of gifts from an African dictator. He lost his re-election bid to Francois Mitterand, France’s first Socialist president.
Giscard was the third president of the Fifth Republic, the new regime inaugurated in 1958 in a referendum promoted by Charles de Gaulle. The Fourth Republic, which had emerged from World War 2, collapsed amid political instability over Algeria’s war of independence.
Early years
Valéry Marie Rene Georges Giscard d’Estaing was born in Koblenz on February 2 1926, when French troops were occupying the German city after World War 1. The son of a public servant, Giscard was educated in Clermont-Ferrand, in the central region of Auvergne, as well as in Paris. He was decorated for service with the free French army during World War 2.
After completing the Ecole Polytechnique and the Ecole Nationale d’Administration, the institutions that train the highest ranks of the French political elite, he joined the Inspection Generale des Finances in 1952. Four years later, he was appointed deputy director to the office of the minister of finance.
In 1956, Giscard was elected to the National Assembly, France’s chamber of representatives, and served as a secretary of state for finance from 1959 to 1962. At 36, he became France’s youngest minister of finance and economic affairs, holding that post from 1962 to 1966.
Werner report
On his second mandate as finance minister, from 1969 to 1974, he backed the 1970 Werner Report, which recommended the creation of a European economic and monetary union and the transfer of powers from the states to the commission in economic and monetary matters. The EU then had its six original members.
In 1974, he defeated Mitterrand and became French president in the elections that followed the death of Georges Pompidou.
In the mid-1970s, the 30-year postwar boom of the French economy, a period known as “the Glorious Thirty”, ended and France entered a prolonged crisis. Immediately after Giscard came to power, the first oil shock prompted a recession in Western Europe.
On October 1973, Arab members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries curtailed oil shipments during the Yom Kippur War, quadrupling oil prices. GDP in industrialised countries shrank and stock-exchange indexes plunged.
Loss to Mitterrand
In a 1981 presidential rematch, Giscard was defeated by Mitterrand after revelations that the incumbent had received diamonds from Central African dictator Jean-Bedel Bokassa.
“No king of France would have been re-elected after seven years,” Giscard said when he lost his bid for a second term. He returned to the National Assembly and became one of the leaders of the Union for French Democracy, a centre-right group.
Giscard later served as president of the commission of foreign affairs from 1987 to 1989 and was a member of the European parliament from 1989 to 1993. He returned to the National Assembly in 1993 and again became president of the commission until 1997.
In December 2001, Giscard was appointed chair of the convention on the future of Europe. In November 2002, he sparked a furore after saying that Turkey isn’t a European country and that its entry would be “the end of the EU”. He said that those who backed Turkey’s candidacy were “the adversaries of the EU”.
Giscard was ambivalent about the EU bringing in new members in Eastern Europe between 2004 and 2007, calling for the original Western members to forge closer ties — a precursor to the “two speed” EU that subsequent French presidents have at times promoted.
In December 2003, Giscard was elected to the Academie Francaise, on the same chair of Leopold Sedar Senghor, the first president of the Republic of Senegal and a major French-speaking poet of the past century.
Giscard and his wife, Anne-Aymone Sauvage de Brantes, had four children: Valerie-Anne, Henri, Louis and Jacinte.
Support our award-winning journalism. The Premium package (digital only) is R30 for the first month and thereafter you pay R129 p/m now ad-free for all subscribers.
obituary
Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, liberaliser and euro founding father, dies
Media reports say he died of Covid-19, but French presidency has not confirmed the cause of death
Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, a former president of France who set European monetary union in motion, fathered the first draft of the EU’s constitution and helped create the G8 forum, has died. He was 94.
A spokesperson for the office of the French presidency confirmed his death via a text message on Wednesday night, without elaborating. Media reports said he died of Covid-19.
Giscard, who led the nation from 1974 to 1981, was France’s youngest 20th-century president.
“Let us dream of Europe!” Giscard said in a speech to the convention on the Future of Europe in February 2002. “Let’s imagine a pacified continent, free from its dividing walls and its barriers, where history and geography will finally be reconciled, so as to allow all nations to build up their future together.”
As president, Giscard worked with German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt to launch the European Monetary System, which had fixed pegs between the region’s currencies before monetary union and the euro. The EMS became operative on March 13 1979.
In 1975, he invited leaders from six industrialised nations to Rambouillet, near Paris, to discuss the energy crisis, putting into motion what would become the G8, consisting of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the UK and the US.
‘Desire for unity’
Almost three decades later, he wrote a 1,037-page draft for a European constitution that boosted the democratic legitimacy of regional institutions to satisfy “the desire for unity of the European continent”.
Elected president at the age of 48, he sought to modernise French society by legalising abortion, making divorce easier, dropping the age of majority to 18, and ending censorship of films and television. However, France’s last executions were carried out under his rule.
His reputation was later tarnished by rising unemployment and by his acceptance of gifts from an African dictator. He lost his re-election bid to Francois Mitterand, France’s first Socialist president.
Giscard was the third president of the Fifth Republic, the new regime inaugurated in 1958 in a referendum promoted by Charles de Gaulle. The Fourth Republic, which had emerged from World War 2, collapsed amid political instability over Algeria’s war of independence.
Early years
Valéry Marie Rene Georges Giscard d’Estaing was born in Koblenz on February 2 1926, when French troops were occupying the German city after World War 1. The son of a public servant, Giscard was educated in Clermont-Ferrand, in the central region of Auvergne, as well as in Paris. He was decorated for service with the free French army during World War 2.
After completing the Ecole Polytechnique and the Ecole Nationale d’Administration, the institutions that train the highest ranks of the French political elite, he joined the Inspection Generale des Finances in 1952. Four years later, he was appointed deputy director to the office of the minister of finance.
In 1956, Giscard was elected to the National Assembly, France’s chamber of representatives, and served as a secretary of state for finance from 1959 to 1962. At 36, he became France’s youngest minister of finance and economic affairs, holding that post from 1962 to 1966.
Werner report
On his second mandate as finance minister, from 1969 to 1974, he backed the 1970 Werner Report, which recommended the creation of a European economic and monetary union and the transfer of powers from the states to the commission in economic and monetary matters. The EU then had its six original members.
In 1974, he defeated Mitterrand and became French president in the elections that followed the death of Georges Pompidou.
In the mid-1970s, the 30-year postwar boom of the French economy, a period known as “the Glorious Thirty”, ended and France entered a prolonged crisis. Immediately after Giscard came to power, the first oil shock prompted a recession in Western Europe.
On October 1973, Arab members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries curtailed oil shipments during the Yom Kippur War, quadrupling oil prices. GDP in industrialised countries shrank and stock-exchange indexes plunged.
Loss to Mitterrand
In a 1981 presidential rematch, Giscard was defeated by Mitterrand after revelations that the incumbent had received diamonds from Central African dictator Jean-Bedel Bokassa.
“No king of France would have been re-elected after seven years,” Giscard said when he lost his bid for a second term. He returned to the National Assembly and became one of the leaders of the Union for French Democracy, a centre-right group.
Giscard later served as president of the commission of foreign affairs from 1987 to 1989 and was a member of the European parliament from 1989 to 1993. He returned to the National Assembly in 1993 and again became president of the commission until 1997.
In December 2001, Giscard was appointed chair of the convention on the future of Europe. In November 2002, he sparked a furore after saying that Turkey isn’t a European country and that its entry would be “the end of the EU”. He said that those who backed Turkey’s candidacy were “the adversaries of the EU”.
Giscard was ambivalent about the EU bringing in new members in Eastern Europe between 2004 and 2007, calling for the original Western members to forge closer ties — a precursor to the “two speed” EU that subsequent French presidents have at times promoted.
In December 2003, Giscard was elected to the Academie Francaise, on the same chair of Leopold Sedar Senghor, the first president of the Republic of Senegal and a major French-speaking poet of the past century.
Giscard and his wife, Anne-Aymone Sauvage de Brantes, had four children: Valerie-Anne, Henri, Louis and Jacinte.
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