'Valéry Marie René Giscard d'Estaing' (born
2 February,
1926) is a
French centre-
right politician who was
President of the
French Republic from 1974 until 1981.
His tenure as President was marked by a more liberal attitude on social issues—such as divorce, contraception, and abortion—and attempts to modernize the country and the office of the presidency, notably launching such far-reaching infrastructure projects as the high-speed
TGV train and the turn towards reliance on
nuclear power as France's main energy source. However, his popularity suffered from the economic downturn that followed the
1973 energy crisis, marking the end of the "
thirty glorious years" after
World War II, unfortunately combined with the official discourse that the "end of the tunnel was near". Furthermore, Giscard faced political opposition from both sides of the spectrum: from the newly-unified left of
François Mitterrand, and from a rising
Jacques Chirac, who resurrected
Gaullism on a right-wing opposition line. All this, plus bad
public relations, caused his unpopularity to grow at the end of his term, and he failed to secure re-election in 1981.
He is a proponent of the
United States of Europe and, having limited his involvement in national politics after his defeat, he became involved with the
European Union. He notably presided over the Convention on the Future of the European Union that drafted the ill-fated
Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe. He also became involved in the regional politics of
Auvergne, serving as president of that region from 1986 to 2004. He was elected to the
French Academy, taking the seat that his friend and former President of
Senegal Léopold Sédar Senghor had held. As a former President, he is a member of the
Constitutional Council. It is a prerogative that he has taken recently.
Biography
Valéry Marie René Giscard d'Estaing was born in
Koblenz,
Germany, the son of Jean Edmond Lucien Giscard d'Estaing (
1894 -
1982), a civil servant, and his wife, Marthe Clémence Jacqueline Marie (May) Bardoux, who was a daughter of senator and academic
Achille Octave Marie Jacques Bardoux and a great-granddaughter of minister of state education
Agénor Bardoux, also a grandaughter of historian
Georges Picot and niece of diplomat
François Georges-Picot, and also a great-great-great-granddaughter of King
Louis XV of France (by one of his mistresses, Catherine Éléonore Bernard (1740 - 1769)), and by whom Giscard d'Estaing was a multiple descendant of
Charlemagne. Despite the addition of "d'Estaing" to the family name by his grandfather, Giscard is not descended from the extinct noble family of
Vice-Admiral d'Estaing, that name being adopted by his grandfather in 1922 by reason of a distant connection to another branch of that family.
[1]
He studied at Lycée Blaise-Pascal in
Clermont-Ferrand,
École Gerson and Lycées
Janson-de-Sailly and
Louis-le-Grand in
Paris. He graduated from the
École Polytechnique and the
École nationale d'administration (1949 - 1951). He acceded to the Inland Revenue Service, then joined the staff of Prime Minister
Edgar Faure (1955 - 1956).
His political rise
In 1956, he was elected to Parliament as deputy of
Puy-de-Dôme ''
département'', in the domain of his maternal family. He joined the
National Center of Independents and Peasants (CNIP), a conservative grouping. After the proclamation of the
Fifth Republic, the CNIP leader
Antoine Pinay became Minister of Economy and Finance and chose him as Secretary of State for Finances from 1959 to 1962.
In 1962, while Valéry Giscard d'Estaing had been nominated
Minister of Economy and Finance, his party broke with the Gaullists and left the majority coalition. The CNIP reproached President
De Gaulle with his
euro-scepticism. But VGE refused to resign and founded the
Independent Republicans (RI). It was the small partner of the Gaullists in the "presidential majority".
However, in 1966, he was dismissed from the cabinet. He did not leave the majority but became more critical. In this, he criticized the "solitary practice of the power" and summarised his position towards De Gaulle's policy by a "yes, but...". Chairman of the commission of finance in the
National Assembly, he harassed his successor in the cabinet. That's why, the Gaullists refused to re-elect him in this function after the
1968 legislative election. In 1969, unlike most of RI’s elected officials, he advocated a "no" vote in the referendum about regions and Senate, while De Gaulle had announced his intention to resign if the "no" won. The Gaullists accused him of being largely responsible for De Gaulle's departure.
During the
1969 presidential campaign, he supported the winning candidate
Georges Pompidou and returned to the Ministry of Economy and Finance. On the French political scene, he appeared as a young brilliant politician, and a preeminent expert in economic issues. He was representative of a new generation of politicians emerging from the senior civil service, whose profile was as "technocrats".
In 1974, after the sudden death of President Pompidou, he announced his candidacy for the presidency. His two main challengers were
François Mitterrand for the left and
Jacques Chaban-Delmas, a former Gaullist prime minister. Supported by all the non-Gaullist center-right, he benefited from the divisions in the Gaullist party.
Jacques Chirac and other Gaullist personalities published the "Call of the 43" where they explained Giscard was the best candidate to prevent the election of Mitterrand. VGE crushed Chaban-Delmas in the first round, and then narrowly defeated Mitterrand in the second with 50.8% of the vote.
Presidency
In 1974, he was elected
President of France when he was 48, the third youngest president in French history, behind
Louis Napoleon Bonaparte and
Jean Casimir-Perier). He promised "change in continuity". He made clear his desire to introduce various reforms and modernize French society, which was an important part of his presidency. He for instance reduced from 21 to 18 the
age of majority and pushed for the development of the
TGV high speed train network.
In 1975, French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing invited the heads of government from West Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States to a summit in Rambouillet to form the G7 now G8 group.
He pursued a controversial course in foreign policy. In 1977, in the
Opération Lamantin, he ordered
fighter jets to deploy in
Mauritania and go to war against the
Polisario guerillas fighting against Mauritanian
military occupation of
Western Sahara. But not even overt military backing proved sufficient to rescue the French-installed Mauritanian leader
Mokhtar Ould Daddah, as he was overthrown by his own army some time later, and a peace agreement was signed with the
Sahrawi resistance.
Most controversial, however, was his involvement with the Bokassa regime of the
Central African Republic. Valéry Giscard d'Estaing was at first a friend of its ruler,
Jean-Bédel Bokassa; he supplied Bokassa's regime with much financial and military backing. However, the growing unpopularity of that government led Giscard to begin distancing himself from Bokassa.
In 1979 French troops helped drive Bokassa out of power and restore former president
David Dacko. This action was also controversial, particularly since Dacko was Bokassa’s cousin and had appointed Bokassa as head of the military, and unrest continued in the Central African Republic, leading to Dacko being overthrown in another coup in 1981.
In a related incident, Giscard was reported by the ''
Canard Enchaîné'' to have accepted diamonds as personal gifts from Bokassa—who fled to France with looted millions from the Central African Republic's treasury, but was still given asylum in France. Presidential official gifts legally are property of the Republic of France instead of d'Estaing. Giscard supporters contended that the diamonds were industrial-grade and thus had no sizeable monetary value.
In home policy, the president’s reforms worried the conservative electorate and the Gaullist party. A rivalry appeared with his prime minister Jacques Chirac, who resigned in 1976.
Raymond Barre, called the "best economist in France", succeeded him. He led a policy of strictness in a context of economic crisis (Plan Barre). Unemployment grew.
Unexpectedly, the right-wing coalition won the
1978 legislative election. Nevertheless, relations with Chirac, who had founded the
Rally for the Republic (RPR), became more tense. VGE reacted by founding a center-right confederation, the
Union for French Democracy (UDF).
Giscard was defeated in the
1981 presidential election by
Mitterrand. At the time, Chirac ran against Giscard in the first round of
runoff voting and declined to call his voters to elect Giscard, though he declared that he himself would vote for Giscard. Since then, Giscard has always attributed his defeat to Chirac, and he is widely said to loathe Chirac. Certainly, on many occasions, Giscard has criticized Chirac's policies, despite supporting Chirac's governing coalition.
Although he said he had "deep aversion against capital punishment" he did not commute three of the death sentences that he had to decide upon during his presidency. These executions would be the last ever in France.
Later career
After his defeat, he retired temporarily from politics. In 1986, he regained his seat in Parliament and won the presidency of the regional council of
Auvergne. In this position, he tried to encourage
tourism to the
région, founding the "European Centre of Volcanology" and
theme park Vulcania.
He hoped to become prime minister of France during the first "
cohabitation" (1986 - 1988) or after the reelection of Mitterrand with the theme of "France united", but he was not chosen for this position. He served as President of the UDF from 1988 to 1996, and was faced with the rise of a new generation of politicians called the "renovationmen". Most of the UDF politicians supported the candidacy of the RPR Prime minister
Edouard Balladur at the
1995 presidential election, but Giscard supported his old rival
Jacques Chirac, who won the election.
In 2000, he made a parliamentary proposition in order to reduce the presidential term from 7 to 5 years. President Chirac organized a referendum on this issue, and the "yes" won. He did not run for a new parliamentary term in 2002. His son
Louis Giscard d'Estaing was elected in his constituency.
Following his defeat in the
regional elections of March 2004, he decided to leave partisan politics and to take his seat in the
Constitutional Council as a former president of the Republic. Some of his actions there, such as his campaign in favor of the Treaty establishing the European Constitution, were criticized as unbecoming to a member of this council, which should embody nonpartisanship and should not appear to favor one political option over the other. Indeed, the question of the membership of former presidents in the Council was raised at this point, with some suggesting that it should be replaced by a life membership in the
French Senate.
In 2003, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing was admitted to the
Académie française, amid controversy; critics pointed out that Giscard had written only a single novel, ''Le Passage'', of dubious quality.
He has also served on the
Trilateral Commission after being president, writing papers with
Henry Kissinger.
He is currently serving as:
★ President of the
Council of European Municipalities and Regions
★ A member of the ''Académie française'' (French Academy)
★ As a ''de jure'' member of the
French Constitutional Council
European activities
Valéry Giscard d'Estaing has, throughout his political career, always been a proponent of greater European integration. In
1978, he was for this reason the obvious target of
Jacques Chirac's
Call of Cochin, denouncing the "party of the foreigners".
From 2002 to 2003 he served as President of the
Convention on the Future of Europe.
On
29 October 2004, the
European heads of state, gathered in
Rome, approved and signed the
European Constitution based on a draft strongly influenced by Giscard's work at the Convention.
Although the Constitution was rejected by French voters in
May 2005, Giscard continues to actively lobby for its passage in other European Union states. Speaking at the
London School of Economics on
28 February 2006, he said that "The rejection of the Constitutional treaty by voters in France was a mistake that should be corrected."
Giscard opposes
Turkey's joining the
European Union because of Turkey’s geographic, ethnic and religious differences from the rest of Europe. He told ''
Le Monde'', "In my opinion, it would be the end of Europe."
Personal
His name is often shortened to "Giscard" or even "VGE" by the
French media. A less flattering nickname is ''l'Ex'' (the
Ex). He was the only surviving ex-president since he left office until the end of
Jacques Chirac's term on
May 16,
2007, with the exception of a brief period between François Mitterrand's retirement in
1995 and death in early
1996.
On
17 December 1952, Giscard married his cousin
Anne-Aymone Sauvage de Brantes, a daughter of Count François Sauvage de Brantes, who died in a concentration camp in
1944, and his wife, the former Princess
Aymone de Faucigny-Lucinge. Their children are: Valérie-Anne, Marie-Aymone, Henri (Edmond Marie Valéry), Louis (Joachim Marie François) and Jacinte (Marguerite Marie). His son Louis is a French conservative Representative, and his son
Henri is the President of the tourism company
Club Méditerranée.
In
2003 he received the
Charlemagne Award of the German city of
Aachen. He is also a
Knight of Malta.
He is an uncle of artist
Aurore Giscard d'Estaing, who is married to the American actor
Timothy Hutton.
He travels the world giving speeches on European integration.
References
1. See .
See also
★
French presidential election, 1974
★
French presidential election, 1981
External links
★
Personnal blog of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing
★
Bio on the French National Assembly website
★
First and second round results of French presidential elections
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