Both her parents, René and Colette Sanson, were members of the Resistance during the German occupation of France. Before the war, was a French diplomat in The Hague. When the Germans invaded the Netherlands, he sent a coded message to warn the French government that Germany was planning to attack France from across the Belgian border. This very message was decoded by Colette, a communication worker at the French Ministry of War. It was not until a few months later that they met in person, in a resistance cell. Both became prominent within the French Resistance. In 1944, after the bombing of a German train, Colette was arrested and sentenced to death by the occupation force before she managed to escape. After the liberation of Paris, René Sanson was appointed Minister of Labour in Charles de Gaulle's provisional government. The couple married in 1945. As a lawyer and an economist, René Sanson remained involved in politics as Member of Parliament and Deputy of the 13th district of Paris until 1967. In 1970, he was in charge of the French delegation at the Osaka World Expo; Véronique first visited Japan on this occasion.