Valéry Giscard d'Estaing

'''Valéry Marie René Georges Giscard d'Estaing** (, , ; 2 February 19262 December 2020), also known as **Giscard** or **VGE''', was a French politician and writer. He was the 20th President of France from 1974 to 1981 during the Fifth Republic.

Born in Koblenz, Germany, Giscard d'Estaing began his political career as a Gaullist and slowly began to change his political thinking around the time he was the Minister of Finance when Jacques Chaban-Delmas and Pierre Messmer were prime ministers. 

He won the presidential election of 1974 with 50.8% of the vote against François Mitterrand of the Socialist Party. His presidency was seen as liberal for his focus on divorce, birth control and abortion. His presidency helped modernise the country because he helped create TGV and supported nuclear power. However, he became unpopular because of a bad economy and the 1973 energy crisis, which many felt that it was the end of the "Trente Glorieuses". In 1981, he lost his re-election campaign to Mitterrand, with 48.2% of the vote.

After his presidency, he was a member of the Constitutional Council. He also was President of the Regional Council of Auvergne from 1986 to 2004. Giscard d'Estaing focused on the European Union after his presidency. He was in charge of the Convention on the Future of Europe that created the treaty that would have created a constitution for Europe, but it did not pass. In 2003, he was elected to the Académie française and was given the Charlemagne Prize. 

At the time of his death at age 94 years, Giscard d'Estaing was the longest-lived French president in history. He was the oldest son of Jean Edmond Lucien Giscard d'Estaing and his wife Marthe Clémence Jacqueline Marie (May) Bardoux.

Giscard d'Estaing had an older sister, Sylvie and younger siblings Olivier, Isabelle, and Marie-Laure. 

He joined the French Resistance and was part of the Liberation of Paris where he protected Alexandre Parodi. He then joined the French First Army.

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.

## Early political career
In 1956, Giscard d'Estaing was elected to the National Assembly as a deputy for the Puy-de-Dôme *département*. He joined the National Centre of Independents and Peasants (CNIP), a conservative group. After the Fifth Republic was created, 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 1966, Giscard d'Estaing was removed from the cabinet.

## President of France
### Presidential election victory 
In 1974, after the death of President Georges Pompidou, Giscard d'Estaing announced his candidacy for the presidency. Jacques Chirac explained that Giscard d'Estaing was the best candidate to stop Mitterrand from being elected. In the election, Giscard d'Estaing beat Mitterrand by a small number of votes, winning 50.7% of the vote which was 425,000&nbsp;votes. At 48, he was the third youngest president in French history at the time, after Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte and Jean Casimir-Perier. He supported nuclear power. 

Economically, Giscard d'Estaing's presidency increased personal incomes, as employment went up 29% and pensions by 65%.

Giscard d'Estaing tried to make the presidency look less like a monarchy. Many of his critics believed that Giscard was not formal enough to be president.
 at the White House in May 1976]]
Many conservatives that supported him slowly began to criticise him because he helped legalise abortion. Even though he was against the death penalty, Giscard d'Estaing said in his 1974 campaign that he would support the death penalty for some criminals. He did not remove three death sentences that happened during his presidency, making France the last country in Europe to take part of death penalty.

### Foreign activities
Giscard d'Estaing was a close friend of West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and together they helped create the European Monetary System. They also helped make the Soviet Union support the Helsinki Accords. 

He supported creation of the European Council at the Paris Summit in December 1974.
 in January 1978]]
Giscard d'Estaing supported de Gaulle's African policy where supported delivering oil supplies to and from Africa. In 1977, in the Opération Lamantin, he ordered the French military to go to Mauritania and stop the Polisario guerrillas fighting against Mauritania.

Giscard d'Estaing became controversial for his support of Jean-Bédel Bokassa in the Central African Republic. Due to the growing unpopularity of that government, he began to slowly criticise Bokassa. 

The Diamonds Affair, known in France as ''l'affaire des diamants'', was a major political scandal in the Fifth Republic.

### Re-election loss
 to François Mitterrand:

]]

In the 1981 presidential election, Giscard d'Estaing's re-election was in trouble because former Prime Minister Chirac ran against him.

Giscard d’Estaing was seen as an important person in modernising France and making the European Union strong.

## Post-presidency
After he lost in 1981, Giscard d'Estaing retired for a short time from politics. and won the presidency of Auvergne.
 Helmut Schmidt's funeral, November 2015]]
In 1982, along with former U.S. President Gerald Ford, Giscard d'Estaing co-founded the annual AEI World Forum. He has also was a member of the Trilateral Commission after being president.

Giscard d'Estaing hoped to become prime minister after the re-election of Mitterrand, but he was not chosen for this job. Most of the UDF politicians supported the candidacy of the RPR Prime Minister Édouard Balladur at the 1995 presidential election, but Giscard d'Estaing supported Chirac, who won the election. 

In 2000, he created a proposal to limit the length of a presidential term from seven to five years, a proposal that eventually won its referendum proposal by President Chirac. Following his retirement from the National Assembly his son Louis Giscard d'Estaing was elected. In 2004, he became a member of the Constitutional Council. His support for creating a European Constitution, were criticised. Many believed Giscard should have been removed from the council and be given a life membership in the Senate.

He supported the presidential campaigns of Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007 and François Fillon in 2017. In 2013, Giscard d'Estaing supported same-sex marriage in France.

From 2001 to 2004, he was President of the Convention on the Future of Europe. On 29 October 2004, the European heads of state approved and signed the European Constitution based on a draft supported by Giscard d'Estaing's work at the Convention. Although the constitution was not approved by French voters in May 2005, Giscard d'Estaing continued to support for its passage in other European Union states. 

In 2008 he became the Honorary President of the Permanent Platform of Atomium Culture. On 27 November 2009, Giscard d'Estaing started the Permanent Platform of Atomium Culture during its first meeting, held at the European Parliament.

## Personal life
Giscard d'Estaing's name was often shortened to "VGE".

On 17 December 1952, Giscard d'Estaing married Anne-Aymone Sauvage de Brantes. In 1974, *Le Monde* reported that he used to leave a letter about where he was in case of an emergency.

In May 2020, Giscard d'Estaing was accused of touching a German journalist's buttocks during an interview in 2018. He denied the accusations, saying that he never did this, however apologised to the reporter. However, many newspapers in different countries why they bought with many believing they wanted to become French nobility.

Giscard d'Estaing wrote his second romantic novel, published on 1 October 2009 in France, titled *The Princess and the President*. He later said that such an affair never happened and that the book was fictional.

## Death
On 14 September 2020, Giscard d'Estaing was hospitalised for breathing problems at the Hôpital Européen Georges-Pompidou in Paris. He was later diagnosed with a lung infection. He was hospitalised again on 15 November, but left the hospital on 20 November.

Giscard d'Estaing died of problems caused by COVID-19 on 2 December 2020 during the pandemic in France at his Authon, Loir-et-Cher home, aged 94. His funeral and burial was held on 5 December in Authon with forty people going the event.

President Emmanuel Macron released a statement calling Giscard d'Estaing a "servant of the state, a politician of progress and freedom". Former presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande, 2017 presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, and European Union leaders Charles Michel, David Sassoli, and Ursula von der Leyen all talked positively about Giscard d'Estaing's role in modernising France and relations with the European Union.

## Honours and awards
]]
Giscard d'Estaing was honoured with the Grand-croix of the Legion of Honour and of the Ordre National du Mérite. In 1973, Giscard d'Estaing was honored with the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic. In 1975, Giscard d'Estaing was honoured with Portugal's Grand Collar of the Order of Saint James of the Sword. In 1976, he was honoured with the Order of the Bath, and Order of the Southern Cross. 

In 1978, Giscard d'Estaing was made Knight of the Order of the Elephant and honoured with the Grand Collar of the Order of Prince Henry by Portugal. In 1980, Giscard d'Estaing was honoured with the Order of the Seraphim.

In 1979, he was given the Nansen Refugee Award. 

In 2003, Giscard d'Estaing received the Charlemagne Award of the German city of Aachen. He was also a Knight of Malta.

## References
## Other websites
*  Biography on the French National Assembly website
*  First and second-round results of French presidential elections 
*