Former President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing on Wednesday deemed "grotesque" the complaint for sexual assault filed against him by a German journalist, a person who according to him "seeks to give itself" an "importance that it does not have" .
"A gesture that no one has remembered"
"It is an allusion to an event which would have taken place two years ago, which would have been a gesture of which no one has remembered," said the former head of state on RTL . According to him, the complainant is "obviously someone who is trying to give herself a role, an importance which she obviously does not have and which I hope will be taken from her". "It was grotesque, and the grotesque does not hurt," added the former head of state. After the opening of this investigation, his lawyer said that Valéry Giscard d'Estaing had been "very affected and injured by the accusation" of the journalist.
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Ann-Kathrin Stracke, a 37-year-old journalist on German public television WDR, filed a complaint on March 10 against the former head of state, accusing him of having put his hand on his buttocks three times during '' an interview in his Paris office. The Paris prosecutor's office then opened an investigation on May 11.
No Gaullism in Emmanuel Macron
While politicians are preparing to celebrate the call of June 18, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing has also refuted that there is a share of Gaullism in the current president Emmanuel Macron. "I do not think so", he said, because today "there is a president with a fairly wide power and there is no longer a manager, which explains to some extent the wavering that we went through during the epidemic period. "
He said he had "esteem for the Prime Minister" and said that "he should be allowed to exercise his office more fully". Likewise Marine Le Pen, who has just paid tribute to the call of June 18 on the Isle of Breast, does not embody this heritage in his eyes either. "De Gaulle was from the right, but not at all from the far right, so he was very far from the movements which have more or less revolutionary aspirations to the right and to the left," he said.
Therefore "I do not think that anyone" and "in particular" Marine Le Pen, "can recover for itself or for its action the heritage of General de Gaulle," he added.