A page is turning for the political history of France.
On Wednesday 2 December passed away Valery Giscard d'Estaing, dean of the Fifth Republic.
According to his family, he died of the Covid-19.
Admitted last September to the Georges-Pompidou hospital in Paris, the one who was President of the Republic from 1974 to 1981 had again been hospitalized in Tours (Indre-et-Loire), in November.
#VGE passed away on Wednesday 02/12/20 in his family home in Loir-et-Cher.
His health had deteriorated and he died of # COVID19.
In accordance with his wishes, his funeral will take place in the strictest family privacy.
- Valéry Giscard d'Estaing Foundation (@Fondation_VGE) December 2, 2020
During his only seven-year term, he had known how to build an image of a modern and reforming president, but who very quickly suffered the disenchantment of the French, before seeing his name sink into oblivion.
So much so that in 1996, after the funeral of François Mitterrand, the former minister André Santini let go: "I do not remember that we did the same for Giscard."
"Giscard at the helm"
Decades before Emmanuel Macron, Valery Giscard d'Estaing was already a president "on the move".
It was on foot and to the cheers of the crowd that he entered the Élysée on May 27, 1974.
"From that day on, a new era in French politics dates. […] So it is I who will lead the change, but I will not lead it alone. [...] I still hear the immense rumor of the French people who asked us for the change. We will make this change with him, for him, as he is in his number and in his diversity, and we will lead him in particular with his youth, "he says.
Valery Giscard d'Estaing is not unknown.
This veteran, hired at 18 in 1944 in the 1st army of General de Lattre de Tassigny, is already a regular at power salons.
He began his political career under the Fourth Republic and was reelected as a deputy under the banner of the National Federation of Independent Republicans (FNRI), the second force of the right-wing majority, without stopping until the presidential coronation.
He was Minister of Finance under Charles de Gaulle then George Pompidou, to whom he succeeded after his death in April 1974, before the end of his seven-year term.
During the short electoral campaign, Valery Giscard d'Estaing was able to stand out thanks to an innovative communication: the French saw the future president ski in Courchevel, play a game of football, play the accordion on television or even pose in swimming suit.
It is also supported by artists like Brigitte Bardot, Sylvie Vartan, Johnny Hallyday, Alain Delon who sports T-shirts and stickers helping to popularize his slogan: "Giscard at the bar".
AFP
He thus makes old Gaullist Jacques-Chaban Delmas out of date in the first round.
In the second round, attacked on the social question by his socialist opponent François Mitterrand during the televised debate, he replied with the famous: "You do not have a monopoly of the heart".
A few days later, he won with 50.81% of the vote and 424,599 votes ahead of his opponent, in the tightest election to date in the history of the Fifth Republic.
According to analysts at the time, his formula would have helped tip the scales in his favor.
He was then, at 47, the youngest elected president of the Fifth Republic.
A liberal and reformist president
As soon as he arrived at the Élysée Palace, VGE set out to modernize French society.
"France must become a huge reform project," he declared from his first council of ministers.
The acts follow.
It lowers the civil majority to 18, establishes divorce by mutual consent and relaxes the state's grip on the audiovisual sector by breaking up the ORTF.
He also voted for the decriminalization of abortion, carried by his Minister of Health, Simone Veil.
All against its own conservative majority.
If Giscard d'Estaing succeeded in reforming the country at the societal level, he encountered economic difficulties and a strong increase in unemployment when the consequences of the first oil shock of 1973 were felt. In 1976, he appointed the economist Raymond Barre in Matignon.
It was the turn of austerity and rigor and the beginning of the end of Giscard's popularity.
A popularity that the “Bokassa diamond affair” will help to erode.
In October 1979, the Canard enchaîné revealed this affair, which dates back to 1973. The former emperor of the Central African Republic, Bokassa I then confidentially gave diamonds to Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, who was then Minister of Finance and hunting friend long-standing.
The president evokes a simple gift in the exercise of his functions and denies the amount of diamonds.
But in public opinion, the damage is done: Valéry Giscard d'Estaing is now perceived as an aristocrat, disconnected from the realities of the French.
He is criticized for his origins - he comes from an old bourgeois family dating back to the Ancien Régime -, his hunting parties and his taste for castles.
His sole mandate is above all marked by major divisions on the right.
When he came to power, he had to deal with the Gaullist majority in the National Assembly.
He then appointed Jacques Chirac Prime Minister, the start of a relationship made up of hostilities and cordial detestation.
Jacques Chirac finds this man, from an old bourgeois family, haughty and contemptuous.
After his shattering departure from Matignon, an open war broke out between the two men.
When the Corrézien presents himself to be mayor of Paris, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing opposes a house candidate.
During the European elections of 1979, Jacques Chirac launched his "Cochin appeal", in which he qualified the party of his competitor, too pro-European in his eyes, as a "party from abroad".
Eliminated in the first round of the 1981 presidential election against his rival, Jacques Chirac torpedoed the re-election of Valery Giscard d'Estaing.
Instead of announcing the rallying of his party in due form, he declared that he would vote "in a personal capacity" for him.
The Chiraquian staff would also have discreetly called for a vote for Mitterrand.
The impossible return
Valéry Giscard d'Estaing emerges humiliated by this presidential election.
François Mitterrand takes his revenge during the televised debate by qualifying him as a "man of the passive", he who had treated the Socialist as "a man of the past".
To complete the loop, he wants to leave the Élysée on foot, but the boos of the activists accompany him to his car.
His "goodbye" has become legendary.
On May 19, 1981, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, beaten by François Mitterrand, bade very solemn farewells to the French from the Elysee.
"I come to say goodbye to you very simply," he explains, with great restraint, seated at a desk on which a bouquet of flowers thrones.
Once this long speech is concluded, silence settles and VGE ends with a "goodbye". And to leave the room. The camera still films the image of an empty chair, while "La Marseillaise" sounds. sequence passes to posterity.
However, VGE does not want to give up political life.
He refuses to sit on the Constitutional Council to avoid a duty of reserve.
Wanting to start from scratch, he was elected general councilor in Chamalières, in Puy-de-Dôme, during the cantonal elections of 1982, then deputy in the legislative elections of 1984. He left his former Prime Minister Raymond Barre to break his teeth as a candidate for the center in the presidential election of 1988 and lets hover the idea of being a recourse for the future.
"I wouldn't want you to say: 'Giscard is letting us down'. If there were difficult circumstances or serious problems that presented themselves to our country, you could always count on me," he says on Antenne. 2, in a skilfully calculated intervention.
A convinced Europeanist
He hopes to return to the fore during the legislative elections of 1993. But an alliance between Jacques Chirac (RPR) and Édouard Balladur (UDF) puts an end to his dreams of Matignon.
Then, long credited with 2% in the polls for the 1995 presidential election, he ended up throwing in the towel and supporting his old enemy Jacques Chirac.
A truce which he takes advantage of to continue his European commitment.
Supported by Jacques Chirac, in 2001 he took the helm of the European Convention, which was responsible for drawing up for the first time a Constitution for Europe.
For Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, Europe is the commitment of a lifetime.
Already in 1957, a young deputy of the Fourth Republic, he expressed in a vibrant plea to the National Assembly his "reasoned faith" in Europe, calling for the ratification of the Treaty of Rome.
He affirms himself in favor of a "third way", between a "supranational Europe and a Europe of the States".
Under his presidency, France is an actor in the deepening of European construction.
With Helmut Schmidt, Chancellor of Germany, he created the European Council in December 1974 and launched the European monetary system, the precursor of monetary union and the euro.
Finally, he ratified the election of a supranational European Parliament by direct universal suffrage, giving rise to the first European elections in 1979.
Valéry Giscard d'Estaing is at the origin of another multilateral club: on November 15, 1975, he brought together representatives of the United States, Japan, France, West Germany and the United Kingdom. United at the castle of Rambouillet.
It was the birth of the G5 - which has since become G7 with the addition of Italy and Canada - which brings together heads of state every year to discuss current economic and financial issues.
Elected to the Académie française in 2004
It is in an unexpected outlet that the former president will find refuge once past the age of political responsibilities: literature.
Supported in particular by Jean d'Ormesson, he was elected to the Académie française on December 11, 2003. An election which appears to be more political than literary because Valéry Giscard d'Estaing then wrote only political essays, his own memoirs and a surprising semi-erotic novel "Le Passage", in which he stages a love story between a lawyer and a hitchhiker.
In 2009, he did it again with "The Princess and the President", which deals with a sentimental relationship between two characters reminiscent of Lady Diana and himself, rekindling rumors of an affair.
He will claim to have "invented everything".
However, a sulphurous reputation of Don Juan sticks to the skin of the former president, since he has long been lent an affair with a famous actress.
The veracity of this connection would also have long obsessed his rival Jacques Chirac.
Rival that he buried in 2019 even though the Corrézien liked nothing so much as to mock the age of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing.
In 2012, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing warned François Hollande: "It could happen that I die during your mandate".
And to claim: "I do not want any official ceremony, any tribute from the State."
His will will be respected, then assured François Hollande.
Giscard doubtless had the idea of leaving as easily as had been his arrival on foot at the Elysee.
The summary of the week
France 24 invites you to come back to the news that marked the week
I subscribe
Take international news everywhere with you!
Download the France 24 application
google-play-badge_FR