He supported European integration and helped modernize society

Ex-French President Giscard d'Estaing dies after contracting 'Covid-19'

Giscard died at the age of 94.

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The former French president, Valerie Giscard d'Estaing, who supported European integration and helped modernize French society in the seventies, died at the age of 94, after contracting Covid-19 disease.

The Giscard Foundation said he died in the family's home in the Loire-et-Cher region of central France.

Giscard, who led France from 1974 to 1981, was hospitalized in September due to respiratory complications, and then transferred to hospital again in mid-November.

Giscard was elected president at the age of 48, becoming the country's youngest leader after World War II.

At home, Giscard led a modernization process of French society, which included permitting divorce with mutual consent, legalizing abortion, lowering the voting age from 21 to 18, and liberalizing the economy.

Representatives observed a minute of silence in the National Assembly on his death.

Former President Nicolas Sarkozy said that Giscard "worked throughout his life to strengthen relations between European countries."

Giscard established close ties with the former West German chancellor, Helmut Schmidt, and together they laid the foundations for the unification of the European currency.

He held the presidency one term, losing his bid to win a new term to socialist Francois Mitterrand, in the wake of the global economic slowdown in the 1970s.

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