The "confession" that VGE did not make on family reunification

Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, November 14, 2018, in Berlin.

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• Valéry Giscard d'Estaing died Wednesday at the age of 94.

• Paying tribute to the former head of state, Marine Le Pen explained that "in 2018, he confessed that his biggest mistake was to establish family reunification".

• The president, however, publicly defended his measure, certainly taking a step back with its terms of application.

The right to vote at 18, legalization of abortion, divorce by mutual consent ... Many reforms were passed between 1974 and 1981, under the tenure of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, who died Wednesday at the age of 94 years.

Among these reforms, the institution in 1976 of a new right for immigrants: family reunification.

A point that Marine Le Pen underlined in a tweet on Wednesday.

After explaining that Valéry Giscard d'Estaing "was the architect of new public freedoms and an ardent support for technological progress", she adds that "in 2018, he confessed that his biggest mistake was to establish family reunification" .

FAKE OFF

The president of the Rassemblement national uses the title of an article in

 published in 2018. This article itself refers to an article in Le

.

The magazine had published, in October of that year, the "good sheets" of a biography devoted to the former head of state.

The author of this work, the journalist Eric Roussel, had been able to speak with Valéry Giscard d'Estaing.

Neither in the article in Le

, nor in the passage in the biography devoted to family reunification, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing mentions “his biggest mistake” on the subject of family reunification.

In the book, the former President of the Republic defends this measure, but regrets the way it has been applied.

“The idea in itself was fair and generous,” he told Eric Roussel.

But it was badly applied, and I made the mistake of no longer monitoring the application;

I am therefore responsible […].

We were targeting the family nucleus as we knew it and we saw completely different nuclei coming in.

"

Questioned on the occasion of the book's release, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing had clarified his thoughts and defended the decree as it appeared in 1976. “It was a very moderate text”, he had then launched, citing the criteria to be met by people wishing to welcome their relatives in France.

"The original decision [this decree] was reasonable, humane and did not come with any negative consequences," he even added.

During this same intervention at the Histoire de Lire fair in Versailles, he lamented being accused "of having opened the borders."

"

A spade sent to his successor

He had also underlined a change in policy at the beginning of the seven-year term of his socialist successor, François Mitterrand.

“Comes 1981 […].

We repeal the decree, that is to say we remove all the conditions and, from there, in fact, family reunification has been and is done without conditions.

"

The decree was not repealed in 1981, but a circular opened the door to a broader interpretation of this text.

Three years later, in 1984, a new decree this time hardened the 1976 text, as historian Muriel Cohen recalls.

Family reunification was recognized as a right by the Council of State in 1978. Since then, numerous decrees and laws have amended its application methods.

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