• France: Former President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, modernizer of French society and one of the architects of European integration, dies of Covid

Brilliant, liberal, haughty.

Last of the leaders who fought in World War II.

Innovative in political communication.

Pattern of centrism in a country divided into two hegemonic forces,

Gaullism on the right, the CP, later replaced by the PS, on the left.

The last of the great leaders who made the V Republic for political stature (De Gaulle, François Mitterrand, Jacques Chirac),

Valéry Giscard d'Estaing has died at 94 years of age.

Bury an era.

Although he only met him at sunset, Emmanuel Macron, young, modern, and centrist sought his anointing on a visit shortly after arriving at the Elysee.

Giscard gave him his blessing with a phrase that shows that he reached old age with pride intact:

"You would have been a great minister of mine."

In times of goodbyes, it is more difficult to remember the shadows of the life of the deceased.

The steel hatreds that were spent among the bad avenue families of the center right, the diamonds of the central African dictator Bokassa, the empty chair he left in his televised farewell message after a sharp

au revoir

after being

defeated by the socialist Mitterrand in 1981

. .. Giscard had been chosen seven years before against the same rival at 48 years old, a precocity only surpassed by Macron.

In that long twilight, he was

able to enter history as the drafter of the European Constitution,

whose works he directed.

His compatriots (and the Dutch) charged his work by voting no in individual referendums.

It would have been a perfect epitaph for a convinced Europeanist who invented the formula for the meetings at a summit of the leaders of the main democracies, which became the G7.

French broadcasters recall their main social reforms,

coming of age at 18, divorce, abortion.

He was also the one who authorized the family reunification of immigrants, as Marine Le Pen maliciously highlighted last night.

Giscard had an

aristocratic bearing and an imposing figure

from his almost 1.90 height.

He was born in 1926 in Koblenz (Germany) where his father was finance director of the High Commissariat of France in the Rhineland occupied after World War I.

His mother was the daughter and granddaughter of politicians who were deputies, senators and minister.

Giscard d'Estaing with then-UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in a 1980 image GABRIEL DUVALAFP

In 1942, in Paris occupied by Nazi Germany, he obtained a double bachelor's degree in philosophy and mathematics. He was 16 years old and joined the Resistance.

With the army of Latrè de Tasigny he fought in Germany and Austria.

Decorated with the War Cross.

Back in civilian life, he left the prestigious Ecole Nationale d'Administration for the financial inspection, the most prestigious body.

It goes up fast, at 29 years old he is already deputy director of the cabinet of the president of the Council.

Soon, he was a

deputy in the Puy de Dome,

where the family settled.

At 36,

Minister of Finance of the Government

headed by Georges Pompidou with De Gaulle in the presidency.

Four years in which he brought the public accounts to balance and created the embryo of what would become the UDF, the second force of the center-right, an uncomfortable but necessary ally of Gaullism.

Minister of great talent for oratory.

In 1969, by refusing to support yes in the referendum that

de Gaulle

had proposed as a plebiscite, he was decisive in the defeat of the general who resigned immediately.

He returned to the Finance portfolio in the mandate of

Pompidou

who died in the exercise of the position.

In 1974 he beat Gaullist

Jacques Chaban Delmás

in the first round

and won the second against

Mitterrand

.

That campaign will be remembered for two things: its freshness, inviting itself to dinner at the voters' home, compared to the formal rigidity of Gaullism and the phrase with which it killed Mitterrand in his debate: "You do not have a monopoly on the heart.

It won by the hair, 50.81%.

To reward the help provided by another young and daring of the time, the Gaullist

Jacques Chirac,

seen as a betrayal by his own, appoints him prime minister.

It was the beginning of

a Cainite rivalry that only ended with the death of Chirac,

at whose funeral he was last seen in public.

Together with Diana of Wales at a 1994 event at Versailles John SchultsReuters

Man of culture, writer of novels and essays, member of the Academy, it was he who decided to transform a train station into a museum to house the 19th century painting in which the Impressionists shine,

the Musée d'Orsay.

His successors never wanted to baptize him with his name.

Perhaps now that the Covid has taken him, Macron has the gesture.

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