Emmanuel Macron and Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, illustration.

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Thomas Samson / AP / SIPA

  • The third president of the Fifth Republic died Wednesday evening at the age of 94.

  • European ambition, “modernity”, liberal and reformist profile… Emmanuel Macron has often been compared to VGE during the 2017 presidential campaign.

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    asked elected members of the majority to come back to the common points and the differences between the two presidents.

“His seven-year term transformed France.

Emmanuel Macron greeted the memory of the former President of the Republic Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, who died Wednesday evening at the age of 94.

“The directions he gave to France are still guiding our steps.

Servant of the State, politician of progress and freedom, his death is a mourning for the French nation, ”adds the current Head of State in a long message of condolence communicated by the Elysee Palace.

He will also pay tribute to him in a televised address this Thursday evening.

We take stock of the commonalities and differences between the two leaders.

Governing at the center

The young age of accession to the Elysée first brought the two men together.

Valéry Giscard d'Estaing was elected Head of State in 1974, at the age of 48.

He was at the time the youngest president of the Fifth Republic.

This precocity record was only broken 43 years later by Emmanuel Macron, who entered the Elysee Palace at 39 years old.

Like the current president, VGE is then a pure product of the French elite, graduated from ENA with a passage to the financial inspectorate.

“Despite their different life paths - one was a local elected official for years, the other comes from the private sector - there are obviously some common points: both were Minister of the Economy before joining the 'Elysée, underlines the deputy La République en Marche from Paris Sylvain Maillard.

And they had a desire for modernity, to do things differently, to replace an existing political offer by directing France to the center.

If the candidate Macron campaigned on the promise of political renewal, it was by opposing Gaullism that VGE managed to conquer the Elysee Palace in 1974, by winning first on the right against Jacques Chaban -Delmas, claimed heir to General de Gaulle, then by beating the socialist candidate François Mitterrand.

"I have the feeling that VGE was more transgressive in the codes"

“What is funny is that Valéry Giscard d'Estaing had theorized this need for union through the center, for overcoming divisions, with his book“ Two French people on three ”.

This is exactly the score of Emmanuel Macron in the 2017 presidential election [in the second round, 66.1%], even if the political situation was different, with an extreme right almost non-existent in his time, ”agrees Roland Lescure, LREM deputy of the French abroad.

"VGE did not want to go beyond this divide but to promote a center-right conservatism, while Emmanuel Macron defends a real project of going beyond", qualified the entourage of the current President of the Republic to AFP.

Through his style and renewed political communication, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing also wished to embody modernity, contrasting with the policies of his time.

"I have the feeling that VGE was more transgressive in the codes, compared to the time when it arrives, than is or was not Emmanuel Macron", recognizes Sylvain Maillard.

The former president then intended to lighten the presidency, at the risk of fueling the trials in demagoguery when he invited himself to dinner with the French or played the accordion in front of television cameras.

Europe, "the matrix of two men"

"They are the two greatest European presidents that I have known", reacted this Thursday Jacqueline Gourault, the Minister of the Cohesion of the Territories, to AFP.

“Europe is the matrix of the two men.

VGE was of course from another generation, which had known war.

But he quickly understood that strengthening European ties was the only way forward, ”says Roland Lescure.

During the presidential campaign of 1974, VGE defends a revival of European construction, proposing in particular the election of the Strasbourg Parliament by universal suffrage, which will materialize under his leadership in 1979. It is he who also establishes, as soon as he is elected, regular “European councils” bringing together heads of state and government, and in 1979 created the European Monetary System (EMS), which gave birth to the euro.

He was, years later, at the head of the convention responsible for drawing up a draft constitution for the European Union, rejected by the French by referendum in 2005.

"VGE has given a real boost to Europe", greets LREM deputy from Var Valérie Gomez-Bassac.

"We went with him from a post-war Europe to a more integrated, more economic and more political Europe, which Emmanuel Macron also wants to do", sometimes with more difficulties than his distant predecessor.

The current president will probably wish to distinguish himself from Valéry Giscard d'Estaing concerning the end of his mandate.

Plagued by the economic crisis and suspicion of business, VGE was defeated by François Mitterand in 1981.

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  • Valéry Giscard d'Estaing

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