Former French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing died on Wednesday from COVID-19 complications. He was 94. Estaing, who was president from 1974 to 1981, had recently been admitted to the hospital with heart problems. As per an AFP report, Estaing died surrounded by his family at his estate in Central France. Estaing’s family told AFP that his funeral will be a very private affair, as per his wishes.
“His death has plunged the French nation into mourning,” Macron said, describing Giscard d'Estaing as “a servant of the state, a politician of progress and freedom”.
Former president Francois Hollande wrote on Twitter, “Valery Giscard d'Estaing will remain the president who modernised France.” “Today, our country has lost a statesman who chose to open up to the world,” he wrote further.
Estaing was a centre-right, pro-Europe politician. He had campaigned for deeper European integration, and has previously said UK's decision to leave the EU was “a backward step”.
Michel Barnier, a lead EU negotiator in talks with Britain over Brexit, tweeted, “For Valery Giscard d’Estaing, Europe needed to be a French ambition and France a modern nation. Respect.”
As a result of Estaing’s commitment to the European project resulted in one of his successors, Jacques Chirac asking Estaing to help draft an EU constitution in 2002. Besides working closely with German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt for a close Franco-German friendship, he paved way for the creation of the G7 summits, a convention of the seven most powerful economies in the world.
Born on February 2, 1926, in Koblenz, Estaing joined a French resistance group in occupied Paris as a teenager before enlisting in a tank battalion in 1944 to help liberate France from Nazi occupiers, which earned him the Croix de Guerre.
After graduating from France's elite Ecole Polytechnique and the National Administration School, he entered politics in 1956 and won a seat in the National Assembly.
