Aloof French president whose common touch failed
Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, who has died aged 94, was a “constant puzzle to his countrymen”, said The Times. A “suave yet aloof” politician of the centre-right, he was the product of an elite, haute-bourgeois background, and made much of his noble antecedents – yet on entering the Élysée Palace in 1974, he tried to come across as a man of the people. He wore ordinary business suits (instead of ceremonial dress); entertained dustmen for breakfast; visited bistros; and played the accordion on TV, while his aristocratic wife, Anne-Aymone, was photographed cooking in their kitchen.
Meanwhile, he pursued a modernising agenda, relaxing the laws on divorce – in the teeth of fierce opposition from the Catholic Church – and even on abortion. He supported construction of the TGV, and promoted nuclear energy. On the international stage, he founded the G6 group of world leaders, and with his ally and fellow European federalist Helmut Schmidt, the West German chancellor, paved the way for the European currency, the European Council and the European Parliament. However, it was his misfortune to assume office as 30 years of postwar growth were ending, said The New York Times – and by the time he left office, few were “ascribing greatness” to him. He’d failed to make good on his promise to decentralise the government, and for all the gimmicks of his early months in office, he’d never shed his “imperious” manner.
Valéry Giscard d’Estaing was born in 1926, into a political family. His father, who had added d’Estaing to his name in 1922, was a civil servant; his mother claimed royal ancestry. They brought their son up to believe that power was his destiny, and sent him to the prestigious Louis-le-Grand lycée in Paris. During the War, his father supported the collaborating Vichy regime, but Valéry pledged allegiance to General de Gaulle’s government in exile. In 1944, he joined a tank battalion, and won the Croix de Guerre. After the War, he studied at the École nationale d’administration – a hothouse for high-flyers in politics and the civil service. He was only 30 when he joined the National Assembly, for a constituency associated with his family in the Auvergne.
Aged 35, Giscard was named finance minister by de Gaulle, who prophesied that he’d eventually betray him, said The Guardian. And so it proved: in 1969, Giscard publicly refused to support the president’s proposed constitutional reforms, precipitating de Gaulle’s resignation. Five years later, de Gaulle’s successor, Georges Pompidou, died in office – and Giscard narrowly beat François Mitterrand to the top job in the subsequent election. In his campaign, he’d portrayed himself as a youthful moderniser, an antidote to austere Gaullism, and had used TV and personal “branding” to an unprecedented degree: he even had celebrities such as Alain Delon and Brigitte Bardot wearing his T-shirts.
He was cheered as he entered the Élysée Palace. But in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis, his government brought in unpopular austerity policies; it was then alleged that Jean-Bédel Bokassa, a dictator who styled himself the Emperor of Central Africa, had secretly given him two diamonds; “was a major scandal. In the 1981 election, he lost to Mitterrand. Leaving the palace, he was booed all the way to his car. Twenty years later, he was rescued from the political wilderness when he was asked to draw up a new constitution for the EU. He soon made himself unpopular, however, by insisting on a large salary and a suite of rooms at an expensive hotel. “It is simply that things should be comfortable,” he said. The constitution was rejected by the French people. Four years later, he set tongues wagging by writing a novel about an affair between a French president and an English princess. It was not, he eventually admitted, based on fact.
L’affaire des diamants”