Brussels 05.12.2020 In agreement with President Emmanuel Macron the European Parliament will pay tribute to Valéry Giscard d’Estaing in the Strasbourg hemicycle on February 2, during a ceremony attended by the President of France and other heads of state and government, wrote on his Twitter micro blog David Sassoli, the speaker of the European Parliament.
Valéry Giscard d’Estaing was asserting himself as a defender of multilateralism. Initiator of the G5, which later became the G7, he was committed to increased cooperation at European level, and a new political impetus for the European institutions. While conferences between European heads of state and government took place on an informal basis, “VGE” took advantage of its first summit as president, which was held in Paris, in December 1974, to institutionalise these meetings.
“We attended the last European summit, and we participated in the first European Council,” he said after the meeting. It was also under his mandate that the election by direct universal suffrage of the European Parliament was decided: in 1979 the first European elections were held, won by the UDF (the president’s party), which brought Simone Veil to the presidency. of the institution.
Giscard d’Estaing aspired to found a whole new EU system with framed by the Constitution, which is supposed to replace all of the current EU treaties, but after failure of referendums in France and the Netherlands in 2005, where the idea was rejected by citizens, this project was adjusted and realised in a form of the Lisbon Treaty.
On Saturday, December 5, about thirty people were invited to enter the church to attend the funeral ceremony, while a security perimeter prevented access to residents of the commune d’Authon. According to the wishes of the deceased, music was part of the ceremony. Access to the vault of the former head of state, buried alongside his daughter Jacinthe, who died in 2018, will be free, as confirmed by the prefect of Loir-et-Cher. All citizens who wish to pay tribute to Valéry Giscard d’Estaing will therefore be able to do so.
French society regards among his achievements: the majority at 18; improving the condition of women;
free access to contraception; the legalisation of abortion; divorce by mutual consent; decriminalisation of adultery; the unification of college system for youth.
Anna Van Densky blog 