Valery Giscard d’Estaing, the former president of France, has died of coronavirus-related complications. He was 94. A conservative descended from royalty, nonetheless he referred to himself as "a conservative who likes change".
His presidential victory brought a fresher, more socially liberal and modernising figure to the Élysée Palace after the stuffy postwar authoritarianism of General Charles de Gaulle and Georges Pompidou. Giscard arrived at the tail end of the “Trente Glorieuses” – the 30 golden years of postwar economic prosperity in France – and swept out some of the dust: reducing the voting age to 18; introducing divorce by common consent and the legalisation of abortion; overseeing the creation of France’s high-speed TGV rail network and promoting nuclear power as a pillar of French independence.
The Guardian
