biography
| name: |
Giscard d'Estaing, Valéry
|
pronunciation:
[zheeskah(r) daystĩ]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1926– )
|
| biography:
| French statesman and president (1974–81), born in Koblenz, W Germany. He was educated in Paris, and worked for the Resistance during World War 2, after which he entered the Ministry of Finance as a civil servant. In 1955 he became an assistant director of the cabinet, finance minister (1962–6), and launched his own Party (National Federation of Independent Republicans). He returned to the finance ministry in 1969, defeated Mitterrand to become president, and was then beaten by Mitterrand in 1981. Through his attempts at economic reform, he tried to allay social unrest in France during the recession of the early 1980s. In 1988 he was elected President of the Union for French Democracy, which he had founded in 1978. A lifelong proponent of European unity, he retired from politics in 1996 to set up the Foundation for Democracy. |
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