In accordance with his wishes, his funeral will take place in the strictest family privacy.’ Valéry Giscard Destin was born on February 2, 1926, in Koblenz, Germany, and was elected president of France in 1974, when he was no more than 48 years old. Before him, Charles de Gaulle, the national hero, and Georges Pompidou, a political follower of de Gaulle, were the former presidents of the “Fifth Republic” of France, and Giscard Destin was the first non-“Guilleste” to enter the Elysee.
He launched his political career in 1959, becoming finance minister in 1969. After his defeat in 1981 – which he said left him with “frustration at a job unfinished” – he remained active in centrist politics, first regaining a seat in the French parliament and then serving in the European Parliament.
