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. In 2001 was selected by European leaders to lead work on the bloc’s constitutional treaty – which French voters then rejected. In 2004, after losing his legislative seat, Giscard ended his active political career.
Giscard was an ambitious European statesman, among those at the forefront of moving the Continent towards a monetary union, along with his friend and contemporary, former German chancellor Helmut Schmidt. The oil shock during his tenure that slowed economic growth in France, media controversies that left him sidelined, and a further turn toward conservative and austerity policies that made him less popular meant that he was only president for one term.In the May 10, 1981, elections, Giscard d’Estaing lost to his rival, socialist Francois Mitterrand, with one million fewer votes. “I never imagined failure,” he later said.
