Giscard became last century’s youngest president at 48 in 1974, beating his Socialist rival Francois Mitterrand, to whom he then lost after his seven-year term in 1981 in a failed re-election bid. During the 14 years of Mitterrand’s presidency and almost all of Chirac’s presidency, Valéry Giscard D’Estaing was considered “the only living former president of France” and participated in television programs with the same title and made comments or expressed memories.
Aged just 18, he joined the French resistance and took part in the World War II liberation of Paris from its Nazi occupiers in 1944. He then served for eight months in Germany and Austria in the run-up to the capitulation of the Third Reich. He paid special attention to the development of relations with Germany as an important economic power in Europe, as well as his energy policies, in the context of the third world countries attempting to impose their opinions on the powerful western countries by forming the OPEC organization years ago. Also, the development of economic exchanges, even in the field of cooperation in the field of peaceful nuclear technology, was one of the goals of Giscard Destin’s foreign policy.
