Valéry Giscard d´Estaing

Award of the International Charlemagne Prize of Aachen to the President of the European Convention, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing:
The decision of the European Council in Copenhagen has cleared the way for the comprehensive unification of our continent. The Union of Fifteen is waiting for the imminent accession of ten further states. In this decisive phase in the shaping of Europe's future, the deepening process must be given a new quality and a new dynamism. More than fifty years after the founding of the ECSC, it is time to give the Community a constitution that will enable it to play a leading role in the world as a political union.
With the establishment of the convention, the European Council in Laeken has sent an impressive signal of its willingness to implement sweeping reforms. This is because the convention is also associated with a forward-looking change in the system of European politics. Unlike in past decades, the Community's treaties are no longer hammered out in intergovernmental negotiations alone, but in a public debate conducted by a parliament whose members are elected by a majority. At the start of the new century, the Union is preparing to implement the same level of transparent and effective democracy at the European level that we take for granted in our member states.
In appreciation of the noble and historic task of drafting a constitution for the United Europe, which will bring the community even closer to its citizens, the Board of Directors of the Society for the Conferring of the International Charlemagne Prize of Aachen honours the President of the European Convention and former President of the French Republic, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, who has been promoting the unification process for decades in various functions and who, together with the members of the Convention, has become a decisive driving force for the ‘new’ Europe in recent months.
Valéry Giscard d'Estaing was born on 2 February 1926 in Koblenz/Rhein and grew up in an upper-class family. His family comes from the Auvergne region. After attending school in Clermont-Ferrand and Paris, he studied at the École Polytechnique and the famous École Nationale d'Administration (E.N.A.), interrupted by a year of military service in Germany. He completed his academic training with distinction.
After a short period working as a civil servant in the Ministry of Finance, Giscard d'Estaing began his parliamentary career on 2 January 1956 as a member of parliament for the Département of Puy-de-Dà´me. In January 1959, he was appointed Secretary of State in the Ministry of Finance, and three years later, in January 1962, he took over as Minister of Finance. Although his name was associated with the largely successful financial stabilisation policy, he had to make way for his successor Michel Debré in the wake of differences of opinion with General de Gaulle when the second Pompidou cabinet was formed at the turn of the year 1965/1966. Shortly afterwards, he was elected leader of the Independent Republicans and on 24 June 1969 he re-joined the government as Minister of Economic and Financial Affairs. After the death of Georges Pompidou, Giscard d'Estaing was elected President of the French Republic on 19 May 1974.
In foreign and European policy, Giscard, together with then-Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, always emphasised the Franco-German friendship not only as an important axis, but rather as the engine of European understanding. Like their predecessors Charles de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer and their successors François Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl, Schmidt and Giscard set a visible example of close cooperation. During his visit to Berlin in October 1979 – the first visit of a French president to West Berlin – Giscard demonstratively reaffirmed the French guarantee for the security and freedom of the city.
Above all, however, the European Monetary System, which was proposed by the French head of state and the German chancellor in July 1978 and introduced in 1979, created a zone of increasing stability and thus represented an important breakthrough on the way to a common European means of payment. For the currencies participating in the EMS, fixed exchange rates were agreed for the first time, which could be changed if necessary. The ECU, a basket currency consisting of the currencies of states that belonged to the EU before 1995, was created as a reference value for these fixed exchange rates and as a unit of account in the EC. The ECU, which was abolished when the euro was introduced and converted into the euro on a 1:1 basis, was thus the legitimate predecessor of the currency that characterises the image of our continent at the beginning of the new century in an incomparable way.
Domestically, Giscard came under sustained pressure from persistently high unemployment, among other things. In the 1981 presidential election, he lost out to his socialist opponent François Mitterrand by a narrow margin, with just over 48 per cent of the vote. After leaving office, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing initially retired from public life, but returned to active politics in 1982, successfully standing in the March cantonal elections in Chamalières. In September 1984, he was re-elected to the French National Assembly in his constituency of Puy-de-Dà´me, where he took over the chairmanship of the Foreign Policy Committee.
In 1988, he was elected by acclamation as the new UDF president, and in June 1989, Giscard was elected to the European Parliament. In March 1993, he returned to the French National Assembly (until 2002), where he again took over the chairmanship of the Foreign Affairs Committee (until 1997). In his capacity as a member of parliament and as President of the Council of European Municipalities and Regions (from 1997), the former President of the Republic regularly spoke out on economic, financial and European policy issues. His sharp criticism of the monetary policy of the Juppé government and the preparations for European monetary union in 1996, for example, received widespread attention. In April 2000, together with former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, he called for sweeping institutional reforms and clear priorities and differentiations in the enlargement of the European Union.
At the suggestion of the European Council of Laeken, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing took over the chairmanship of the Presidium of the European Convention, which – already with the participation of the candidate countries – began its work in February 2002 with a hearing phase in Brussels. The historic significance of this convention and its work was made clear by the eloquent Frenchman in his welcoming address:
‘We are allowed to dream and communicate the dream of Europe! If we fail, each country would revert to the logic of the free movement of goods. None of us, not even the largest countries, would have sufficient weight to counter the world powers. We would all be isolated, brooding over the causes of our decline and our domination by others. We appeal to the enthusiasm of the other Europeans, but first of all to ourselves. To convince and carry the others with us, we must be passionate about the success of our task, which is modest in form but formidable in content, because if it succeeds, in accordance with the mandate given to us, it will shed a new light on the future of Europe.’
The paradigm shift in European politics, which was already evident from the establishment of the Convention, was subsequently also reflected in the sustained efforts to reach out to the public and engage with citizens as widely as possible, in particular by involving numerous civil society organisations. One plenary session held in June was devoted to hearing the views of representatives of civil society; a month later, at Giscard's suggestion, the European Youth Convention took place – a visible sign of a new dawn.
In October 2002, the former French head of state presented a widely acclaimed first rough draft of a European constitution, which even critics praised and showed great respect for. In 18 pages, the President of the Convention set out a framework that adapts the treaty basis of a united Europe to the level of unity that has actually already been achieved, while at the same time pointing the way to the future of deeper integration. The preliminary draft essentially consists of two parts. The first part, which also contains the Charter of Fundamental Rights drafted under the auspices of the 1997 Karlspreis winner Roman Herzog, outlines the principles, objectives and powers of the EU and its institutions; the second part is devoted to the individual policy areas and the implementation of the Union's measures.
Valéry Giscard d'Estaing has already received many awards for his services, including the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour, the Grand Cross of the National Order of Merit of the Republic of France and appointment as a Knight of the Order of Malta. In November 2001, he and Helmut Schmidt received the Jean Monnet Foundation's Gold Medal for their early commitment to the European Monetary Union. The former head of state has been married to Anne-Aymone de Brantés since 1952 and has four children.
In the person of the President of the European Convention, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, the Board of Directors of the Society for the Conferring of the International Charlemagne Prize of Aachen honours, in 2003, a great statesman and European who, over many decades and in various functions, has rendered outstanding services to the United Europe and who, together with the members of the Convention, has now taken on the noble task of to give this community a new shape by drafting a new contractual basis. We associate the hope with this award that the Union will grow even closer together through a common constitution and that the Franco-German partnership, which Valéry Giscard d'Estaing has practised for decades, will remain the driving force behind the European integration process, even 40 years after the conclusion of the Elysée Treaty.