Valéry Giscard d’Estaing: “France Shall Not Fall Back into the Party Regime”

Sorina Soare and Alexandra Iancu analyse Valéry Giscard d’Estaing’s term in office. He was the first non-Gaullist President, even though he had been a member of Charles de Gaulle’s and Georges Pompidou’s governments. With openly liberal views, he applied a policy of economic rigour at the time of the first and second oil shocks. His presidency was also marked by the advancement of the European Union project, with the integration of Greece in the common market and the creation of the European Monetary System. As he grew more unpopular on account of the economic crisis and political scandals such as the Bokassa Diamonds affair, he was defeated by the socialist candidate François Mitterrand in 1981. During his tenure, the clashes between President Giscard’s centrists and Prime Minister Jacques Chirac’s neo-Gaullists pushed the latter to dissent. The institutional confrontation between the two palaces and a shrinking parliamentary majority reached a new stage of complexity and intensity.