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Valéry Marie René Georges Giscard d'Estaing ((:valeʁi ʒiskaʁ destɛ̃); born 2 February 1926), also known as Giscard or VGE, is a French centrist politician who served as President of the French Republic from 1974 until 1981 and who is now a member of the Constitutional Council of France. His tenure as President was marked by a more liberal attitude on social issues – such as divorce, contraception, and abortion – and attempts to modernize the country and the office of the presidency, notably launching such far-reaching infrastructure projects as the high-speed TGV train and the turn towards reliance on nuclear power as France's main energy source. However, his popularity suffered from the economic downturn that followed the 1973 energy crisis, marking the end of the "thirty glorious years" after World War II. Giscard faced political opposition from both sides of the spectrum: from the newly unified left of François Mitterrand, and from a rising Jacques Chirac, who resurrected Gaullism on a right-wing opposition line. All this, as well as bad public relations, caused his unpopularity to grow at the end of his term, and he failed to secure re-election in 1981. He is a proponent of the United States of Europe and, having limited his involvement in national politics after his defeat, he became involved with the European Union. He notably presided over the Convention on the Future of the European Union that drafted the ill-fated Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe. He took part, with a prominent role, in the annual Bilderberg private conference. He also became involved in the regional politics of Auvergne, serving as president of that region from 1986 to 2004. He was elected to the French Academy, taking the seat that his friend and former President of Senegal Léopold Sédar Senghor had held. As a former President, he is a member of the Constitutional Council. ==Early years== Valéry Marie René Giscard d'Estaing was born on 2 February 1926 in Koblenz, Germany, during the French occupation of the Rhineland. He is the elder son of Jean Edmond Lucien Giscard d'Estaing (1894–1982), a high-ranking civil servant, and his wife, Marthe Clémence Jacqueline Marie (May) Bardoux, who was a daughter of senator and academic Achille Octave Marie Jacques Bardoux and a great-granddaughter of minister of state education Agénor Bardoux, also a granddaughter of historian Georges Picot and niece of diplomat François Georges-Picot, and also a great-great-great-granddaughter of King Louis XV of France by one of his mistresses, Catherine Eléonore Bernard (1740–1769) through her great-grandfather Marthe Camille Bachasson, Count of Montalivet, and by whom Giscard d'Estaing was a multiple descendant of Charlemagne. Giscard had an older sister, Sylvie (1924–2008). He has a younger brother, Olivier, as well as two younger sisters: Isabelle (born 1935) and Marie-Laure (born 1939). Despite the addition of "d'Estaing" to the family name by his grandfather, Giscard is not descended from the extinct noble family of Vice-Admiral d'Estaing, that name being adopted by his grandfather in 1922 by reason of a distant connection to another branch of that family,〔See French Wikipedia〕 from which they were descended with two breaks in the male line from an illegitimate line of the Viscounts d'Estaing. He joined the French Resistance and participated in the Liberation of Paris; during the liberation he was tasked with protecting Alexandre Parodi. He then joined the French First Army and served until the end of the war. He was later awarded the ''Croix de guerre'' for his military service. In 1948, he spent a year in Montreal where he worked as a teacher at Collège Stanislas.〔''Mon tour de jardin'', Robert Prévost, p. 96, Septentrion 2002〕 He studied at Lycée Blaise-Pascal in Clermont-Ferrand, École Gerson and Lycées Janson-de-Sailly and Louis-le-Grand in Paris. He graduated from the École Polytechnique and the École nationale d'administration (1949–1951) and chose to enter the prestigious Inspection des finances. He acceded to the Tax and Revenue Service, then joined the staff of Prime Minister Edgar Faure (1955–1956). He is fluent in German.〔http://www.faz.net/aktuell/gesellschaft/menschen/valery-giscard-d-estaing-in-wahrheit-ist-die-bedrohung-heute-nicht-so-gross-wie-damals-13925996.html?printPagedArticle=true#pageIndex_2〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Valéry Giscard d'Estaing」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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