France will pay him a last tribute.
A day of national mourning has been decreed next Wednesday, December 9, to honor the memory of former President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, announced President Emmanuel Macron in his speech Thursday evening.
Another "solemn tribute" will be held on February 2, the date of the birth of the former president, in the European Parliament.
At the request of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, whose "modesty" Emmanuel Macron stressed, there will be no national tribute as for other public figures or former presidents.
Valéry Giscard d'Estaing died at the age of 94 on Wednesday evening, in his home in Authon, in Loir-et-Cher, as a result of the Covid-19.
He had been President of the Republic between 1974 and 1981, for a single term.
He was then the youngest President of the Republic since Casimir Périer, being elected at the age of 48.
In accordance with the wishes of the late president, his funeral will take place "in the strictest family intimacy", Saturday, in Authon.
But a mass in Paris could be organized in his memory, at the Saint-Honoré-d'Eylau church, according to BFMTV.
The former president should be buried in Authon with his youngest daughter Jacinte, who died in 2018 from a long illness.
A shower of tributes
The announcement of the death of the former president triggered a shower of tributes, saluting the figure of a reformer, modern and European man.
Germany "loses a friend" and "a great European", reacted Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose head of diplomacy recalled Giscard's "decisive influence" on Franco-German relations, thanks to her friendship with former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt.
His British counterpart Boris Johnson paid tribute to a “great modernizer of France”.
Political Newsletter
Every day, political news seen by Le Parisien
I'm registering
Your email address is collected by Le Parisien to enable you to receive our news and commercial offers.
Learn more
The two former presidents still alive also paid tribute to him: Nicolas Sarkozy greeted "a man who has done honor to France", and François Hollande a "resolutely European" president, but who "has not always been understood".
READ ALSO>
Death of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing: his life in 15 photos
The President of the Senate, Gérard Larcher, praised a president of "great intelligence", "modern and reformer".
"He blew a great wind of modernity on French society and gave rise to immense hope of overtaking and rallying", reacted to AFP François Bayrou, who succeeded him at the head of his UDF party.