LyrArc Article Gist
Valery Giscard d'Estaing known in France as V.G.E. died at the age of 94 from covid complications. He was president of France from 1974 to 1981 and ran for election after De Gaulle and De Gaulle's assistant Pompidou withdrew from politics. He presented himself as the modernizing face of Gaullism and supported most of De Gaulle's initiatives in improving Franco-German relations. He was finance minister and a Gaullist under both De Gaulle and Pompidou for 12 years. He lowered the voting age to 18 and advanced women's rights. One of his major contributions was the EMS or European Monetary System that set the stage for the Euro currency. He strengthened relations between France and Germany. After losing the 1981 election to Francois Mitterand on the left he continued to serve in the European Parliament and drafted a European Constitution that became part of the Treaty of Lisbon. To this day France is governed by a strong presidency after the lessons learned from the failure of political parties to agree and get things done both in the prewar period and the period 1946-1958. De Gaulle pushed through the reforms that made "the state" above the parochial and selfish interests of parties and politicians and embodied this in a directly elected president. From 1958 to 1981 France was governed with this principle in mind, and later presidents from Mr. Sarkozy to Mr. Macron also adopted this idea of "the state" with their movements but with lesser success than Mr. De Gaulle, Pompidou and V.G.E. who as Mr. Macron says "set the directions for France that still guide our steps." ...

LyrArc Article Gist
This Explainer by Lisa Thomas-Darbois shows how the National Assembly is elected and how it works with the president and their respective powers under the Fifth Republic set up in 1958 during the Algiers Crisis and decolonization by Charles De Gaulle. In 1962 a constitutional amendment led to direct popular election of the president. De Gaulle was elected in 1965. Though De Gaulle resigned in 1968 much of the work of modernizing French agriculture from a backward local regional basis to a national technological basis was done by De Gaulle, and French infrastructure postwar rebuilding started. This was continued through the 5 year presidency of DeGaulle's assistants Pompidou and seven year presidency of Giscard Destaing till 1981, modernizing France over 2 decades. To get elected to the National Assembly one has to get 50% of the vote in the first round and 25% of eligible voters. In the second round only the top two parties and parties with more than 12.5% of vote participate. A change was made to make the president's term 5 years and have the election of the National Assembly after the presidential election. Under this change Macron was able to get a majority in the Assembly after his election as president in 2017. In the event the opposition parties get a majority in the National Assembly cohabitation happens and the prime minister is from the opposition ranks as is likely in 2024. This transfer authority on domestic policy to the majority in the Assembly with foreign policy run by the president. It happened twice under presidetn Mitterand and once under president Chirac. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Michael Getler of the Washington Post gives an indepth look at former West German chancellor, Helmut Schmidt, who succeeded Willy Brandt as chancellor in 1974 till the fall of the SPD government from internal divisions in 1982. This was the period when West Germany emerged as the leading economy in Europe, and pursued policies of improved relations with East Germany (the GDR) under Honecker, and the Soviet Union under Brezhnev, leading to the period of German reunification under his successor Helmut Kohl of the Christian Democrats. Schmidt also pursued very close relations with France under Giscard d'Estaing, setting up the groundwork for what would become the Euro currency and European monetary system. In the years after 1982 Schmidt was active as co-publisher of the Die Zeit newspaper. This account of Schmidt and that period complements Jonathan Kandell's indepth assessment of Schmidt in the NYT. Today's world economic summits of western leaders- especially the critical ones following the 2008 global economic crisis- originated from the meetings Schmidt started in 1975 and broadened in 1979. During that period Germany, France, UK and the U.S. were faced with the global recession after the 1973-74 oil crisis. Here Getler describes Schmidt in terms used by Germans for someone who is action oriented but also overconfident and brushes off other people- the German word "macher." Another German expression "Mr Schmidt Schnauze," as Mr Schmidt the Lip, stuck to Mr. Schmidt for his tendency to offer strong criticism, while being less tolerant of criticism of his own policies and actions....

LyrArc Article Gist
The NYT's Jonathan Kandell offers an indepth look at former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, who succeeded SPD leader Willy Brandt. Schmidt was from a working class neigborhood in Hamburg. Schmidt fought in the Germany army on the eastern front and the western front. He was a prisoner of war in a British camp in 1945. From 1946 to 1949 he studied politics and economics at the University of Hamburg. Both his father and wife were schoolteachers. He joined the SPD party during this period and worked for the Hamburg city government in various positions before being elected to the Bundestag, the German parliament in 1953. He returned to city government and supervised the response to a flood from the overflowing Elbe river in 1961 with extraordinary vigor. When Brandt was elected chancellor in the Social Democrat government in 1969, Schmidt was made defense minister, making improved relations with the Soviet Union and East Germany (German Democratic Republic or GDR) a priority, at the same time supporting the stationing of American nuclear missiles in Germany. In 1972 Schmidt became finance minister, and in 1974 he succeeded Brandt as chancellor. Schmidt and Giscard D'Estaing, the French president helped setup the European Council, and made the early efforts that led to the common Euro currency of the European Union, Schmidt's main achievement. By 1982 the Social Democrats party was divided following Schmidt's support for stationing nuclear missiles in Germany, and a parliamentary vote led to the fall of the Schmidt government. Kandell describes Schmidt as overconfident, not willing to listen to criticism. Some of Schmidt's popularity in Germany he attributes to Schmidt's wife Loki, a botanist with a likable personality. Later assessments of Schmidt in the media make references to Schmidt's frequent cigarette smoking right up to the end....