Former French president Valery Giscard d'Estaing dies at 94

PARIS -- Valery Giscard d'Estaing, president of France from 1974 to 1981 and a key actor in European integration, has died on Wednesday at the age of 94, French media reported.

Giscard d'Estaing died Wednesday evening "surrounded by his family" on his property in Authon in Loir-et-Cher, west France, Europe 1 radio reported.

The former president had been hospitalized several times in recent months for heart problems. He had made one of his last public appearances on Sept. 30, 2019 during the funeral in Paris of another former president, Jacques Chirac.

In 1974, after the sudden death of President Georges Pompidou, Giscard d'Estaing announced his candidacy for the presidency and narrowly defeated Francois Mitterrand in the run-off.

During his seven years at Elysee, Giscard d'Estaing firmly supported European integration and worked with Germany's former chancellor Helmut Schmidt to create the European Monetary System (EMS) in 1979, which would give birth to the euro, Europe's single common currency, two decades later.