Close cooperation and friendship with the Social Democratic West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt forged the two former enemies together into the driving axis of Europe. Both were at the forefront of what is now the regular (in neutral English) European peaks of heads of state or government.
The biggest challenge at the time was the monetary chaos after the end of the Bretton Woods system in 1971. In 1979 Giscard and Schmidt therefore launched the European Monetary System (EMS), with most European currencies limiting fluctuations against each other to 2.25 percent. It was the beginning of monetary cooperation in Europe.
Giscard was also at the cradle of the forerunner of the euro and then took the other European leaders hard. That a French president used the English name “European Currency Unit” (ECU) as a monetary unit of account for the EMS, was strange. Back after the summit where the decision was made, VGE let slip that “coincidentally” this was also the name of a medieval French coin, the écu. Know your classics. (Read more below the photo).
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