Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, President during the Fifth Republic (1926 to present, Year of Entry: 1944)

Valéry Giscard d'Estaing is an alum of both École Polytechnique and the École Nationale d'Administration. He entered l’X in 1944 and graduated from the latter institution in 1951. A finance inspector by trade, he held the position of Minister of Finance from 1962 to 1966, then Minister of the Economy from 1969 to 1974. In his role as President of France from 1974 to 1981, Giscard d'Estaing introduced a number of reforms, including lowering the age of majority to 18, and allowing divorce by mutual consent and voluntary termination of pregnancy. He created the Ministry of Women’s Rights, and abolished the ORTF (French Radio and Television Broadcasting Office) and wiretapping. Following his graduation from the École Nationale d’Administration in 1949 as part of the "Europe" year group, he launched the European Monetary System alongside Helmut Schmidt in 1979, and chaired the Convention on the Future of Europe in 2002. Valéry Giscard d’Estaing is also an accomplished novelist and essayist, and has been a member of the Académie Française since 2003.