Marie-France Garaud, advisor to Georges Pompidou and Jacques Chirac, died Wednesday at the age of 90 at her home in Saint-Pompain in Deux-Sèvres, her son Jean-Yves Garaud announced Thursday to AFP . A figure of the conservative right, Marie-France Garaud appeared as the gray eminence of Georges Pompidou, alongside another influential advisor, Pierre Juillet.
When Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, elected to the Elysée, appointed Jacques Chirac to Matignon, it was with this young Prime Minister that the duo worked, pushing him in particular to run, successfully, for mayor of Paris in 1977 or to launch the “Cochin Appeal” on Europe a year later, on a conservative and sovereignist line.
MEP between 1999 and 2004
Jacques Chirac, however, distanced himself a few months later from this essential advisor, who then stood against him during the 1981 presidential election (1.33%). “She was someone, she could not be left indifferent. She exerted a form of fascination through her authority and this halo of gray eminence. She had what many political leaders no longer have, a strong character, not always convenient, and a backbone”, paid tribute to AFP Henri Guaino, former advisor to Nicolas Sarkozy at the Elysée.
“There were two of them with Pierre Juillet. They beat Jacques Chirac well at the start, but it couldn’t last. For them, variation represented a form of weakness, when Jacques Chirac was in plasticity. The break took place after the call from Cochin, and the expression ‘party from abroad’, which may have shocked even people like me”, he continued.
Marie-France Garaud was elected MEP in 1999 on the list led by Philippe de Villiers and Charles Pasqua. She indicated that she had voted for Marine Le Pen during the 2017 presidential election.