Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, France's president from 1974 to 1981, has died at the age of 94.
He died of complications from coronavirus, surrounded by his family at his estate in central France.
A centre-right, pro-Europe politician, Giscard d'Estaing also liberalised laws on divorce, abortion and contraception during his seven years in power.
President Emmanuel Macron said his presidency had transformed France and his direction still guided its way.
"A servant of the state, a politician of progress and freedom, his death has plunged the French nation into mourning," he said in a statement.
The late president's family said his funeral would take place amid "strict intimacy".
Long career in politics
In later life, Giscard d'Estaing liked to portray himself as the grand old man of French politics.
As one of France's youngest presidents - he was 48 when he came to power, he had a longer career in politics after he left high office than he had enjoyed on his way to the Élysée Palace.
He was seen by many as arrogant and aloof; his presidential popularity was short-lived and he was eventually squeezed out of office by a strengthening of opposition from both the left and the right.
He was also caught up in a scandal surrounding his support for a corrupt African dictator.
Valéry Marie René Georges Giscard d'Estaing was born on 2 February 1926 in Koblenz, in what was then French-occupied Germany.
His father was a civil servant who worked for the French occupying forces, while his mother was descended from King Louis XV of France via one of his mistresses.
Giscard d'Estaing's education was disrupted by World War Two. He was just a teenager when he joined a French resistance group in occupied Paris before enlisting in a tank battalion in 1944, earning the Croix de Guerre in the last months of the war.
He worked for a while as a teacher in Montreal before graduating from the Ecole Nationale d'Administration and joining the tax and revenue service.
In 1955 he spent some time on the staff of prime minister Edgar Faure before winning the seat of Puy-de Dome in the National Assembly, the area from which his mother's family came.
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