Valéry Giscard d’Estaing said on Tuesday 4th October that the UK really had “two years” maximum to leave the EU. It also recommends “not to conduct this way by hard negotiation”.
Invited to speak in the halls of the Senate by the Institute Lecanuet, VGE has gathered around him almost all of the centrist galaxy. Present and former Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, the former minister Francois Leotard, the president of the Modem or the UDI Jean-Christophe Lagarde …
Article 50 of the Treaty of Lisbon enabled as part of Brexit is “outright copy” of a section of the 2005 draft constitution which he is the “author” , explained VGE during a dinner speaking to centrists in the Senate. “it is I who wrote, so I wrote the article Brexit”, he launched
Beyond two years, negotiations “can not continue”, he stressed. And “it is not the Commission which shall negotiate, but the Council”, he said. He called also not “seek to drive this way by hard negotiation” because “it will be difficult but it can be exemplary” .
For VGE, Stiglitz deserves a “dunce cap”
The former president also pleaded in favour of a “route” and “timetable” for Europe, which he estimated at 20 years. “It should be the essential challenge of the next French presidential election”, he said. For that “France needs more of a statesman than a president”, he added, also calling on future French leaders to respect their European commitments from the perspective of public deficits .
During a session of question and answer, he attacked the Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, economist and author of the recent The euro: how the single currency threatens the future of Europe . On the book “Mr. Stiglitz should deserve not the Nobel but a dunce cap” , he commented.
