Portrait: Simone Veil, first President of the European Parliament and Holocaust survivor
Wednesday, 25 December 2024 - 11:00 am (CET/MEZ) Berlin | Author/Destination: Editorial / Redaktion General , European Union , Portrait
Reading Time: 2 minutes
in 1982 © European Union
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Simone Veil was a French
magistrate ,
Holocaust survivor , and politician who served as
Health Minister in several governments and was
President of the European Parliament from 1979 to 1982, the first woman to hold that office. As health minister, she is best remembered for advancing
women’s rights in France, in particular for the 1975 law that legalized
abortion , today known as the
Veil Act (French: Loi Veil). From 1998 to 2007, she was a member of the
Constitutional Council , France’s highest legal authority.
A Holocaust survivor of both Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bergen-Belsen , she was a firm believer in European integration as a way of guaranteeing peace.
Coffins of Simone and Antoine Veil under the dome of the Panthéon, Paris, 2018 © Emmanuel J. Lévy/cc-by-sa-4.0
She served as president of the
Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah from 2000 to 2007, and then as its honorary president. Among many honours, she was made an
honorary dame in 1998, was elected to the
Académie Française in 2008, and in 2012 received the grand cross of the
Légion d’honneur , the highest class of the highest French order of merit.
Among France’s most revered figures, Simone Veil and her husband were buried at the
Panthéon on 1 July 2018. Her eulogy was given by President
Emmanuel Macron .
Read more on
Wikipedia Simone Veil (
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Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Index ). Photos by Wikimedia Commons. If you have a suggestion, critique, review or comment to this blog entry, we are looking forward to receive your e-mail at
comment@wingsch.net . Please name the headline of the blog post to which your e-mail refers to in the subject line.
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