Simone Veil

Simone Veil DBE
16th President of the European Parliament 1st of the Elected Parliament
In office July 1979 – 1982
Preceded by	Emilio Colombo
Succeeded by	Piet Dankert
Personal details
Born	13 July 1927 Nice, France
Political party	UDF, LDR
Spouse	Antoine Veil
Profession	Lawyer, politican

Simone Veil, DBE (born 13 July 1927) is a French lawyer and politician who served as Minister of Health under Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, President of the European Parliament and member of the Constitutional Council of France.

A survivor from the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp where she lost part of her family, she is the Honorary President of the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah.

She was elected to the Académie française in November 2008.

Early life

Veil was born Simone Annie Jacob, the daughter of a Jewish architect in Nice, Alpes-Maritimes, France. In March 1944, Veil's family was deported, Simone, her mother and one sister to Auschwitz-Birkenau where her mother died shortly before the camp's 27 January 1945 liberation. Veil's father and brother also died in internment. Veil's other sister who had been arrested as a member of the Resistance survived her imprisonment in Ravensbruck. Veil returned to speak at Auschwitz-Birkenau in 2005 for the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the camps.

Having obtained her baccalauréat in 1943 before being deported, she began the study of law and political science, where she met her future husband Antoine Veil.

The couple married on 26 October 1946, and have three sons.

Political career

Minister of Health

From 1974 to 1979 she was Minister of Health in the governments of prime ministers Jacques Chirac and Raymond Barre. She pushed forward the following notable laws:

• Making access to contraception easier (December 4, 1974) – the sale of contraceptives such as the combined oral contraceptive pill had been made legal in 1967.
• Legalizing abortion (17 January 1975), her hardest political fight, and the one for which she is best-known. In June 2007, in a France 2 interview, she acknowledged that science is proving the existence of life from conception: "It is increasingly evident scientifically that from conception we are dealing with a living being."

European Parliament

Veil was elected as a Member of the European Parliament in the 1979 European election. In its first session, the new Parliament elected Veil as its President, which she served as until 1982. As well as being the first president of the elected Parliament, she was the first female President since the Parliament was created in 1952. In 1981, Veil won the prestigious Charlemagne Prize. She was re-elected in the 1984 election and became the leader of the Liberal Democrat group until 1989. She was re-elected for the last time in the 1989 election, standing down in 1993.

Between 1984 and 1992 she served on the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety, and the Committee on Political Affairs. After standing down from these committees she served on the Committee on Foreign Affairs and its related Subcommittee on Human Rights. Between 1989 and 1993 she was also a member of Parliament's delegation to the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly, serving as its vice-chairwoman until 1992.

Minister of Social Affairs

After many years in the European Parliament she returned to French government from 1993 to 1995 when she was Minister of State for Social Affairs, Health and Towns during the Premiership of Édouard Balladur.

In 1998, aged 70, she received an honorary damehood (DBE) from the British government for her contributions to humanity.

Member of the Constitutional Council

In 1998, she was appointed to the Constitutional Council. In 2005, she put herself briefly on leave from the Council in order to campaign in favour of the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe. This action was criticized, because it seems to contradict the legal provisions that members of the council should keep a distance from partisan politics: the independence and impartiality of the council would be jeopardized, critics said, if members can put themselves "on leave" in order to campaign for such or such project.

In 2003, she was elected to the Board of Directors of the International Criminal Court's Trust Fund for Victims.

In 2005 she was awarded with the Prince of Asturias Award in International Cooperation.

In 2007 she was awarded the North-South Prize.

In 2007, Veil surprised many observers by declaring her support for the right-wing presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy. She was by his side on the day after he received 31 percent of the vote in the first round of the presidential elections that year.

Criticism

In a letter to then Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski, Yehuda Levin, the head of the New York City-based Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada criticized Veil's presence in 2005 at the commemoration of the 60th anniversary of Auschwitz's liberation: ‘... Veil [an Auschwitz survivor] – the orthodox rabbis said – was to be held responsible for a mass murder of human life far exceeding that of the German National Socialists by legalizing and promoting abortion.’