Former Prime Minister of Denmark accuses former French President Giscard d’Estaing of groping her

The former Prime Minister of Denmark Helle Thorning-Schmidt accused former French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing of having groped her, in fragments of his memoirs published this Monday in the Danish press.

“I saw Giscard d’Estaing sit next to me and hold my thigh under the table. It was crazy. I wondered what was happening, I changed places and it was over “, wrote the former Social Democratic leader in the book “Considerations of a blonde”.

The events occurred in 2002-2003 during a dinner at the embassy of France in Copenhagen.

At the time Thorning-Schmidt It participated in the European Convention, created to draft a Constitution for the EU and chaired by the former French leader, who died in December last year.

“Today it would have been considered sexual harassment. Not that one. It was another time, but it seemed inappropriate to me and this situation made me very angry ”, declared to the local agency Ritzau.

Thorning -Schmidt She was the first woman to head a Danish government, between 2011 and 2015, and led the Social Democrats from 2005 to 2015.

The new book of Thorning-Schmidt, which was also at the helm of Save the Children International from 2016 to 2018, follows in the wake of the #Metoo movement, which took off in the Scandinavian kingdom last year.

“On Denmark we are not as egalitarian as we thought. We have fallen asleep “he declared to Ritzau.

This is not the first time that Valéry Giscard d’Estaing has been accused of indecent behavior.

In March 2020, a journalist for the German public television WDR, Ann-Kathrin Stracke, 37, filed a complaint against the former French president, accusing him of touching her buttocks three times during an interview in Paris.

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