Sexual harassment Former Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt accuses former French President of harassment in her memoirs

Abroad|Sexual harassment

Denmark former Prime Minister in 2011-2015 Helle Thorning-Schmidt says in his recent memoirs that the former president of France Valéry Giscard d’Estaing grabbed him in the early 2000s.

Excerpts from Thorning-Schmidt’s memoirs have been published in Danish newspapers on Monday, according to the news agency AFP.

According to Thorning-Schmidt, the harassment took place in 2002 or 2003 when she attended a dinner at the French Embassy in Copenhagen.

“Giscard d’Estaing sat next to me and he grabbed my thigh under the table,” Thorning-Schmidt writes.

“It was completely absurd. I wonder what exactly is going on. I changed places and the situation was over. ”

Giscard d’Estaing (1926–2020) was President of France from 1974–1981. In his retirement years in the early 2000s, he chaired the so-called European Union Convention, which was tasked with drafting a constitutional treaty for the EU.

Dinner in Copenhagen joined the work of the convention. Thorning-Schmidt was a Member of the European Parliament at the time.

Thorning Schmidt, 54, is a Social Democrat. He led his party from 2005 to 2015.

Previously at least one woman has come to the public to report on Giscard d’Estaing’s harassment, AFP says. German journalist Ann-Kathrin Stracke has said the former president touched him three times in the buttocks during an interview.