Simone Veil

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Simone Veil
Veil in 1984
Member of the Constitutional Council
In office 3 March 1998 – 3 March 2007
Appointed by	René Monory
President	Roland Dumas Yves Guéna Pierre Mazeaud
Preceded by	Jean Cabannes
Succeeded by	Renaud Denoix de Saint Marc
Minister for Social Affairs, Health and Urban Issues
In office 30 March 1993 – 11 May 1995
President	François Mitterrand
Prime Minister	Édouard Balladur
Deputy	Philippe Douste-Blazy
Preceded by	Bernard Kouchner
Succeeded by	Élisabeth Hubert
President of the European Parliament
In office 17 July 1979 – 18 January 1982
Preceded by	Emilio Colombo
Succeeded by	Piet Dankert
Member of the European Parliament for France
In office 17 July 1979 – 30 March 1993
Preceded by	Constituency established
Succeeded by	Jean-Marie Vanlerenberghe
Minister of Health
In office 28 May 1974 – 4 July 1979
President	Valéry Giscard d'Estaing
Prime Minister	Jacques Chirac Raymond Barre
Preceded by	Michel Poniatowski
Succeeded by	Jacques Barrot
Personal details
Born	Simone Annie Jacob (1927-07-13)13 July 1927 Nice, France
Died	30 June 2017(2017-06-30) (aged 89) Paris, France
Resting place	Panthéon
Political party	UDF (1979,[1]1984, 1995–1997)[2] Union pour la France en Europe (UFE) !1984) UDI (2012-2017) European Liberal Democratic and Reform Party (in the European Parliament)
Spouse	Antoine Veil ​ ​ (m. 1946; died 2013)​
Children	3
Alma mater	Faculty of Law of Paris University of Paris Sciences Po ENM

Simone Veil (French pronunciation: [simɔn vɛj] ^ⓘ; née Jacob; 13 July 1927 – 30 June 2017) 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. 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.^[3]