Simone Veil

Simone Veil
Simone Veil
	Veil in 1982
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
13th 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; 13 July 1927; Nice, France
Died	30 June 2017 (aged 89); Paris, France
Resting place	Panthéon
Party	UDF (1979, 1984, 1995–1997); 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;

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Simone Veil DBE (French: [simɔn vɛj] ^ⓘ; née Jacob; 13 July 1927 – 30 June 2017) was a French magistrate, Holocaust survivor and politician. Deported as a teenager to Auschwitz-Birkenau and later Bergen-Belsen, she became a prominent advocate for human dignity and European reconciliation. As minister of health, she championed women’s rights and is best remembered for the landmark 1975 law legalising abortion, known as the Veil Act (French: Loi Veil).

In 1979, Veil became the first woman elected President of the European Parliament, symbolising both her stature and her commitment to European integration as a guarantee of peace. She later served on France’s Constitutional Council (1998–2007), the country’s highest legal authority, and as president of the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah, where she contributed to Holocaust remembrance and education.

Honoured nationally and internationally, she was elected to the Académie Française in 2008, received the grand cross of the Légion d’honneur in 2012, and was awarded numerous doctorates honoris causa abroad. After her death in 2017, she and her husband, Antoine Veil, were interred at the Panthéon in July 2018 during a state ceremony led by President Emmanuel Macron.