Former French president Valery Giscard d’Estaing, who championed European integration and helped modernise French society in the 1970s, has died at the age of 94 after contracting Covid-19.

Giscard’s foundation said he passed away in his family home in the Loir-et-Cher region of central France. He had been admitted to hospital in September with respiratory complications, and was hospitalised again in mid-November.

His funeral will be an intimate family affair, the Valery Giscard d’Estaing Foundation said on Twitter.

Giscard was elected president in 1974 at the age of 48 to become France’s youngest postwar leader.