Political groups

1995: Group of the European Democratic Alliance
1995-1999: Group Union for Europe

National parties

1995-1999: Centre national des indépendants

Biography

Jean-Antoine Giansily was born in Ajaccio, France. He obtained a Master of Philosophy and a Bachelor of Arts and the Faculty of Arts at the University of Nice and also received a CES in Economics.

Giansily entered the civil service in 1965 and joined the Budget Directorate in the Ministry of Finance in 1975. He was attached to the Financial Controller for Scientific Research until 1979 and then to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs until 1984. He was appointed Financial Controller of the Ile-de-France Region in 1984, a position he held until June 1990, when he was appointed Inspector of the Regional Administration. He would then be responsible on mission to the Minister for Enterprise, responsible for Trade and Crafts from 1994 to 1995. He was also an auditor at the Institut des Hautes Etudes de Défense Nationale (IHEDN) in 1978.

A European federalist, he campaigned for the National Centre for Independent and Paysans (CNI), a conservative and traditional political party. He was Secretary General of the youth branch “Young, Independent and Peasant” from 1979 to 1983. Giansily was also a Member of the CNI’s Executive Committee in 1980, was its National Secretary in 1987, its Secretary-General from 1989 to 1992 and, after the death of Yvon Briant, was its president from 1992 to 1996. After internal party disputes, he resigned from the CNI in February 1997 and joined ‘Le Rassemblement pour la République’ (RPR) in January 1998.

He started at the European Parliament on 19 May 1995 to occupy, following the UDF-RPR list, the seat left vacant by Jean-Pierre Raffarin, who had been appointed Minister. During his term of office as a Member of Parliament until 1999, he worked with the Conservative Group ‘Union for Europe’. His activities related largely to the work of the Committee on Budgets, which he was Vice-Chair of, though he was a member of numerous committees and delegations.

Giansily held positions in local administration in parallel to his work in Parliament. He was Councillor of Arrondissement de Paris XVème since 1983, and a Councillor of Paris since 1989. He undertook to provide support to the municipality of Bucharest and signed on 20 July 1996 a protocol of cooperation between the two cities on behalf of the Mayor of Paris.

He was also committed to supporting transatlantic relations and the values set out in the North Atlantic Treaty, in his capacity as President of the French Association for the Atlantic Community (1996-2002) and Vice-President of the Atlantic Treaty Association. The General Assembly of the Atlantic Treaty Association took place in Strasbourg in 1999.

He concluded all political activity in 2001 and returned to his professional activities in the French Ministry of Finance, becoming Head of the Economic Mission to Istanbul (2001-2005) and then to Bratislava (2005-2009). 

In addition to his career in the civil service, he devoted himself to writing. He was an essayist, a polemist and created journals and newspapers, which he would also work on as a member of the editorial team. These included the ‘Revue de Politique Independent’, ‘Regard européen’, ‘France Indépendent’ and ‘France Réelle’. His articles focused on the United States and relations with France, Turkey and Slovakia. His book “The European Union and the Yugoslav Crisis” (1999) would be based on his experiences as rapporteur for the reconstruction budget of the former Yugoslavia in 1996.

For more information on his time as an MEP, click here.

What's in the archives?

Most of the files in these fonds date from the period Giansily was active as an MEP, i.e. from 1995 to 1999, though other documents included dates from 1992 or 2000.

Political activities

Given his education as an economist, the economic content is predominant with a significant focus on financial, economic and monetary issues. Giansily was mainly dedicated to monitoring economic and fiscal affairs and relations with other countries. The documents show the legislative procedure on these topics and include two general themes. Firstly, documents dealing with budgetary matters contain information on budget lines, budget reports and supporting information for drawing up parliamentary reports on the European Coal and Steel Community operating budgets from 1996 to 1999. Secondly, documents dealing with monetary affairs, including the changeover to the euro and the third stage of the Economic and Monetary Union include contributions from the seminars on the single currency, other parliamentary reports of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs and brochures and information on the euro that was collected for further work in the Subcommittee on Monetary Affairs.

Relations with other countries

Giansily’s activity in the field of relations with other countries was also remarkable, in particular as a member of the delegations with Romania and Turkey. In the case of Romania, his interest had begun in the 1970s and was fostered during his time as Member of Parliament and as Deputy Mayor of Paris (given his involvement in the 1996 Paris and Bucharest Cooperation Protocol) and as a result, he had a good knowledge of the social, political and economic situation in the country. Documents dealing with Romania illustrate the activities of the Joint Parliamentary Committee or working documents on the political and economic situation in the country which were used as supporting documents during the visits to Romania. Documents dealing with Turkey demonstrate the activities of the Joint Parliamentary Committee and include documents containing political and economic information on the country: brochures and relations with Greece, Cyprus and Kurds.

The files dealing with parliamentary reports contain particularly rich information on the situation in the countries of the former Yugoslavia after the war. Documents concerning the former Yugoslavia include programmes, donors’ conference, budget lines, management of reconstruction projects, copies of peace agreements, contributions, and information on elections. 

His archives are also rich in information on the situation in Togo, a member of the ACP-EU Joint Assembly, and the highly controversial conditions of the 1998 presidential elections, of which Giansily was an observer. The preparation of the Joint Assembly meeting in Lomé in 1997 was marked by a debate on the situation of democracy in the country. As a result of the engagement with Togo, the EU-Togo Intergroup of Amitié was set up on 27 October 1998 with Giansily as President. 

The documents on his political party, namely the Centre national des indépendants (CNI), the Municipality of Paris and the French Association for the Atlantic Community contain additional information which is difficult to dissociate from Giansily's activity as a Member.

His archives also include his biography and a series of press articles focusing on the changeover to the euro, the reconstruction of the former Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Togo as well as Franco-German relations.