Simone Veil honored in European Parliament tribute

The European Parliament, gathered for its plenary session here, paid a solemn homage on Tuesday to Simone Veil, former president of the European Parliament.

Nazi death camp survivor and leading figure for feminism, the former French health minister who brought forward the French law to decriminalize abortion died on June 30 in Paris.

"Condemned to die at 16 years old, Simone Veil has just entered into the immortality of history, after a long and intense life, during which she worked without tiring to defend the ideas and values that were hers and which became ours," said President of the European Parliament Antonio Tajani in an emotional tribute to Veil in the Strasbourg hemicycle.

"Her life was proof that it is possible to resist the temptation of hate. Her life was, and will remain, a formidable testimony for all of us and for future generations, because she had the courage to continue to believe, despite everything, in the goodness of human beings," said the president.

Veil, who died last Friday in her home in Paris at the age of 89, has long stood amongst the most popular figures in France.

Born in Nice in 1927 to a Jewish family, Veil was one of the rare survivors of the Nazi concentration camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bergen-Belsen, and Bobrek.

Tajani's speech was followed by a short video and a eulogy delivered by Guy Verhofstadt, president of the Liberal Group of the European Parliament, that Veil had once led. In front of Members of European Parliament (MEPs), he praised Veil's "exceptional character, the incarnation of our shared history and of our future."

Veil was president of the European Parliament from 1979 to 1982, and between 1984 and 1989 she was leader of the Liberal Group. She remained an MEP up until 1993, when she returned to French political life to the Constitutional Council. In 1981, she was awarded the Charlemagne Prize, an award which honors individual contributions to European unity.

Her death provoked strong emotions in France and Europe. A state funeral is scheduled for Wednesday in Paris.