Simone Veil

A portrait of Simone Veil, a towering figure in the fight for women's rights. Born Simone Jacob, she died in June 2017 at the age of 89. A survivor of deportation to Auschwitz, she became one of the most important architects of a united Europe — serving as the first elected President of the European Parliament from 1979 to 1982. She is above all associated with the legalisation of abortion in France, which she championed and which was enacted in 1975 in a law bearing her name. From 2008 she was a member of the Académie française. Her prisoner number appears on her collar. The European Parliament is shown in the background, alongside her name, birth and death years, the country designation "RF", the year of issue "2018", and the mint marks.

Simone Veil is among the most influential political figures in 20th-century France - and her biography carries a weight that gives her later achievements their full measure. Born Simone Jacob in Nice in 1927, she was deported to Auschwitz with her family in 1944. She survived; her mother and one of her brothers did not. After the war, she studied law and began a career in the judiciary before entering the cabinet as Minister of Health under Valéry Giscard d'Estaing in 1974. In that role she pushed through the law legalising abortion - a bill she carried against fierce resistance, above all from the conservative Catholic wing of parliament. The so-called "Loi Veil", named after her, has since been regarded as a turning point in the history of women's rights in France.

Her European dimension is at least as significant. From 1979 to 1982, Simone Veil was the first directly elected President of the European Parliament - an election held shortly after the parliament's very first direct vote, one that gave European integration both symbolic and institutional weight. She remained a member of the European Parliament until 1993 and campaigned throughout her life for a united Europe, which she saw as a necessary consequence of the experience of the Second World War. In 2008 she became the first woman inducted into the Académie française. After her death in June 2017, France decided to induct her into the Panthéon - one of the Republic's highest state honours. With the 2018 2-euro commemorative coin, France pays tribute to her life's work.