1979 in France
overview of France-related events during the year of 1979
Events from the year 1979 in France.
Incumbents
President: Valéry Giscard d'Estaing
Prime Minister: Raymond Barre
Events
1 January – Peugeot completes its takeover of Chrysler Europe, which includes the Simca factories in France and the former Rootes Group factories in Britain. The deal was agreed eight months ago. It is unclear whether the Chrysler brand on British market models will be replaced by Simca branding, or whether a new or different brand within the combine will replace it.
8 January – French tanker Betelgeuse explodes at the Gulf Oil terminal at Bantry in Ireland; 50 are killed.
February – Peugeot becomes the first carmaker to offer a turbo-diesel engine, fitting the engine to their range-topping 604 saloon. The Simca Horizon is European Car of the Year for 1979.
18 March – Cantonales elections held.
25 March – Cantonales elections held.
6 – 8 April – Metz Congress of the French Socialist Party.
The public source identifies “1979 in France” as overview of France-related events during the year of 1979. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around France, overview and France-related.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2812747. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1979.
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This entry incorporates text from “1979 in France” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.