In 1974, after his election as President of France, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing formally annulled the contract for the Aérotrain Cergy-La Défense line and SNCF formally shifted support to the "Train à Grande Vitesse (TGV)" as its high-speed ground-transportation solution. Notably, D'Estaing's wife was the granddaughter of Eugène Schneider, founder of what became an international syndicate, Schneider Group. Noted Belgian journalist Karel Vereycken pointed out: "the Schneider dynasty have been and are still a pillar of the history of the French railroad and steel industry. Hence, the innovation of the Aérotrain (to be built by the aircraft industry) would not, in the short run, have made them more wealthy and one can easily imagine that a train without wheels does not get much enthusiastic approval of the feudal wheel producers." Rohr abandoned the technology in 1975.