Francois Hollande warns against rising nationalism in New Year address

France President Francois Hollande warned against the risks of rising nationalism in France in his last New Year address ahead of the election of his successor next spring.

Hollande, who said this month he would not seek a second term in 2017, defended his legacy as president and hit out at anti-immigration polices and anti-euro National Front, whose leader Marine Le Pen is set to make it to the second round of the presidential election, according to polls.

“There are periods in history when everything may change dramatically. We're in one of them,” Hollande said an address that was broadcast on French television.

“How can we imagine our country being curled up behind walls, reduced to its internal market, going back to its national currency and, on top of that, discriminating between its own children according to their origins?” he said.

Hollande, who did not directly name the National Front, mentioned British voters' decision in June to leave the European Union, and the U.S. presidential election won by Donald Trump in November, as events that demonstrated that democracy, freedom and peace were “vulnerable and reversible”.

The France president also warned against the calling into question of the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change – an agreement which U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has promised to quit.  

“France will not let anybody or any state, be it the biggest one, call into question this major achievement of the international community,” Hollande said.

Hollande's comments on Brexit in particular echoed those made on Saturday by German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Merkel, seeking a fourth term as chancellor in 2017, described 2016 as a year that gave many the impression that the world had “turned upside down”. In her address, Merkel urged Germans to shun populism and urged the country to take a leading role in addressing the many challenges facing the European Union.

In her address, she compared Brexit to a “deep incision” and said that even though the EU was “slow and arduous”, its member states should focus on common interests that transcend national benefits.