In 2014 he wrote a bitter criticism of Britain’s role in the EU bloc – an article that resonates strongly after Britons voted 52% to 48% to leave the EU in a referendum on 23 June.
“Get out of Europe before you wreck it,” Rocard wrote then in the headline of an opinion piece published in the Guardian and France’s Le Monde.
“You do not like Europe,” he told Britons, blaming them for Europe’s failures and accusing them of selfishness and an obsession with trade over the project for political unity.
“You never shared the true meaning of the project … always putting the national interest first – you reintroduced these ideas and made them contagious,” he wrote.
President François Hollande said in a statement: “A great figure of the Republic and the Left has just disappeared”.
Among Rocard’s achievements were the creation of a minimum welfare benefit in France and reform of the financing of the welfare system.
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