Ladies, it is not your education, status or personality that has brought you here but the elegance of God which was still and still working upon you.

Neither the chains of dictatorship nor the fetters of oppression can keep down the forces of freedom for long.

The markets want to force us to do certain things. That we won't do. Politicians have to make sure that we're unassailable, that we can make policy for the people.

Ever since Germany was able to regain its unity, it is in an even stronger position to give its contribution to upholding this order to which we feel committed and for which particularly people in the German Democratic Republic stood out there on the streets to keep this up, to maintain this order.

Globalization - and I think we share this conviction - is that globalization needs to be shaped politically, it needs to be given a human face, but we cannot allow to fall back into plagued globalization times.

When we, for example, see shifts of huge production lines from certain areas to other countries, people tend to ask the question, "Where's my place in this modern world?" We have this here, this tendency in our country, we have it in other countries.

There is anything but an assurance of success, I have to be very clear about that.