To be serious, if we were only interested in earning big money then a politician would have to go and work in industry.

The fact that people have hijacked it is certainly not something that fills me with great joy. We have to find new ways of addressing people, new ways of getting into contact with people.

There are a lot of areas where we cooperate, fight against ISIL, for example. Here, Germany was able to contribute to a certain extent in certain areas.

There's a rumour going around that states cannot go bankrupt. This rumour is not true.

Look at the history of the printing press, when this was invented what sort of consequences this had. Or industrialization, what sort of consequences that had. Very often, it led to enormous transformational processes within individual societies. And it took awhile until societies learned how to find the right kind of policies to contain this and manage and steer this.

When it comes to human dignity, we cannot make compromises.

If Europe today accounts for just over 7 per cent of the world's population, produces around 25 per cent of global GDP and has to finance 50 per cent of global social spending, then it's obvious that it will have to work very hard to maintain its prosperity and way of life.