Europe needs to develop a sense of collective history - we need to write books from a European perspective, to teach it in schools as well.

I work even when I am on vacation. You know that line by Stéphane Mallarmé, "All earthly existence must ultimately be contained in a book"? I am the kind of person who finds life interesting only if it is translated into writing, if it is parsed into words.

Europe needs to develop a sense of collective history - we need to write books from a European perspective, to teach it in schools as well.

Even if it doesn't sound like it at first, that's an identity that Europe can go out into the world with and take a leading role.

If you trace the history of Islamist terrorism, you see that its founders were great admirers of European fascism. They read the texts of European fascism, they quoted them in speeches and letters. This is not from the Koran - the Koran doesn't teach you how to repress people; there's nothing in there about women having to cover their faces, there's certainly nothing about suicide bombing.

I definitely don't agree with that sort of rhetoric from the United States - this idea that all the major conflicts of our age need to be solved militarily.

Europe has certainly lost confidence in itself. This was something that, when I was a young man, we never imagined would happen.