Trump is a partner for us who cannot be easily categorized. Putting it in the noblest way possible, his understanding of politics is a little different from ours here in Europe. The way he acts forces us Europeans to take on a new responsibility. We are not standing with our backs up against the wall, but, to put it as pithily as the German chancellor has: We can no longer rely on the U.S. the way we could in the past.

I assumed office to bring the EU to a point from which there is no going back. Instead, I am having to unwind the EU to a certain extent.

I wouldn't like Greece to stay recession. I do think that everything has to be undertaken to reconnect with growth.

The European family may well be anything but perfect.

We no longer have the pact from 1997; it was radically amended in 2005 and the Commission is applying this Stability Pact with wisdom and rationality.

The Greek nation has to be respected. I am not in the camp of those who openly want to humiliate Greece.

Between now and then, after 43 years of European marriage, the whole body of legislation will therefore have to be disentangled. That entails a whole range of specific and very complex questions: what will be the future legal status of the millions of EU citizens in the UK and the millions of Britons on the continent?