My friendship with Martin [Schulz], by contrast, is completely different in that it goes far beyond politics.

You can't deepen the European Union against the wishes of the European countries.

Article 50 governs the exit from the European Union and here there can also be no renegotiation.

I completely agree with Helmut Kohl. I am not an advocate of the "United States of Europe," nor am I an integration fanatic.

In politics, there are different categories of friendship. My friendship with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, for example .

I was never presented with the details as far as the collective bargaining system is Greece. I am in favor of a normal system without giving the labour minister the right to extend the results to extend the result of the collective bargaining to the whole of the real economy. The government has to make sure that the results will not harm the situation of small and medium enterprises.

The way some German politicians have lashed out at Greece when the country fell into the crisis has left deep wounds there. I was just as shocked by the banners of protesters in Athens that showed the German chancellor in a Nazi uniform.