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?

In the end, the British didn't vote to leave because of the euro. They're not even members of the currency union. Even the refugee crisis hardly affected the country.

In the highest government office, you have to be ready to bow out at any time, otherwise you are not a free individual anymore.

I'm not deaf and the Commission isn't operating in a parallel world of legal texts.

I am in favor of the European institutions being led for the next two-and-a-half years as they have been thus far. We need stability.

With hindsight, it is always easy to blame everyone else.

There is a proposal to divide the currency zone into a north and a south euro. There is also the idea of setting up a core monetary union in the middle of Europe. I disapprove of these debates. Instead, we should devote all of our efforts to supplementing the monetary union with a political union.