Without sounding too grandiose, the survival of the planet itself is at stake, you have rising sea levels, acidification of the oceans, immigration sparked by climate change, droughts that are much more severe.

This revision of the Constitution will not be perfect. But at least the Constitution will not be inflexible. It will be a step towards the Social Europe which we wish.

I am a partisan and artisan of Europe. But I draw the lessons of my experience in government.

For a long time many believed that there would be an automatic adjustment and counted on a rapid increase in the wages of the emerging nations, on our advances in technology and the costs of transport preventing disruption. But this reassuring analysis is out of date.

Thanks to the euro, our pockets will soon hold solid evidence of a European identity. We need to build on this, and make the euro more than a currency and Europe more than a territory... In the next six months, we will talk a lot about political union, and rightly so. Political union is inseparable from economic union. Stronger growth and Euorpean integration are related issues. In both areas we will take concrete steps forward.

The demographic weight of countries such as China and India exercise a massive pressure on our wages and salaries. They have accomplished massive technological advances and the revolution in information technology has reduced the costs of transport.

The EU should help the emergence of "organized multipolarity" in the currently non-polar world.