Refugees cost us money too when they come to us. If we improve their living conditions in Turkey, we create an incentive for them to stay there and not to place their fates in the hands of smugglers.

Politics is a dynamic process. When I was a young man in the 1970s, Yasser Arafat had just perpetrated various terrorist attacks. Just a few years later, after I had entered European Parliament, the same Yasser Arafat was given the Nobel Peace Prize.

Donald Trump is withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement because he wants to lower environmental standards for American products and manufacture more cheaply. His reasoning is quite simple, but very shortsighted. It won't succeed because, by doing so, Trump is missing a golden opportunity to modernize American industry.

In the days before the vote, I bet that the British would stay in the EU.

Ms. Merkel's attempt to present herself as a Social Democrat was a clever move. But it's not working anymore. The divisions between the CDU and CSU have simply become too great for that.

We all have to accept accusations that we ignored the refugee crisis for far too long. The first time that I referred to the Mediterranean Sea as Europe's cemetery was in October 2013, when hundreds of people drowned off Lampedusa. Italians, Maltese, Greeks and Spaniards have been pleading for help for years. But nobody cared.

Many who have voted for the AfD, or who intend to do so, aren't doing so because they are dyed-in-the-wool enemies of democracy. Rather, they are desperate.