The construction of social housing and the attempt to support families seeking to buy their own homes are all projects from the 1960s and '70s. It all sounds old-fashioned, but it is actually completely modern.

If you say in advance there is going to be a main candidate and then that doesn't count later, then that's going to be a highly problematic occurrence in a democracy.

Turkey has in interest in finding agreement on more permissive visa requirements, it wants to be recognized as a safe country of origin and it wants to finally return to constructive EU accession negotiations. We Europeans decide all of those things together.

It was a Russian airplane that was bombed over the Sinai Peninsula. When the Russians conduct air strikes on IS, they are doing so because they too are threatened by terror.

[Helmut] Kohl said Europe must return to being a community committed to stability and the rule of law.

Solidarity is the fundamental idea of European cooperation. If a country feels itself to be militarily threatened and calls for soldiers, weapons and sanctions, then that's what it gets. When governments say they need money from the structural funds to stabilize their economy, that's what they get. But you can't cherry pick solidarity.

I find it surprising, however, that many German politicians generally oppose referendums, but then when it's an EU matter, they immediately scream for a plebiscite.