Italy is one of the eight major industrial nations. What will happen if a G-8 country within the European Union goes bankrupt? Does anyone think Germany wouldn't be affected? Italy is one of our key markets.

We agree: Brussels can't regulate everything. I'm driven by something else: There are forces in Europe that want to generally give national policy priority over a common European approach. We have to prevent this.

We Germans are particularly aware that you can only be successful on the global market over the long term if you offer energy-efficient products that are, by nature, climate-friendly.

I am critical of the fact that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is pulling out of everything - the joint approach to the refugee issue, for example. He cannot disparage his colleagues in the EU either - that's not how we treat each other. We require solidarity: in refugee policies, just as in the financial architecture of the structural funds from which countries like Hungary have strongly profited from for years.

When we were negotiating the ongoing financial period in 2013, I talked myself hoarse. London and Berlin in particular insisted on reducing the budget. So we - to the applause of German journalists - made cuts to central future-oriented areas and slashed the budget for development aid, research and technology.

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.

A joint European army is a very far-reaching proposal and it would be difficult to implement. Such initiatives are nevertheless needed.