The stubborn stance of some European governments on the refugee question is a reprisal less aimed at Angela Merkel or (Vice Chancellor) Sigmar Gabriel than at certain people on Wilhelmstrasse in Berlin.

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.

I believe that dignified work is a value in itself.

In 2003, Helmut Schmidt said: Predatory capitalism exists, we have to civilize it and we can do that via Europe. He was right. We haven't tried hard enough.

European policy is always an interplay of rationality and emotion.

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.

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.