We must now, in the 21st century, protect democracy, one which rests on fundamental rights for all, regardless of skin color, gender, race or religion. Nothing less than that is at stake.

We're at a historical juncture: A growing number of people are declaring what has been achieved over the past decades in Europe to be wrong. They want to return to the nation-state. Sometimes there is even a blood and soil rhetoric that for me is starkly reminiscent of the interwar years of the past century, whose demons we are still all too familiar with.

We are living through an epochal shift. If we aren't careful, the elementary foundations of our pluralistic democracy will be threatened.

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.

But if you constantly insist only on your own interpretation, it isn't long before it seems patronizing.

I'm not a populist. But I try to present complicated issues in such a way that people know where I stand.

I would have oriented myself in case of Donald Trump according to what former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder said to then - U.S. President George W. Bush when the Americans launched a war that was in violation of international law. Schröder showed that a German chancellor can act in a clear and self-confident manner toward a U.S. president.