I cannot guarantee people absolute fairness. I can only promise that I will do everything in my power to secure fairness or create a greater degree of fairness.

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.

It is courageous to occasionally admit that there are certain things one can't do.

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.

In times of upheaval, people wish for nothing more than composure and sincerity.

We have to engage in a dialogue with Donald Trump because he is the elected president of the United States of America. But we have to emphatically oppose his foreign policy ideas.

I have friends in politics who really put the friendship to the test through their behavior.