The ESM, the European Stability Mechanism, is not funded by Germany alone. Twenty-seven percent of the bailout package comes from Germany. Italy and France together cover a total of 38 percent. That's reality. It makes no sense to say that everyone wants to get at Germany's money.

The dangerous glorification of the nation state, and the baiting of minorities that goes along with it, releases an anti-democratic energy.

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.

Political leaders need to formulate long-term EU goals that show: Yes, we want to stay together.

We all have to accept accusations that we ignored the refugee crisis for far too long. The first time that I referred to the Mediterranean Sea as Europe's cemetery was in October 2013, when hundreds of people drowned off Lampedusa. Italians, Maltese, Greeks and Spaniards have been pleading for help for years. But nobody cared.

Britain, Europe's second largest economy, a member of the G-7 and the UN Security Council, wants to leave the EU. That weakens us and it weakens Britain.

Trump has a clear goal: the division of Europe and the destruction of the European domestic market. The fact that Brexit propagandist Nigel Farage was the first European he received in his tower speaks volumes. That is why we must strengthen the European domestic market and work even more closely together in Europe. That is absolutely compulsory for Germany.