Trump is the freely elected president of the U.S. and as such deserves respect.

I'm fully aware that my vision of a European bicameral parliament can't be implemented tomorrow. I'm also not an integration fanatic.

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

We need a comprehensive renewal of the nursing care system in Germany, and quickly. The two-tier medical system must be abolished. Patients with public health insurance are waiting months to be seen by a specialist doctor, while doctors increasingly give priority to privately insured patients. That's unacceptable. We also need an educational revolution. Medicine, nursing care, education: Germany is not a modern country when it comes to these three areas. We have to adapt our policies to the social reality. These are projects that can awaken Germany out of its torpor.

We are in the middle of a tough, ideological conflict that is being waged across the entire continent. On the one side are those who say that global challenges like migration and terror cannot be met with national parochialism. On the other side are those who would like to see a renaissance of the nation-state.

I still hope that the American system of checks and balances will ultimately prevent this man, Donald Trump, with his erratic political style, from jeopardizing our European security architecture.

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.