I am certain that the United States next year, under a new president - regardless whether it's Obama or McCain - will present an ambitious program promoting renewable energies and energy efficiency. Europe could quickly fall behind.
Sigmar GabrielWhat we have at present is a system of loss socialism. Whatever goes wrong is shouldered by the general public and anything that works is privatised. Worshippers of market freedom have suspended the most important economic principle: Risk and liability go hand in hand.
Sigmar GabrielThose who reject integration programs in the long term have as little right to stay in Germany as a hate preacher paid from abroad in a mosque.
Sigmar GabrielThe truth is that we have long had a multi-track Europe with very different objectives. The traditional differences between the north and the south in fiscal and economic policy are far less problematic than those that exist between Eastern and Western Europe. In the south and east, China is steadily gaining more influence, such that a few EU member states no longer dare to make decisions that run counter to Chinese interests. You see it everywhere: China is the only country in the world that has a real geopolitical strategy.
Sigmar GabrielThe task for Germany today is - through its own policies and its own structural reforms, its own investments - to support the EU and the Commission... but every nation has to have the courage to broach such structural reforms and speak clearly about them without making people be afraid.
Sigmar Gabriel