I hope Gunter Grass will continue helping the SPD in campaigns and that he will otherwise remain with us as a provocative literary figure, as well.

Those 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.

What 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.

Economically and politically, Germany is extremely stable. There are countries with functioning governments whose institutions don't work. My only concern is about Europe. There's a risk we will run out of time. We have been blessed with a pro-European French president, but we are also approaching the next elections for the European Parliament in 2019, and it will be important for pro-European parties present a credible answer to the anti-Europeans on the left and the right.

The 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.

The production of natural resources in agriculture, forestry and fisheries, stable natural hydrological cycles, fertile soils, a balanced climate and numerous other vital ecosystem services can only be permanently secured through the protection and sustainable use of biological diversity.

When you think back today to a time more than 70 years ago when Germany was a terrible place, a place people were afraid of, it is a wonderful development that we have gone from being a terrible place to a place that people dream of.