Real life is happening outside and not in front of a computer.

A major danger for us Europeans: We must demonstrate that those who have this view of us are mistaken, that we can come to agreement, that we as a community of democratic and free nations are economically successful and are gaining political influence. To do so, we must learn to project our power.

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.

Madame Merkel knows very well that her conservative Christian Democratic Union or CDU, and the CSU, the Bavarian sister party to the CDU, with which it shares power nationally, must change their European policies. The FDP's nationalist-liberal position on Europe is presumably one of the reasons the attempt failed to form a Jamaica coalition government which would have seen the CDU, FDP and Green Party govern together.

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.

However, I have a low opinion of people with narrow political horizons. Someone who talks about the environment and knows nothing about economics can make as many mistakes as someone who does the opposite.

Less and less is the question being asked as to whether developments are taking place in a democratic and free way. Europe is in a phase in which this output is no longer sufficiently visible or tangible. Youth unemployment is still far too high, we still haven't solved our currency problem and living conditions in Europe are drifting apart. That is one reason why critics say that our Europe is based on yesteryear's model.