By preventing new conflicts, we avert the causes of radicalization and the risk of terrorist attacks in Europe, including in Germany.

Reliability is the precondition for trust.

The United States lived on borrowed money for too long, inflating its financial sector unnecessarily and neglecting its small and mid-sized industrial companies.

If the Schengen system (of border-free travel) is destroyed, Europe will be seriously endangered politically and economically. That is why we Europeans have to invest billions in Turkey, Libya, Jordan and other countries in the region as quickly as possible everybody as much as they can.

I suggested that countries with tighter finances think about such a [fuel] tax. We don't have the time at the moment for months of discussion.

Europe has grown through crises. Each crisis also presents opportunities, and Europe has emerged stronger from each one. That is the way history unfolds. Europe is sometimes slow, and it reacts sluggishly, but it is capable of finding solutions.

A number of politicians, including those within your own party, believe Germans would be safer if the German military didn't insert itself into so many of the world's hot spots.