My mother's brother was killed while clearing mines in 1945. Those are things that mark your childhood and they help explain why we are so devoted to European unity.
For me, respect is an extremely important political term. Since I began campaigning, it has been at the heart of each of my speeches. Many people have the feeling that politicians aren't paying a sufficient amount of attention to them. And then, when the refugees arrived on top of all problems, there was a feeling: You do everything for them, but nothing for us. This mixture of frustration and fear has led to this reaction. That is why it is so important to show these people: We respect you.
There are certain reactions that you aren't allowed to show in Berlin, for example that you feel offended. If you do, the best-case scenario is a sympathetic article along the lines of: Nice guy, but he's not up to it. The alternative is to don a suit of armor and become cynical. But that's not healthy either: Cynicism is the worst characteristic a politician can have. That's why you have to have an internal balance in Berlin, so you can stay true to yourself. And I have that.
The principles of the SPD have remained the same for 150 years: democracy, human dignity, justice and inclusion. We will never change those principles.
Donald Trump is betraying everything that made America great: tolerance, democratic institutions and respect for the individual. In that sense, Trump is the most un-American U.S. president that the country has had in a long time.
Donald Trump is withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement because he wants to lower environmental standards for American products and manufacture more cheaply. His reasoning is quite simple, but very shortsighted. It won't succeed because, by doing so, Trump is missing a golden opportunity to modernize American industry.
Referendums are a democratic instrument, but so are decisions reached in a parliamentary democracy. I advise extreme caution when it comes to referendums. In Germany too.
If we want to create new rules of globalization, then we can't just think in terms of the nation state. The nation state has long offered protection. But it suffers from the fact that many citizens increasingly fear that it can no longer protect them: The threat of transnational terrorism is growing. Freedom of movement rules in Europe facilitate social dumping. Regardless of the make-up of the next government, it must have clear ideas on how to overcome the lack of direction of recent years.
When a man ends up in the White House who boasts about not having a clue and who says that specialist knowledge is elite nonsense, then a critical point has been reached. Then you will have an obviously irresponsible man sitting in a position that requires the utmost degree of responsibility.
We're at a historical juncture: A growing number of people are declaring what has been achieved over the past decades in Europe to be wrong. They want to return to the nation-state. Sometimes there is even a blood and soil rhetoric that for me is starkly reminiscent of the interwar years of the past century, whose demons we are still all too familiar with.
CDU head Angela Merkel has tried for years to serve two sides: the conservative side by holding up her CDU party membership. But then at the same time she acts as though she were also a Social Democrat. I don't have this hydra-headed nature. In the end, people will vote for the Social Democratic original.
Politics is a dynamic process. When I was a young man in the 1970s, Yasser Arafat had just perpetrated various terrorist attacks. Just a few years later, after I had entered European Parliament, the same Yasser Arafat was given the Nobel Peace Prize.
We have to engage in a dialogue with Donald Trump because he is the elected president of the United States of America. But we have to emphatically oppose his foreign policy ideas.
Particularly in periods of crisis, governments have the obligation to lead by good example! Instead, many in Europe are confronting this global challenge with a penny-pinching mentality that drives me crazy.
Complementing the nation-state as it reaches its limits amid globalization: That is what Europe must offer.
As a party of labor, the SPD must work together with the unions to ensure that people can make a living with their work. That is why I am not a proponent of the concept of unconditional basic income. I am, however, very much in favor of decent wage agreements, secure and lasting jobs, employee participation in decision-making and the examination of the social justification for claims and payments.
The vast majority of people support the idea of an enlightened, modern union of countries demonstrating solidarity. Film director Wim Wenders recently summed up the problem to me very well. He said the idea of Europe has become an administration, and now people think that the administration is the idea. But that doesn't mean we should give up on the idea - it means we should change the administration.
Imagine a German as president of the European Commission. If he or she goes to some particular country and says do this or that, it won't be very well received. The president quickly ends up being the evil German. But if the president is elected by and controlled by 700 representatives from all EU countries, that legitimizes him or her in a very different way.
We are living through an epochal shift. If we aren't careful, the elementary foundations of our pluralistic democracy will be threatened.
I am critical of the fact that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is pulling out of everything - the joint approach to the refugee issue, for example. He cannot disparage his colleagues in the EU either - that's not how we treat each other. We require solidarity: in refugee policies, just as in the financial architecture of the structural funds from which countries like Hungary have strongly profited from for years.
Political leaders need to formulate long-term EU goals that show: Yes, we want to stay together.
European policy is always an interplay of rationality and emotion.
In the days before the vote, I bet that the British would stay in the EU.
Refugees cost us money too when they come to us. If we improve their living conditions in Turkey, we create an incentive for them to stay there and not to place their fates in the hands of smugglers.
I believe it is wrong to give Moscow a rebate on Ukraine sanctions because of Syria.
