Nobody in Europe will be abandoned. Nobody in Europe will be excluded. Europe only succeeds if we work together.

So Europe needs to be competitive and we also need to be competitive if we wish to remain an interesting economic partner for the United States. This has to be done on the basis of strength, of competitiveness.

I said, yet again, for Germany, Europe is not only indispensable, it is part and parcel of our identity. We've always said German unity, European unity and integration, that's two parts of one and the same coin. But we want, obviously, to boost our competitiveness.

If Europe today accounts for just over 7 per cent of the world’s population, produces around 25 per cent of global GDP and has to finance 50 per cent of global social spending, then it’s obvious that it will have to work very hard to maintain its prosperity and way of life,

Above all it is important to point out that we can only maintain our prosperity in Europe if we belong to the most innovative regions in the world.