I think that the proposed constitution is one of the European legal documents with the strongest social dimension I have seen since I began following European issues.

Very few MPs disagree with the need for a withdrawal bill to enable us to disentangle our 50-year relationship with the legal structures of the European Union and to enable us to function effectively outside of it.

It's really necessary for the United States to continue to give strong leadership to the Middle East peace process, supported by European countries at the same time.

Among my European ancestors were piano builders, goldsmiths, and vintners but, to the best of my knowledge, no professionals of any kind.

From Calcutta has gone forth a living stream of knowledge in many branches of study. It is inspiring to think of the long succession of scholars, both Indian and European, who have lived in this city, made it their own, and given it of their best.

Europeans have long had a complicated and somewhat insecure relationship with the US, part admiration, part jealousy, part irritation.

Everyone from Silesians to Sicilians to Scots seems to want autonomy or independence. The British voted to leave the European Union, and hostility to the superstate is rising across the continent.

For the sake of our interests, as well as of our honour and dignity, we were obliged to see that we won for our international policy the same independence that we had secured for our European policy.

To the European immigrant - that is, to the aliens who have been converted into Americans by the advantages of American life - the Promise of America has consisted largely in the opportunity which it offered of economic independence and prosperity.

For 500 years, since European explorers came, Latin American countries had been separated from one another. They had very limited relations. Integration is a prerequisite for independence.

Democracy is not the end point of mankind. There may be developments in many different directions in the coming centuries. Democracy has only existed for about 200 years. It started out with the American Declaration of Independence. The Americans got their ideas from the Europeans, in the main from the French, the Dutch and the British.

The rule of law means that law and justice are upheld by an independent judiciary. The judgments of the European Court of Justice have to be respected by all. To undermine them, or to undermine the independence of national courts, is to strip citizens of their fundamental rights. The rule of law is not optional in the European Union. It is a must.

Asia is still dominated by skyscrapers. I hope that, in European cities, it will become a declining trend. They were almost never necessary.

To the European, it is a characteristic of the American culture that, again and again, one is commanded and ordered to 'be happy.' But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to 'be happy.'

The European Union is not only a great idea, but it's also an idea we must keep working on.

There is a painful joke that Europeans often tell of their Gallic neighbors: God created France, the most beautiful country in the world with so much good in it, and ended up feeling guilty about it. He had to do something to make it fair. And so, he created the French people.

After the Berlin Wall came down I visited that city and I will never forget it. The abandoned checkpoints. The sense of excitement about the future. The knowledge that a great continent was coming together. Healing those wounds of our history is the central story of the European Union.

There is a perfectly good alternative to the European Union - it is called the European Free Trade Association, founded in 1960. Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein are members. E.F.T.A. stands for friendship and cooperation through free trade.

I want to show a new vector of policy that will be there when I will become a president. And my vector is friendship with America and friendship with European Union.

Paul Poiret did wonderful things because he was so influenced by motifs, but Vionnet really understood the kimono and took the geometric idea to construct her clothes - and that brought such freedom into European clothes in the 1920s.

Today, hundreds of millions dwell in freedom, from the Baltic to the Adriatic, from the Western Approaches to the Aegean. And while we must never take this for granted, the first purpose of the European Union - to secure peace - has been achieved and we should pay tribute to all those in the EU, alongside Nato, who made that happen.

In the long term, Germany didn't need a finance minister who was absent during important negotiations in the European Council. But the chancellor strongly encouraged me to stay. And everything did work out for the best in the end.

Europe is difficult to coordinate, and our main deficit may not even lie in this area of finance and economics, but in foreign and security policy. We have a leadership problem because we are still 27 different members who have still not decided on how to work with each other based on what we used to call a European constitution.

When I was younger, I had some close friends who always loved European football, and Real Madrid at that time were the dominant force. I remember family holidays when we used to go to Spain, and we'd bring back replica shirts of Real Madrid and pretend to be the players when we played in the park.