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As we sip our drinks, there is still time for one last dark warning about the future of Europe. Leaning forward, the president says: “Our generation have lived in such certain times, secure times, that we cannot imagine how it was in the past. But nothing is excluded. Nothing. We have banished the demons of the 20th century but we have not eliminated them: hatred, racism, anti-Semitism, nationalism. Look at what’s happening in Hungary. Young students in Budapest are painting on the door of a professor – ‘Jew’. These are students doing this, not football hooligans. We have the privilege that we have never seen such people in power but there is no guarantee it will not happen. My protection against them is a strong European Union.”
After that, there seems nothing much left to say so I call for the bill. Earlier in the evening, Schulz had said that he must pay, explaining that parliamentarians are not allowed to accept hospitality. I counter-explained that while our guests choose the restaurant, FT journalists are obliged to pay. It is one of those British rules. So, a trifle reluctantly, Schulz lets me settle the bill and heads back to his Strasbourg hotel – and his diary.