"We now stand all alone"

Calling Charles Goerens an old hand in politics would almost be an understatement. Over his long career, the DP politician has been a minister, party president and parliamentary group leader, and has been an MEP continuously since 2009, having first joined in 1982.

Lëtzebuerger Journal: For years, you have regularly ranked first among the most popular Luxembourgers in the European elections, and in December last year you even came third in the Politmonitor poll of the most popular politicians, ahead of Luc Frieden. How do you do that?

Charles Goerens: You'll have to ask the people who responded to this question. However, the proximity of the poll to the last European elections probably contributed significantly to my popularity in Luxembourg. I was constantly in the media during the election campaign.

As a former Minister for Cooperation, development policy is particularly close to your heart. Recently, there was a scandal in the European Parliament, when a majority of Christian Democrats, right-wing conservatives and far-right parties rejected your report on development aid financing ahead of a relevant UN conference. As a result, you refused to attend the conference to represent the European Parliament's position. You then accused the EPP of playing with fire.

Every 15 years, an international conference on the financing of development aid is held under the auspices of the United Nations, this time in Seville, Spain. I was commissioned by the European Parliament to draw up a report for this conference in order to provide the EU Commission and the EU Council of Ministers with the necessary impetus. However, this report was then rejected by the far-right and right-wing populist groups, which would not have been so bad if the EPP (the Christian Democrat group, ed.) had not also voted against it.