Elmar Brok - Member of the European Parliament

Stephen Sackur speaks to Elmar Brok, MEP - the longest serving member of the European parliament and a close ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel. The EU is bedeviled by problems that simply won’t go away – from Brexit to immigration to an increasingly vexed relationship with the Trump Administration. Germany is the EU’s most powerful economy, but is its political clout on the wane?

(Photo: Elmar Brok prior to the beginning of the EU foreign ministers meeting on the constitution in Brussels, 2004. Credit: Thierry Monasse/AFP)