A Wake-up Call for Europe
We have built the European Union through courage, wisdom and hard labor. It is through renewed courage, greater wisdom and harder labor that we must strengthen it. Through courage, we, Europeans, together with our allies and friends, have brilliantly overcome the twentieth-century mortal threats to our civilization: Fascism and Communism. No words can better sum up the courage needed to fight against Nazism than Winston Churchill’s chilling call on the eve of the great battles of the Second World War: “In this crisis [...] I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.” The resilience of Londoners under the bombs, the heroism of the Stalingrad defenders, the sacrifices on the beaches of Normandy and the bloody war in the Pacific, tragically delivered exactly what Churchill foretold. Courage was at work in the streets of Budapest, Prague, Gdansk, Timișoara when the call of freedom from criminal communist regimes was frantically claimed from the chests of millions...