Politics & Power Quote by Angela Merkel

Merkel’s plainspoken syntax is doing diplomatic heavy lifting. “Particularly important” signals urgency without sounding alarmist; it’s the verbal equivalent of a raised eyebrow in a room full of egos. The key move is her expansive “everyone who holds political responsibility.” It’s not idealism about unity. It’s a realist’s admission that Europe’s machinery runs through people you may dislike, parties you’d rather ignore, and governments that complicate your domestic politics. In other words: no one gets to opt out of the shared project while still cashing its benefits.

The line’s quiet subtext is Germany’s postwar posture as Europe’s anchor that must never appear domineering. Merkel frames cooperation as necessity (“can only be build together”), not German preference. That grammar matters. She’s positioning consensus as the only legitimate method, which inoculates her against accusations of hegemony while still nudging smaller states and unruly partners toward the table.

Contextually, it sits in the Merkel-era Europe shaped by enlargement, the euro’s fragility, and recurring crises that punish disunity: financial turmoil, migration pressures, rising nationalism, Russia’s assertiveness. Merkel’s career was built on crisis management through incremental coalition-building, and this sentence reads like her doctrine in miniature. “Build” implies ongoing construction, not a finished monument; Europe is a site, not a shrine. The message to citizens and rivals alike: integration isn’t a romantic dream, it’s maintenance work, and the alternative is collapse by neglect.