Time & Perspective Quote by Jean-Claude Juncker

Crisis language is Juncker's native dialect, and this passage shows why: it turns a technical, elite-driven project into a moral referendum on resolve. The architecture is classic European Commission persuasion. First, the stakes are inflated ("a very important choice") to make hesitation feel like dereliction. Then the real move arrives in the pivot to a string of rhetorical questions that answer themselves. By asking "Is this not the time...?" Juncker doesn't invite debate; he drafts the listener into agreeing, because the only socially acceptable response is "yes".

The subtext is less about sleeves and more about discipline. In EU politics, "pull ourselves together" often codes for member states stopping their domestic theatrics long enough to accept coordinated action: budget rules, institutional reforms, emergency measures, the unglamorous grind of integration. "Double, triple our efforts" is deliberately vague - an elastic mandate that can justify harder negotiations, tighter timelines, and tougher compromises without naming the sacrifices upfront.

Contextually, this is the Juncker method at moments when the European project looks fragile: eurozone turmoil, migration, Brexit aftershocks, legitimacy crises. He speaks to a union that is always accused of being distant by borrowing the vocabulary of work and solidarity, the stuff of national mythmaking. It's motivational rhetoric with a bureaucrat's utility: it manufactures urgency, recasts complexity as willpower, and subtly frames dissent as irresponsibility rather than an alternative plan.