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Dies ist ein Brief an meine liberalen Parteifreundinnen und Parteifreunde in Verbindung mit meiner Kandidatur für das Präsidium des Landesvorstands der FDP Baden-Württemberg.

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Liebe Parteifreundinnen, liebe Parteifreunde,

wir stehen in Balingen nicht vor einer gewöhnlichen Vorstandswahl. Wir stehen vor den Trümmern einer Epoche, mit verbrannter Asche in den Händen. Zum zweiten Mal in der neueren Geschichte sind die Liberalen aus dem Parlament geflogen und als das geschah, trat ich in ein. Wer vor Ihnen jetzt glaubt, ein paar neue Plakate und die alten Phrasen würden unsere FDP retten, hat die Tragik der Lage nicht begriffen.

Der weltweit bekannte deutsche liberale Denker Max Weber, dessen Werke ich in London studierte, sprach vom „stahlharten Gehäuse der Hörigkeit“ – einem bürokratischen Staat, der den Bürger erstickt und ihm die Luft zum Atmen, zur sprituellen und individuellen Freiheit nimmt. Er hat sehr viel Gutes geleistet als Liberaler in Deutschland, aber genau ihm misslang es die Zerstörungslust im Menschen zu verstehen und er schrieb den Artikel 48 ins Grundgesetz, der später derb missbraucht wurde. Wir kennen heute aber die Zerstörungslust und auch sehen wir im Jahr 2026, was in unserem Land geschieht. Die ausufernde Bürokratie, der lähmende Steuerstaat, das tiefe Misstrauen gegen nahezu jeden, der etwas aufbauen will, den radikal werdenden, opportunistischen und Ideenlosen Nationalismus – das ist der Chaos im stahlharten Gehäuse unserer Gegenwart.

Ich bin nun unter Ihnen, als ein Liberaler unter vielen, nicht nur, weil ich an unsere Ideen glaube, sondern weil ich diesen noch tatkräftiger beitragen will. Die Liberalen dürfen sich nicht länger aufreiben lassen. Wir werden gemeinsam lernen, unsere Prinzipien klug mit Realpolitik zu verbinden, denn das ist möglich. Wir müssen dafür nur eine Sache tun: diesen Moment des tiefen Einschnitts annehmen – um aus der Asche, wie ein Phönix, gemeinsam mit neuem Feuer aufzuerstehen.

Mein Name ist Milutin Stanisavljević. Ja, dieser Name klingt nicht nach altwürttemberger Honoratioren. Aber mein Name und meine Biografie stehen für das reinste, unverfälschte Versprechen des Liberalismus. Mein Vorname bedeutet „der Sanfte“, mein Nachname „der Ruhmerzeuger“, ich habe sie nicht gewählt, aber bin bemüht beiden gerecht zu werden.

Als 13-Jähriger versteckte ich mich im Keller vor NATO-Bomben, die auf Serbien fielen. Wenige Tage nach unserer Flucht nach Deutschland sah ich im Fernsehen in Stuttgart, wie eine Bombe 50 Meter neben unserem Familienhaus einschlug. Ich weiß, was Traumata sind. Ich weiß aber auch, wie man sie überwindet. Ich habe mein Abitur am Schickhardt-Gymnasium Stuttgart abgelegt, in London Politik und in Erlangen Philosophie studiert. Ich habe insgesamt 20 Jahre auf internationaler und 10 Jahre auf Bundesebene gearbeitet und theoretisch, wie praktisch gelernt, Systeme zu analysieren, Konflikte zu verstehen, aber auch Aufbrüche und Aufbau. Ich habe gelernt: Freiheit ist kein Geschenk des Staates, sondern das Fundament der Menschenwürde.

Schon während eines Schüleraustauschs in den USA habe ich die amerikanische Marktliebe erforscht. Seither wirkte ich auch selbst auf dem Markt und trug das unternehmerische Risiko. Mit meinem Projekt „Kindern lernen Markt“ habe ich ein philosophisch-politisches Wirtschaftskonzept entwickelt, das Kindern die Soziale Marktwirtschaft durch direkte Praxiserfahrung nahebringt. Nach einem erfolgreichen Piloten bereite ich nun die wissenschaftliche Absicherung vor, um das Konzept an Schulen im In- und Ausland zu bringen.

Als Schöffe am Amtsgericht kenne ich den Wert der Justiz. Sie trennt die Spreu vom Weizen – nicht nach Hautfarbe, Religion oder Herkunft. Sie unterscheidet streng meritokratisch nach dem menschlichen Verhalten: Trägt jemand zu unserer Gesellschaft bei oder schädigt er sie? Beitragendes Verhalten wird belohnt, schädigendes sachgerecht bestraft. Diese gelebte, auf Menschenwürde basierende Meritokratie habe ich hier in Baden-Württemberg gelernt. Nicht in England, nicht in den USA. Hier lernte ich, dass das Individuum auf dem Prüfstein steht und nicht verschiedene Kollektive. Jede erfolgreiche Organisation und Gesellschaft ist deshalb erfolgreich, weil sie schädigendes Verhalten eingrenzt, während sie beitragendes Verhalten belohnt. So bleibt die Menschenwürde in Takt, denn jeder Mensch kann lernen, sein Verhalten zu ändern.

Der deutsche Liberalismus blieb immer dann in der Hoffnung zurück, wenn er als Partei abgehobener Eliten wahrgenommen wurde. Theodor Heuss hat nach 1945 gezeigt, wie es anders geht: Er ging als „Papa Heuss“ zu den Menschen, hörte zu und erdete die Freiheit im Alltag der Bürger. Viele von uns sind Papas und Mamas zu Hause, wir erziehen und bilden unsere Kinder, meine Gattin und ich haben alleine an der Front schon sehr viel zu tun, als Eltern von nicht zwei, nicht drei, sondern vier Kindern.

Wir müssen jetzt aber, wie Heuss einst, auch unter die Menschen! Wir werden zum Phönix nur wenn wir die Partei der Schöpfer und Aufsteiger werden. Wir müssen den Kreisverbänden, dem Handwerk, dem Mittelstand und den Gründern zeigen: Wir sind eure Stimme gegen die Bevormundung. Wir wollen auf Augenhöhe arbeiten, nicht beherrschen. Mit Künstlicher Intelligenz können wir die Bürokratie jetzt massiv reduzieren und unsere Gesellschaft wieder in eine humane Leistungsgesellschaft verwandeln.

Denn eines ist klar: Wird Deutschland einfach zum Land der Erben, so wird Deutschland ST-ERBEN!

Liebe Freundinnen und Freunde, niemand hat je mit einem Text und einer Rede alles adressiert und gelöst, darum geht es gar nicht. Wir adressieren und lösen Dinge gemeinsam. Dafür müssen wir jetzt zuerst aber das Gehäuse der Agonie aufbrechen. Haben wir den Mut, uns neu aufzustellen – intellektuell geschärft, prinzipientreu und unbestechlich. Ich wiederhole - intellektuell geschärft, prinzipientreu und unbestechlich!

Überall wo Menschen bereit sind zivilisiert zu streiten für die Freiheit, dort lebt der Liberalismus und dort wird er leben.

Deshalb noch etwas, meine liberalen Freundinnen und Freunde: Lernt verdammt noch mal meinen vollen Namen: Milutin Stanisavljević. Gebt euch den Ruck! Wer Neues lernt, bleibt jung. Vielleicht stimmt es, dass viele Menschen bis zum Tod dasselbe denken und dann sterben. Die Liberalen gehören aber definitiv nicht zu solchen Menschen, nein!

How did a state with exceptionally strong local and regional ties become at the same time one of Europe’s most internationally connected centres of business, science and everyday life?

To an outside observer, Baden-Württemberg may initially appear to embody a contradiction. In few places are origin, region and locality cultivated so naturally: Badeners remain Badeners, Swabians remain Swabians, people from the Palatinate remain people from the Palatinate; dialects are not merely spoken but form part of people’s sense of themselves, while associations, municipalities, churches, festivals and local traditions continue to structure social life in many places. And yet this state is remarkably outward-looking. Its companies sell machinery, cars, pharmaceuticals and technologies across the world, its universities and research institutes attract people from many countries, and millions of its present-day inhabitants, or their families, themselves came from elsewhere.

Perhaps what is distinctive about Baden-Württemberg is precisely that these two sides have not become opposites. A sense of home and openness to the world have not displaced one another here. They have helped to produce one another.

Indeed, the very notion of an ancient Baden-Württemberg homeland is historically curious. Baden-Württemberg is younger than the Federal Republic itself. After the Second World War, south-western Germany was divided into Baden, Württemberg-Baden and Württemberg-Hohenzollern. Only a fiercely contested referendum led to their unification; on 25 April 1952, the new state came into being. In South Baden, more than 62 per cent had previously voted for the restoration of the old state of Baden. Opposition did not disappear after the new state was founded. Only in a further referendum in 1970 did almost 82 per cent of Baden’s population vote to remain within the united state. Baden-Württemberg is thus the only present-day German federal state whose creation resulted directly from a referendum.

This is more than a historical curiosity. It tells us something about the character of the state. Baden-Württemberg did not come into existence by erasing its older identities. It arose above them. Baden and Württemberg, Hohenlohe and the Electoral Palatinate, the Black Forest and Lake Constance, Stuttgart, Karlsruhe, Mannheim, Freiburg, Heidelberg, Ulm and countless smaller towns and communities did not have to cease being themselves in order for a common state to emerge.

Perhaps the answer to our original question begins here. Home need not mean that everyone is the same. Home can also be a place in which people are rooted differently and nevertheless form something together.

Politically, this principle is particularly evident at the local level. Baden-Württemberg is not a state whose social life is organised exclusively from Stuttgart. Much happens in municipalities, associations, volunteer fire brigades, church communities, sports clubs, cultural initiatives and voluntary organisations. According to the state government, around 41 per cent of citizens are engaged in voluntary civic activity, most of it directly within their local communities. Municipal self-government is therefore more than an administrative arrangement; it forms part of the state’s political culture.

Yet political culture is not static. One of the most intense conflicts in the state’s recent history demonstrated precisely this. The protests surrounding Stuttgart 21 became an experience of what can happen when part of the population comes to feel that political and administrative decisions are being made too far away from them. From 2011 onwards, the state government responded by developing its Politik des Gehörtwerdens – a “politics of being heard” – and expanding new forms of public participation. One need not agree with every aspect of its implementation to recognise something characteristic in this: political belonging, too, must continually be renewed.

The apparent tension between home and the wider world becomes still more striking when we turn to the economy. Baden-Württemberg possesses an economic structure that is at once locally rooted and globally dependent. Alongside internationally famous corporations stands an enormous industrial and Mittelstand landscape. More than 1.4 million people work in industry; almost 30 per cent of gross value added is generated by manufacturing. Mechanical engineering, automotive manufacturing and electrical engineering predominate, and a large proportion of their output is sold abroad. In 2025, companies in Baden-Württemberg exported goods worth around €241 billion.

What is interesting is not simply the magnitude of these figures. It is the geography behind them. A company may be based in a comparatively small town or municipality, its history tied to that place for generations, while its customers, suppliers and employees are spread across several continents. The local and the global do not first encounter one another at Stuttgart Airport. They meet in workshops, laboratories and family businesses.

Behind this lies an older cultural disposition: problems are not merely discussed but dismantled, measured, constructed and – where possible – solved. Carl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler came from the south-west; Robert Bosch later explicitly combined technological innovation with entrepreneurial and social responsibility. Yet the more important story is not a genealogy of celebrated inventors. It is that invention itself became an infrastructure.

In 2023, 5.7 per cent of Baden-Württemberg’s entire economic output was devoted to research and development – compared with 3.2 per cent in Germany and 2.13 per cent in the European Union. The state therefore ranks among Europe’s most research-intensive regions. Universities, universities of applied sciences, companies and non-university institutions form a research network extending far beyond the state’s borders.

A particularly important expression of this connection between science, business and social responsibility can be found in healthcare. Baden-Württemberg has four university hospitals, in Freiburg, Heidelberg, Tübingen and Ulm, combining highly specialised patient care with research and medical education. They are complemented by the Medical Faculty Mannheim of Heidelberg University and University Hospital Mannheim, as well as the Central Institute of Mental Health. The four state university hospitals alone have around 6,900 beds, treat more than 250,000 patients as inpatients and around 1.5 million as outpatients each year, and employ approximately 33,000 people. Around 18,000 medical students are trained in the state.

Here, too, however, the real strength lies not in the number of hospitals. It lies in the connection between treatment, research, teaching and commercial innovation. Baden-Württemberg participates in numerous German Centres for Health Research, spanning cancer and infectious diseases, cardiovascular and pulmonary conditions, diabetes and neurodegenerative diseases. Heidelberg is also home to the German Cancer Research Center, while the Heidelberg Ion-Beam Therapy Center is one of the internationally outstanding facilities of its kind.

A significant health industry has developed around this scientific medicine. Pharmaceuticals, medical technology and biotechnology form another important part of the state’s economy. An analysis commissioned for the state put the gross value added generated in 2021 by human pharmaceuticals alone at €6.5 billion, medical technology at €4.1 billion and biotechnology at €3.3 billion. Around 43,600 people were employed in human pharmaceuticals, 49,300 in medical technology and 22,200 in biotechnology.

Perhaps nowhere is Baden-Württemberg more clearly revealed as a place that is simultaneously home and part of an international community of knowledge. A patient from the region may be treated in a hospital where scientists from around the world conduct research; a therapy developed there may later help people on other continents. Research then becomes more than an economic asset. It becomes a form of responsibility.

The future of this strength will depend on whether Baden-Württemberg can connect medicine, biotechnology, medical technology, digitalisation and artificial intelligence even more closely. The state already possesses an unusual concentration of the necessary building blocks: patient care, university medicine, fundamental research, industrial development and a strong Mittelstand. We should not merely administer this combination. We should expand it.

Yet it would be a mistake to turn a portrait into a hymn of praise. The economic model that made Baden-Württemberg prosperous is itself under pressure. Real economic output fell by 0.6 per cent in 2025, the third consecutive year of recession. Industry has been particularly affected. The automotive sector and mechanical engineering simultaneously face digitalisation, artificial intelligence, the transformation of propulsion technologies, Chinese competition, high costs and geopolitical change.

Perhaps it is precisely now that we will discover whether the much-celebrated Tüftlerland – the land of inventors and ingenious problem-solvers – remains a living reality or has become merely a fond memory of past achievements. Tradition has a future only if it can change. One can be proud of Carl Benz while still understanding that Carl Benz, were he alive today, would have to invent something new.

The connection between home and openness to the world becomes still clearer when we look at the people themselves. Baden-Württemberg today has more than 11.2 million inhabitants – over four million more than when the state was founded. More than three quarters of this population growth is attributable to immigration. After the war came displaced persons and refugees, later the so-called Gastarbeiter, workers from other parts of Germany, refugees from civil wars, people from eastern Germany after reunification, and eventually new arrivals from across Europe and the wider world. In 2024, around 3.55 million residents had a migration background, almost one third of the population.

This changes the meaning of home.

If home meant only that those belong whose ancestors have lived in the same place for centuries, present-day Baden-Württemberg would be inconceivable without a substantial part of its own population. Economically, too, without those who came here, the state could scarcely have become what it is today. Openness to the world is therefore not merely a moral self-description. It forms part of the state’s biography.

The interesting question, then, is not whether Baden-Württemberg is a homeland or a country of immigration. It is both. The more difficult task is to turn arrival into belonging. That also entails expectations of those who come: home does not arise merely because one resides somewhere. It grows through language, relationships, work, neighbourhood, responsibility, participation and a willingness to carry something of the common life. Equally necessary is the willingness of those already here not to reduce belonging to ancestry.

Perhaps this is a contemporary understanding of home: home is not only what we inherit. Home is also what we continue to build together.

Culturally, too, Baden-Württemberg can hardly be reduced to a single centre. More than 1,200 museums and museum institutions are distributed across the state; alongside internationally renowned institutions in Stuttgart and Karlsruhe are open-air, regional and local-history museums, many supported by volunteers. Theatres, orchestras, conservatoires, festivals and independent cultural organisations are found far beyond the state capital. At the same time, Fasnet, traditional dress, religious processions, dialects, craft traditions and local festivals continue to thrive.

Perhaps this is the most remarkable cultural feature of all: an internationally renowned ballet and the local Fasnet need not justify themselves to one another. A research institute staffed by scientists from around the world and a Swabian or Alemannic dialect can exist only a few miles apart. High culture, folk culture, science, industry and immigration do not form a contradiction-free unity – but they do form an extraordinarily dense landscape.

And perhaps this is precisely where a misunderstanding needs to be overcome. Openness to the world is not the opposite of rootedness.

Those who confuse openness with the dissolution of all differences ultimately make the world poorer. We do not have to eat the same food everywhere, celebrate the same festivals, speak the same dialects or tell the same stories in order to live together. Conversely, home becomes dangerous when love of one’s own turns into contempt for what is foreign. Between these two errors lies a wide space.

Baden-Württemberg has lived in that space since its foundation.

The state itself arose from difference. Its economic strength grew from companies that were often deeply rooted locally and, precisely from that position, ventured into world markets. Its scientific and medical strength depends upon international exchange. Its population growth would be inconceivable without immigration. Its political culture, meanwhile, remains strikingly anchored in municipalities and civic institutions.

Perhaps Baden-Württemberg therefore became open to the world not despite its attachment to home. Perhaps, in important respects, it was precisely from strong roots that it acquired the confidence to look outwards.

But this must not become a source of complacency. A state that depends on exports must confront a changing global economy. A state that depends on research must not allow innovation to suffocate under bureaucracy. A state with such powerful medical and healthcare infrastructure must ensure that scientific progress reaches people. A state whose prosperity was built in part by immigrants must make belonging possible while also expecting common rules and shared responsibility. And a state with strong local traditions must ensure that home does not become a closed door.

But security is part of home as well. A Christmas market, a church, a synagogue, a mosque, a town festival or a political gathering must be places where people can come together without fear. Attacks on such places do not merely attack individual people; they attack the freedom to live together in public. Baden-Württemberg must therefore identify violent extremism, whatever its origin, at an early stage, equip its security authorities accordingly, and intervene decisively where radicalisation threatens to turn into intimidation and violence. The rule of law and fundamental rights must apply without qualification. Openness to the world does not mean defencelessness. Anyone who wishes to live, worship, celebrate and express an opinion peacefully in Baden-Württemberg should be protected. Anyone who intimidates others or prepares acts of violence must know that this state will defend its freedom.

Baden-Württemberg is only 74 years old. Perhaps that is a useful reminder that home need not always be ancient. Sometimes a new political order can emerge, allow older identities to endure, welcome millions of new people and nevertheless, over time, become a home itself.

Home and openness to the world are then not opposites. Home tells us where we stand. Openness to the world determines how far we can see from there.

Every child learning to walk falls. No one would therefore conclude that walking itself was a mistake. We intuitively understand that development consists of attempts, of balance and the loss of balance, of progress, overreach, correction and another attempt. Curiously, we often lose this equanimity as soon as we turn to political entities. We expect them to function even while they are developing; and when they stumble, some declare them failures while others pretend that they never fell at all.

It may therefore be worth taking a sober look at the European Union: neither as a project of salvation nor as a bureaucratic aberration, but as one of the most unusual political experiments on the European continent.

Its beginnings were remarkably concrete. After two world wars, six states did not begin by attempting to impose a European identity, but by jointly administering coal and steel – precisely those industries without which war could scarcely be waged. In 1951, the European Coal and Steel Community was established; the Treaties of Rome followed in 1957. Former enmity was to be transformed into organised mutual dependence. Today this sounds technical. At the time, it was almost revolutionary.

Only a few years later, however, it became clear that common institutions do not simply make national interests disappear. France's “empty chair” policy temporarily paralysed the Community in 1965–66 because Paris opposed an expansion of majority voting. The Luxembourg Compromise defused the crisis – at the cost of greater deference to national vetoes. The Community's first serious institutional stumble thus already revealed the problem that continues to accompany the European Union today: how much common purpose can national sovereignty tolerate, and how much national sovereignty can common action tolerate?

Yet it continued. The customs union was completed in 1968. Denmark, Ireland and the United Kingdom joined in 1973 – in the very year that an oil crisis hit the European continent hard economically. In 1979, citizens were able to elect their representatives to the European Parliament directly for the first time. The Community was thus becoming larger, more democratic and, at the same time, more vulnerable to a world it could not control.

The 1980s perhaps show particularly well how renewed momentum can emerge from stagnation. Greece, Spain and Portugal joined after the end of their dictatorships; European integration thereby also became an anchor of democratic consolidation. The Single European Act prepared the way for the single market, while Erasmus, launched in 1987, began bringing young people together across the member states and across the European continent. Then, in 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. A project that had begun in Western Europe suddenly acquired the possibility of overcoming a substantial part of the continent's political division.

The 1990s therefore became a period of extraordinary acceleration: Maastricht formally established the European Union in 1993, the single market realised its four freedoms, Schengen made borders between an increasing number of member states disappear from everyday life, and in 1999 the euro came into existence, initially as a book currency. The European Union was no longer merely a market. It began to develop elements of a common political order.

Yet precisely this success generated new problems. Those who grow quickly can find their institutional development lagging behind their own expansion. In 2004, ten further states joined, eight of them from Central and Eastern Europe. Historically, this was perhaps one of the greatest achievements of the European integration project: the division of large parts of the European continent that had emerged after the Second World War and the Cold War was politically overcome to a considerable extent. Only a year later, however, voters in France and the Netherlands rejected the proposed European Constitutional Treaty. Integration had advanced far, but evidently not every conception of its further deepening commanded the same democratic consent. The Treaty of Lisbon later found another route towards institutional reform.

Then came the financial and euro crisis. It was not merely an economic crisis, but a test of the construction itself. The European Union had created a common currency without developing an equally sophisticated common economic and financial architecture for all the risks arising from it. The crisis brutally exposed the interdependencies between banks, states and national economies and led, among other things, to the European Stability Mechanism and the banking union. For a time in 2012, even the future of the euro itself was in question; that same year, the European Union was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Rarely have recognition of a historic achievement and doubts about the future of the project stood so close together.

No sooner had that crisis become more manageable than the next arrived. More than a million people sought asylum in European Union member states in 2015. The states responded very differently, and the crisis exposed how incomplete a union remains without a genuinely common asylum, border and migration policy. Brexit followed in 2016: 52 per cent of British voters chose to leave. For the first time, the Union did not grow but lost a member state. Anyone who claims that European integration is historically inevitable should remember that moment. It is not.

Then came Covid. Borders that had become almost invisible to millions of EU citizens suddenly reappeared. Health policy proved to be a national competence, while the virus naturally showed no interest whatsoever in jurisdictional boundaries. Yet the crisis again produced more common action: the EU organised joint vaccine procurement and adopted what was then the largest recovery and stimulus programme ever financed through the EU budget. Two years later, Russia's attack on Ukraine once again forced the Union, within a matter of months, to take decisions on sanctions, energy, weapons, refugees and security that would scarcely have been imaginable only a few years earlier. War thus returned to the European continent in a particularly brutal form; it did not, and does not, take place “in the EU”, but in a European state outside the Union, whose relationship with the EU has thereby become more political still.

I recognise a pattern in this. The European Union does not develop despite its crises. It frequently develops through them. That is no excuse for bad decisions. On the contrary: some problems arose precisely because integration was badly designed, pursued too slowly, too quickly or at too great a distance from citizens. Growth, after all, is not the same thing as maturity.

The European Union therefore finds itself at such a point once again today. The principal question is no longer whether we can trade with one another or travel to France without a passport check. The world around it has become harsher. There is war on the European continent, the United States is realigning its interests, China is an economic and technological competitor, artificial intelligence is transforming industries, and the EU's own competitiveness is under pressure. The Draghi Report identified the innovation gap, the challenge of competitive decarbonisation and dangerous strategic dependencies as central challenges. For 2024–29, the EU itself therefore places three objectives alongside one another: a free and democratic, a strong and secure, and a prosperous and competitive Europe within its sphere of political responsibility.

Perhaps it is precisely this combination that matters. Freedom without security becomes vulnerable. Security without freedom becomes authoritarian. And both eventually become politically hollow if the European Union is no longer economically capable of generating its own prosperity.

A mature European Union therefore need not do more everywhere. It must learn to do the right thing at the right level. Where individual states are plainly too small to act effectively alone – in trade, defence, large parts of foreign policy, migration at common external borders, technological sovereignty or the regulation of global markets – the EU needs greater capacity to act. Where municipalities, regions or states can solve problems better themselves, Brussels should not infer from the existence of a European institution that a European rule is therefore necessary. Subsidiarity is not the enemy of European integration. It may well be one of its preconditions.

After more than seventy years of European integration, it would therefore be strange to judge the European Union by whether it has ever fallen. Of course it has fallen. It will fall again. The more interesting question is whether it learns from its falls.

Six states became twenty-seven. Coal and steel became a single market, freedom of movement, common institutions and a currency. From centuries of wars between European states emerged, within the European Union, a political space in which France and Germany now conduct their conflicts in meeting rooms. This is neither a law of nature nor a guarantee for the future. Precisely for that reason, it should neither be romanticised nor belittled.

And perhaps, at the end, it is worth looking at the map as well. The European Union is not Europe. Europe is the continent – larger, more diverse and extending politically far beyond the boundaries of the Union. Yet the EU's 27 member states already encompass almost 40 per cent of its territory and nearly 450 million people. From an association of six states there has thus emerged a political space of a scale that itself creates responsibility: towards its own citizens, towards the other states of the European continent, and towards a world in which decisions taken by the European Union have consequences far beyond its external borders.

Size alone creates neither legitimacy nor, still less, wisdom. But anyone who politically organises such a substantial part of a continent cannot indefinitely behave as though it were a small economic cooperation project. Greater significance has brought greater responsibility: to protect peace and freedom within its own political space, to enable prosperity, to act reliably towards its neighbours, and to assume responsibility where the member states together can genuinely achieve more than they can alone.

The European Union is not a finished house into which we moved at some point. It is a political development on the European continent to which every generation continues to contribute. Our task is not to defend every step taken so far. Our task is to determine what the next right step should be.

A child, after all, does not become an adult by ceasing to fall.

It becomes an adult by learning why it fell – and then walking differently.

This one I wrote only in German language.

I will publish this text in English soon, for now I have written it in German and Serbian.

I have written this text in German for now, but will translate it into English as well.