“European integration should not be rigid but as flexible as we can possibly make it. It should not be a straitjacket for the peoples of Europe but should be their common mainstay, a common support for the healthy, individual development of each of them.”

Address on continuing European integration at the Grandes Conférences Catholiques https://www.cvce.eu/obj/address_given_by_konrad_adenauer_on_continuing_european_integration_brussels_25_september_1956-en-ea27a4e3-4883-4d38-8dbc-5e3949b1145d.html (25 September 1956)

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Konrad Adenauer 12
German statesman, Federal Chancellor of Germany, politician… 1876–1967

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