On the occasion of the Memorial Day Celebration in the German Bundestag today, French President Macron has reminded Germans and Europeans that peace is nothing we can take for granted but a task for every generation. In his moving speech before the Bundestag, Macron also addressed common challenges, such as climate change and trade conflicts, and called for a pooling of sovereignity of nations in Europe in a stronger European Union.

Other speakers were young men and and a young woman from Belgium, Great-Britain, France, and Germany who had visited the graves of soldiers together, and written them letters. “We have visited cemeteries in France and Belgium, which together have more deaths than guests fit into our stadium,” a young soccer player from Berlin said.  A young Belgian soccer player from Bruges today, commemorated two brothers of a local rival soccer club who died on the front lines together: “We will always remember you as friends. Tears know no color.”

“Tears know no color.” Blood is red in every country. And in our diverse European family, every single family has memories of a fallen relative, of famine, or of destruction we have brought on ourselves twice in the past century. May the similarities of such memories all over the continent bring us together as one family, the European family.