Remarks by President Obama at Strasbourg Town Hall;

This speech was delivered in front of a broader audience at Strasbourg’s sport Arena. It thus follows that not only the official representatives of France were presented, but also especially the young students. The most characteristic feature of the speech is not so much the effort to take a greater fancy by using more humorous hints but rather the relatively high degree of sincerity and concreteness.

At the beginning, however, the typical greeting cannot be omitted and also commemorations of mutual bounds are overhauled. In this case, not only the relationships with France, but ass the event took place in Strasbourg, the residence of European Union's institutions, the American-European contacts were taken into consideration. It must be noted that this commemoration was not too long and it was not especially original with comparison of such nearly obligatory diplomatic remarks at the beginning of the majority foreign speeches. These references to the past serve as the support for the encouragement in the future, e.g.: “At the crossroads where we stand today, this shared history gives us hope - but it must not give us rest. This generation cannot stand still. We cannot be content merely to celebrate the achievements of the 20th century, or enjoy the comforts of the 21st century; we must learn from the past to build on it success. We must renew our institution, our alliances. We must seek the solutions to the challenges of this young century."

As it has been denoted a few lines earlier, the speech is quite remarkable by its will to admit that these deeply rooted relationship among the United States and the whole Europe is not without shadows and as good as it should to be: " Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times, where America shows arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive. But in Europe, there is an Anti-Americanism that is at once casual, but can also be insidious". Such openness and sincerity is not used so often in diplomatic speeches, usually due to the fact that politicians do not make worse yet more unstable and uncertain bounds; with this notion in the mid, Obama's attempt to describe and explain some misunderstandings might be appreciated. It also seems that this approach was positively accepted by the members of Strasbourg’s audience who expressed his position by burst of applause. All reactions of the audience are recorded in this transcript of the speech as well.

Further in the speech, Obama tried to explain the reason of unpopular steps that American government had been enterprising, such as the war in Afghanistan. In this case, true sincerity was accompanied with a bit of enhancement, as in: " As president, I can tell you there's no decision more difficult, there's no duty more painful, than signing a letter to the family of somebody who has died in war." Although it truly would not be easy to do such a thing, it may be hardly expected that the president has a deeper feeling towards the man who has died, especially when the text of universal letters of this kind was written before this man died nevertheless, of course, such matter is highly sensitive and may differ according to individual presidents how they express their personal regret. It is understandable that Obama said this but it was rather a bit of overused soothing.

At the end, Obama offers some space for the audience to ask him questions. His effort to be familiar when he gave the space for the questioner to put him a question may be appreciated positively as well as his immediate reaction o the questions. He was even sometimes quite concrete, providing proves which American government had taken in order to solve particular situation that he was been asked on.