Berlin - 9 November 1989: crowd of Berliners on the wall, Strasbourg - 22/11/1989: Formal sitting with Helmut KOHL, German Chancellor and François MITTERRAND, Strasbourg - 16/05/1990: Visit Lothar DE MAIZIERE Prime Minister of the German Democratic Republic to the EP, Brussels - 28/06/1990: Meeting of the Temporary Committee on East Germany chaired by Simone VEIL, Strasbourg - 08/10/1990: First meeting of the European Parliament after the reunification of Germany.
German reunification
German reunification was the process in 1990 in which the German Democratic Republic became part of the Federal Republic of Germany to form the reunited nation of Germany, as provided by Article 23 of the FRG's then constitution.
The swift and unexpected downfall of the German Democratic Republic was triggered by the decay of the other communist regimes in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. The liberalizing reforms of President Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviet Union appalled the Honecker regime, which in desperation was by 1988 forbidding the circulation within East Germany of Soviet publications that it viewed as dangerously subversive. The Berlin Wall was in effect breached in the summer of 1989 when a reformist Hungarian government began allowing East Germans to escape to the West through Hungary’s newly opened border with Austria. By the fall, thousands of East Germans had followed this route, while thousands of others sought asylum in the West German embassies in Prague and Warsaw, demanding that they be allowed to emigrate to West Germany. At the end of September, Genscher, still West Germany’s foreign minister, arranged for their passage to West Germany, but another wave of refugees from East Germany soon took their place. Mass demonstrations in the streets of Leipzig and other East German cities defied the authorities and demanded reforms.
#eudebates #Berlin #wall #Germany
Thirty years ago, the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain fell. This event led to global consequences. November 9th, 1989, marks the end of the cold war and announces an appeasement after several decades of international tensions. At the European level, it is the first step towards the reunification of one of the leading countries of the European Union. On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of this peaceful revolution, Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission, declared: “When people took to the streets in the autumn of 1989, they risked their own freedom to achieve freedom for all. Their courage tore down walls, their unity inspired Europe and the world, and their peaceful revolution changed the course of history forever. People healed a European continent divided by war, and reconciled Europe’s history with its geography. Instead of suffering history, these people made history.”
The fall of the Berlin Wall, on 9 November 1989, was a pivotal event in world and European #History.
#WindofChange #Germany #Europe #EuropeanHistory #Europeans #Union #BerlinWall30 #BerlinWall #Berlin #Berlinermauer
