25 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall: MEPs tell their stories
On Sunday it was 25 years since the Berlin Wall collapsed. On that day thousands gathered all along the wall that had separated East and West Germany since 1961. This historic occasion will be commemorated by the Parliament at the start of this week's plenary on 12 November from 15.00 CET. Read on to discover how MEPs remember the fall of the Berlin Wall.
"I heard a big noise on the street, so I jumped out of bed, opened the window and saw a crowd going somewhere," said Alain Lamassoure, a French member of the EPP group who was in Berlin when East German Government spokesman Günter Schabowski famously said the border would be opened "effective immediately".
In Rome, then EP President Enrique Barón Crespo, a Spanish member of the PES group, was preparing for the Italian EU Council Presidency gala dinner when a journalist called to ask: "President, the Berlin Wall has fallen, what do you think?"
Within two weeks the Parliament, which already supported German reunification and set up a special committee to this end, invited German chancellor Helmut Kohl and French president François Mitterrand to address the plenary. You can find the minutes of the plenary by clicking on the link on the right.
MEPs still clearly remember that night in Berlin. In the video you will find contributions by Alain Lamassoure (EPP, France), Constanze Krehl (S&D, Germany), Beatrix von Storch (ECR, Germany), Guy Verhofstadt (ALDE, Belgium), Ska Keller (Greens / EFA, Germany), Marisa Matias (GUE/NGL, Portugal) and Amjad Bashir (EFDD, UK), sharing with us their memories and thoughts of the events that transformed Europe and the world.
You can follow the topic on social media using the hashtags #Mauerfall #fotw25 and #fallofthewall25.
Further information
- Watch the commemoration in Parliament live on 12 November from 15.00 CET
- (open in a new tab) Video on Vimeo
- (open in a new tab) Fall of the Wall: videos and images
- (open in a new tab) Testimonies by former EP Presidents Enrique Baron Crespo (speaking in Spanish), Pat Cox (in English) and Hans-Gert Pöttering (in German) on the fall of the Berlin Wall and the enlargement process
- Debate in plenary with Kohl and Mitterrand (22 November 1989) (PDF - 5041 Kb)
- EP resolution on developments in Central and East Europe (23 November 1989) (PDF - 158 Kb)