25 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall: MEPs tell their stories

On Sunday (9 November) 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. There had been peaceful demonstrations since September 1989 and the call for freedom to travel became stronger each day. When the East German government announced that people were now able to cross the border whenever they wanted, people flocked to the wall and tore it down.

"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 European Parliament 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 below.

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.MEPs will commemorate the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall with a plenary debate on Wednesday 12 November.