Berlin: from Wall to Gateway

Enrique Barón Crespo
Member of the Spanish Congreso de los Diputados (1977-87), Constitutional Father, Former President of the European Parliament (1989-1992) and member of it (1986-2008). President of UEF-Spain

30 years ago, the Berlin Wall, which had transformed the Hellenic Brandenburg Gate from the historical access to the city into an impassable barrier, fell. With symbolic intent, the quadriga crowning the gate, which once Napoleon had taken to Paris, was turned to face the other way.

Not only were a city and a country divided by an iron curtain, but a continent and a world were cut in two as a result of the Yalta and Potsdam Conferences. At 169 kilometers, the Berlin Wall was the most visible part of this iron curtain, which stretched 1800 kilometers across Germany and into Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Even so, it was much shorter than the Great Wall of China, at 6770 kilometers. In the long term, the common element shared by these structures was their ineffectiveness in trying to stem the tide, even though they have left a lasting impression, and not just in physical terms.

My contribution will focus on the European dimension of the events, based on my experience as President of the European Parliament (EP) at the time. My intention is not simply to give an autobiographical account, as, right from the start, it was the EP the European forum in which the issue was publicly and openly debated. [...]

In 1989 a series of signs had suggested that the Soviet Bloc was a pressure cooker about to blow. The borders of the Soviet Union had been defined by Stalin at Yalta and Potsdam, where he had imposed his map of Central and Eastern Europe with a traditional imperial political and military logic, according to which: ‘whoever occupies a territory also imposes his own social system as far as his army can reach. It cannot be otherwise’. In 1945, the Soviet Army had reached the heart of Berlin – the Reichstag – next to the Brandenburg Gate. This hugely emblematic location was where the famous photo of the Russian soldier flying his flag over the ruins was taken.

At the heart of the empire, Gorbachev’s policy of perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (transparency), which was welcomed more in the West than at home, had delivered the immortal warning ‘life punishes those who come too late’ to the apparatchik Erich Honecker, veteran leader of the German Democratic Republic. He was overthrown on 18 October, three weeks before the fall of the Wall. In the meantime, the ever-rebellious Poland had held elections in April, with 99% of the votes going to Solidarity, resulting in the formation of the Mazowiecki government. In the summer, Gyula Horn had pierced the barrier between Hungary and Austria, and tourists from East Germany were occupying the West German embassies and escaping to the West. Mass demonstrations were also occurring in Czechoslovakia.

These fundamental seismic movements were penetrating to the very hearts of leaders and citizens who, in the main, had lived through the war. Faced with these events, positive reactions came immediately from Chancellor Kohl, supported by President Bush Senior and Felipe González, together with deafening silences that reflected the fears of returning to the past and the desire to maintain a ‘status quo’, as expressed in Mauriac’s cynical comment: ‘I love Germany so much that I am glad there are two of them’.

After making an initial welcoming statement, I convened an extraordinary meeting of the Enlarged Bureau (the body that at the time brought together the Conference of Presidents and the EP Bureau) one week later, on 16 November, to decide on our response. […] The proposal made was to welcome these events, which were in line with the commitment to respect the fundamental rights of individuals, as recognised in the founding Treaties, including the right to free movement and also self-determination through free and fair elections. The decision made was to support the informal meeting that was to be held by the European Council in Paris under the French Presidency, to request the French Foreign Minister, Roland Dumas, to report on this meeting, and to accept the invitation of the President of the Volkskammer to visit the German Democratic Republic (GDR).

At the same time, […] I sent invitations to President Mitterrand and Chancellor Kohl. This invitation for them to appear together was unprecedented. Both immediately accepted. One week later, following the announcement that the Sakharov Prize was to be awarded to Alexander Dubcek, the President-in-Office of the Council, President Mitterrand, and Chancellor Kohl appeared together. [...]

President Mitterrand […] stated that on 9 November in Berlin, history in action had offered the world the spectacle, which had been unlikely even the day before, of a breach in the Wall that, for nearly 30 years, had in itself symbolised the fractures in our continent. On that day, democracy and freedom had won one of their most wonderful victories. The people had spoken; their voices had crossed borders and broken the silence of an order that they had not wanted and that they aspired to reject in order to recover their identities.

After indicating his excitement, welcoming Chancellor Kohl and expressing his regard for Gorbachev for the role that he had played, President Mitterrand placed the issue in a moment of reflection, in a joint analysis of the consequences for the European balance, and also the willingness of the Community and its members to assist the Eastern Bloc countries that ‘have made commitments to themselves’. His conclusions with regard to the future concerned the very future of the Community itself and the common values which were demanded and which knew no bounds. His first conclusion involved ‘affirming our own identity as a Community in order to open up to the East’, which ‘absolutely depends on the political will to show that, in the end, it is political unity that has prevailed over all the actions taken since the founders conceived the European idea’. [...]

Aware that ‘nothing is ever enough; nothing can ever be done quickly enough’, he suggested measures to accompany the reform movement, such as the creation of a Bank for the development of Eastern Europe, the extension of training programmes such as Erasmus, and the admission of countries to the Council of Europe and GATT. He highlighted the need to be ready, at the imminent European Council in Strasbourg in December, ‘to successfully complete the fundamental plans that will allow our Europe to equip itself with the necessary economic and monetary, social and environmental policy tools and also to complete the internal market’. [...]

For his part, Chancellor Kohl started by saying that ‘in Western Europe, the Member States of the Community are actively preparing for the challenge of the 21^st century, in which, thanks to the internal market of 320 million people, we can move towards the political union that we cherish and that must be achieved’. He then went on to examine the changes that were occurring with dizzying speed across the continent. He expressed his appreciation of Gorbachev’s perestroika, which, for the first time since the end of the Second World War, was encouraging the justified hope of an end to the East-West conflict and of lasting stability based around a common freedom for the whole of Europe, ‘to which not only London, Rome, The Hague, Dublin and Paris belong, but also Warsaw, Budapest, Prague and Sofia, and also of course Berlin, Leipzig and Dresden’. After commenting on the progress made by Poland and Hungary, he said that ‘the desire for freedom among the Germans of East Berlin and the GDR has brought a peaceful end to the Wall and the barbed wire, with a celebration of coming together, mutual belonging and unity’. ‘Those Germans who in the end have come together in a spirit of freedom will never be a threat, but solely a benefit to the unity of Europe.’ ‘The division of Germany has always been a visible and particularly painful expression of the division of Europe. However, the unity of Germany will only be achieved if we can unify our old continent. German policy and European policy are inseparable. They are two sides of the same coin.’[...]

In conclusion, he felt it necessary to explain the philosophy of the GDR, whose government was holding fast to the goal identified by Adenauer of ‘a free and united Germany in a free and united Europe’, which was a dual constitutional obligation enshrined in the German Basic Law (Grundgesetz). He emphasised that the task had a ‘European global dimension’.

The tenor of the speeches made by the political group representatives was generally supportive. [...] Valéry Giscard d’Estaing started his speech by confirming that ‘today will perhaps mark the political birth of the EP, at a time when the tide of freedom is flooding across Eastern Europe’. The response should be ‘to speed up the union of the Community and provide massive Community aid to the Eastern Bloc countries, subject to two vital conditions: not to run any unnecessary risks in terms of military alliances that could threaten peace, and to speed up the union of the Community in order to achieve a modern federalism based on subsidiarity’. He concluded that explicit support should be given to German reunification, not as a pretext for changing the Community, but as an incentive for its union in order to offer a framework for the political reunification of the German people. [...]

The Commission President, Jacques Delors, after welcoming the events and assuming responsibility for implementing the measures proposed by President Mitterrand, […] as a militant pro-European, expressed his conviction that the political cooperation measure adopted by the Council was the most important in the Community’s history and that more resources, coordination and speed were needed to ensure that hopes were met. As a result, he said that ‘the Community must be strengthened, its proactiveness increased and its integration accelerated; now we must design the architecture for the great Europe’.

The debate ended with an overwhelming majority vote – with only two votes against – for a resolution in which the events in Central and Eastern Europe and the collapse of the Wall due to the people’s peaceful aspiration to freedom were warmly welcomed. The resolution recognised the right to self-determination of the GDR’s population, including the possibility of becoming part of a unified Germany in a united Europe; it called for a rapid response from the EC in terms of aid and cooperation for Central and Eastern Europe, ‘within which institutional ties may be offered to all those countries that are interested in it’ (a timid euphemism for accession); and, last but not least, it insisted on the importance of a mutual security policy and disarmament negotiations on the eve of the Bush-Gorbachev Summit. Chancellor Kohl commented at a later date on his astonishment at the firm Socialist support, both in the EP and among the Heads of Government in that political family, for the resolution of the German question.

The debate in the EP was important due to its timeliness, namely less than two weeks after the fall of the Wall, and particularly due to the nature of its participants: leaders and parliamentarians who had mostly lived through, participated in or suffered from the Second World War. Most Germans, members of the largest population in the centre of the continent, without any defined borders but with a strong cultural and historical identity, cherished the hope of reunification. For many others, the prospect of a unified and powerful Germany, which could once again adopt its ‘Sonderweg’ or special path, was seen as a threat. However, both the atmosphere and the result showed that the Community spirit had become deep-rooted among Western Europeans and also that it constituted a legitimate aspiration for those excluded from power by the construction of such an indestructible wall as an iron curtain, as I had the honour of saying directly on behalf of the EP before the democratically elected parliaments of Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

The words and silences of Mitterrand and Kohl during their joint appearance were particularly important. Much has been written and speculated about their differences, although it would have been strange if they had not had any. The important point is that they were able to channel positively and overcome these differences, despite the long history of confrontation, including on a personal level. That is one of the virtues of the Community method, or rather its spirit, which made it possible for Pierre Uri, a French philosophy professor who was persecuted by the Vichy Regime, to draft the Treaty of Rome from beginning to end, under the supervision and control of Hans von der Groeben, a senior German civil servant. On 28 November, Kohl announced in the Bundestag his 10-point plan for German unity, which included a plan for a German confederation and its membership of the European Community, thus rejecting the temptation of neutral unity. The parties in the process of adapting the international treaties had a 2+4 format (the two German states plus the four occupying powers: USA, USSR, Great Britain and France), whereas the European Community dimension involved 12 Member States, and a wider European dimension involved also the CSCE.

Two weeks after this unique public debate, I presented a decalogue of proposals to the European Council in Strasbourg, including enlargement, German unity and the need to add political union to the planned agenda of an Intergovernmental Conference on the Union, decided to lead the way. The role played by the European leaders of the Member States was decisive. Coming from different political perspectives, they were able to understand the extent of the changes in hand and the value of unity. [...]

However, not everything was a bed of roses. Still in December, President Mitterrand made his only official visit to the GDR, at a time of clear tension with Chancellor Kohl, which manifested itself in his non-attendance on 22 December at the formal opening of the Brandenburg Gate, which leads straight into the Pariser Platz. Although accepting the German desire for reunification as legitimate, the French President added ‘if they want to and if they can’. Kohl’s 10-point plan failed to answer three basic questions: his explicit non-recognition of the Oder-Neisse border with Poland; the speed and format of the reunification process; and also the issue of resulting alliances. One other factor was added: the election on 29 December to the Presidency of the free Czechoslovakia of the writer and resistance fighter Václav Havel. Mitterrand attempted a response with his plan for a Federation within the Community and a Confederation within the Council of Europe. Havel was the first to reject this division.

The acceleration of the process, in which the citizens of the GDR voted with their feet, threatening to provoke a mass exodus, precipitated events. In March, the population of the GDR voted for the first time in free elections, overwhelmingly supporting reunification. At European level, at the Dublin Summit, the Franco-German plan opened the way to reform. On 1 July, the German political and monetary union became a reality. [...]

On 3 October, the Day of German Unity was celebrated for the first time, with one of the largest mass demonstrations that I have ever witnessed in my life. All protocol and order-keeping services were overwhelmed when faced with the human tide that converged on the Reichstag. In the formal sitting of the Bundestag, the Federal President, Richard von Weiszäcker, placed the Commission President, Jacques Delors, and myself, as EP President, on either side of him. I had the honour of speaking on the same day at the formal sitting held in the Paulskirche in Frankfurt, which had been a sanctuary for German constitutionalism since 1848.

That same month, I spoke in Rome at the European Council meeting at Palazzo Madama, seat of the Senate of the Italian Republic, on the EP’s vision for the European process. I made a proposal to actively participate in the negotiations of the future Treaty and expressed concern about the initial signs of implosion in Yugoslavia. [...]

At the next Council meeting, held in the Sala della Lupa of Palazzo Montecitorio, we managed to convene the Intergovernmental Conference on Political Union, in addition to the Intergovernmental Conference on Economic and Monetary Union, which had been the subject of long preparations since 1987. For the first time, our proposal for the European Parliament’s participation through the Preparatory Inter-institutional Conference was accepted, through which we were able to significantly strengthen the democracy and effectiveness of the nascent Union. [...]

Although the tango says that 20 years is nothing, in this case many things have happened. The European Union has grown from 12 to 27 Member States and from 320 million to 500 million citizens. It has a single currency, the euro, which works, which protects us and which, in spite of us, has become a global reserve currency. At this point, we must pay tribute to Chancellor Kohl, who led the way in changing the framework for the euro, against his own public opinion. The EU is a pioneering model for political organizations of the future, in a globalized world based on regional multilateralism. G-20 meetings more closely resemble the European Council than G-7 meetings, due to their organization, paraphernalia and dynamic.

People power peacefully broke down the Wall dividing Europe and the world. However, there are still many mental walls between us in the noble cause that we share. They are more difficult to combat and overcome than physical walls. The laborious gestation of the Treaty of Lisbon, which salvaged the wreck of the Constitutional Treaty, bears witness to this. However, here too, we are breaking down the walls of mistrust and narrow nationalism. It is to be hoped that its implementation throws open an important gateway to the future of a European Union open to the world.