GUEST POST – Autumn of Change: 20 years on

We are inviting a series of guest posts to mark the official launch of the Young Fabian blog. YF members who would like to contribute should get in touch with Vice Chair, Adrian Prandle, aprandle@youngfabians.org.uk.

Today Marie-Noelle Loewe, Young Fabian member, with a unique perspective amongst YF members on the fall of  the Berlin Wall and what that means for the EU today

I was seven years old when the Berlin Wall fell. I grew up in a small town close to Dusseldorf, which is rather far away from what was then the German Democratic Republic, so my memories of the time are personal rather than political. I remember that my grandmother encouraged me and my sisters to eat our daily fruit without complaining, since “the children in the east didn’t even know what bananas are.” I remember my dad (who had fled East Germany at the age of four) always got rather excited when successful escapes were reported on the news. And I remember that, shortly after 9th November 1989, a few new classmates joined my school who spoke with a funny accent and had never eaten a Mars bar before.

For the rest of the world, the events in Berlin of course marked the end of the cold war, bringing more significant changes. 40 years of isolation ended for millions with the collapse of the ‘Iron Curtain’, marking a new area of ‘freedom to’ rather than ‘freedom of’. This month, celebrations are taking place all over Europe to celebrate the Autumn of the Nations: the velvet revolution in Czechoslovakia which ended the rule of the Communist party; the bloody end of the Socialist Republic of Romania whose citizens had suffered under the oppressive rule of Nicolae Ceauşescu for almost 20 years. What started in Poland spread through Bulgaria, East Germany, Romania and so on. By 1991 the Soviet Union had collapsed and fourteen of its former satellite states had denounced communism.

Our generation should remember these images when we think about what Europe means for us. We should remember that the Union is more than a single market; it is also a union of ideas – 20 years on, the values of freedom and democracy, European values, prevail through the nations formerly behind the ‘Iron Curtain’. These are the values which gave birth to the project; the European Union.