European Parliament President Martin Schulz Europe speech to the Konrad Adenauer Foundation by Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament Speeches Berlin 09-11-2014 Ladies and gentlemen, I should like to start by thanking Hans-Gert Pöttering and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation for making the Europe speech an annual event on the Berlin political calendar. It is a very welcome initiative, in particular because the speech is given on 9 November, a day which evokes such mixed emotions among us Germans, Martin Schulz as the day on which the republic was proclaimed after the First World War had come to an end in 1918, as the day of the attempted putsch by Hitler and Ludendorff in 1923, as the day on which Jewish businesses throughout Germany were attacked in 1938, the so- called Reichspogromnacht, a day of shame for our nation, and more recently, as the day on which the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, a day of joy; it makes perfect sense, therefore, to think about topical EU issues on a day which symbolises the low points and the high points in German history like no other. Like no other day, 9 November illustrates just how closely German history and European history are bound up with one another and just how great the burden of responsibility for Europe that Germany bears is. Ladies and gentlemen, This year, 9 November marks the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is only right that we should be celebrating: when the Wall came down, a Europe-wide liberation movement, and with it the year which Timothy Garton Ash referred to as ‘the year of wonders’, reached its climax. It was indeed a year of wonders – a year in which the spark of freedom became a fire which spread across Europe. At the start of the decade, workers in the Gdansk shipyards had already begun to unite under the leadership of Lech Wasa. Before long, the Solidarno trade union had 10 million members – 10 million! Then, in February 1989, round table discussions paved the way for the first free elections in Poland, and Solidarno’s landslide victory. The significance of Pope John Paul II’s role in bringing down the Communist regime can also not be overstated. In Hungary, mass demonstrations held on 15 March – Hungary’s national day – forced the regime to hold talks with opposition groups. In June 1989, Hungary’s Foreign Minister Gyula Horn and his Austrian counterpart Alois Mock cut through the barbed wire fence at the border between their two countries. In August, two million people joined hands to form a human chain stretching from Vilnius to Riga and on to Tallinn. The ‘singing revolution’ then brought the peoples of the Baltic States independence. In Prague, meanwhile, Vaclav Havel was released from prison and the protesters responded with cries of ‘Havel to the castle!’ In May, civil rights activists brought to light extensive ballot rigging in East Germany, thus shattering the illusion of democracy in that country. In the autumn, more and more people began joining the Monday demonstrations held in Leipzig every week. According to Erich Honecker, Leipzig had become the ‘centre of the counter-revolution’, where more and more people gathered Europe speech to the Konrad Adenauer Foundation by Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament 1/6 European Parliament President Martin Schulz to chant the words ‘We are the people!’ And then, on 9 November, brave men and women brought the Berlin Wall down – the wall that had summarily torn families apart. It must have been very hard to find even one German family that had not been separated from at least one brother or sister, uncle or aunt when the Wall was erected - a wall which arbitrarily divided a country and a people into east and west, a wall which arbitrarily divided an entire continent. But on 9 November, 25 years ago, freedom finally prevailed. Looking back, ladies and gentlemen, it is difficult to imagine it any other way – it is as if the civil rights activists were always destined to succeed, as if the Berlin Wall was always destined to fall. We tend to forget that, in fact, it could all have turned out quite differently, that there could easily have been a repeat of the massacre at Tiananmen Square. It took tremendous courage on the part of the activists to stand their ground. They were shadowed and had their houses searched, they were fined, interrogated and jailed. We owe a debt of gratitude to the brave people who gathered in Leipzig every Monday to shout ‘We are the people’; to Lech Wasa’s trade unionists; to the people who joined hands across the Baltic States and sang against oppression; to the Hungarians for opening their borders; we owe a debt of gratitude to them, and to so many others, for the peaceful, singing, velvet revolution of 1989 that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November. As we now know, in 1989 it wasn’t the superpowers or the statesmen that made history – the people wrote their own history. Ladies and gentlemen, The fall of the Berlin Wall marks a turning point in the history of Germany and Europe; entire peoples were now no longer isolated and deprived of a say in their own futures; the Cold War and the stand-off between the superpowers came to an end. Eric Hobsbawm defines the year 1989 as the end of ‘the short 20th century’, and Francis Fukuyama even spoke of ‘the end of history’. He believed, along with many others, that liberal democracy and a free market economy had triumphed, and that they would now sweep everything before them. Today this seems incredibly naïve, but at the time, during those years of revolution, there was a real sense of euphoria. Now that the military and ideological conflict between the superpowers was over, hopes for lasting peace and a new, fairer world order seemed entirely justified. 1989 was the year of freedom. Some of the most powerful images of that year – images that none of us will ever forget – are images of people crossing borders: barriers were raised, border guards were left standing helplessly, people climbed fences, tore down walls. They ushered in a peaceful revolution. No tanks were deployed, no shots were fired, no blood was shed. In 1989, we did away with so many borders in Europe. So today I ask myself: did the hopes and dreams of 1989, the year of wonders, ever really come to fruition? The dream of reunification did come true; German reunification really was an unexpected gift which no one even in 1987 or 1988 had expected to receive so soon. Gorbachev himself did not believe that reunification would be on the cards for another 50 or 100 years. That it came about so quickly, and in such a rational, clear-sighted way, was largely thanks to Helmut Kohl and his ability to combine statesmanship with a deep understanding of history. The European liberation movement likewise reached its climax only with the reunification of Europe. People had longed not only for freedom from Soviet oppression, but also for a ‘return to Europe’. For decades, people in Central and Eastern Europe had been cut off from their European roots, and from developments in the western part of the continent, by the Iron Curtain. They could see that Europe was moving forward without them, and that the European integration process was taking ever clearer shape, in the form of the European Community. The ‘big bang’ of the EU’s eastern enlargement crowned the transition of many central and eastern European states from Communist rule and a planned economy to democracy and a free market economy. The region of stability, peace and prosperity on our continent became larger. Europe speech to the Konrad Adenauer Foundation by Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament 2/6 European Parliament President Martin Schulz Indeed, one aspiration of 1989 was certainly fulfilled when Europe enlarged eastwards: the peoples of Central and Eastern Europe returned to their rightful place in the European family. Europe has grown together once again, and that is a good thing. And yet, ladies and gentlemen, when I look around me today – a quarter of a century after we were enthusiastically tearing down walls and opening borders, 25 years after the stand-off between the superpowers came to an end, when many of us thought that a new era of everlasting world peace had dawned – when I see the way we are now erecting new borders in Europe, I am dismayed. There is currently a lot of loose talk about reintroducing borders in Europe. People die almost every day trying to reach our shores, and European borders are once again being shifted by force of arms. Because of this, many Europeans are once again living in fear of war. Ladies and gentlemen, I grew up in the corner of Europe where Germany, Belgium and Holland meet. Borders were part of my everyday life, borders marked by wooden barriers, borders at which long queues of cars formed at weekends when people wanted to cross to go shopping or to visit relatives. Borders which were sometimes closed, for example because of a football match. For that reason, I regard freedom of movement as perhaps Europe’s greatest achievement. And to my mind, nothing symbolises that freedom more powerfully than open borders. If I am honest, it is very difficult for me to grasp what these open borders must mean to people who for decades were hemmed in by walls and spring-gun installations.