German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Hungary’s right-wing populist Prime Minister Viktor Orban commemorate the opening of the border 30 years ago today in the Hungarian city of Sopron.
At the pan-European picnic on the border with Austria on August 19, 1989, about 600 GDR citizens spontaneously fled to the West.
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The event is considered one of the decisive steps on the way to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Merkel and Orban also want to use the occasion for bilateral talks. The German-Hungarian relationship is considered burdened because Orban governs his country increasingly authoritarian.
