In this interview excerpt, Mark Eyskens, Prime Minister of Belgium in 1981 and Minister for External Relations from 1989 to 1992, pays tribute to the personality of and role played by Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1985, elected as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in October 1988 and President of the Soviet Union in 1990. Gorbachev initiated a series of economic and political reforms that led to perestroika.

In this interview excerpt, Mark Eyskens, Prime Minister of Belgium in 1981 and Minister for External Relations from 1989 to 1992, discusses the events in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) that led to German reunification, and describes his memories of his official visit to East Berlin on 20 November 1989.

In this interview excerpt, Mark Eyskens, Prime Minister of Belgium in 1981 and Minister for External Relations from 1989 to 1992, describes the efforts made to redefine relations between East and West after the collapse of the Soviet bloc and also to restore confidence, particularly between the United States and the Russian Federation.

In this interview excerpt, Mark Eyskens, Belgian Prime Minister in 1981 and Minister for External Relations from 1989 to 1992, discusses the collapse of Communism in Romania in December 1989, placing this event in the context of the collapse of the Soviet bloc in Eastern Europe, particularly after the successful protest movements in Poland in the 1980s and in Hungary in 1989.

In this interview excerpt, Mark Eyskens, Belgian Prime Minister in 1981 and Minister for External Relations from 1989 to 1992, emphasises the contrast between the coordinated approach of the Member States of the European Communities during the collapse of the Soviet bloc in Central and Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and the failure of European policy during the break-up of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s.