Thirty years after the fall of the Iron Curtain, here’s what recent history can tell us about Europe today

Even as it copes with a wave of populism, xenophobia and neo-fascism, it’s a testament to the EU that the Europe of 30 years ago seems almost unimaginable

Austrian Foreign Minister Alois Mock (left) and his Hungarian counterpart Gyula Horn (right) cutting through a piece of the Iron Curtain between Hungary and Austria (EPA)

The placid Hungarian city of Sopron (population: 62,246) is not as famous as it ought to be. For it was there, some three decades ago, that a short ceremony marked the end of the Iron Curtain and, in due course, the end of Soviet Russian occupation of eastern Europe, which led, a couple of years later, to the dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and of the doctrine of Marxist-Lenism itself.

So, quite a big deal for an otherwise inconsequential place. Sopron was chosen because it sat just about on the border between Hungary and the old Czechoslovakia on one side, part of the eastern bloc, and Austria to the west, part of the west. On 27 June 1989, Austrian Foreign Minister Alois Mock joined his Hungarian counterpart Gyula Horn in cutting the barbed wire fence.