apoland1Meanwhile, outside our plenary session, an exhibition was staged of ‘the vote that broke the wall’. On 4th June 1989 the first free elections behind the Iron Curtain took place in Poland. The elections brought an overwhelming victory for ‘Solidarnosc’, led by Lech Walesa at the time, and it was this first democratic eruption that paved the way to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Iron Curtain, and the unification of Europe as we know it today. Looking at the posters and photographs, it all seemed so far away. Could it already be twenty years? In any case, when history has a mind to, it can move very, very fast.