June , the Hungarian Gyula Horn , leader of goulash communism , together with the Austrian Christian democrat Alois Mock , symbolically cut the wire fence of the Iron Curtain , setting in motion a peaceful chain reaction in which the Eastern Bloc disintegrated . Tourists from East Germany occupied the West German embassies and escaped to the West . Mass demonstrations also took place in Czechoslovakia . The Soviet Union , the core of the Eastern Bloc , imploded at the end of 1991 , while the former Yugoslavia broke up in a bloody civil war .
It was not just a European earthquake . History took on a frantic rhythm : from China to South Africa with the end of apartheid and the liberation of Mandela ; in Central America with the peace process ; in Chile with the failure of Pinochet ’ s plebiscite .
Meanwhile , the EC was living in the 1980s the second creative period in its open ended constitutional process of building a peaceful , democratic , prosperous and united Europe , applying “ pas à pas la methode communautaire ”. The direct election of the European Parliament in 1979 had opened up a new way forward .
A crisis was overcome in 1985 with the election of Jacques Delors as Commission President , with a programme to achieve the Single Market - the Common Market plus the social dimension - and the Monetary Union . The European Parliament had approved in 1984 the “ draft Treaty establishing the European Union ”, known as the Spinelli Treaty , in recognition of his unrelenting federalist work . The next leap was the Single European Act approved at the European Council held in Milano : the first time that the Council had voted , on the initiative of President Bettino Craxi . The reaction of British Prime Minister , Margaret Thatcher , was compared to the eruption of the Krakatoa volcano .
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