for a gala dinner hosted by the Italian Government at the majestic Villa Madama on the occasion of my official visit to Italy . I received a phone call from a young journalist , Marco Zatterin , who told me that the Berlin Wall had fallen . He asked me for a statement . My response was to ask him , in turn , whether the Wall had fallen in a physical or figurative sense .” We spent half an hour checking the news . Needless to say , during the dinner - with the Italian President Francesco Cossiga , the Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti and the Foreign Minister Gianni De Michelis - the only political dish was the news and its consequences .
A fortnight later , at my invitation , which both had immediately accepted , President François Mitterrand and Chancellor Helmut Kohl made a historic joint appearance before the European Parliament , following the announcement that the Sakharov Prize was to be awarded to Alexander Dubček .
In his speech , President Mitterand stated that , on 9 November in Berlin , history in action had offered the world a spectacle , which had been unlikely even the day before , of a breach in the Wall that , for nearly 30 years , had itself symbolised the fractures in our continent . On that day , democracy and freedom had won one of their most wonderful victories . The people had spoken ; their voices had crossed borders and broken the silence of an order that they had not wanted and that they aspired to reject in order to recover their identities . After indicating his excitement , welcoming Chancellor Kohl and expressing his regard for Gorbachev for the role that he had played , he placed the issue in a moment of reflection , in a joint analysis of the consequences for the European balance , and also the willingness of the Community and its members to assist the Eastern Bloc countries that ‘ have made commitments to themselves ’. His conclusions with regard to the future concerned the very future of the Community itself and the common values which were
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