David Cameron has commented on the significance of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
"The events of 9 November 1989, in which East Berliners streamed across the wall that held them captive for nearly three decades, changed the face of Europe and the course of history", he said.
Cameron recalled his personal experience of the event:
"As a student travelling through Central and Eastern Europe in the mid 1980s, I was struck not only by the drab uniformity but by the hope of the people of those you spoke to that one day things would be better. Few could have imagined that the change, when it came, would be so fast or so dramatic. Every day there was a new, epic development; it was as if history had pressed the fast forward button.
I will never forget the excitement and the heady optimism of those times - the sense that suddenly everything was possible. In a few momentous months, a tide of liberty rolled across Central and Eastern Europe. The Iron Curtain - which had cruelly divided the European continent for so long - was consigned to history. From Warsaw to Prague, from the Baltic States to Bucharest, proud European nations reclaimed their nationhood and their freedom. Today, those nations are members of NATO and the European Union."
He also commented on some of the lessons that can be learned from the fall of the wall:
"Two decades on, the fall of the Berlin Wall carries some powerful lessons which made a deep impression on me at the time, and which are every bit as valid today as they were then. The universal yearning for freedom in the face of oppression. The fact that political leadership really can make a difference - in leaders like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, who stood up to Communist tyranny during the Cold War, to Mikhail Gorbachev who ushered in glasnost and perestroika, to Chancellor Kohl, who led his country so skilfully to unification.
The most important lesson of 1989, however, was the power of the human spirit, whatever the odds. Ultimately, it was the decisions of thousands of brave individuals who refused to put up with oppression which brought an end to Communist dictatorship in Central and Eastern Europe. It is to their courage and their determination that we pay tribute today - not least as we remember all those who still struggle for their freedom and their rights in so many parts of the world."