EBRD: learning from crisis, facing new challenges

The President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development Thomas Mirow reflected on developments in central and Eastern Europe since 1989 and the radical reforms that followed the fall of the iron curtain in a speech made at the UK's Oxford University. 

Mr Mirow looked at the challenges that the EBRD and the international community have faced in eastern Europe over the last twenty years, and considered what lessons could be applied to the current situation in North Africa and the Arab world.

The EBRD President compared the speed of current events with the sudden collapse of communism in 1989 which set in motion the events leading to the foundation of the Bank. 

He says, “History can move at breakneck speed sometimes, defying our ability to keep up. We are living through another of those periods, today – just as we did in 1989.”

Read his speech here.

Last updated 23 February 2011