of state (deputy minister) in the Foreign Ministry. In 1989 he stepped forward to become foreign minister in the country's last communist government led by Miklós Németh. By this time, Horn had become a prominent member of the party's reformist wing, which wanted to jettison the goulash Communism of Kádár in favour of Western-style democracy and a market economy. As a minister he was in charge of foreign affairs when Hungary decided to open the western border (the "Iron Curtain") to East Germans wishing to emigrate to West Germany. He is often credited with having a major part in the decision and, consequently, a role in German unification. He and his Austrian counterpart Alois Mock posed for cameras on 27 June 1989 to cut through a barbed wire frontier fence, in a largely symbolic act of rapprochement which had been planned months before. As foreign minister he ordered the border to be opened to allow East Germans gathered in Hungary by the thousands to cross into Austria, and from there to West Germany. With this act he greatly contributed to the later unification of Germany. Within weeks tens of thousands of East Germans, who travelled to Hungary with "tourist" visas, headed straight for the unfortified border and walked into the West. Horn outraged his East German counterparts when he told them that international treaties on refugees took precedence over a 1969 agreement between Budapest and East Berlin limiting freedom of movement. The fall of East German communism and the process of German unification had been launched. With dizzying speed, communist governments in the region succumbed to popular uprisings and sheer fatigue. Within a few years, the Soviet Union itself had evaporated. Horn helped lead the transformation of the MSZMP into the Hungarian Socialist Party later in 1989. As foreign minister he prepared and signed the Hungarian-Soviet troop withdrawal agreement in March 1990. Among the politicians of the transitional era, including representatives of civil opposition, he was the first in Hungary who raised and suggested the issue of possible membership in NATO and the European Union. After communism He was elected to Parliament in 1990 and retained a seat until the 2010 parliamentary election. The Socialists were roundly defeated in that election, taking only 33 seats. He served as Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs between 1990 and 1993, until his resignation. Also in 1990, he succeeded Rezső Nyers