Professor Edgar Morgenroth:

For the people of the former East Germany there were, yes. The standard of living in east Germany has improved significantly. I can remember going to East Germany soon after unification and there were villages that did not have paved roads. It is hard to imagine now but the standard of infrastructure was extremely poor. There had been very low investment in East Germany. The standard of environmental protection was terrible, so much so that even the then Head of State Erich Honecker's grandchild had serious health issues due to air quality problems. Again, that was all sorted out. The environmental degradation was cleaned up. The standard of living in the wider sense for people in East Germany has improved massively. Obviously there is also the different situation when compared to the time before unification when those people did not have freedom of movement. They could not move, they did not have all sorts of political freedoms and so on, which they got with reunification. Again, this is a very different situation to us. The people of Northern Ireland can go where they like and they do not have the kind of constraints that were faced by East Germans.

There are some similarities and there are also a lot of differences and we need to be aware of the differences. The standard of living, however, has improved and if one goes into an east German city now and compares it with 1989 there is an enormous difference.