The communist past is not only an issue for the nations that suffered from communist dictatorship but it is Europe’s common burden, Minister for Human Resources Zoltan Balog said on Friday.

Balog told a celebratory event in Passau organised by Bavaria’s Landtag commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Hungary-Austria border opening that Europe would only be “united in people’s souls” once countries in the former eastern bloc were no longer referred to as such.

As the Hungarian honorary guest of the event that was broadcast live on Bavaria’s public television, he said Communist dictatorship was “not the private history of the East but a common burden for Europe, just like Nazism” and the eastern and western parts of Europe need to get over it together.