In her annual speech for the New Year, Queen Margrethe II expresses the wide-felt disappointment with some of the developments after the revolutions in East and the fall of the Berlin Wall, yet feels grateful for the lasting opportunities of peace and freedom. She reminds the viewers that democracy requires hard work, in new democracies as well as in Denmark. Remembering a number of royal events of that year, she finally sends a number of personal greetings and thankyous.—Peter Brandt Nielsen