The plans for a huge hydraulic power plant on the Danube’s Hungarian-Czechoslovakian stretch at Bős-Nagymaros were drawn in the 1950s, with the building phase set to begin in the 1980s. Several demonstrations against the plan's realization  were held during 1988 and 1989.
On this occasion, twenty thousand people took part . The protesters handed in a petition addressed to Prime Minister Károly Grósz stressing that a democratic handling of the issue could provide the foundation of a new political consensus.