Strasbourg, 21/06/2007 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday, MEPs reaffirmed their desire to see the framework decision to combat racism and xenophobia adopted rapidly. The aim of the draft decision is to ensure that all member states apply harmonised sanctions - from to three years' imprisonment - for any public incitement to violence and hatred against persons of a different race, colour, religion national or ethnic descent; dissemination of writings with such content; or public approval, denial or gross trivialisation of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) Council reached an informal political agreement in April (see EUROPE 9410). “In order to avoid racist, xenophobic and anti-Semitic acts and diatribes in future which go against our common values, it was vital to adopt the framework decision on combating racism and xenophobia to punish perpetrators in a uniform way across all member states,” said Martine Roure (PES, France), following the vote. Currently, with the Council still working on the content of the text, the framework decision is still not fully ready. Parliament will await the Council's text before drawing up a second, shorter, consultation report on the framework decision. The report drawn up by Ms Roure seeks to send a strong political message on the need to ratify the framework decision as quickly as possible and recommends that, in the final text, the Council recognises that some member states “have criminalised the denial or flagrant trivialisation of genocide”, like the holocaust. (bc)