Strasbourg, 23/04/2008 (Agence Europe) -On Monday 21 April, the European parliament held a short debate on the hearing of 8 April on the crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes committed by totalitarian regimes, held by the European Commission and the Slovenian Presidency. Jacques Barrot commented on the results of this, stating that the European Commission should present a report to the Council two years after the entry into force of the framework directive on genocide and xenophobia, dating back to April 2007. It is at that time, he added, that we will be able to hold a genuine political debate, whereas for the time being the Commission preferred to see a debate of experts from various areas, based on scientific ground. The two central subjects were the recognition of totalitarian crimes and reconciliation, and the Commission drew the following conclusions from the debate: - the "old" Member States should increase their awareness of the tragic history of the new States: there is a "deficit of acknowledgement" which must be plugged; - in order that reconciliation can be possible, we must establish the truth about genocide and war crimes; - enormous differences exist in the method of dealing with acknowledgement and reconciliation; - there is no European model in this field. Despite high demand for a stance to be taken by the European institutions, Mr Barrot stressed that each State must "find the way to manage its memories" and that the Union can do no more than to facilitate the process and promote exchange, without taking the place of the Member States.
There are too many differences in the way that the memory of totalitarianism is dealt with, said the Lithuanian member Vytautas Landsbergis, on behalf of the EPP-ED party: in his view, the crimes of Germany and Russia must find a global response, without forgetting those of "small national dictatorships". It was against the falsification of history, and Holocaust denial in particular, that the Dutch Socialist Jan Marinus Wiersma, and Baroness Ludford of the United Kingdom, on behalf of the ALDE group, spoke out. The latter is, however, against making the denial of these crimes a criminal offence, because she believes that criminalisation should exist only in the event of incitement to violence or hatred. She also called for more recent crimes to be looked at, such as the situation in Guantanamo, and for the International Criminal Tribunal to be given the means to act efficiently. The Union should manage to establish a common interpretation of war and its causes, suggested German member Daniel Cohn-Bendit, (Greens/EFA), stating that Nazis and Stalinism were two "unique forms of totalitarianism", but which shared structural similarities. Speaking on behalf of the GUE/Nordic Left, the French member Francis Wurtz said that he had no problem with accepting a "radical condemnation of the abominable crimes of Stalinism", but felt that it was unacceptable to try to "furtively trivialise Nazism by comparing it to other totalitarian regimes". The British Conservative Christopher Beazley would have liked to see a stronger and more explicit condemnation of Russian totalitarianism by the European Commission. (L.G.)