crimes committed by totalitarian regimes - Ministrstvo za pravosodje

Crimes committed by totalitarian regimes
“United Europe – United History” Initiative of the 22
January 2006 Conference organised at the European
Parliament
Bearing in mind that:
1. The European Union is a community of nations with different, and frequently conflicting, histories.
There have been injustices committed and bloody wars fought in Europe for centuries but the EU of
15 has managed to overcome the difficult past. This was so not because the West Europeans have
forgotten their history but because they have reassessed it and because they have found common values
to share.
2. With the extension of the European Union a number of East European countries have been included
along with their different historical experience. While the main problem of the 20 th century history for
Western Europe might have been the overcoming of Nazism, for Eastern Europe it is also important to
overcome the totalitarian Communist past.
3. Whatever is common in the European Union is based on the concept of truth. The wider the scope
of a common understanding of our difficult past is, the stronger the European identity will be. France
and Germany were the first to start reconciliation on the grounds of common economic interest but also
through a sincere reconsideration and overcoming of their bad history.
4. History is important because the way history is presented tells a lot about credibility of those who
present it.
5. The contemporary neglect of history teaching in Europe poses a threat to the common values elaborated
in the decades of the EU development. Historical amnesia is not the way to prevent an instrumental use
of history. It may rather draw closer the moment when ghosts of historical reclaiming will be awoken.
A group of MEPs – Tunne Kelam from Estonia, Girts Valdis Kristovskis from Latvia, Vytautas
Landsbergis from Lithuania, Wojciech Roszkowski from Poland and Gyoergy Schoepflin from
Hungary – initiated foundation of a working group on “United Europe – United History”.
On 22 January 2008 a conference was organized at the European Parliament during which a
mission statement of these five MEPs was presented along with a resolution on formation of a Working
Group “United Europe – United History”. The resolution has so far been initially signed by 50 MEPs
which allows tabling it as an EP draft resolution.
“United Europe – United History”: a mission to consolidate a common memory
(Wojciech Roszkowski, Gyoergy Schoepflin, Tunne Kelam, Girts Valdis Kristovskis, Vytautas Landsbergis)
The 2004 enlargement of the European Union has thrown up a new problem: what is the full
history of Europe? What is to be included in this history, especially when it comes to the most recent
period, since 1945? And how is Europe to deal with its different histories? If those many historical
experiences are not brought into a single, sufficiently broad European history, the European present
will be more difficult to understand as Europeans will remain partial strangers to one another, making
communication and cooperation significantly harder.
It is sometimes believed that good international or intercommunity relations require a certain deal
of forgetting about history. We do not share this opinion. Conflicts may result from opposite interests or
from contradictory interpretations of the past. But if interpretations are neglected and the past is pressed
into a jar of forgetting, misinterpretations may, sooner or later, cause explosions anyway. Before 2004
nations of the European Union that have gone through many twists and turns of their historical relations
have generally managed to minimize the historical fallout among themselves. This was not because
they have forgotten their past but because they have reassessed it and have found more common values
to share. But new Member States that joined after 2004 have brought new historical experience, new
grievances and complaints, so far ignored in the West. Equally, they have not shared in the process of
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