Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-01-13-Speech-1-102"
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"en.20030113.6.1-102"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, rather than examining in detail certain highly debatable statements in the Swiebel report – of which there are many – I would like to illustrate by way of example the gap between our stated intentions and what happens in practice: in theory, we are in a European area, a legal area which is theoretically an area of freedom – freedom of thought and freedom of speech. Well, it seems that not everybody enjoys this freedom. As proof of this, I need only give an example from my home town of Lyon: a young historian, to whom I have already drawn your attention, Mr Jean Plantin, is currently at risk of having his suspended sentence withdrawn and becoming the first prisoner of conscience in France.
What crime has Mr Plantin committed? He edited a journal. A perfectly proper journal. A journal that does no harm to anyone. A serious, scientific journal. It is true that this journal freely discusses history, and in particular, what appears to be a taboo chapter in history, the history of the Second World War.
The interests of certain lobby groups, certain pressure groups, certain political forces and certain foreign States are so great that it is easy to understand their desire to ensure that there is an official, unilateral version of this part of history. Allow me to say, however, that the magistrates of the Court of Appeal in Lyon, in sentencing Jean Plantin, have passed a judgment which – at the very least – fails to honour our fundamental freedoms and which will go down in the annals of history as an example of the unacceptable thought-policing denounced by one of our greatest journalists.
I cannot accept that historians today might be imprisoned, as in other European countries, for their ideas, their beliefs and their analyses. This situation is absolutely intolerable, as is the withdrawal of the university degrees awarded to Jean Plantin over ten years ago. This unacceptable situation must not be allowed to continue."@en1
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