Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-04-21-Speech-1-109"
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"en.20080421.15.1-109"2
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"Mr President, in just the same way as the Baltic Sea became an internal EU sea in 2004, so the historical experiences of the 10 new Member States that suffered under the totalitarian rule of communism have become an all-European problem.
I absolutely agree with Mr Cohn-Bendit: we need a uniform or common interpretation of our common history. So it is not a question of condemnation; it is a question of moral and political assessment of all the crimes. We are called upon to guarantee that all crimes against humanity, all acts of genocide and classicide and all war crimes should be treated equally. Justice belongs to all citizens of Europe without any exception.
In that sense, I am a bit disappointed with the Commission statement, because the main theme is that the assessment of communist totalitarianism will be an internal affair for every relevant country. I am afraid it is going to deepen double standards, because clearly Nazism and fascism are not considered to be internal matters in any of the EU Member States. Every emergence of neo-Nazism and racism is viewed as a direct threat to the common values of Europe.
So, what do we need to do? There are still tens of millions of living victims of communist regimes, as well as their descendents. As things stand today, they are bound to feel like second- or third-class victims. The famous ‘never again’ is still not guaranteed for them.
Lastly, this is not a problem of the past. The absence of a political and moral assessment is continuously shaping our present day and is distorting our common future. Could one imagine the return of the Soviet KGB leadership to power in Russia or a revival of communist political forces in Germany if there had been an assessment of the communist system at the end of the Cold War?"@en1
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