EU won't legislate on Poland's communist crimes

bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12059475

From the article:
The European Commission has rebuffed a call from several former Soviet bloc countries for the EU to legislate against the condoning or denial of totalitarian crimes.

But the Commission, which drafts EU laws, pledged to help keep the memory of such crimes alive across Europe.

The EU is treaty-bound to combat hate crimes that target national, religious or ethnic groups.

But the Commission says crimes based on politics are a national-level matter.

Should the EU be involved in this at all? Is there a double standard when condemning mass crimes?

That's understandable.
A good number of EU politicians from formerly communist states would have to be tried in courts of law. In some cases, the entire ownership structures of some countries would have to be revised as many of former commies are today's capitalists.

Yawn. Because this is utterly boring.
They gave - yawn again - a platform to the Smolenskists (I think some of my taxes went into that).

so why did you read that and why did you bother to answer to such boring stuff?

The EU will never publicize, nor seek any kind of justice, even symbolic, for communist crimes...Ask me why and I will tell you.

Does Poland legislate on communist crimes?

Do you imply that both party's are doing (or rather not doing)that for the same reason ?

No.

Does Poland legislate on communist crimes?

Communist crimes (Polish law)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_crimes_(Polish_law)

Thanks, that's interesting.

Yawn. The Smolenkists never give up.

Please, tell Joe. I have some of my own thoughts on that, but would like to hear yours.

I'll save you the trouble - they are outside the EU's remit and are the legal responsibility of individual member states. No conspiracy.

EU won't legislate on communist crimes
The EU refused to draw equivalence between the two. An attempt to draw up a hierarchy of victimhood by clambering to the top was rejected. Poland to its credit didnt join this charade nor did Poland legislate to down play the uniqueness of the holocaust. The Lithuanian academic Leonidas Donskis coined the phrase stratocide to explain the difference. Stalinist crimes were not genocide.

Sounds a bit like democide, which the USSR is often accused of. I'd say that there was also genocide during the Stalin years, but the majority democide/stratocide.

Yes, in soviet central Asia genocide happened. Stratocide could be described as such. These phrases were all coined to describe horrific events. The attempt to have Stalinist crimes in Eastern Europe made the same as Nazi crimes especially the Jewish genocide is an attempt to downplay the genocide and to forge an identity. What better way to form an identity than to have a captain evil trying to destroy you. In the Jewish case this was true in other cases Stratocide describes very well what happened.

I entirely agree. The original proposition that equates the crimes of the Stalinist years - done when things were going badly, with the holocaust (both genocide against Jews and Roma as well as democide against homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses and Masons) carried out with the intention of killing specific groups and done when things were going exactly to plan is rather disingenuous and opens the door to compensation claims against the former Soviet Union. Which some former Eastern-bloc politicians would rather like.

Here we have the beauty of simplicity, I hadnt thought of compensation:)

Well, some politicians certainly have - remember Kaczor producing a ridiculous reparations bill for the Germans, including an estimate of how many bicycles were destroyed? All added up by accountants working at our expense. Now if the proposition to equate Stalinist crimes with the holocaust was passed (by whom? it isn't the EU's responsibility) that would open the door to compensation claims. Which in turn would lead further claims like those of Zimny Lech with governments being asked to pay for bicycles damaged 60 years ago. Ad infinitum.

This thread is about the proposition made to the EU. Only a tiny part of the EU was in the USSR, and a relatively small part of it in the non-USSR comecon countries. The EU has many roles, none of them concerning political pronouncements about things that are alleged to have happened to citizens of member states many years before EU accession perpetrated by people who may or may not now be citizens of the same or other members states.