GUE/NGL MEP Martina Michels, Vice-Chair of the Committee on Culture and Education said:

“An unscientific and revisionist culture of remembrance is being cultivated by a majority in the European Parliament. It is unacceptable that such a historical mutation is passed on to subsequent generations, whereby Communists and Nazis are equated and we are simultaneously urged to forget the fascist dictatorships of southern Europe or Europe's colonial past. Moreover, these forms of memory culture insults all members of democratic forces who lost their lives in the struggle against such regimes”.

The aim of the programme adopted today was to financially support initiatives to highlight “the causes of the totalitarian regimes in modern European history (especially, but not exclusively the Nazism that led to the Holocaust, fascism, Stalinism and totalitarian communist regimes) and the memory of the victims of their crimes.” 25 % of the funds (up from 4 %) are set to be used for this “remembrance of European history”. “This remembrance strategy is based on a one-sided theory of totalitarianism and the associated localisation of totalitarian regimes. The resulting equation of fascism and communism is not only historically inadmissible, they also glorify the view of European history in its entirety.”

“History is indivisible. That's why the defence of human values is of the same relevance as the clear denunciation of crimes committed under the Nazi dictatorship and the refusal of Stalinism” Martina Michels concluded.

Strasbourg, 19 November 2013