The Diversity of Legal Governance of Memory in Europe : Looking Back on the MEMOCRACY Country Studies

Abstract

Memory laws pose a set of distinct challenges for modern democracies, including in the realm of human rights law. In four conducted studies during the MEMOCRACY project (2021-2025), we took stock of the dynamics, trade-offs, and effects of legal governance of historical memory in a region ridden with mnemonic conflicts. The reports collect and categorise legislative outputs concerning the historical past in Germany, the three Baltic States, Hungary and Poland, Russia and Ukraine, and situate this legislation in the context of the respective domestic memory politics. The common effort also sheds light on the question of the compatibility of these countries’ memory laws with human rights law standards enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the law of the European Union (EU). In this post, we distil the most interesting comparative findings of the reports, namely the fact that the countries’ own and foreign experiences with totalitarianism are legally and politically approached very differently (1). On this basis, we sketch the consequences and challenges of these fundamental differences, both for the establishment of a “European memory” (2) and the various states’ approaches to modern geopolitics (3). Our analysis demonstrates that, at the moment, there is a disharmonious myriad of understandings of the past in the official discourse of the European countries, reflected in various legal measures. It varies too greatly to serve as a common basis for a European memory. Rather, to some extent, a diversity of memories should be recognised, and historical dialogue seems better suited than laws to foster mutual understanding of history.