Criminalizing Holocaust Denian in the EU: compendium on 27 member states

Abstract

The compendium Criminalizing Holocaust Denial in the EU collects, translates to English and provides an overview on the current state of criminal Holocaust denial legislation of all 27 EU Member States. Being the first endeavor of this kind, the compendium pursues primarily four goals: first, it aims to provide an EU-wide comprehensive empirical basis for further comparative research on Holocaust denial bans and memory laws1 more generally. The compendium is therefore kept deliberately descriptive. Second, it seeks to inform policy makers at the national and EU level about the existing rules in (other) EU Member States and their application. This is particularly relevant since Article 1 (1) (d) of the EU Framework Decision on Combating Certain Forms and Expressions of Racism and Xenophobia by Means of Criminal law (2008/913/JHA) [‘EU FD 2008’] obliges Member States to criminalise, under certain conditions, the condoning, denial or gross trivialisation of the Holocaust. Thus, the compendium serves as a source of inspiration for national policy regarding possible regulatory techniques of denial bans. It also helps EU policy makers to assess to what extent states have implemented the EU FD 2008 regarding Holocaust denial. Thirdly, it seeks to broaden legal practitioners’ and the general public’s knowledge about Holocaust denial legislation, which is crucial for a critical and informed 10 | INTRODUCTION discourse about memory politics and law within the EU space.2 With its linkage to public education about the Holocaust as such, the compendium finally aims to contribute to providing a basis for a world in which memory laws such as Holocaust denial bans may no longer be necessary. Holocaust denial bans have been selected as comparative material as they are the earliest and clearest examples of modern memory laws and have served as a blueprint for other forms of mnemonic governance. Moreover, they exist, even if not always explicitly codified as a separate crime, in all Member States and are usually clearly identifiable as such. Still, the country entries also include references to denial bans regarding other crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes where they are intrinsically linked to the Holocaust denial provision. The country entries are structured as follows: they contain the source where the relevant criminal Holocaust denial provision can be found, the text of the provision in English and in the original language, a short summary of the most relevant specificities of the country (“key points”), the background of the provision, its application in the case law, the controversies surrounding the legislation and selected references for further reading.