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7 . Military parade in Moscow dedicated to the 65th anniversary of the victory in the “ Great Patriotic War ”, i . e . the east European theatre during World War II | Presidential Press and Information Office , Wikimedia Commons resolutions on the past adopted for the sake of “ good neighbourliness ” and mutual recognition between the two regions of Europe to transcend this memory divide . The action of Eastern European members of the European Parliament ( in particular those from the Baltic States ) thus led a few years later to a memorial point of convergence regarding a dual recognition : that of the Nazi crimes perpetrated against the European Jewish populations and that of Soviet crimes committed against East European civilian populations . This convergence based on the premise of an equivalence of these crimes is recognised by several resolutions . In 2008 , the European Parliament recognised the famine of 1932- 1933 in Ukraine artificially caused by the USSR as a “ crime against humanity ”. Above all , the European resolution of 2009 establishes a European Day of Remembrance on 23 August recalling the German- Soviet Pact of 23 August 1939 that has become the inaugural and programmatic event of the double Nazi / Soviet crime committed against European civilians during the Second World War . This consensus reached based on an event presented as foundational to build a European collective memory is once again affirmed by the Resolution on the importance of European remembrance for the future of Europe , approved by a large majority of MEPs on 19 September 2019 ( far right , right and centre-left ). Some representatives of Western Europe ( Spain and Italy in particular ) then expressed their misgivings over equating Nazism and Stalinism , and historians and artists rallied together in Belgium to condemn this vision of history .
Alongside European policy on the past is making the contesting of various crimes punishable as criminal offences . By its Framework Decision 2008 on combating certain forms and expressions of racism and xenophobia by means of criminal law , the Council of Europe called on EU member states to “ take the necessary measures ” to penalise “ publicly condoning , denying or grossly trivialising crimes of genocide , crimes against humanity and war crimes ” defined by the International Criminal Court , which also criminalises the denial of the Armenian genocide .
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Observing Memories Issue 5