Report: Taking Stock of European Memory Policies Report: EUROM Meeting 2018 | Page 12

For Rafal Rogulski (ENRS), there
is a need to create a shared space to
improve the reflection on historical
memory, especially as it pertains to
divisions between North and South and
East and West. He pointed to the
strength of bi and multi-lateral
collaborative projects, primarily in the
field of education, that combine
different state agents. Rogulski also
emphasized how different points of
view and unexpected outcomes
shouldn’t be shunned, but instead
embraced. He pointed to the need to
create shared education spaces and
approaches that can combine a number
of different, and perhaps competing,
narratives and approaches within the
European framework.
Bruno Boyer (Mémorial de la
Shoah) explicitly highlighted the need to
strengthen European remembrance. He
reemphasized this need by connecting it
to the contemporary developments in
Poland, Croatia, Hungary, and France,
and warning about the dangers a
weakened focus on remembrance in
European Institutions and their budgets
would prove to the organizations
working on remembrance in these
countries. He thus ardently argued for
the need to strengthen the Europe for
Citizens’ programme. Secondly, while
acknowledging
his
non-objective
positioning, Boyer argued for the need
to maintain the singularity of the
Holocaust as the main European
remembrance framework, pointing to
its inclusive and multidirectional
capabilities.
David Stoleru remarked on the
need to rethink European education,
and the ways in which schools are
structured, focusing on the need to
rethink the segmentation of historical
studies and citizenship studies. In this
vein, he argued for an approach that
connects historical reflection with
action, highlights active citizenship, and
enables this active citizenship through
the critical study of historical European
memory. Stoleru finally pointed to
possibility of embracing education of an
experimental nature.
Oriol López (EUROM) remarked
that
connecting
memory
with
citizenship is an obvious choice, but that
there is a clear necessity to stress the
element of remembrance. He directed
attention to the fragility of initiatives in
this field that do not receive financial
support from national governments or
private funds, and instead rely largely,
or even solely on European support to
stay afloat. Cutting back, or diminishing
the focus on remembrance within these
European programs and budgets, thus
risks jeopardizing organizations that do
invaluable work within the European
field of remembrance and historical
memory. López further pointed to
EUROM’s proposal to create a
‘manifesto’ to defend the need of EU
remembrance policies. The