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EU Criminalises Racial Hatred
European Union interior ministers are accused of creating 'Thought Crimes' by agreeing that incitement to racial hatred merits status as an EU-wide crime.
Ministers from the EU's 27 nations agreed that persons found guilty of incitement to hatred or violence against groups or individuals based on their colour, race, national or ethnic origin will face a jail term of one to three years.
German pressure to make Holocaust denial a specific crime under the new laws failed: However, Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia as well as Germany have their own national Holocaust Denial crimes.
Legislation grouping denial of the Armenian massacres along with the Holocaust was rejected too. Turkey is reported to have been vehemently against such a measure, though France is working on a law on the massacres.
A ban on Nazi symbols was also not included in the EU-wide legislation.
Former Soviet Bloc members Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania failed to have their claim that Stalinist atrocities be treated with the same severity as the Nazi Holocaust.
The Guardian reports that the legislation includes text criminalising: "publicly condoning, denying or grossly trivialising crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes ... when the conduct is carried out in a manner likely to incite to violence or hatred against a group or [group] member".
Britain's delegates claim that the new laws will have no effect on Britain, despite a clause demanding that nations with no Holocaust denial laws help countries investigating these offences with their enquiries. The EU Referendum Blog argues that the laws "will make Holocaust denial a criminal offence throughout the 27 EU member states, but it will also include denial of atrocities like the Rwanda massacre."
A British official added that Britain's Race Relations Law was actually tougher than the EU's new laws.
Why have it then? Most countries already have crimes against hate speech. Also, the legislation, when passed in parliaments, allows nations to limit prosecutions to those "likely to disturb public order." It is difficult to see what the point of the exercise is, otherwise than to create the principle of EU-wide crimes and make ministers feel good about themselves by fighting racism - something their predecessors already did, in many cases: Britain's Shadow Home Secretary David Davis said Britain has laws dating to 1861.
The Telegraph rounds up opinion from British bloggers, some of whom fear that the new laws will trample free speech.
Meanwhile, the European Network Against Racism has already complained that the text is "weak."
This point seems to be agreed by the EU Referendum Blog: "Concern has been expressed that this will badly affect the freedom and rights of bloggers to express themselves but, since no right-minded person would seek to indulge in denying Mr Hitler's schemes (or anything similar), the limitations are fairly academic.
"In fact, the overall applications of the Decision are so heavily circumscribed that it is difficult to see how they will have much impact at all. Once the lawyers have finished with it, and it has been taken apart by civil liberties groups, and indeed national parliaments – making a mockery of the good intentions - it may well turn out that the EU has shot itself heavily in the foot."
