01 February 2007
The German government has dropped its plan to outlaw the use Nazi insignia such as the swastika across the European Union. The move came after European Hindu groups this month joined forces to fight the German plan saying that the swastika had been one of their religious symbols for around 5,000 years before Adolf Hitler's Nazi party adopted it in the 1930s. Last week, the Italian government adopted a bill which proposes penalties of up to three years in jail for inciting racial hatred, but which stopped short of making Holocaust denial a crime. German Justice minister Brigitte Zypries said earlier this month that Germany – which currently holds the six-month EU presidency – wanted to harmonize rules throughout the EU for dealing with Holocaust deniers and for punishing displays of Nazi symbols, which are banned in Germany and eight other EU states. But in a statement, the German EU presidency said it would "not seek to prohibit specific symbols such as swastikas" when setting out plans for an EU-wide anti-racism law.
It would also not try to push all EU states to say it is a crime to deny that six million Jews were exterminated during World War II, thus guaranteeing "the member states the necessary leeway for maintaining their established constitutional traditions…The goal is to attain minimum harmonization of provisions on criminal liability for disseminating racist and xenophobic statements." The European Commission proposed in 2001 an EU-wide anti-racism law, but EU states failed to agree, struggling over the issue of freedom of expression.
Two years ago, an attempt by the Luxembourg presidency to push for common legal standards regarding Holocaust denial was blocked after Denmark, Italy and the UK voiced concerns that this would violate civil liberties. Germany is now considering reviving the Luxembourg idea which suggests that incitement to racism and xenophobia should be punishable by at least one to three years in jail in all 27 EU states, but leaves it to each state to decide on the specifics. The Luxembourg blueprint says that racist declarations or Holocaust denial would not be prosecuted if they were expressed in a way that did not incite hatred against an individual or group of people.
