Czech EU presidency calls for platform to co-ordinate study of totalitarian past

The Czech presidency of the EU has called for the establishment of a unified platform to co-ordinate the study of totalitarian regimes. Speaking at the European Parliament, the Czech deputy prime minister for European affairs, Alexandr Vondra, said two decades after the fall of the Iron Curtain a platform of memory and conscience should be set up, in order to increase public awareness of the causes and consequences of the totalitarian regimes that existed in some EU member states. One of the project’s initiators, Czech MEP Jana Hybášková, said it should at first be based on co-operation between existing institutions doing research into the crimes of Communism and Nazism. The platform is intended to facilitate the exchange of information, support international projects under a single grant policy and allow free access to archives within the EU.

Author: Ian Willoughby