A day-long public Hearing on 'What do young Europeans know about totalitarianism?' was organised in the European Parliament by three MEPs: vice-president of the European Parliament László Tőkés, from Romania, Sandra Kalniete from Latvia and Milan Zver from Slovenia. They highlighted the importance of improving the young generations' knowledge on totalitarian regimes and that our common future was unimaginable without the understanding of our common past.
"Genuine European unity requires the integration of our historic past", said László Tőkés MEP in his opening remarks. "While Imperialism, as well as Nazism and Fascism were rightly dealt with long ago, we still owe a definite historic judgement on totalitarian Communism. We should not use double standards when judging totalitarian regimes. War crimes, genocide and mass murder - irrespective of what kind of totalitarian dictatorship committed them - will remain crimes against humanity therefore we must stand up against them", highlighted Tőkés.
“Europeans must ensure tolerance and mutual understanding vis-à-vis our differing historical experiences and memories, because these are also a part of Europe's living history and of our collective memory”, underlined Sandra Kalniete. “Totalitarianism on both the Left and the Right is based on the belief that ideologies are superior to people and that it is the right and duty of ideologists to impose this so-called superior system by total violence, if necessary”, emphasised György Schöpflin.
Milan Zver said that we cannot understand the present or anticipate the future if we ignore the past. For the further development of democracy in Europe, we need to improve the political culture and make greater transparency of democratic processes. We have to strengthen education for democracy, where schools, media, science and politicians bear the most important role.
In total ten MEPs addressed the audience, among others French MEP Joseph Daul, the Chairman of the EPP political group in the European Parliament, German MEP Doris Pack, the Chairwoman of the Parliamentary Culture and Education Committee and Finnish MEP Heidi Hautala, the Chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Human Rights. The two Secretaries of State, one from Hungarian Ministry of Education and the other from Polish Ministry of Education, held an important role in the public hearing, since they represented the actual and the future presidency of the EU.
