The map offers a quick overview of the criminalization of historical denialism in the European Union.
The map does not refer to countries where a denialist statement can nonetheless be punishable through general criminal law provisions (i.e. incitement to hatred etc.), but only to those who decided to introduce specific provisions in order to criminalize historical denialism.
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The legal database aims to present carefully collected material on memory laws. It pivots on a twofold dichotomy which constitutes both a classification method and a basic search help for users.
The first dichotomy concerns the spatial dimension of memory laws. It includes a “national dimension” category, which is country-specific, and an “international dimension” category, which gathers material from the Council of Europe, the European Union, the United Nations and the UN Human Rights Committee.
The second dichotomy concerns the legal typology of the provision or set of provisions. It includes a “positive law” category, which contains legislation in the field of memory and distinguishes between remembrance and criminal laws protecting memory, and a “case law” dichotomy, which contains a large number of decisions issued by national and international courts. The latter category should be understood in a broad sense, since it gathers not only binding judgments, but also decisions of international organizations that are not binding on all States.
Since the four categories (national dimension / international dimension / positive law / case law) may overlap, every document is multi-tagged so as to describe more accurately the complex phenomenon of memory laws. For example, a French constitutional court decision may be tagged as both “national dimension” (France) and “case law” (constitutional case law); or, again, the criminal offence of denialism in Germany is tagged as both “national dimension” (Germany) and “positive law” (criminal offence).
To date, the database is limited to EU countries, but an expansion to the member States of the Council of Europe is envisaged, given the importance of the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights in the field of memory laws. Selected countries (Belarus, Russia, Switzerland, Turkey and Ukraine) are enlisted in a separate (in progress) section
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Newly uploaded material is also to be found directly here:
