29 January 2025
Memory Laws and Colonial Reckoning in France and the Netherlands
While France embraced the formal regulation of historical memory regarding its colonial past nearly two decades ago with the adoption of a law by its parliament, the Netherlands has opted for more symbolic recognition on behalf of the head of state. The essay argues that, despite neither approach being capable of fully satisfying all sides in the debate on how to frame colonialism in the present, the Dutch model is notably less problematic concerning its impact on freedom of expression, adherence to the rule of law, and the fit towards a unique set-up of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Continue reading >>
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28 January 2025
The Diversity of Legal Governance of Memory in Europe
Memory laws pose a set of distinct challenges for modern democracies, including in the realm of human rights law. In the four reports, conducted during the MEMOCRACY project, we took stock of the dynamics, trade-offs, and the effects of legal governance of historical memory in a region ridden with mnemonic conflicts. This contribution distils the most interesting comparative findings of the reports, namely the fact that the countries’ own and foreign experiences with totalitarianism are legally and politically approached very differently. On this basis, we sketch the consequences and challenges of these fundamental differences, both for the establishment of a “European memory” and the various states’ approaches to modern geopolitics. Continue reading >>
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27 January 2025
Omnipresent History
Present-time politics are, to an unprecedented extent, shaped by struggles over how to remember the past: Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine is led in the name of history; Germany’s wrestling with the war in Gaza is largely determined by its memory of the Holocaust, to give just two examples. However, historical narratives have not only swept into politics, but also into law. Continue reading >>
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