The EU Commission has declined a motion by six EU member states from the former Soviet bloc urging equation of communist repression with Nazi war crimes, the Euractiv website said on Friday.
The foreign ministers of Lithuania, Latvia, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania sent a joint letter to the EU commission urging it to make "the approval, denial or belittling of communist crimes," a criminal offence.
The EU Commission based its refusal on an independent report it had carried out earlier, saying that the conditions for making a legislative proposal had not been met at this stage.
The laws in all EU member states are different, and no national court has so far sanctioned the denial of crimes committed under totalitarian regimes in Eastern Europe during the Cold War, the EU Commission said.
BRUSSELS, December 23 (RIA Novosti)
