Memory Narratives and Policies in the European Union and the Council of Europe in the Context of Russian Military Aggression from 2014 to 2023

The Politics of Memory Laws : Russia, Ukraine and Beyond / Uladzislau Belavusau, Aleksandra Gliszczyńska-Grabias, Maria Mälksoo and Angelika Nußberger (eds). Oxford : Hart Publishing, 2025, s. 265–280.

The occupation and annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014, and the ensuing conflict between Russia and Ukraine – which culminated in Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 – has reshaped the security landscape in Europe and significantly impacted two crucial European transnational organisations, namely, the European Union (EU) and the Council of Europe (CoE). The EU and the CoE considered Russia’s actions a violation of international law, and expressed political, military, economic, and humanitarian support for Ukraine, whilst simultaneously emphasising its territorial integrity and sovereignty, and deploring Belarusian involvement. These policies were supported by changes in the official historical narratives of both organisations, which resulted in an important correction of the European memory framework. Russia attempted to legitimise its aggression through ideological historical narratives and by invoking alleged historical parallels. Ukraine has vehemently rejected such claims and has provided evidence to counter Russian historical propaganda. The leaders and institutions of the EU and CoE have aligned themselves with Ukraine in the realm of historical narrative, actively reshaping the official historical accounts of their organisations in terms of their relationships with Russia and Ukraine. Political leaders, states, and international or transnational organisations who interpret the past in light of present developments and interests, consider historical narratives to be an asset in bilateral and multilateral relations and consequently, part of their diplomatic strategies. In the literature concerning Europeanisation, the role of crises in driving the integration of European states and societies, most notably through the EU and the CoE, is often underscored. This chapter seeks to answer how the institutions of the EU (that is, the European Parliament (EP) and the European Commission) and the CoE (that is, the Committee of Ministers, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe – PACE, and the European Court of Human Rights – ECtHR) have recalibrated official historical narratives regarding Ukraine and Russia from 2014 to December 2023, against the backdrop of Russian military aggression. It explores how the European ‘region of memory’, a political project created to develop a shared realm of remembrance, has evolved in the past decade and (finally) expanded to include remembrance of Soviet crimes. To achieve these objectives, doctrinal analysis and discourse analysis are performed using official documents from both organisations. The catastrophe of WWII spurred the project of European integration[6] that included the establishment of the CoE in 1949 and the EU’s predecessor, the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1951. The European project, essentially a peace and reconciliation project, was aimed at pacifying intra-European relations, primarily through Franco-German cooperation, and further reconciliation and cooperation between other European states. The CoE and the EU have been built around the remembrance of WWII victims, condemnation of the war’s atrocities, a pledge to draw lessons from the darkest chapter of recent European history, and to strive for post-war renewal and economic prosperity. Since the late 1970s, Western European democracies, notably Germany, have made commemorating Holocaust victims a central aspect of their historical policy and collective memory. Initially, European integration was built around positive aspects of shared historical heritage. However, in the 1990s and 2000s, the memory of the genocide of European Jews became not only central to the European memory culture but institutionalised. The EU has gradually built on these initial efforts in order to create a unified project focused on European memory. In the 1990s and 2000s, the European Parliament (EP) passed several resolutions on WWII and the genocide of European Jews. Notably, in 1995, 27 January was deemed to be a European day to commemorate the Holocaust. Later, in 2005, the EP adopted the Resolution on remembrance of the Holocaust, antisemitism and racism. In 2008, the EU encouraged Member States to punish Holocaust denial. After the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, political and legal Europeanisation of formerly communist states from CEE took place. In the 1990s and 2000s, these states were included in the CoE and the EU, the majority acceding through the 2004 EU enlargement round. The new members of European structures were expected to internalise European memory culture, which focused on remembrance of WWII in the context of the Holocaust. After freeing up historical debate in the 1990s, many societies in CEE started to openly discuss the genocide of Jews and the respective involvement of their states and citizens, which often provoked strong domestic and international reactions. In parallel, CEE societies built their militant democracies and mnemonic constitutionalism on the condemnation of fascism and the two totalitarianisms of the twentieth century: Nazism and Soviet Communism. Post-communist states in CEE have challenged the Western European memory canon and appropriated the visual and symbolic means of cosmopolitan memory of the Holocaust to reposition the crimes of communism and equate them with Nazi atrocities. Furthermore, they have demanded the expansion of European remembrance culture and inclusion of their own distinctive historical memories of twentieth-century mass violence, WWII and its consequences, with particular reference to Soviet aggression, occupation, and decades of domination marred by human rights violations. These demands have been met with 268varying degrees of success. The mnemonic region of Europe is at the heart of the global history of reckoning with the violent past. However, despite pressure from CEE countries, the EU and the CoE institutions were hesitant to include the memory of Soviet crimes in the shared European remembrance culture. This chapter posits that the security and political landscape in Europe which emerged following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 created conditions for integration of the dominant assessment of the Soviet regime in CEE countries into a shared historical narrative of united Europe. The EU and the CoE condemned the current Russian regime’s imperialist and expansionist foreign policy as well as its totalitarian turn in domestic policy, both of which are underpinned by historical narratives. In the past, European narratives emphasised historical ties with Russia and portrayed it as both a victim and a victor of WWII, but never the aggressor and oppressor. Recent violations of international law, including the cruel crimes committed by Russia against Ukraine, have incentivised the EU and the CoE to remember historical crimes committed by Russia in its various forms of statehood, including the Soviet crimes against states and peoples that are currently facing territorial demands or other threats from Putin’s Russia.

Funding provided by: University of Copenhagen.

Taking women's rights seriously : Women's struggle for a new "social contract" in Poland

Pravni zapisi 2024, t. 15, nr 1, s. 20-56.

Współautorstwo: Śledzińska-Simon, Anna

The article traces the trajectory of the struggle for woman’s rights in Poland from 1989 to the present. It argues that the democratic transition successfully shaped the foundations of a liberal regime, but was accompanied from the outset by an agreement between the government and the Catholic Church that limited reproductive rights and led to a re-traditionalization of gender roles. This context is crucial to understanding the Constitutional Tribunal’s interpretation of the constitution, which reinforced a kind of sexual contract, seeking to domesticate women. The change of government in 2015 significantly weakened guarantees of the rule of law and further curtailed reproductive rights, prompting mass protests and the mobilization of democratic opposition. This article posits that the overthrow of the illiberal regime in the recent parliamentary elections marks the beginning of a new social contract in Poland, in which woman’s rights are taken seriously.

Ovaj članak prati tok borbe za prava žena u Poljskoj od 1989. do danas. U njemu se tvrdi da je demokratska tranzicija uspešno oblikovala temelje liberalnog režima, ali da je od samog početka bila praćena sporazumom između vlade i Katoličke crkve koji je ograničio reproduktivna prava i doveo do vraćanja tradicionalnim rodnim ulogama. Ovaj kontekst je ključan za razumevanje tumačenja Ustavnog suda, koji je ojačao neku vrstu ugovora o rodu, nastojeći da primiri žene. Promena vlasti 2015. godine znatno je oslabila garancije vladavine prava i dodatno umanjila reproduktivna prava, što je izazvalo masovne proteste i mobilizaciju demokratske opozicije. U članku se tvrdi da svrgavanje neliberalnog režima na nedavnim parlamentarnim izborima označava početak novog društvenog ugovora u Poljskoj, u kojem se prava žena shvataju ozbiljno.

Memory Laws in Poland and Hungary : Report by the research consortium ‘The Challenges of Populist Memory Politics and Militant Memory Laws (MEMOCRACY)’

Współautorstwo: Gliszczyńska-Grabias, Aleksandra; Baranowska, Grażyna; Sadowski, Mirosław Michał; Vorobiova, Anastasiia

Warszawa : Instytut Nauk Prawnych PAN, 2023

ISBN 9788366300767

Bibliografia - s. 55-75.

This Report consists of two main parts devoted to Poland’s and Hungary’s remembering of and dealing with the past, including with the use of memory laws and other deployments of legal and extra-legal means in historical policy, including soft law. It also discusses relevant domestic courts’ jurisprudence. The report situates these practices against European human rights law standards, inferred from the ECtHR case law. The aim of this exercise is capturing the dynamics of the Polish and Hungarian state’s relationship to the past after 1989 in a concise form and examine the current legal framework. The Polish and Hungarian sections are structured around common themes. In what follows, we shall discuss mnemonic constitutionalism, the institutionalisation of mnemonic governance, memorialisation of the Second World War and the Holocaust, reckoning with communism, education, and memory. The report includes discussions of political, social, and cultural factors that contextualise the legal framework. The final part concludes with broader reflections on the state of Polish and Hungarian memocracies, understood as constitutional and political regimes based on references to the past and a specific form of governance of historical memory. The report is supplemented by Conclusions and Recommendations addressed to a wide range of players and participants of public deliberations over history and the past, including lawmakers on domestic and European level, academia, and the civil society.

The authors are grateful to the Volkswagen Foundation for supporting this study within their research grant allocated for the consortium project ‘MEMOCRACY’ (2021-2024).

Using Financial Tools to Protect the Rule of Law : the Case of Poland

The Rule of Law in the EU: Crisis and Solutions / edited by Xavier Groussot, Anna Zemskova. - Swedish Institute for European Policy Studies, Sztokholm 2023, s. 46-52.

The contribution discusses the European Union’s financial sanction mechanisms intended to foster rule of law compliance in Poland and the Polish government’s response. Sanctions include the Court of Justice of the EU’s periodic penalties, delaying approval of the Recovery and Resilience Plan funding, making the disbursement of funds conditional upon rule of law milestones, and linking European funds to observance of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU. It finds that the effectiveness of these sanctions is hindered by political factors in Poland, despite the government’s openness to cosmetic changes.

Introduction to the Special Section ‘Memory Laws and the Rule of Law’

European Constitutional Law Review 2023, t. 19, nr 4, s. 591-601.

Współautorstwo: Rhein-Fischer, Paula

The articles in this Special Section demonstrate that modest attempts to reconcile society and consolidate democracy by transitional justice measures may not prevent a democratising state from turning into an illiberal populist regime. Memory laws are an important part of the governance toolkit in the rule of law backsliding states and can contribute to further moving away from transnational standards on the rule of law and human rights. Governments in states experiencing rule of law backsliding adopt diverse strategies regarding memory laws, sometimes concurrently. Frequently, these strategies involve bold and straightforward historical policies and laws aimed at whitewashing a country’s national history. In other instances, political leaders may opt to disguise their true intentions, for example, by utilising and distorting pre-existing legal mechanisms such as strategic civil lawsuits against their critics. It is important for the governments of liberal democracies to be aware of this inherent risk of memory laws when they decide to join the trend of governing the memory of the past.