Materials from the EPP hearing on the European Commission’s Report: The memory of the crimes committed by totalitarian regimes in Europe

 Multi Media

Photographs from the Hearing
EPPpress release
EPP TV coverage
Latvian TV

Materials from the Hearing

Advertisement

General Court of the EU: The Soviet coat of arms may not be registered as a Community trade mark

On 20 September 2011, the General Court of the European Union has ruled in case Case T‑232/10, Couture Tech Ltd vs. Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market (Trade Marks and Designs) (OHIM), that the Soviet coat of arms may not be registered as a Community trade mark. In this precident it was decided that “its registration as a Community trade mark must be refused even if it is contrary to public policy and to accepted principles of morality in only one Member State.”

Press Release: http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2011-09/cp110095en.pdf

Judgment: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:62010TJ0232:EN:HTML

Warsaw Declaration on the occasion of the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Totalitarian Regimes, 23rd of August 2011

The ministers of Justice of 16 Euroepan Member States and the President of the European Parliament signed the Warsaw Declaration on the occasion of the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Totalitarian Regimes, 23rd of August 2011. Please find the link to the document here.

Documents and Information Regarding the ‘House of European History’ Project

Russia posts Katyn massacre documents on the Internet

The Russian Archives have posted documents which shed light on the Soviet Union’s World War II massacre of more than 20,000 Polish officers and other prominent citizens. The Soviet Union had blamed the massacres on Nazi forces who invaded in 1941. This explanation had remained the official state position until Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev acknowledged Soviet responsibility in 1990. The current Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, has promised that more similar documents would also be released. The documents are available on the following site:

http://rusarchives.ru/publication/katyn/spisok.shtml (In Russian)

Also see:  Excerpts: Beria letter to Stalin on Katyn (From BBC news in English)