This is the outcome of a difficult negotiation initiated by the European Commission in 2001, whose aim was to harmonize laws on hate crimes across the EU. Like most EU laws, the text will be implemented through legislation adopted by the parliaments of the Member States.
According to the text, Member States can choose not to make genocide denial illegal unless the genocide in question has been recognized by an international court. This is tailored to allow Member States to exclude the Armenian genocide, which was never sanctioned by an international court, from the scope of the legislation. This was of course introduced as a sop to the Turkish government, which denies the Armenian genocide as a matter of policy.
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