LONDON: Incitement to racial hatred and xenophobia is to become a crime across the EU, although the long-fought agreement avoids singling out Holocaust denial and was watered down after differences between member states.

Six years of often fractious negotiations ended in Luxembourg on April1 9, with a compromise that struggled to balance freedom of expression with a tough stance on anti-semitism and other forms of racism and prejudice.

Justice ministers from all 27 EU countries agreed to punish incitement to hatred or violence against a group or a person that is based on colour, race, national or ethnic origin, by a sentence of between one and three years’ jail.

But, disappointing anti-racism campaigners, Jewish groups and Germany, which holds the EU presidency, the law neither bans Holocaust denial as such, nor Nazi symbols.

“Europe has a special historic responsibility to combat anti-semitism and it is a shame that the final version did not include this,” said the European Jewish Congress.

Germany, France, Belgium, Austria, Spain and several eastern European countries have laws banning Holocaust denial. These laws will still apply. Britain, Ireland and the Nordic countries have always resisted such a law so as not to compromise academic or artistic freedom unless it specifically incites racial hatred.

There is no reference either to the mass killings of Armenians by the Ottoman Turks in 1915, which Armenians insist should be recognised as genocide. Turkey, a candidate for EU membership, had made clear it would object strongly to this.

The new EU legislation will need to be ratified by some national parliaments. It criminalises “publicly condoning, denying or grossly trivialising crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes ... when the conduct is carried out in a manner likely to incite to violence or hatred against a group or (group) member”.

British officials insisted the EU provisions would mean no changes because UK domestic law, including the 2006 Religious and Racial Hatred Act, was tougher.

The final deal was only completed to the sound of bitter historical controversy, with Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania pressed into dropping their demand for a reference to “Stalinist crimes” to balance the attention given the Nazi atrocities.

The EU justice commissioner, Franco Frattini, said the commission had agreed on public hearings in one of the Baltic states and Slovenia, on “the horrible crimes of the 20th century”. He added: “The fact that the EU now has moral responsibility and not only on the economy, is demonstrated by initiatives like this.”

Lady Ashton, Britain’s constitutional affairs minister, said the decision struck the right balance between all the issues.—Dawn/ The Guardian News Service