Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism

Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism
The Prague Declaration was signed in Wallenstein Palace, seat of the Czech Senate
Created	3 June 2008
Signatories	Václav Havel, Joachim Gauck, Göran Lindblad, Vytautas Landsbergis, Emanuelis Zingeris, Pavel Žáček, Łukasz Kamiński, Martin Mejstřík, Jiří Liška, Ivonka Survilla, around 50 members of the European Parliament, and others
Purpose	Called for "Europe-wide condemnation of, and education about, the crimes of communism"

The Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism (also known as the Prague Declaration), which was signed on 3 June 2008, was a declaration initiated by the Czech government and signed by prominent European politicians, former political prisoners and historians, among them former Czech President Václav Havel and current German President Joachim Gauck, which called for "Europe-wide condemnation of, and education about, the crimes of communism."

To date, the most visible proposal set forth by the declaration was the adoption of the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism (known as the International Black Ribbon Day in some countries), adopted by the European Union and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, as the official international remembrance day for victims of totalitarian regimes. On 14 October 2011, the Platform of European Memory and Conscience, an EU educational project to raise awareness about totalitarian crimes and to combat intolerance, extremism, and anti-democratic movements, was established by the governments of the Visegrád Group and a number of European government institutions and NGOs, as an initiative of the Polish EU presidency and following decisions by the European Parliament and the EU Council supporting the project.

The declaration concluded the conference European Conscience and Communism, an international conference that took place at the Czech Senate from 2 to 3 June 2008, hosted by the Senate Committee on Education, Science, Culture, Human Rights and Petitions, under the auspices of Alexandr Vondra, Deputy Prime Minister of the Czech Republic for European Affairs, and organised by Jana Hybášková MEP and Senator Martin Mejstřík in co-operation with the Office of the Government of the Czech Republic, the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes and the European People's Party's Robert Schuman Foundation.