EUROPE CANNOT ENDORSE A REVISION OF HISTORY
On Europe's dissenting position towards the participation of the Austrian Freedom Party in government

Ljubljana, 1 February 2000


"Europe cannot endorse a revision of history. Because of the victims in the struggle against Nazism and Fascism, because of loyalty to humanity, of which the holocaust is a reminder, because of Europe without hatred towards the different and because of its democratic future. I believe that this is the essence of the EU Member States' admonishing position on the possibility of Haider's party participating in government, for it is not in line with the foundations of the EU's and all of Europe's democratic future,” stated President of the Republic, Mr Milan Kucan, for the Delo daily.

As he already mentioned at the international holocaust conference in Stockholm, President Kucan still stands on his position that the rise of Jörg Haider’s Austrian Freedom Party presents just as much a danger to Slovenia as it does to Europe. The Slovenian President evoked this already in October 1999. upon the publication of the outcome of elections in Austria. In his opinion, this is a policy that is oriented towards the past. It is attempting to retroactively change history and historic events, creating new divisions in Europe through populism, xenophobia and inward closing. By referring to the so-called ‘correction of injustices’ and with the demand for the abolishment of AVNOJ resolutions, it is attempting to change the role that Austria played in World War II following its Anschluss to the Third Reich. At the holocaust conference, President Kucan expressly underlined that Slovenia will not accept demands which could be interpreted as demands for repealing the acts that the then Slovenian state carried out to punish the occupying forces’ crimes committed over the Slovenian nation, in the spirit of Potsdam and in accordance with post-war treaties and decisions of the allied forces and of the entire democratic world. In the President’s view, current reactions from democratic Europe prove that nothing happening in a European country, particularly an EU Member State, and which concerns others and their common future, is and can no longer be solely its internal issue.