VILNIUS - The European Commission has rejected an initiative by a Lithuanian MEP to ban the communist hammer and sickle as part of an EU-wide effort to fight against political extremism and hatred. The proposal, penned by Vytautas Landsbergis, reportedly had leftist leaders in Rome in hysterics and spurred heated political protest.
Landsbergis, together with other post-Soviet bloc MEPs, had wanted the hammer and sickle to be equated with the swastika as symbols of repressive 20th century regimes that killed tens of millions of lives. Western Europe, he suggested, needed to be mindful of the horrors of Soviet communism as well.
Landsbergis sent the letter to Franco Frattini, the justice and internal affairs commissioner, and suggested that all totalitarian symbols should be treated equally.
But the idea triggered political controversy in Italy, and communist adherents attacked it bitterly. Some Italian leftists said they felt as if they had been scalded with hot water once they heard of Landsbergis' idea to enforce a Europe-wide ban on their party symbol.
Although initially interested in a wider debate on the use of totalitarian symbols, Frattini was later compelled to take a more subtle position due to protests in Italy, his home country. Influential Italian parties, tracing their roots back to the country's wartime battles against fascism, have long used the hammer and sickle in their flags and were not shy to protest the initiative. The Red Brigades enjoyed wide support in Italy during the 1960s and 1970s.
Rome's leftist daily Il Manifesto called the Lithuanian and other MEPs who dared to speak disrespectfully about the hammer and sickle, "losers from the East," while Commissioner Frattini was lambasted for "demonic blasphemy."
Gennaro Migliore, Italy's foreign policy coordinator of the Reformed Communist Party, was quoted as saying Landsbergis' proposal was "insanity" since "the hammer and sickle has also been used in other countries as the symbol of democracy and the fight for justice."
It was the first time that a Rome-based newspaper dedicated an entire front page to an interview with Landsbergis, leader of the right-wing Homeland Union, and published his caricature.
The European Commission rejected the initiative on Feb. 8, as Frattini said including the hammer and sickle in a draft of the EU law on racism would not be appropriate.
Frattini's spokesperson, Frisco Abbing, said it would be better to leave the decision of banning specific symbols up to individual countries.
"I think it would be hard to explain and unwise if we tried to harmonize it at a European level," Abbing said.
In his letter to European deputies, Frattini said the Europe of today was united and free because it had liberated itself from the 20th Century's two great authoritarian regimes - Nazism and communism. Both systems differed in their origin and fate but were similar in that their leaders slaughtered innocent people, Frattini noted.
Italian communists condemn Nazism since it generated the extermination of entire human races, while arguing that communism strives to create equality, peace and good.
