“Framing the ‘Crimes of Communism’ in European Remembrance Policy: A Case Study of the Program Europe for Citizens”

After the Cold War, a new constellation of actors entered the European Parliament (EP) and asked for an official recognition of their sufferings during Communism. In 2006, the EU adopted the program Europe for Citizens, which supports “projects aiming at preserving the sites and archives associated with deportations as well as the commemorating of victims of Nazism and Stalinism”. Building upon an actor-centered political sociology of European integration, this paper will focus on the political and institutional logics behind the creation of a new public policy in the field of remembrance: how did memory entrepreneurs frame the alleged lack of recognition of Communist crimes as a public policy problem that needed to be dealt with at the European level of government? In what way did the political and bureaucratic competitions within the European Commission and the EU Council integrate the claims emanating from the EP in order to translate them into public action? This paper will test the following hypothesis: the inclusion of Stalinism among Europe’s “dark pasts” was shaped not only by the salience of the political debates on Communism in the EU, but also by the possibility for policy-makers to use pre-existing public policy elements (actor networks, policy tools, issue framing etc.) in the fields of culture, citizenship and justice, in order to address the demands of memory entrepreneurs. It seeks to contribute to a broader debate on the policy-making mechanisms and narratives employed in order to persuade institutional decision-makers to establish a common European culture of memory