BRUSSELS, April 18 (UPI) -- The European Union appears poised to criminalize denying that the Holocaust occurred, the Financial Times reported Wednesday.
Diplomats said the measure, scheduled for a vote Thursday, had been carefully worded to include only denial of the Nazi Holocaust of World War II and the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. EU officials considered the measure for six years.
Several Baltic countries and Poland pushed for the inclusion of "Stalinist crimes" in the text but that is not popular among most other countries, the report said.
The draft law makes it mandatory for all EU member states to punish public incitement "to violence or hatred directed against a group of persons or a member of such a group defined by reference to race, color, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin."
On conviction, offenders could be sentenced to three years in prison.
Holocaust denial is already a criminal offense in Germany and Austria and several other European countries.
