Gabriele Albertini (PPE). – (IT) Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, with Parliament’s approval, from now on, the concept of ‘righteous’, which has always been applied to those who saved Jews from the ‘final solution’, will be the heritage of all of humanity.

There have been objections from those who do not recognise Soviet communism as totalitarianism and who refuse to compare the lager to the gulag, from those who prefer to ignore the massacre of the Armenians so as not to prejudice relations with Turkey, from those who think that comparing the shoah with other horrors of the 20th century by an extended and generalised use of the word ‘righteous’ makes it banal, and finally from those who have criticised the exclusion or inclusion of this or that example of genocide or massacre.

The European Parliament has overcome these and other objections and, from now on, men and women who were brave enough, and sometimes lost their lives, opposing the abuse of tyrants of any ideology or political leaning will be recognised as heroes of human dignity and heroes in the building of the moral identity of the European people.