Thanks to Prince Harry, European politicians have been recently debating a ban on the use of evil symbols. Their thinking is that such a ban might be of use in a campaign to combat anti-Semitism, racism and intolerance in Europe. Thanks to Prince Harry, who, as the world well knows, chose to don a German soldier's uniform at a private party last month wider public debate has been mostly swirling around the swastika. Until last week, that is.

A group of conservative Eastern European Members of European Parliament called for justice commissioner Franco Frattini to include communist symbols in the proposed ban. Led by Hungarian MEP Jozsef Szajer and former Lithuanian President Vytautas Landsbergis, the group of MEPs that included Estonia's Tunne Kelam called for the red star and the hammer and sickle to be included in a ban of symbols of all totalitarian regimes. Eastern Europeans need to speak out, as the suffering caused there by Soviet backed regimes as well as outright occupation is continually being shunted to the background thanks to Russian propaganda.

The issue would have been on the table even without Harry, as the justice and interior ministers of the 25 EU countries will meet later this month - coincidentally on Estonian Independence Day - to discuss an EU law against racism and xenophobia. Frattini had proposed the ban against Nazi symbols, but before the Szajer-Landsbergis call he had not included communist symbols in the ban. Roscam Abbing, a spokesman from Frattini's office responded to the Eastern European initiative by suggesting that this inclusion "might not be appropriate" under the present anti-racism rules to be negotiated. Why? Because while the swastika was and is seen as a symbol specifically associated with anti-Semitism, the hammer and sickle is not. Abbing tried to slide away from the topic last week, suggesting that the issue "warrants further political debate."

Landsbergis, for one, was not amused. He pointed out that the hammer and sickle was not only a symbol of oppression but also a manufactured one - just like the swastika was taken out of its ancient religious symbolic context for the use of an ideology. Landsbergis called it a "fake symbol of unity of workers and farmers," as repulsive to many in Eastern Europe today as the swastika may be in the West.

This Tuesday the European Commission decided to continue straddling the fence. Perhaps thanks to the Szajer-Landsbergis initiative, Frattini said that it would not be appropriate to pair the symbols of the two totalitarian regimes in any ban that is part of the draft law on racism. In fact, his spokesman Abbing went as far as suggesting that it would be "unwise" to harmonize a ban at the EU level. "What we could at most envisage is a general reference to a prohibition of using materials… which could lead to racism or xenophobia." And, of course, "detailed implementation and the transportation of that general rule" would be the responsibility of each member state within their boundaries.

Note also that the idea that an EU-wide ban on Nazi symbols would be unwise originated from Frattini's home country, Italy. Not only has Italy's post WW II ruling past seen communists be part of coalition governments, the present Italian government includes the National Alliance, a party whose roots can be traced all the way back to Mussolini. Of course, Frattini did acknowledge that Europe is free today only because the continent rid itself of communism and fascism.

A BBC report of this Tuesday covered Frattini's letter of response to the Szajer and Landsbergis-led group of MEPs rejecting their proposal, while calling for wide-ranging debate on Europe's past with extreme ideologies. Frattini called them similar yet different - differing in their "origin and fate", but similar in the fact that both slaughtered the innocents who were perceived or regarded as "objective enemies."

It might be the time to suggest to Frattini that symbols aside, the similarities are what the EU should be looking at. Even after war had broken out, as late as February 5, 1941, Adolf Hitler boasted in a speech that, "basically, National Socialism and Communism are the same." As Walter Goerlitz' 1953 book, "History of the German General Staff " points out, the Nazi high command was riddled with Communist agents who were able to infiltrate precisely because the ideological similarities allowed them to operate undetected. Yet Frattini trotted out the tired and true "disagreement between historians" about whether Nazi and Soviet crimes can even be compared on a scale of evil. As John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr noted in their excellent book "In Denial", revisionist historians are among the worst offenders when it comes to denying factual evidence.

The shibboleth is the swastika; it is as if the hammer and sickle's legacy of evil crumbled along with the Berlin Wall. How else to explain the continual double standards, not only with regard to the past but also to the present? The EU's recent plans to lift an arms embargo against red China, and to ease sanctions on communist Cuba are just the more visible signs of putting trade over principles.

True, any EU law that banned the symbols of evil would be difficult to enforce - as Honor Mahony asked in the EUobserver on Tuesday, how do you legislate that, for instance, "satirical articles or cartoons containing the symbols would not fall foul of the law"? But the EU is not lampooning or making fun of the past, as Harry, in his youthful wisdom, allegedly attempted to do last month. (We can safely suggest that the international outcry and foofaraw would have been minimal, had the Prince worn a five-pointed red star and a Soviet uniform.)

The EU is, in theory, trying to make itself a safer and more honest community, less racist, xenophobic and oppressive. It must not single out one symbol at the expense of another. They would be wise to follow Szajer's home country Hungary's example - Hungary has bans on both communist and fascist symbols. And though Landsbergis agreed that a ban on symbols is best achieved by national governments, Frattini and his fellow commissioners should lead by example, not apply double standards.

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