Creating an Observatory on History Teaching in Europe at the Council of Europe

On November 12, 2020, the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers adopted a resolution establishing a new autonomous body – the Observatory on History Teaching in Europe as an Enlarged Partial Agreement of the Council of Europe. Our country was one of its co-founders, along with 16 other states.

I am referring to an initiative that the French presidency of the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers proposed in September 2019. We supported that project from the very beginning, and helped write the Observatory’s charter. We have always advocated a greater engagement of the Strasbourg potential in order to preserve historical memory and pass it on to new generations. It is especially important in the current situation, now that historical revisionism has been elevated at the state policy level in certain European countries, school textbooks glorify Nazi accomplices, and memorials and burial sites of the soldiers who liberated Europe are being desecrated.

The Observatory will carry out a comparative analysis of programmes and methods of teaching history used in the secondary education systems in the participating countries, will prepare reports and recommendations, and will be a platform for expert discussion and exchange of experience. We hope that this new body will not turn into another Council of Europe monitoring mechanism, will not impose any educational standards or ideological attitudes. We see its main purpose in strengthening mutual understanding and trust between countries and peoples on the continent.

The Russian Ministry of Education is to represent our country in the Governing Board of this new Enlarged Partial Agreement of the Council of Europe.

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