Dear colleagues, dear friends,

I write to you at the end of this year 2009 in order to give you three brief informations about the life of our association Liberté pour l’histoire.

1. If the memorial debates have been solved for the time being in France, thanks to the parliamentary Rapport Accoyer published by the National Assembly, which declared that no more laws concerning historical facts should be introduced, the problems have moved to the East. In Russia, Ukraine and the Baltic States, a battle has been raging for the last six months. Its stakes are even more important than those we have known. Liberté pour l’histoire takes its share, modest but determined, in this battle by expressing its full and entire solidarity to our Russian colleagues who defend in their country the very same cause than ours and who need our support.

In order to approve the "Appel de Blois", send an e-mail to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , give your first and last names and write "read and approved". Everyone is entitled to give its signature. Academics should add their university and others their residency.

Since 2005 Liberté pour l’Histoire has fought against the initiatives of legislative authorities to criminalize the past, thus putting more and more obstacles in the way of historical research. In April 2007, a framework decision of the European Council of Ministers has given an international dimension to a problem that had until then been exclusively French. In the name of the indisputable and necessary suppression of racism and anti-Semitism, this decision established throughout the European Union new crimes that threaten to place on historians prohibitions that are incompatible with their profession.