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Why does nobody talk about how quickly flag burning laws spread across Europe
I was looking up old news articles from 15 years ago about Denmark's flag code and noticed how many countries quietly added restrictions after 2015. Now you've got places like France and Germany where burning a national flag can land you a fine up to 15,000 euros, way more than when I first read about it. Has anyone else tracked how these laws changed and what it means for free speech over there?
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the_elizabeth7d ago
Wow @mark676, that's way more research than I put into my taxes.
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Yeah I used to think that was just people being paranoid about losing free speech, but then I actually looked into the specific numbers for France. You can get hit with a 15,000 euro fine and even a year in prison for burning their flag in public. Germany's the same ballpark, around 10,000 euros if I remember right. What really changed my mind was reading about how these laws popped up not just in the usual places but in countries like Latvia and Lithuania too, and the fines got bigger every year after 2015. It's not like they had massive flag burning protests that forced a crackdown, it just kind of quietly happened. Your mileage may vary but I think there's something to tracking how the legal landscape shifts without much public debate.
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