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On 29th June 1998, the 15 Foreign Ministers of the EU States (Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Spain, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Austria, Portugal, Finland, Sweden, Great Britain and North Ireland) were all in favour of the universal abolition of death penalty, a battle that is an important element of the EU human rights politics; to be an EU member, a State mustn\'t apply the death penalty. A great public opinion movement also supports this crusade.
During the EU ministers\' reunion some important figures were remembered: 84% of the world executions occur in only 4 States; in 1997, 1644 death sentences were imposed in China, 143 in Iran, in 122 Saudi Arabia, 74 in the USA. And all that without defeating criminality, as death penalty supporters say.
Italy is first in this battle; in fact Italy presented the motion against death penalty to the UN commission for the human rights in Geneva.
Russian President, Boris Yeltsin, signed a decree commuting the death sentence for all of the convicts on Russia's death row, in June 1999.
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