An End To Compensation Claims?
Following their meeting on 4 November in Krakow, Polish Prime Minister Marek Belka and German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder said that neither the German claims for reparations from Poland nor the Polish property claims from Germany have a legal basis. In the interest of improving bilateral relations, the two sides have decided to appoint new co-ordinators to deal with these still outstanding and related issues.
The conclusion that reparation claims from both sides were "without foundation" was reached by a joint team of lawyers who have been working on the issue since the two leaders' October meeting in Berlin. "The most important factor in the [team's] expert opinion is that there is no legal basis for claims by one side or the other," Schröder said. Belka said that the team's report would be published soon, and added that "as far as Poland is concerned, the report is satisfactory and we consider the question closed".
For several years, the two countries' ties have been strained over ethnic Germans' legal moves to recover property from Poland which they lost upon their expulsion from the country after World War Two. After 1945, some 15 million ethnic Germans were expelled from the then Polish and Czech territories. In reponse to the German claims, the Polish parliament passed a resolution in September 2004 demanding war reparations from Germany.