End of inadmissibility. The German government has formally rejected Warsaw’s request to negotiate compensation for damage suffered by Poland during World War II, the Polish Foreign Ministry announced on Tuesday.
“According to the German government, the case of reparations and compensation for war damage is still closed and the German government has no intention of opening negotiations on this matter,” the ministry said in a press release issued after receiving an official response from Berlin. .
Poland claims compensation from Germany in the amount of 1.3 billion euros.
The press service of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed this Tuesday to AFP that the federal government had “responded to Poland’s verbal note of October 3, 2022”, while recalling that it does not publicly disseminate “the various contents of diplomatic correspondence.
Polish diplomacy took the case to the United Nations (UN) on Tuesday, asking its high representatives for their “cooperation and support so that Poland can receive compensation for the damage caused by the German aggression and occupation in the years 1939-1945”. , according to another official press release.
A “closed” question for Berlin
Germany considers that Poland renounced war reparations in 1953 and confirmed this resignation on several occasions. Berlin has raised the same arguments against redress claims raised in the past by Greece and Italy.
During her visit to Warsaw on October 4, the German Chancellor, Annalena Baerbock, had already indicated that, “from the point of view of the federal government, the issue of reparations was closed”, while assuring that her country assumed ” its historical responsibility, without ‘if’ or ‘but'”.
Polish nationalist conservatives in power question the validity of this 1953 agreement, saying Warsaw acted at the time under pressure from the Soviet Union. Since coming to power in Poland in 2015, the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party has often defended the issue of war reparations, insisting that Germany has a “moral duty” in this regard.
Source: BFM TV
