Germany has rejected a Polish parliamentary report claiming it owes its eastern neighbour €1.3tn for damages caused during the second world war, saying the question of wartime reparations is “closed”.
“The federal government’s position is unchanged,” a spokesperson for the German foreign ministry said on Friday. “In the view of the government this matter is closed”.
Jarosław Kaczyński, the leader of Poland’s ruling conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, on Thursday presented a report assessing the financial damages caused by Nazi Germany’s invasion and occupation of the country during the second world war.
Speaking on the 83rd anniversary of the invasion in 1939, Kaczyński said a parliamentary committee had calculated the total losses amounted to 6.2tn złotys, roughly €1.32tn.
Kaczyński, who does not hold a government role but is seen as a driving force behind the conservative governing party, announced Poland would formally request reparations, while conceding he expected talks to be “long and difficult”.
The parliamentary report, which was commissioned five years ago but whose publication was repeatedly delayed, will further test diplomatic relations between Poland and Germany just as the two Nato members are attempting to show a united front over Russia’s war in Ukraine.
In a keynote speech in Prague earlier this week, the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, had signalled a more confrontational stance over Poland’s crackdown on judicial independence, saying EU funds should be tied to the maintenance of rule-of-law standards.
The Polish government, meanwhile, has accused Scholz of backtracking on promises of military aid to Ukraine since the start of Moscow’s invasion in February.
The former Polish prime minister Donald Tusk said the re-emergence of the reparations question was part of an “anti-German campaign” predominantly designed to shore up support for Kaczyński’s PiS party ahead of Polish elections next autumn.
According to the foreign ministry, Germany has paid about €74bn in reparations since the end of the war, mostly to Israel and western European states or individuals living in those countries.
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The German government argues Poland waived its right to war reparations in 1953, as part of an agreement in which its eastern bloc ally East Germany ceded territories beyond the Oder-Neisse border to Poland and Russia. The current Polish government argues the waiver was agreed under pressure from the Soviet Union.
Germany says any outstanding reparations issues were settled with the “two-plus-four” agreement between the US, UK, France and the Soviet Union that sealed reunification in 1990 – an agreement, a government spokesperson said on Friday, that Poland “welcomed without reservations” at the time.
When discussing financial payments over historical atrocities since then, Germany has been cautious to avoid the term “reparations” for fear of setting precedents, instead using euphemisms such as “healing the wounds” as during negotiations with Namibia relating to the Herero and Nama genocide at the start of the 20th century.
