During a joint press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Warsaw on Tuesday, President Andrzej Duda criticised Prime Minister Donald Tusk for saying that Poland had abandoned demands for war reparations against Germany made by the previous conservative PiS government, Euractiv reports.
Tusk and Scholz held a joint press briefing after Polish-German intergovernmental consultations in Warsaw on Tuesday, during which they were asked about reparations for Nazi crimes during World War II put forward by Poland’s previous conservative PiS (ECR) government.
PiS sent a diplomatic note to Berlin in 2022 asking it to pay 1.3 trillion euros in war reparations.
Although Poland’s communist government had renounced all claims for war reparations in 1953, the PiS government argued that the agreement was invalid because Poland had failed to negotiate fair compensation while it was dependent.
Berlin has consistently rejected Poland’s reparations claims, arguing that all financial claims related to World War II were settled by the 1990 “Two Plus Four” treaty that allowed German reunification.
Recognising the German government’s position, echoed by Scholz, Tusk said he was “not disappointed” by it. He admits:
In a legal sense, the problem of reparations has been described in decisions and government treaties, but one can draw various conclusions from them.
For him the most important are the German statements “confirming the belief, widespread in Poland, that the historical renunciation of reparation claims does not change the fact of the great loss of life, property and land suffered by Poland as a result of the German invasion”.
He expressed satisfaction with his German counterpart’s statements on other forms of compensation for war crimes. These include a monument in Berlin in memory of Polish victims of the German occupation, the establishment of a Polish-German House and financial support for war survivors, as Scholz listed. Scholz also added:
We, the Germans, caused immeasurable suffering to Poland during the Second World War. We are aware of our guilt and responsibility for the millions of victims of the German occupation.
The opposition is outraged
However, Tusk’s backtracking on reparations and Scholz’s vague promises on war reparations have sparked outrage in Poland, especially among the opposition.
PiS MP Zbigniew Bogucki called the chancellor’s statement “imprudent,” pointing out that few of the war’s survivors are still alive. The reparations are “Germany’s obligation towards Poland and Polish citizens, which it has never adequately fulfilled,” he wrote on X.
Another PiS MP, Arkadiusz Mularczyk, author of the PiS government’s report on the German war reparations, said:
Poland and Poles suffered proportionally the greatest losses as a result of German aggression (…). One-off, relatively small financial gestures do not close the issue of reparations.
During a press conference with his Albanian ally in Tirana, Duda was asked about the Tusk government’s position on German reparations. He noted:
If the prime minister agrees with the German position that reparations claims have been dropped, I say I do not agree with it.
He also said he did not share the view that “any Polish authorities have in fact waived their rights and demands for compensation for the damage inflicted on Poles, the Polish nation and our country during the Second World War.”
The disagreement over war reparations is another issue that has divided Tusk’s government and the president, a former PiS member who is still accused of loyalty to his old party.
On Monday, Duda announced the creation of his own council to oversee the implementation of strategic development projects, as he disagreed with Tusk’s cabinet over the previous PiS government’s flagship project of building the CPK mega-airport.
