Berlijn en Warschau bestoken elkaar met schadeclaims voor slachtoffers Tweede Wereldoorlog (en)

The Polish and German governments have agreed to set up a bilateral committee of legal experts to fight lawsuits by Germans seeking compensation for property they lost to Poland after the collapse of the Third Reich.

Following official talks in Berlin on Monday (27 September) German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and Polish Prime Minister Marek Belka appealed to the common sense of Germans and Poles trying to revive a debate about World War II reparations claims.

An estimated 2.5 million ethnic Germans were expelled or fled from Poland when Germany's borders shifted at the end of World War II.

Destroy the unity of Europe?

Some of them have threatened to take their claims for repatriations to Polish and European courts.

In response, the Polish parliament (10 September) adopted a resolution calling for reparations for the "costs brought on by German aggression, occupation and genocide".

However, the resolution is not legally binding.

Poland twice declared itself willing to drop all of its demands for reparations from the Germans, in 1954 and in 1970.

Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski also turned down the reparations demand.

"If we were to settle these accounts, then we would in fact destroy the unity of Europe", he said in an interview.

64 percent want compensation

Both Mr Schröder and Mr Belka, appeared determined to calm the discussion in order to preserve good relations between the two neighbours.

"I hope that our opposition conservative leaders will now step up their efforts to silence those in their ranks who've chosen to pour more oil on the fire in recent weeks", Mr Schröder said at a press conference after the meeting, according to Deutsche Welle.

The leader of Poland's conservative Law and Justice party, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, has made the issue of reparation payments a priority should his party be voted into power during the upcoming elections in October.

The Polish Rzeczpospolita newspaper published a poll last week saying 64 percent of Poles are in favour of seeking compensation from Germany for damages during World War II.