Spanning tussen EU buren heeft oorsprong in WO2 en energie (en)

Tension between two of the EU's biggest member states - Germany and Poland - remains in the air despite conciliatory words as chancellor Angela Merkel and prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski's meeting on Monday (30 October) failed to see agreement on World War II reparations and energy.

The short, four-hour long visit by the Polish prime minister to Berlin saw Mr Kazcynski propose a new international pact that would see both Berlin and Warsaw publicly commit to block any future claims by German or Polish citizens who lost property in the war.

"It is the highest time to close the problem of the claims," he told German tabloid Bild over the weekend, referring to private damages claims by Germans who lost property in what is now Poland and to a campaign by German politician Erika Steinbach to raise awareness of the suffering of German war exiles.

"These people question the property situation in Poland - that concens exactly 34 percent of the territory of Poland. And the German state does nothing against it," Mr Kaczynski told Bild, talking about cases filed by the Prussian Claims Society at the European Court of Human Rights.

The call came in the context of steadily deteriorating ties between the two nations since Mr Kaczynski's party came to power in Poland last September, with one German magazine calling the Polish leader a "mammoth from the Communist era" ahead of the trip.

But Ms Merkel did not go as far as Mr Kaczynski wanted on the pact, while offering assurances that she would follow previous German governments in not to backing reparation campaigns. "This will remain the case," she said, expressing sympathy for "disturbances" are caused by claims groups, newswires report.

"From the point of view of Poland, the matter of reparations is not yet closed," Mr Kaczynski countered. "We want to go further."

The two neighbouring states also failed to see eye-to-eye on the second major issue of energy, with the Polish leader sticking to his opposition against Germany's plans to build a direct gas pipeline to Russia under the Baltic Sea, bypassing Poland.

"We upheld our [negative] position on the matter of the Northern pipeline," Mr Kaczynski said, despite reassurances by Ms Merkel that "no member state in the EU should be cornered by the project of another member state."

Ms Merkel reportedly offered to build a branch from the pipeline to Poland, but the Polish PM dismissed the offer, saying "via this branch [Russian state gas monopoly] Gazprom's gas would be flowing to Poland, but we want diversification, to have gas from various sources."

The position reflects fears in Poland, shared by Baltic politcians, that Moscow could through use the future Northern Pipeline choose to supply gas to Western Europe while turning off supplies to ex-Soviet EU members in the event of a political dispute.

Mr Kaczynski said that the "general idea" of EU energy cooperation should be that "Poland, in the case of risk, has commitments on supplies from countries situated further west" adding that this principle should be enshrined at "[EU] treaty level and by linking energy grids."

"I hope that these talks, which will be carried out at a technical level [in Polish-German energy working groups]...will lead to a situation where during the German presidency decisions will be taken, which in the final count will lead to such a state of affairs," the Polish PM said.

"It's a matter of fundamental concern to us," he added.