PM 'convinced' Germany will pay Poland for wartime destruction
Mateusz Morawiecki, the Polish prime minister, has said he is “convinced” Germany will pay Poland reparations for the destruction the country suffered at German hands during WWII.
A report detailing Poland's losses resulting from the German invasion was presented on Sept. 1, the 83rd anniversary of the outbreak of World War II. According to the report, Germany should pay Poland PLN 6.2 trillion (EUR 1.32 trillion) in compensation for the destruction caused by the war.
The German government has said that the issue is closed owing to Poland apparently renouncing war reparations in 1953.
"I am convinced that Poland will gain damages from Germany even though it will not be fast," Morawiecki told the niezalezna.pl website on Thursday.
Morawiecki said that Poland had analysed all the arguments of the German side and all those, who believed that the subject was closed, and that no government resolution regarding Poland's decision to renounce damages had been found.
"A so called government resolution to this effect, said to be issued in August 1953, is to be of key significance. But such resolution had not been found in our archives," the prime minister stated.
Morawiecki also said that, in accordance with the Polish Constitution adopted in 1952, the then Council of Ministers "had not been authorised to pass such a resolution."
"It could have been adopted either by the Council of State or the Sejm, the lower house of parliament," he continued, adding that none of the two institutions had issued such a document, and that this was further proof that Poland had not renounced war reparations.
"The alleged renouncement of war reparations is an imaginary legal act," Morawiecki said.
The prime minister also said that the only proof that a renouncement had taken place was an article in a communist daily, Trybuna Ludu, published on August 24, 1953. This, he added, could not be regarded as a source of international law.
"This alleged resolution had never been published in a Polish journal of laws. It seems that the meeting of the Council of Ministers, which was said to have adopted this resolution, never took place," Morawiecki said.
According to the prime minister, none of the legal acts signed by the two countries in 1970 and 1990 had concerned WWII reparations.
"This means that there is no binding source of international law in accordance with which Poland has renounced WWII compensation from Germany," said Morawiecki.
Meanwhile, a Polish MEP told PAP that there would be a draft resolution in the European Parliament regarding WWII reparations from Germany.
"The draft will be filed by the European Conservatives and Reformists Group," Bogdan Rzonca of Poland's ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party said, adding that the matter of war compensation had been initiated by MEP Kyriakos Welopulos of the Greek Solution party.
