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Poland has ‘very strong legal case’ for WWII reparations: PM

07.09.2022 21:30
The Polish prime minister has said that Poland has “a very strong legal case” for seeking reparations for the losses suffered at the hands of Germany during World War II.
Mateusz Morawiecki.
Mateusz Morawiecki.PAP/Tomasz Wiktor

Mateusz Morawiecki made the remark in a media interview on Wednesday, Polish state news agency PAP reported.

'Poland has very strong legal case for war reparations'

Speaking on the sidelines of the Economic Forum conference in the southwestern Polish city of Karpacz, the PM told the i.pl website that “Poland has a very strong legal case, not just a historical, moral and political case” for seeking reparations from Germany.

“We will make use of this legal justification,” he added.

Morawiecki stated that the report published last week, detailing Poland’s wartime losses caused by Germany, represented “a move intended to restore justice.”

“Poland is the country that suffered the biggest destruction at the hands of Germany, that lost the biggest number of people,” he stressed.

Scholz: issue of WWII reparations ‘settled conclusively under international law’

Morawiecki’s words came after the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz rebuffed Polish demands that Berlin pay reparations for the damage it inflicted on Poland during the war.

In an interview for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper, published on Wednesday, Scholz said: “I would like to state, just like all the previous German federal governments, that this issue [of WWII reparations] is settled conclusively under international law.”

Poland estimates its WWII losses caused by Germany at EUR 1.3 trillion

Last Thursday, Poland published a report estimating the country’s World War II losses at the hands of Germany at EUR 1.3 trillion. 

The leader of the country’s ruling conservatives Law and Justice, Jarosław Kaczyński, said that a decision had been made to raise the issue of World War II reparations with Berlin. 

Kaczyński added: “It’s about securing compensation, maybe through a long and arduous process, for everything that Germany, the German state, the German nation, did to Poland between 1939 and 1945.” 

(pm)   

Source: PAPi.pl