Poland plans to seek $1.3T in reparations from Germany for WWII
axios.com
axios.com
Poland must pay a daily penalty of €500,000 ($585,550) for ignoring a previous order from the European Union’s top court to cease operations at the Turow lignite mine, with its CEO slamming the fine as “bizarre”.
On Monday, the EU’s Court of Justice (CJEU) confirmed it was enforcing the financial penalty against Warsaw, stating that Poland must pay the European Commission the daily half-million euro fine until it sees compliance with the earlier order.
Judges from the Luxembourg-based court said that the fine is “necessary… to deter that member state from delaying bringing its conduct into line with that order.”
https://twitter.com/EUCourtPress/status/1439940814046744581?...
The Czech Republic took legal action against Poland in February over activities at the mine, which also sits close to the German border, claiming that it spoiled its citizens’ drinking water. After Warsaw failed to obey the court orders in May to “immediately cease lignite extraction activities at the mine”, Prague asked the court to fine Poland €5 million per day.
Poland is widely hated by its neighbors for the existence of this mine. The mine is also in a hilarious geographic location if you look it up on the map. It's BARELY within the country.
> Poland must pay a daily penalty of €500,000 ($585,550) for ignoring a previous order from the European Union’s top court to cease operations at the Turow lignite mine, with its CEO slamming the fine as “bizarre”.
> On Monday, the EU’s Court of Justice (CJEU) confirmed it was enforcing the financial penalty against Warsaw, stating that Poland must pay the European Commission the daily half-million euro fine until it sees compliance with the earlier order.
> Judges from the Luxembourg-based court said that the fine is “necessary… to deter that member state from delaying bringing its conduct into line with that order.”
> https://twitter.com/EUCourtPress/status/1439940814046744581?...
> The Czech Republic took legal action against Poland in February over activities at the mine, which also sits close to the German border, claiming that it spoiled its citizens’ drinking water. After Warsaw failed to obey the court orders in May to “immediately cease lignite extraction activities at the mine”, Prague asked the court to fine Poland €5 million per day.
> Poland is widely hated by its neighbors for the existence of this mine. The mine is also in a hilarious geographic location if you look it up on the map. It's BARELY within the country.
Wow. Turów Brown Coal Mine https://maps.app.goo.gl/3GZHsBabN8rwPqZTA
The border actually follows the Lusatian Neisse, and then the Oder river, except in the vicinity of the port city of Szczecin; this is the border set by the Allies at the Potsdam Conference after the end of World War 2.
The mine on the eastern side of the river became Poland, but it was still supplying a power plant on the west side of the river in East Germany [1]. Later, in 1962, Poland built its own power plant [2].
The Soviets and the Polish wanted to push this border as far west as possible, while the western allies wanted to set it was far northeast as possible to more closely approximate the German-Polish ethnic divide at the time. Various compromise options were proposed, following various rivers, but in the end the western allies agreed to the Soviet proposal. Germans in these territories gained by Poland were expelled. (Meanwhile, the Soviets took the eastern half of previous Poland and made it [3] part of the Soviet Union, specifically the constituent republics of Belarus, Ukraine, and Lithuania... it was a messy time.)
[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kraftwerk_Hirschfelde [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tur%C3%B3w_Power_Station [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kresy
Whole problem was that "big hole" is sucking water from immediate surroundings and turning it into desert, not spoiling the water. Part of the agreement is construction of wall which will prevent that.
There are disputes here and there, but I would not use world "hated"
No, this is just your opinion. Even the new Polish ambassador in Czechia, chosen by the current right-wing government, very openly said that the behavior of the Polish government was stupid and he doesn't understand it, because it could be solved easily straight away. And instead of listening to him, they started to shout "Treason!" all over Twitter and finally they dismissed him. Now again they can't find anyone who would be stupid enough to agree to take on this post:
So please anwer the damn question and stop saying idiotic statements until you answer it.
A few of its members basically drag the rest along for bad decisions and the smaller guy follow because they need that sweet sweet eu money.
The incompetents in the government decided that negotiation, or the way lower than the dien cost of fixing water pipeline for few villages, was beneath them.
The ECJ injunction was about stopping the expansion when, as matter spanning the border, the case was taken to court.
Once again politicians decided to... Ignore the injunction, which resulted in a fine, and finally the fine was taken from funds that would otherwise go to Poland.
Poland (and others…) warned the successive German governments since about the risks of increasing dependence on Russian gas, and… here we are.
The borders were based on rivers, no idea what you’re insinuating there.
I'd say, "the current right-wing government is widely hated by most of its citizens." The mine case was just one of the many cases when they showed their glaring incompetence. I mean, they could have solved the problem a long time ago but by their arrogance decided to ignore it, then the case went to court and they had to do it anyway and pay a nice sum of money. Everybody is angry about this, not just the neighbors, because it's not these incompetent and corrupt puppets that are going to pay but Polish citizens.
Poland's 2020 election was very controversial, and Duda won by the slimmest of margins.
https://www.cbos.pl/PL/szukaj/open_file.php?url=2022/K_092_2...
Why do they come up with this right now? Their poll ratings are slipping, following Odra river ecological disaster and huge inflation - and these are only their latest screwups. Many social groups traditionally in favor of PiS are becoming mad at the government. They have their "iron electorate" that will vote them no matter what, but this does not give them majority.
I thought it couldn't get dumber than that but the Polish version seems worse.
However, please enlighten me. I would be interested in evidence of a distant or non-existent memory of 6 million dead Polish.
It is unfortunate that the reparations paid to the USSR were not actually used to Poland's benefit; however, that is the USSR's fault, not Germany's, and many Poles acknowledge that. The present government had strong support by conservatives and by anti-communist people because they promised to rid public offices from leftover communists or their puppets (which - true to their word - they did, but in a very bad, anti-democratic way, which ended up breaking more glass than they could have saved). This past support is eroding, but going back to the previous, "communists & puppets" won't solve anything either...
It is regretful that Poland's location in between two much larger, powerful countries made its people suffer as a "buffer zone" of sorts. Of course geography itself doesn't harm people, but people get harmed because of geography.
This is a product of the currently ruling party, and the elections are coming. While Poland still should get some kind of support from Germany for the damage it caused in many aspects of life here, I don't believe that reparations are what we should and what we could get. The issue has been closed and that fact has been confirmed by Polish government most recently in 2004. The only country we should and could get reparations from is russia, as they actually made Poland to pay (by forcing it to buy subsidized coal many years ago) instead of be paid, and apparently USSR made a promise to pay the reparations.
So currently ruling party is not really about getting something for Poland in regards of WWII disaster, but it's only about winning the next elections and seemingly weaken the country once more. Please keep in mind that we have a prime time for russian trolls here and it might take some time if we could ever get rid of them from the politics. To weaken Poland means to empower russia influence here, but sadly many supporters of the ruling party don't connect the dots this way.
However, I seem to recall WWI reparations being levied against Germany as among the drivers for the instability of the Weimar Republic[1] that helped inform political drift of the 1930s.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territories_of_Poland_annexed_...
It's not decided, it's declared.
The tricky bit is enforcing it, which usually requires having just won a war with the other party, and getting it in the peace treaty they're forced to sign.
I'm not sure if Poland has the high ground in this.
IANAL but I don’t think this specific treaty would have any material relevance in this case.
Not sure what to make out of this
"hey guys lets make germany pay more than we should reasonably ask for a long time, that never went wrong before."
Not that I defend that government, but let's stay coherently on the topic.
And also lost whole lot of land in the process.
just google:
"poland reparations before:2022"
what has changed this time?
This is even though Poland is housing millions of Ukrainian nationals. A senior EU official has been quoted they won’t get this fund till till this government stays in power.
[1] https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2022/08/29/eu-council-sue...
A good place to understand this is to read _Bloodlands_ by Timothy Snyder. Send a bill to both of them I say.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_indemnity
Not sure you're comparing apples with apples here.
The difference was that the French paid promptly, and the Germans did not.
The inability to afford the reparations outright, and the "solution" which led to hyperinfaltion is part of the catalyst that allowed extreme resentment over handling of the treaty, and ultimately the rise of fascism.
Printing money was a domestic political decision, because the government could not agree to raise taxes (or cut social spending). Much of the seed of fascism was laid in the strength of parties who never believed in democracy in the first place (discussed in some detail by Daniel Ziblatt in _Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy_) and unchecked activity of political movements who never accepted the defeat in WW I.
The latter started right at the end of WWI, when Ludendorff and Hindenburg, the German military (and for much of 1916-1918 de facto government) leaders, refused to take responsibility for the armistice and pretended that it was the politicians who had forced it on an "undefeated army". Arguably, the German military command was treated too leniently after WW I. Hanging those two (like their counterparts were after WW II) might have saved millions of lives.
The difference was that France paid in full and in advance (so much in full that the cash influx actually caused a crash in Germany – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_indemnity#Aftermath), whereas Germany tergiversed, delayed, and printed money like their was no tomorrow, sacrificing their econoomy on the altar of spiting their debtor – which eventually turned into their favor, as their reparations were shrinked to virtually nothing.
Sources: Tooze, Wage of Destruction; Memories of a Magician, Schacht.
According to Versailles, Germany had actually to pay a third of the total sum in over a decade, all the while having the only intact industrial basis in Europe. It was absolutely doable, had they not adopted the most inane economical policies of the time, and scuttled their economy to spite the Entente.
The reason for anything big and complicated like a war could probably occupy thousands of pages of discussion. But I'd like to jot down what I see as one major difference here between Germany's experience to close out WWI and France's and most other countries' experience in past wars.
Unlike many large-scale past wars in Europe, the sequence of events in WWI wasn't exactly "Some country's leaders get angry for one stupid reason or another, those countries fight and one side ends up winning, and then both sides come to the negotiating table and come up with a relatively even-handed peace-deal based on the actual events of the war that felt like a fairly won or lost outcome that almost anybody could come to accept".
You had legitimate peace overtures from the Central powers midway through WWI that were blocked because the Allies were behind the scenes agitating to get the Americans involved on their side. And then at the end, because the inclusion of American resources so totally flipped the outcome of the war (what would have likely been a modest Allied victory with reasonable peace negotiations changed into a big win and the Allies having the power to demand whatever they wanted), the Allies could exact revenge and gain incredible wealth + continental power over their biggest economic rivals.
Do your history books go into the German Revolution of 1918–1919? And the real poverty and unseemliness of the Weimar Republic? All of these events and the fallout is arguably tied into this major difference with WWI being flipped by an outsider. And it's easy to see how this difference contributed to some really bad times later on. Hell, I shouldn't even say WWI and WWII, IMO this time period was really one big war with a long intermission.
That's what the Germans wanted everyone to believe.
Now, if you compare Versailles (1918) with Brest-Litovsk, Sèvres, or even Versailles (1871) (or even the Septemberprogramm), it's far from awful for the time. Germany had to pay reparations that were in the norm for the period, and lost territories that were basically ethnically either Polish or Danish. It was still the first powerhouse of Europe, and had an intact land- and industrial base, especially in comparison to France or Belgium, where – on top of battle-caused destruction – they carefully destroyed economical infrastructure (e.g. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44575822?seq=3#metadata_info_ta...).
> And the real poverty and unseemliness of the Weimar Republic?
If that's what you learned in your history books, think about changing them. The only thing that led to the infamous economical failure of the Weimar republic is its aversion to pay reparation (~B150$ today) in a normal manner. Instead, they printed stupid amount of money to buy foreign currency to pay reparation with. Of course, this led to a monetary crash – out of wich Germany promptly got out by simply switching to a better handled new mark[1,2,3,4]. It was a pure product of the hopeless German economic policies, that they went back to being the economic powerhouse of Europe as soon as they got their duck in a row, and the difficulties they met thereafter were the baseline for all the nations after the war[5,6].
https://www.minneapolisfed.org/economic-research/conferences...
https://www.jstor.org/stable/41377814
[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/41377814 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_the_Weimar_R... [3] Wages of Destruction, Tooze [4] Confessions of the old wizard, Schacht [5] https://www.jstor.org/stable/41377814 [6] https://slidetodoc.com/europe-between-the-wars-the-economics...
I don't know that I'd say that, like I who to blame for WWI is a very contentious subject and ultimately I'd say that the blame does rest on the German leaders, including the Kasier and German General Staff, but to pretend France has no culpability is a little disingenuous. I'd say that WWI was pretty much every European country going on a genocidal rampage on their neighbors, just because the French weren't very effective at keeping it on their neighbors soil doesn't mean they aren't responsible.
it was a chain reaction of treaties.
the only one germany 100% caused unneeded trouble for was belgium.
As for both world wars, france has a habit of pushing germany to fight because they get to arrogant.
Furthermore france actually did go on a genocidal bent right after ww2 in algeria, and even place nazi collaborators in charge of this algerian genocide!
the allies are a lot less clean than we pretend.
We can acknowledge the nazis were evil without simultaneously over-demonizing the german empire and over-praising the allies.
ww1 was a war caused by treaties and hubris
ww2 was a war caused by angry people electing a maniac
> france has a habit of pushing germany to fight because they get to arrogant.
"she was asking for it"
Going to say that about Ukraine, too?
Germany started an invasion of another country. Austria-Hungary only invaded Serbia because of German support.
'Historian Joachim Remak says:
The nation that...can still be held least responsible for the outbreak of the war is France. This is so even if we bear in mind all the revisions of historical judgments, and all the revisions of these revisions, to which we have now been treated....The French, in 1914, entered the war because they had no alternative. The Germans had attacked them. History can be very simple at times.'
Ah yes, France pushing Germany to fight by... getting declared war on in 1914, and flashing that lewd Danzig in 1939. Poor Germany, how could she resist.
In Germany?
Personally I've lost mine ages ago. There is no way to discern truth from propaganda without investing an unsustainable amount of time researching. The internet ceased to be a source of truth when the people with motive realized that the populous get their information from it.
It's fine for technical learning and easily proven facts, but any political information or any with significant economical impact should be considered propaganda, as for every person that actually knows anything about the topic there will be 10 that are paid to spread some agenda
Is it Russia or is it Russia?
either russia is running a major disinformation campaign which requires a certain level of skillset OR russia is running an agent within the foreign gov't. that's what's being asked, not "is it russia"?