Vaclav Klaus wants an exemption from part of a rights charter in the Lisbon Treaty, writes DANIEL McLAUGHLIN
PRESIDENT VACLAV Klaus’s latest objection to the Lisbon Treaty touches on one of the most sensitive chapters of modern Czech history.
The staunch eurosceptic is demanding an exemption for the Czech Republic from part of a rights charter that will become binding when the treaty comes into force – something that can only happen when he adds his long-awaited signature to the document.
Klaus fears that ratifying the treaty in its current form will expose his country to claims for property that was taken from three million ethnic Germans who were expelled from Czechoslovakia after the second World War. They were among at least 12 million Germans who were forced from their homes across eastern Europe after the defeat of the Third Reich, most from Czechoslovakia, Poland and land that became part of the Soviet Union.
In Czechoslovakia the expulsions were concentrated in the Sudetenland, which was home to most of the 3.1 million Germans living in the country at that time and who comprised almost a quarter of its entire population.
The centuries-old German community in Sudetenland was deeply dissatisfied by the peace settlements of the first World War, which dissolved the Austro-Hungarian empire to which they belonged and placed them not under rule from Berlin or Vienna but inside newly formed Czechoslovakia.
This discontent was brought to boiling point by the Great Depression, which took a heavy toll on the industrialised Sudetenland, creating a fertile breeding ground for political extremism. Many local Germans heartily supported Adolf Hitler’s drive to annexe Sudetenland, and welcomed the arrival of Nazi troops.
The ensuing occupation of Czechoslovakia, and particularly the brutal reprisals for the 1944 assassination in Prague of senior Nazi Reinhard Heydrich, hardened Czechoslovak opinion against the Sudeten Germans, and they were immediately targeted as collaborators when the war ended.
At least 20,000 ethnic Germans were killed in reprisals and forced marches before a formal process of resettlement was established at the Potsdam conference of July 1945 and under decrees issued by post-war Czechoslovak president Eduard Benes. Only about 200,000 ethnic Germans remained in Czechoslovakia after the resettlement programme of 1946, mostly those who could prove their anti-Nazi activities during wartime or whose expertise was needed to restart Sudetenland’s industry.
The so-called Benes Decrees stripped almost all Sudeten Germans – and about 50,000 Hungarians – of their Czechoslovak citizenship and property rights, expelled them from the country, and opened up a deep sore in relations between Prague and neighbouring states.
German, Austrian and Hungarian politicians often deride the Czech Republic for upholding the Benes Decrees, but they remain almost sacrosanct for many Czechs.
Klaus has been a particularly staunch defender of the decrees, and even said before his country joined the EU in 2004 that he would rather scrap its bid for accession than be forced to revoke them.