Poland’s claim for reparations for WWII damages from Germany was one of the topics of Thursday’s talks between the Polish and German presidents, Andrzej Duda and Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Duda’s aide has said.
The Polish foreign minister on Monday signed a formal note to the government in Berlin, demanding compensation for the losses Poland suffered at the hands of Nazi Germany between 1939 and 1945. On September 1, Poland announced that the losses totalled EUR 1.3 trillion.
Jakub Kumoch, who heads Duda’s international policy bureau, said on Thursday that during a face-to-face meeting in Malta Duda and Steinmeier “agreed that this is a rather difficult issue that both countries must resolve.”
“Both presidents… admitted this is a dispute of a legal nature, while their task is to build relations between the societies of Poland and Germany so that they suffer as little as possible from such disputes and continue to develop positively,” Kumoch said.
Asked whether, according to Steinmeier, the question of war reparations was a closed issue, as German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock has put it, Kumoch replied that he had not heard the German president use such wording.