European Foundation Intelligence Digest - Issue No. 144 / 12th June 2002

Germany re-opens the Sudeten German question

As the Czech Republic goes to the polls on 14th and 15th June, the country faces the question of its EU membership with increasing unease. In May, the European Parliament adopted a resolution demanding that the Beneš decrees be examined for their compatibility with EU law. At the same time, the Chairman of the EP, Pat Cox, has set up a three-man commission to examine the question. With these two events, the EU has made the issue of the expulsion of the Germans from Czechoslovakia in 1945 into a European issue, connecting it organically with the Czech admission to the EU. This is precisely the outcome the Czechs wanted to avoid, preferring to keep the issue bilateral between the Czech Republic and Germany, Austria and Hungary. [For information on the Beneš decrees, see the Czech government site: http://www.czechembassy.org ].[ For the German perspective, see http://www.sudeten.de/bas/index.htm and http://www.bund-der-vertriebenen.de ]. Prior to this, in an almost incredible renversement des alliances the German Interior Minister paid a visit to the congress of the Sudeten Germans Association on 18th May. For decades reviled as a bunch of Nazi irredentists, the Sudeten Germans are now suddenly in vogue with the New World Order, as it prepares to gobble up the Czech Republic. The demand, pushed largely by German and Austrian politicians, and supported by Members of the European Parliament (including by the British Conservative Party MEPs, who have collaborated in the German-Austrian carve-up), that the Beneš decrees be rescinded if the Czech Republic is to join the EU, can only have as a consequence that this small country will be swamped with claims for property restitution by the descendants of the 3- million Germans expelled after the war.

Now even an old leftie like Otto Schily – who is an old friend of Horst Mahler, the founder of the Baader-Meinhof gang – has visited the Sudeten Germans’ Congress to lend his and the German government’s support to their long-standing demand that the decrees be abrogated. Schily told the Sudeten Germans that it was “unjust” to drive out whole populations: this is the one thing the Sudeten Germans have been going on about for years. While the expulsion may indeed have caused injustice, it is of course also the Sudeten Germans’ desire, once the Beneš decrees are rescinded, to reclaim the property that was taken from their ancestors sixty years ago. This could well give rise to fresh injustice. The president of the Bavarian parliament, Johann Böhm, has said that there is much land which “used to be German and which now belongs to the Czech state”.

The Sudeten German Congress was also addressed by the Christian Democrat candidate for Chancellor, the Bavarian prime minister Edmund Stoiber. Stoiber used his speech to pay homage to the 90 year-old Siegfried Zogelmann, a campaigner for the rights of Sudeten Germans who, having joined the Nazi party as a Czechoslovak citizen in 1938, worked in the office of the Nazi Governor of the “Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia” Reinhard Heydrich. [For both Schily’s and Stoiber’s speeches, in German, see http://www.sudetendeutscher-tag.de/, under “Reden”] Stoiber naturally promised to make the Sudeten question a European issue.

There is now therefore an organic link between EU policy towards the Czech republic, and German policy towards that country. The Federal Chairman of the Sudeten German Association, Bernd Posselt, a MEP, was appointed on 7th February to the post of Vice-Chairman of the joint committee of the European Parliament and the Czech Parliament: the purpose of this committee is to oversee the process of Czech admission to the EU. Posselt, who became a CDU MEP in 1994, has for years been active in the radically euro-fanatical association, Pan Europa. In 1998, he was appointed the president of Pan-Europa Union Deutschland. One of the goals of that association is to promote group rights for ethnic minorities in states on Germany’s borders, including those of the “Sudeten Germans”: Posselt also works on minority languages in the EP. In 1994, he called for the establishment over the Sudetenland of “a supranational legal order based on the traditions of the Holy Roman Empire.” He said that such a supranational order could “end disputes about areas of national sovereignty and state borders” – even though there is not supposed to be any border dispute between Germany and the Czech Republic. It has always been one of Posselt’s main policy goals to link the abrogation of the Beneš decrees to the admission of the Czech republic to the EU. [www.german-foreign-policy.org]

II. Other news from Mitteleuropa

Verheugen says Klaus is allowed to win

The EU commissar with responsibility for enlargement has graciously said that a victory in the forthcoming Czech elections by Václav Klaus’ Civic Democratic Union would not jeopardize the Czech Republic’s chances of accession to the EU, even though Klaus is usually regarded as a Eurosceptic. [RFE Newsline, 6th June 2002] Anti-EU feeling has risen sharply in the Czech republic, thanks to the decision by the European Parliament and by its president to make the revocation of the Beneš decrees into a European issue: a motion was voted to this effect last week by the EP, while the President of the European Parliament, Pat Cox, has set up a three-man commission to examine the compatibility of the decrees with EU law. This was in direct contradiction to the express desire of the Czech government and opposition, which lobbied the European Parliament not to make the decrees into a European issue but instead to keep it bilateral between the Czech Republic and Germany/Austria.

The courtesy of allowing democracy to decide the outcome of an election has not, however, been extended to neighbouring Slovakia. The New World Order, including the European Union, has repeatedly said that it could not accept a victory by Vladimir Meciar’s Movement for a Democratic Slovakia. The same message was repeated by a US senator, George Voinovich, who warned against any return to power by Meciar or the HDZ, saying that it would complicate Slovakia’s entry into Nato. This hostility from the West persists in spite of strenuous efforts by the HDZ to convince the outside world that they are in favour of both the EU and Nato. [RFE Newsline, 31st May 2002]

Big row within German FDP

A huge row has broken out in Germany over alleged renascent anti-Semitism. Two rows, indeed, have been running in parallel, each as oblique as the other. First, there was the withdrawal by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of the serialization of a novel by Martin Walser, “Death of a Critic”. In this fictional work, an author kills a literary critic because of a bad review: the fictional critic is quite clearly recognizable as Marcel Reich-Ranicki, a famous Jewish personality. The second row involves criticism of Israel made by the General Secretary of the Free Democrats, Jürgen Möllemann, and a subsequent quarrel with the Deputy Head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Michael Friedman. Möllemann said that Ariel Sharon and Michael Friedman were themselves responsible for anti-Semitic feeling. Möllemann’s statements were immediately attacked by his political enemies as an attempt to turn the FDP into a party like its opposite number in Austria, the Freedom Party, which used to be led by Jörg Haider. Anti-Israeli sentiments have also been expressed by Jamal Karsli, a member of one of the FDP’s regional structures: Karsli had to resign as a result, on the demand of the leader of the party, Guido Westerwelle. The FDP’s opinion poll rating has dropped from 13% to 10% as a result of these arguments, but the party is still evidently angling for a place in a future coalition government with the Social Democrats if necessary. Elections are being held in Germany in September. [Handelsblatt, 11th June 2002]

German unemployment rises

The latest seasonally adjusted figures released by the Federal Employment Ministry show an unexpected rise of 60,000. The expected figure had been 8,800. The unadjusted figure of jobless fell to 3,946,000; 78,000 fewer than in April but 225,600 more than in May last year. This is a big disappointment for the German government. Both the German Chancellor and Walter Riester, the employment minister, had confidently predicted that the seasonally adjusted figures would fall. Riester had said in the middle of May that he expected “well above 100,000” fewer people out of work. Employment experts had been speaking of a drop of up to 150,000. [Handelsblatt, 31st May 2002] There is bad news, too, on the monetary front. The money supply measure M3 is growing too fast, i.e. inflationary pressures are building up in the euro zone. It rose by 7.5% instead of the target rise of 4.5%. Although this would normally require a rise in interest rates, the ECB left them unchanged because the pick-up in the euro zone economy remains fragile. It is said to be likely that they will rise in late summer, if the economic recovery in the euro zone is confirmed. [Handelsblatt, 6th June 2002]

Germany blocks subsidy agreement

Germany is blocking an agreement on the agricultural subsidies which will be paid to new EU member states. It refuses to sign any accord before the general election in Germany on 21st September. Since the Spanish presidency is determined to have a positive outcome at the Seville summit in June, this means that the question might be kicked into touch until December, a date by which negotiations on accession were supposed to be finished. This means – as the Digest has never tired of pointing out – that none of the really big issues connected with enlargement, and especially not agriculture, have been properly addressed. The candidate countries are pushing for levels of agricultural subsidy equal to those given to current member states. They have spent the last decade integrating into their legal systems the 80,000 pages or so of expensive European legislation and they now argue that agricultural subsidies are as much a part of the indivisible acquis communautaire as those laws. The Commission responded to their demand for 100% of the subsidies by offering 25% on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. But Germany is blocking any shift in the Commission’s position because, as the biggest net contributor to the budget, it does not want to have to fork out any more payments. Germany is instead insisting that the CAP, and especially the system of direct aids, be “reformed”, which is supposed to happen next year. France, for her part, wants the system of direct aids to continue for another 10 years – a system out of which her own farmers do so well. Dominique de Villepin, the French foreign minister, has said that he thinks that direct aids do form part of the acquis. [Laurent Zecchini, Le Monde, 11th June 2002]

Germany wins on coal subsidies for herself

When it comes to paying themselves subsidies, however, the German position is completely the opposite. Germany has just obtained agreement from the European Commission to carry on showering her miners with money until 2010. The level of subsidy is theoretically supposed to go downwards as that date approaches but, since the Commission has decided to create a “committee” in 2006 to study the question of whether they have or not – the classic bureaucratic way of burying an issue - all the signs are that these subsidies will go on forever. This deal was the result of some negotiation or other with France over an entirely unrelated matter: this is the reality of the supposed wonders of inter-governmental co-operation on which the EU is so proudly based.: pork, pork and pork [Handelsblatt, 6th June 2002]

Enlargement runs into the sands

Scepticism is said to be rising that enlargement will go ahead. The final decisions on which new member states to admit is supposed to be taken in November. This is then to be followed in December by a decision of the EU heads of state and a vote in the European Parliament. Up to 10 new members would then be admitted at the beginning of 2004. This timetable is looking increasingly ragged, however – and not just because of the problems outlined above. The candidate states themselves are becoming increasingly Eurosceptic, where fears are rising that EU membership will simply lead to everything being sold off and closed down in the new member states, with the corresponding effect on jobs. If support for enlargement is low in France (39%) Austria (46%) and Germany (47%) it has also fallen in the candidate countries themselves. Western economists are now generally agreed that enlargement will bring no economic benefits to Western Europe, because any positive effects from increased exports have already come into play, as borders are already effectively open. By contrast, enlargement will drain the EU budget to such an extent that it cannot survive in its present form, according to experts. [Malte Fischer, Witrschaftswoche, Handelsblatt, 7th June 2002]

III. Other European News

Convention wants to establish EU border police

According to reports, the inhabitants of Georgia are expecting a big police action in the Pankisi gorge, a mountainous region on the border with Chechnya where American troops have recently been deployed, supposedly to fight terrorism. It is alleged, notably by the Americans and the Russians, that the place is infested with Al-Qaida and other Muslim terrorists from over the border. But the mayor of the local town strenuously denies that there are any terrorists at all. The Mayor of Duisi said that Russian and Georgian politicians were deliberately misrepresenting the situation in the gorge for their own purposes. [Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 10th June 2002] The FAZ reporter who went to see what was going on in the gorge reported that all was quiet there – and then delivered all the usual stuff about how everyone says the place is a hotbed of Muslim fundamentalist terrorism. This report seems to confirm the impression left by General Peter Pace, Vice-Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, who was repeatedly asked on 27th February 2002 why troops were being sent into Georgia. Despite insistent questioning, Pace refused to confirm that there was a specific terrorist threat in Georgia. [Department of Defense official transcript, 30th May 2002]

Policing the Pankisi

The outgoing Czech prime minister, Milos Zeman, has said that the election of Edmund Stoiber as German Chancellor in this autumn's elections "would not be conducive to the further development of Czech-German relations". He said Stoiber was one of "those politicians who always look to the past because they have nothing to say about the future", a reference to Stoiber's strongly anti-Czech stance on the question of the Sudeten Germans and their expulsion from Czechoslovakia after the war. Zeman's deputy in the Social Democratic Party, Vladimir Spidla, has said that the expulsion of 3-4 million Sudeten Germans was "far sighted" and "one of the sources of peace". This naturally caused great outrage in Germany. Spidla insisted that all property matters had been resolved at the Paris conference in 1952 and that "neither the Czech Social Democrats nor any other relevant political force (would) open the way to the restitution of property to the Sudeten Germans." The Austrian parliament, meanwhile, has complained about the hardening of Czech attitudes and has expressed regret that the Czech parliament had recently voted overwhelmingly in favour of the Benes decrees. The president of the Austrian parliament, however, said emphatically that the Sudeten German question should not be connected with the question of Czech EU membership. This corresponds to the Czech position on the matter. [Die Welt, 22nd May 2002]

Mr. Solana goes to Belgrade

Javier Solana, the foreign policy supreme of the European Union, has travelled to Belgrade to oversee the transformation of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia into a new common state of Serbia and Montenegro. This is supposedly a “compromise” between the Montenegrins’ desire for independence and the international community’s desire to hold Yugoslavia together, especially including the territory of Kosovo. In reality, the solution is exactly what the Montenegrin leadership has in fact always been calling for, in spite of its talk about independence. [Handelsblatt, 10th June 2002]

Latvia lays it on the line

The prime minister of Latvia, a candidate country for EU membership, has said that he regards the forthcoming second referendum on the Nice treaty on Ireland – which has not even been announced to the Irish people yet – as “a cause for concern.” Prime Minister Berzins said, “Last time I met with the Irish prime minister, he promised that the political elite in Ireland would do everything possible to make the outcome of the upcoming referendum a
positive one for EU Expansion.” [The Baltic Times, 6th – 12th June 2002] He thereby continued to peddle the myth that the Nice treaty is necessary for EU enlargement, as well as driving another nail into the coffin of the idea that the states of Europe can any longer be considered democracies.

Koštunica lashes out at Hague witnesses

The president of Yugoslavia has said that the democratic states of the world must react against claims made by witnesses in the trial of Slobodan Miloševic at The Hague to the effect that all Serbian politicians had paramilitary formations in Kosovo. He said that this was tantamount to alleging collective guilt for the Serbian people. He was speaking with reference to the testimony of a former KLA commander in the village of Racak, where, in January 1999, an alleged massacre took place. The Serbs have always maintained that the village was a KLA stronghold and that the dead bodies were those of KLA fighters, not civilians. The KLA commander, Shukri Buja, confirmed in his testimony that Racak had indeed been an important KLA base; that many villagers belonged to the KLA; and that the village had a strategic importance for controlling other parts of the region. [Le Monde, 7th June 2002; see transcripts of hearings on 5th and 6th June, http://www.un.org/icty/latest/index.htm] He then added his allegation about Serbian politicians. When asked, Buja said with a smile that he was not sure about the number of Serbs he had killed. [Tanjug, 8th June 2002] This statement appeared to conflict with the testimony of the president of Kosovo, Ibrhim Rugova, who refused to admit that any Serbs had ever been killed by Albanians. [See, e.g. transcript for 3rd May 2002, http://www.un.org/icty/latest/index.htm]

Arab FN candidate victim of racist attack

A prominent candidate for Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front party, who is of Arab origin, has been the victim of a racist attack by anti-FN activists. Frid Smahi who stood as the FN candidate in the legislative elections in the 16th arrondissement of Paris found graffiti in the hallway of his house saying “Arabi Smahi go home.” Smahi said that he was deeply traumatised by this attack. He added that numerous Jewish residents in the same building told him they would be voting for him. An elderly Jewish man said to Smahi that he would vote FN but that he had one or two doubts about some people in the party. Smahi replied, “Sir, if I hear one anti-Arab or one anti-Jewish remark by anyone in the FN, I will personally punch whoever made it.” Smahi added that he wanted to be a model for reconciliation between Jews and Arabs “united in their love of France”. The previous week, a group of FN activists of Maghrebin origin were examined by police while putting up posters. Initially, the police tried to get the young Arabs to clear off but when they saw who they were putting up their posters for, they suddenly became very friendly and wished the candidate (Smahi) good luck. Smahi said on his two centre-right opponents in the 16th arrondissement, “We have had an excellent and very courteous campaign, with each side free to express his point of view.”