Polish president slams Tusk for saying Poland will drop German reparations claims

President Andrzej Duda took aim at Prime Minister Donald Tusk for saying Poland had given up on war reparations claims against Germany launched by the previous conservative PiS government during a joint press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Warsaw on Tuesday. Tusk and Scholz held a joint press briefing after the Polish-German intergovernmental consultations in Warsaw on Tuesday, during which they were asked about the reparations claims for Nazi crimes during World War II made by Poland’s previous conservative PiS (ECR) government. PiS, which lost power to the Tusk-led coalition in December, sent a diplomatic note to Berlin in 2022 asking for €1.3 trillion in war reparations. Although Poland’s communist government renounced all claims to war reparations in 1953 under pressure from the USSR, the PiS government argued that the agreement was invalid because Poland was unable to negotiate fair compensation at a time when it was dependent. Berlin has consistently rejected Poland’s reparations claims, arguing that all World War II-related financial claims were settled by the 1990 Two-plus-Four treaty that allowed Germany’s reunification. After acknowledging the German government’s position, reiterated by Scholz, Tusk insisted that he was “not disappointed” by it. “In a legal sense, the problem...