Poland asks Germany for war reparations of €1.3 trillion

WARSAW: Poland on Thursday estimated the financial cost of World War II losses to be 1.3 trillion euros (dollars) and said it would "ask Germany to negotiate these reparations".

"It is a major sum of 6.2 trillion" Polish zloty, said Jaroslaw Kaczynski, head of the ruling Law and Justice party and widely considered to be Poland’s de facto leader. Most of this sum "is compensation for the deaths of more than 5.2 million Polish citizens," he stressed.

Kaczynski said that receiving reparations would be a "long and difficult" process. "It is a decision we will implement," he said, speaking on the anniversary of Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939.

Kaczynski was speaking at a conference dedicated to the presentation of a report on Poland’s losses in the 1939-1945 war. Since coming to power in 2015, Poland’s governing Law and Justice (PiS) party has often championed the issue of war reparations.

Work on the reparations report began in 2017, when the conservative government insisted that Germany had a "moral duty" in the matter. Germany has often rejected Poland’s claims, pointing to a 1953 decision by Poland to renounce claims against East Germany.

The German government on Thursday turned down the Polish call to negotiate on reparations. "The German government’s position is unchanged, the reparations issue is closed," a foreign ministry spokesman said in an email to AFP. He cited the 1953 decision, calling it a "significant foundation for Europe’s order today".