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Germany enjoying more comfortable ties with Poland
Germany's delicate relationship with Poland, long overshadowed by memories of World War Two, has undergone a change for the better but some lingering tensions and new worries over jobs remain. The warm welcome given by Polish Catholics to the German who succeeded their revered countryman, the late Pope John Paul II, underscored the changed climate. For years, the defining image in German-Polish relations was former Chancellor Willy Brandt kneeling in contrition in 1970 before the monument to the Warsaw Jewish ghetto, site of one of the most brutal Nazi atrocities in wartime Poland. Poland's entry to the European Union a year ago, with strong German support, gave a new dimension to their relations and the new pope has given them another unexpected boost. For Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski and his German counterpart Horst Koehler, opening a "German Polish year" on Saturday, relations are as warm as they have been since World War Two ended in Europe in 1945. Ceremonies to mark the 60th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany are taking place across Europe over the next two weeks. Warsaw and Berlin have teamed up effectively a number of times recently. A report commissioned in Warsaw and Berlin helped stifle a row over claims by a group representing ethnic Germans driven out of Poland at the end of the war. At the same time, the two cooperated in a Polish-led effort by the EU to mediate in last year's disputed Ukrainian election and have continued to work together closely with Ukraine since. Thousands of German firms operate in Poland, a market that has been the best for German companies of any of the new EU states, a study by business consultancy Roedl & Partner said. ON ICE Whether the harmony persists is another matter, particularly if the dispute over wartime compensation by ethnic German exiles erupts again. "It hasn't been resolved once and for all," said Sabina Woelkner, a specialist on German-Polish relations at the German Council on Foreign Relations. "It's on ice for the moment." Poles have also been angered by a noticeable recent tendency in Germany to focus on German suffering in the war in a manner that has sometimes seemed to show Germans as its real victims. "The whole compensation issue is more than just a legal question and it's unlikely to have a purely legal solution, it's really a wider social issue," Woelkner said. There are also lingering reminders of the Old Europe vs New Europe split conjured by US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld over the Iraq war. Poland supported the US-led invasion while Germany firmly opposed it. While differences over the war have receded, some economic issues have come to the fore. The more free market agenda of newer EU states has caused disputes over plans to open the EU services market and over what Berlin sees as unfairly low taxes to attract foreign investors. On the German side, low-paid Polish workers have become a worrying threat as companies have shifted jobs to lower cost locations in eastern Europe and Polish tradesmen have undercut German rivals. With five million Germans out of work, stories of abattoir workers replaced by Poles on a fraction of German wages, have featured in campaign rhetoric ahead of a major regional election next month. Institutional links have helped take the emotional heat out of many issues with a European dimension but they resonate at a popular level, perhaps inevitably given the tortured history. But even here, there may be a more hopeful side. "There may be conflicts but at least that means that the two sides have something real to say to one another," Woelkner said. |
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