Enlarge image
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis with Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2019
Photo: Kay Nietfeld / picture alliance / dpa
Greece insists on its reparation demands: Shortly before the 80th anniversary of the German attack on Greece in World War II, the Foreign Ministry declared that the question of compensation was still open from the Greek perspective.
“The question remains open until our demands have been met.
These demands are valid and active and they are asserted by any means, "said ministry spokesman Alexandros Gennimatas of the dpa news agency on request.
Negotiations would have a positive effect on Greek-German relations.
The Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras made the reparation claims against Germany an election issue in 2015.
During the refugee crisis, however, the topic took a back seat.
Greece asked Germany to negotiate reparations again in June 2019.
In October this demand was rejected by the German side.
The government of today's Conservative Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis then reaffirmed in January 2020 that the reparations issue was open to them.
Nazi Germany invaded Greece and Yugoslavia on April 6, 1941.
Up until 1944, the SS and the Wehrmacht carried out numerous massacres in Greece.
They called this retaliation for partisan attacks.
Tens of thousands of Greek civilians were killed in the war.
A Greek parliamentary commission estimated the amount of war damage Germany caused in the country to be at least 289 billion euros - including a forced loan that Greece had to grant the Deutsche Reichsbank during the war.
The country had already considered seizing German property in April 2019.
With the adoption of a report, the parliament gave the Greek government the task of pulling out all the legal and diplomatic registers available to it so that Germany would recognize the reparation payments.
Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras assured MPs that he would do everything possible.
For the federal government in Berlin, on the other hand, the reparations issue is legally and politically concluded with the Two-Plus-Four Treaty on the Foreign Policy Consequences of German Unity of 1990.
In the treaty between the Federal Republic of Germany, the GDR and the four former occupation powers USA, Soviet Union, France and Great Britain, reparations in Greece are not expressly mentioned.
In addition, numerous states attacked and occupied by Nazi Germany, such as Greece and Poland, were not involved in the negotiations.
kha / dpa