Abstract:

In Spite of the Friendly Cooperation Treaty of 1992, and the Declaration of Reconciliation of 1997, relations between Germany and the Czech Republic remain troubled by problems inherited from the Second World War: the expulsion of Sudetan Germans on one side, and compensation for Czech victims of nazism on the other. Ten years after German Reunification and Vaclav Havel’s speech in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, these questions are stakes in domestic politics in Berlin, Prague, and, also, Vienna. They feed populist currents in Germany and Austria and alter the terms of the debate over the young republic’s entry into the European Union. If they persist, these obstacles, bequeathed by history, could even defer and complicate the European enlargement process to the countries of Central and Eastern Europe.

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