Benes Decrees
Benes Decrees
Presidential decrees named after the former Czech President Edvard Benes. They were first decided by the Czech government-in-exile during the Second World War and were formally approved by the new Czech parliament on 5 March 1946.This law can now be found as Constitutional Act No 57/1946 of the Czech Republic. They confiscated the land and property of the Sudeten Germans.
After the war the Czech Government expelled 2.6 million German, Austrian and Hungarian citizens under these decrees and expropriated their property because many of those expelled had supported the German occupation.
Most of the decrees are still legally valid in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. They can be regarded retrospectively as a form of legal discrimination against German citizens.
A group of Germans brought a case challenging their validity before the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg with a view to getting the property of their relatives back.
They failed to win. In late 2009 Czech President Vaclav Klaus feared that the validity of the Benes decrees might be challenged in the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg under the provisions of the new Lisbon Treaty which he opposed.
There was fear that the new constitutional principle of equality before the law for all EU citizens, the "additional citizenship" provision of the Lisbon Treaty, together with the Charter of Fundamental Rights encompassing a right to property whch is made legally binding for the first time through Article 6 TEU, might lead the judges of the EU Court of Justice to take a different view of the validity of the Beses decrees in some future court case.
Vaclav Klaus obtained a political guarantee that the Lisbon Treaty would not touch property rights arising from the Second World War before he would append his signatiure to it as Czech President and so complete the ratification process of the Czech Republic. He also obtained a Czech opt-out from the European Charter of Fundamental Rights.
The former German Vice-President of the European Commission, Günter Verheugen, criticised the representatives of the former "Sudeten-Germans" for still asserting property claims in relation to countries bordering Germany.
