17 April 2007
Poland's foreign minister, Anna Fotyga, has said she does not know when a proposed bill on compensation for property seized by the Nazis and the Communist regime would be passed. "It is inappropriate for a government member to interfere in a parliamentary procedure," Fotyga told the Jerusalem Post” during a visit to Israel, where she attended ceremonies marking Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The Polish Sejm (parliament) has been deliberating a bill that would allow for a 15 per cent compensation payment to former property owners. Poland and Belarus are the only countries in Central and Eastern Europe that have not yet passed a law dealing with property taken by the Nazis and Communists. "We have to find some equilibrium between our budgetary obligations and the need to fulfill our obligations according to international law," Fotyga told the newspaper, adding that Poland was one of the poorest members of the European Union. Last month, Poland’s Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski told a delegation of the Jewish Claims Conference that he expected parliament to pass a compensation law by the end of the year.
