Poland’s foreign minister said she does not know when a proposed bill on
compensation for property seized by the Nazis and the Communist regime will
pass. “It is inappropriate for a government
member to interfere in a parliamentary procedure,” Anna Fotyga told The Jerusalem Post during a visit to Israel on Holocaust Remembrance Day.
A bill has been sitting in
Parliament for several months that would pay 15 percent compensation to former
Jewish and non-Jewish property owners. Poland and Belarus are the only countries in the
former Eastern Bloc that have not 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 Post, adding that Poland is one
of the poorest members of the European Union.
Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski had told American Jewish leaders that he
expected Parliament to pass a compensation law by the end of the year.
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