The appointment should take place soon, according to a spokesman for the Polish foreign ministry on Monday: The former reparations commissioner Arkadiusz Mularczyk is to become the new deputy foreign minister.
With the change of personnel, Poland’s national-conservative PiS government is sending another signal for a confrontational course in its policy toward Berlin. Mularczyk will succeed Szymon Szynkowski vel Sek, who recently moved to the post of Europe Minister.
PiS MP Mularczyk, 51, chaired a parliamentary commission that put the damage caused by Nazi Germany in World War II at €1.3 trillion in a report presented in September.
In a diplomatic note to Berlin, the Polish government has meanwhile referred to its claim for compensation. This demand is accompanied by increasingly sharp anti-German tones from leading PiS representatives.
PiS boss Jaroslaw Kaczynski said at a weekend appearance in Zamosc, south-east Poland, that Germany treats Poland “racist” because, unlike many other countries, it has not paid the country any compensation.
The federal government rejects any claims for reparations. For them, the question is closed with the 2 4 treaty on the foreign policy aspects of German unity.
