Bavarian PM calls for dialogue between Czechs and Sudeten Germans

The Prime Minister of Bavaria, Horst Seehofer, has asked the Czech government to start a dialogue with the Sudeten Germans, a community whose members were expelled from Czechoslovakia after the end of WWII. Speaking at a Sudeten German conference in Augsburg, Germany, on Sunday, Mr Seehofer said the motto of the Czech presidency of the EU “Europe without barriers” meant no one should be excluded from a dialogue, particularly those who became “victims of the 20th century history”. Spokesperson of the Sudeten German association and MEP Bernd Posselt said that Czech politicians should finally scrap the Beneš decrees. These were issued by President Edvard Beneš after the war and became the legal basis for the expulsion of some three million ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia.