Verheugen rules out any link between Benes Decrees and EU accession

The commissioner for European Union enlargement, Guenter Verheugen, has confirmed that the debate over the controversial Benes Decrees will have no impact on the Czech Republic's accession to the EU. In a joint statement drafted with Czech Prime Minister Milos Zeman on Thursday the comissioner said that the decrees were no longer legally effective, adding that property restitution was not a European matter, but a matter for the Czech Republic. In recent months the Benes Decrees, which sanctioned the expulsion of some 2.5 million ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia after the Second World War, had been the subject of renewed discontent among Austrian, German, and Hungarian politicians. Some had called for the annulment of the Benes decrees as a pre-EU accession requirement for the Czech Republic.