Old tensions simmer just below surface as Tusk and Merz to meet in Berlin | Poland

When the Polish and German governments meet in Berlin for annual political talks on Monday – their first since Friedrich Merz became chancellor – Ukraine looks set to dominate the headlines.

Amid growing US pressure for a peace deal with Russia, Warsaw and Berlin will want to send support to Kiev and a signal of unity among central Europe’s largest and most militarily powerful countries.

But beneath the surface, bilateral relations are becoming increasingly complicated. Poland, long considered the junior partner, no longer sees itself in an inferior role. This is due not only to its economic success since the fall of communism in 1989, but also to its avoidance of German policies that it sees as missteps, such as immigration and relations with Russia.

Deputy director and co-chair of the German Institute for Polish Affairs Dr. A study on Polish-German relations.

The study, which tracked mutual feelings over the past 25 years, showed an almost record level of hatred on the Polish side this year; Poles’ positive opinion of the Germans was slightly more than negative. This is in stark contrast to the Germans’ view of the Poles; The survey records the lowest ever percentage of people expressing a negative opinion of their eastern neighbours.

Łada-Konefał says Poland’s mood was fueled by years of anti-German rhetoric by the previous conservative-populist Polish Law and Justice government (PiS), which regularly portrayed its rivals – particularly Poland’s liberal prime minister Donald Tusk – as agents of Berlin involved in anti-Polish collusion. The rising far-right Confederation alliance also regularly claims that Tusk is serving Germany.

“But… these [comments] “It fell on fertile ground: somewhere in the Polish soul… there were deep-seated uncertainties about the Germans… and so these feelings began to resonate,” he says.

The extreme politicization of the relationship also made it difficult for the Tusk government to reset the relationship without first gaining meaningful concessions from Germany, leaving it too passive to shape its own narrative.

“PiS’s aspect of defending Polish identity against Germany and [Tusk] Associate professor of social sciences at SWPS University in Warsaw. “The fact that it represents the ‘hidden German tendency’ is a salient distinction in Polish politics, no matter how unfair and exaggerated, so any action will inevitably be evaluated through this prism,” says Ben Stanley.

Hopes briefly rose this year when Merz chose to make his second foreign trip to Poland, but then faced domestic pressure from the far-right Alternative für Deutschland on immigration, clashing with Warsaw over border controls, a sensitive issue for many Poles.

Analysts say many Poles still hold grudges over Germany’s slow response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and are disappointed that peace talks appear to concern Berlin rather than Warsaw.

Prof Aleks Szczerbiak from the University of Sussex recalls that during the recent joint trip of Polish, German, French and British leaders to Kiev, Merz, Macron and Starmer went to Tusk together in a different carriage.

Szczerbiak says that although the reasons behind this were functional, the symbolism of traveling alone during the tense presidential campaign in Poland was “terrible” and was used by Tusk’s rivals to argue that he was “second-rate” when it came to directing European foreign policy.

Szczerbiak said Germany’s pressure for Poland to take a “more central role” in the talks would send a better signal, reflecting the importance of Poland as Ukraine’s neighbor, logistics hub and home to 1.5 million Ukrainians.

But the tensions most difficult to resolve are the legacy and memory of Nazi Germany’s 1939 invasion of Poland. Polls show that 58 percent of Poles expect the Germans to do more to pay reparations to their country.

In 2022, the Polish parliament almost unanimously accepted a motion He rejected Berlin’s claim that a communist government had waived its compensation rights in the 1950s, emphasizing that Poland had never been properly compensated.

a report, Produced under the PiS governmenthe calculated these at €1.5 trillion (£1.3 trillion), three times Germany’s debt-heavy 2026 budget. Former minister Arkadiusz Mularczyk, who conducted the study, says this is a “conservative” estimate and compares it with the 2 trillion euros the federal republic paid for investment in East Germany after reunification.

Tusk’s government distanced itself from the demand but instead urged Berlin to “think creatively”, especially about the 60,000 living victims of the war. Polish media reported that a one-off payment offer of €200 million (€3,300 per person) was rejected by Warsaw last year as insufficient.

Poland’s new president, Karol Nawrocki, also signaled his support for the issue during a recent trip to Berlin, proposing that Germany invest in the Polish military as part of the agreement.

But when Mularczyk offered to brief German Ambassador to Warsaw Miguel Berger about the report last week, the diplomat refused to discuss it fuels “division that only helps Putin.”

The question of ownership of Nazi-looted works also looms large in this relationship, with a long list of works of art and other items sought by Poland regularly appearing in German collections or at controversial auctions. Polish media reported that the “historic return” of some valuable items looted during the war will take place at the meeting to be held in Berlin on Monday. reported Sunday.

But a much-anticipated memorial to the Polish victims of the Nazis in Berlin has yet to be fully realized. A. temporary memorial stone It was unveiled this summer, but the final monument has not yet been designed or budgeted.

In a sign of intent, the two parties that make up the German government agreed ahead of Monday’s meeting. The Bundestag proposed the decision He called for the work to be accelerated. However, patience with politics is waning on the Polish side.

Prof Robert Traba, deputy chairman of the advisory council of the Foundation for German-Polish Cooperation, warns about the “asymmetry” of information, saying: “Although Germany has been a hot topic in Poland for years, Poland in Germany has been and continues to be a cold topic, or rather, an overlooked topic.”

In 2018, he examined 40 German history handbooks and discovered that only two mentioned the Warsaw uprisings of 1943 and 1944, and none covered the Nazi German occupation of Poland under the General Government.

Traba explains that for the Germans, the postwar reckoning was “about Franco-German and German-Jewish reconciliation.”

“There is almost no space for Polish-German reconciliation and sensitivity to this issue,” he says. The new German republic’s focus on the west meant that “the relationship with the east was in a position of certain superiority for many years”, which further disturbed the Poles.

In this sense, Traba says that the temporary monument in Berlin reflects the policy of Polish-German relations well, even if unintentionally. “These… are not a real relationship between two extremely important partners and neighbors that could give a new direction to European politics, but rather a temporary arrangement,” he says.

“That’s why I’m talking about the momentum we need, emphasizing: we want this done differently.”