A spectre over Central Europe

摘要

Has Central Europe come to terms with the second world war? When Tony Blair visited Prague on an arms-selling mission earlier this year, he was assailed by Czech journalists. But not for details of the fighter aircraft he was trying to flog: what they wanted to know was Britain's position on the Benes decrees. The Benes what? Mr Blair looked at his notes, and flannelled. Well he might. The decrees, providing a legal basis for the eviction of ethnic Germans, the "Sudeten Germans", from Czechoslovakia, were issued by President Edvard Benes in 1945. Yet they are still a live political issue―and a growing one. They have been used by populist politicians across Central Europe. They figured in Hungary's elections in April and in the Czech ones in June. They will figure in the Slovak and the German elections next month. They could even threaten the enlargement of the European Union.