Vienna - An Austrian government minister from the far-right Freedom Party said the Czech Republic and Slovenia should be barred from joining the EU unless they rescinded post-war decrees seizing German-owned property. The comments by Defence Minister Mr Herbert Scheibner, in an interview published today, contradicted the foreign ministry position that there is no link between the two issues.
Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Germans were driven out of former Nazi-occupied countries and had their property seized after the second World War. Austria was part of Hitler's Third Reich from 1938 to 1945.