WORLD VIEW: The forthcoming enlargement of the EU and a series of imminent general elections are reopening historical scars in relations between the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Germany and Austria.
The decrees issued by the exiled Czechoslovakian president, Edvard Benes, in 1945 stripped some three million Sudeten Germans and tens of thousands of Hungarians of their citizenship and property, prior to their expulsion (with Allied acquiescence) for co-operating with the Nazis. They joined some 14 million ethnic Germans expelled from Eastern Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia at the end of the second World War, whose survivors settled in the two German states after it.
After a long period in which their fate was virtually a taboo subject in Germany (except for the expatriate associations in Bavaria) there has recently been a sudden flourish of interest in the dramatic story of their expulsion. Gunter Grass's latest novel, Im Krebsgang (The walk of a crab), deals with the sinking of the refugee ship, William Gustlof, in the Baltic by the Soviet navy with 10,000 people aboard. It is as if the consolidation of Germany's peaceful relations with its neighbours 13 years after its reunification allows that trauma to be faced more openly and confidently. But this is awakening old fears in several of the accession states.
The issue has been made more political as the EU enlargement negotiations enter their most critical stages, dealing with property rights and land purchase. Poland has just reached an agreement on tax and capital movement, providing for up to 12 years' transition period on land sales and leases and the purchase of holiday homes.
Many Poles fear a surge of investment from former German occupants and owners of farms and land after enlargement, making it a sharply controversial political issue. During his visit to Dublin last week the Polish Foreign Minister, Dr Woldzimierz Cimoszewicz, said compensation for those expelled as demanded by the expatriate associations has never been supported by the German government. Any attempt to do so would raise the deepest questions of responsibility for beginning the war and compensation for its casualties and damage. The Polish President, Mr Aleksander Kwasnievski, said last week "that period should remain closed, in the judicial sense. We must keep the status quo concerning borders after the war".
There are similar concerns about land and property in the Czech Republic. In January the Czech Prime Minister, Mr Milos Zeman (facing elections in June), described the Sudeten Germans as "Hitler's fifth column". He was responding to demands from Austria, notably by the far right leader, Mr Jörg Haider, that the Benes decrees be annulled as a condition for Czech EU membership. In February, the Hungarian Prime Minister, Mr Victor Orban, made a similar demand, recalling the 30,000 ethnic Hungarians expelled from Slovakia in 1945.
On March 11th, Mr Orban met the Austrian Chancellor, Mr Wolfgang Schuessel; the Prime Minister of the German state of Baden-Wuertemberg, Mr Erwin Teufel, and the Bavarian State Secretary, Mr Erwin Huber, at the northern Hungarian town of Esztergom, on the border with Slovakia. They called jointly for the Benes decrees to be annulled before the Czech Republic joins the EU, demanding European co-operation on the issue.
A wider regional meeting in the nearby town of Visegrad, on the Danube, was cancelled earlier because of the row, symbolising the disarray among the accession states who met there for the first time in 1990 on the proposal of the Czech President, Mr Vaclav Havel.
Elections in Germany are also stoking up the issue. The Chancellor, Mr Gerhard Schröder, cancelled a visit to Prague that threatened to be dominated by the Benes decrees. His challenger in the September polls is Mr Edmund Stoiber, Premier of Bavaria, where most of those expelled from Czechoslovakia settled after the war. (In fact they were originally of Austrian rather than German background, having settled in the Sudeten region under the Hapsburg Empire - hence Austria's interest).
EU officials have urged that entry negotiations "should not be burdened by the past" in the words of Mr Guenter Verheugen, the chief negotiator. He has welcomed statements by the Czech and Slovak governments that the Benes decrees are no longer in effect. But they do not want to repeal them officially because this could allow expelled Germans and Hungarians to reclaim confiscated properties. Mr Havel has said restitution cannot be part of the discussion about them.
These disputes may seem far away from Ireland's preoccupations and interests - but that is quite a mistaken view. Dr Cimoszewicz had a clear message for his hosts in Dublin. A second Irish No to the Nice Treaty "would not only complicate but even block the enlargement process" he told a press briefing . "I don't mean to press Irish voters, who have a sovereign right to decide. But it is a matter of fact that they have a responsibility not only for the future of Ireland but for the whole continent".
He said enlargement is a chance to integrate quite different societies and eliminate the division of Europe agreed at Yalta. The Nice Treaty sets out important and necessary institutional agreements to allow enlargement proceed.
It can be seen from the row over the Benes decrees that any prolonged delay in enlargement, such as could be triggered by a second Irish No, would exacerbate such tensions and make it more difficult for governments in the accession states to win their own referendums on agreements involving hard decisions.
Ireland is seen by them as a successful model of catch-up development by a peripheral country. Such goodwill would be lost in a second No. It would also obscure the parallels there are between Ireland's historical circumstances and political development.