Dhe dispute between Germany and Italy over individual compensation payments for Italian victims of Nazi crimes during the German occupation from September 1943 to April 1945 enters the next round. On Friday evening, Berlin filed a lawsuit against Rome with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague and requested provisional legal protection in the conflict, which has recently come to a head.
The federal government felt compelled to take this step because a court in Rome wants to decide on May 25 whether, in order to enforce the Italian courts’ recognized claims for reparations by Nazi victims, properties belonging to the Federal Republic of Germany in Rome should be forcibly auctioned off.
Berlin is hoping for provisional legal protection
The properties and buildings threatened by foreclosure are those of the German School, the Goethe Institute, the German Archaeological Institute and the German Historical Institute in Rome, as can be seen from Berlin’s complaint. Berlin hopes that the ICJ will grant Germany interim legal protection before the May 25 court date in Rome.
In the pleading, Rome demands that Italy must ensure that no new civil proceedings are brought against Germany before Italian courts. The highest UN court will only make a final judgment on the matter in a few years.
A United Nations flag flies in front of the International Court of Justice in The Hague (archive image)
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Image: AP
Germany appealed to the ICJ for the first time at the end of 2008 to have it checked whether judgments made in Italy, according to which Germany had to pay individual compensation, were compatible with international law. With its judgment of 2012, the UN court confirmed Berlin’s view that the issue of financial reparations after the end of the Second World War had been resolved in several bilateral agreements and that the Federal Republic also enjoyed state immunity against individual claims for compensation.
Italy approved a good two dozen new procedures
The Federal Republic signed an initial agreement with Italy on June 2, 1961, and the treaty came into force in July 1963. According to the agreement, the agreed 40 million Deutsche Marks were to be distributed by the government in Rome to Italians who were “affected by National Socialist persecution measures for reasons of race, belief or world view” and who had “suffered damage to their freedom or health”. Survivors of victims also received payments under the bilateral agreement.
Regardless of the ICJ judgment of 2012, according to Berlin’s brief filed in The Hague on Friday, Italian courts have approved a good two dozen new cases over the past ten years. In 2014, the Italian constitutional court also ruled that Nazi victims and their surviving dependents can generally sue the Federal Republic for compensation. The principle of state immunity does not apply in the case of war crimes or crimes against humanity.
The dispute over late collective and non-payment of individual compensation payments for Nazi crimes burdens the Federal Republic’s relations with several countries that were occupied by the Wehrmacht during World War II.
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