Czech PM backs minister’s participation in Sudeten German association meeting

Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka has justified a government minister attending a meeting of the Sudeten German Landsmannschaft association last weekend saying that given today’s state of Europe the Czech Republic needed allies. Sobotka’s comments came in an interview with the daily Právo. Christian Democrat Minister for Culture, Daniel Herman, attended the meeting in Nuremburg last Saturday. The Prime Minister said the leadership of the Sudeten association has signalled it wants to drop claims for the return of property after around 3 million ethnic Germans were expelled from Czechoslovakia at the end of WWII. This, he added, was a significant sign the association wanted to focus on the future. Sobotka stressed though that it was the Sudeten Germans that contributed initially to the break up of Czechoslovakia and the expulsion of Czechs from border territories where the Germans were in the majority in 1938.