Stoiber attacks Prague expulsion decrees

Edmund Stoiber, the Bavarian challenger to Chancellor Gerhard Schröder in Germany's forthcoming election, said on 19 May 2002 that the Benes decrees which deprived some 3 million ethnic Germans and Hungarians of Czechoslovak citizenship, land and property after the second world war, were incompatible with European values and laws and should be scrapped. The European Parliament has asked a panel of experts to assess the compatibility of the decrees with EU law.