The Czech lower house of parliament has approved a resolution opposing plans to hold the annual Sudeten German congress in the Czech city of Brno later this month, reigniting long-running historical tensions over the post-war expulsion of ethnic Germans from former Czechoslovakia.
The non-binding motion was passed on Thursday, May 14th, with the support of Prime Minister Andrej Babiš’s governing coalition, on the initiative of the right-wing Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) party.
It urges the organisers to cancel the 76th Sudeten German Day gathering, scheduled to take place May 22-25 in Brno.
Lawmakers said the chamber opposed the event because of concerns over historical revisionism, the relativisation of Nazi crimes, and any attempts to challenge the Czech Republic’s post-war legal and property settlement, including the Beneš decrees under which around three million Sudeten Germans were expelled and dispossessed after the Second World War.
Opposition parties boycotted the parliamentary vote in protest, accusing the government and SPD of reviving old nationalist divisions for political gain. Martin Kupka, chairman of the centre-right Civic Democratic Party (ODS), described the resolution as an “embarrassment.”
The annual congress of the Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft, representing expelled Sudeten Germans and their descendants, is due to be held in the Czech Republic for the first time following an invitation from the reconciliation-focused cultural initiative Meeting Brno.
Organisers insist the event is intended as a symbol of reconciliation rather than political revisionism.
Former German MEP Bernd Posselt, the association’s chairman, condemned the parliamentary vote as “a farce and caricature of a parliamentary process” and confirmed that the gathering would proceed as planned.
The dispute has also drawn in senior German politicians. Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder, who serves as patron of the Sudeten Germans, and German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt are both expected to attend the congress in Brno.
The controversy has exposed wider divisions within Czech society over how to confront the legacy of the expulsions.
Former Czech president Miloš Zeman recently signed an open letter describing the planned gathering as a deliberate provocation, while several Czech intellectuals, opposition politicians, and civic groups have defended the event as an important gesture of Czech-German reconciliation.
AfD MP Martina Kempf added to the debate this week by arguing that Prague should recognise the suffering caused by the expulsions as an injustice. Czech Foreign Minister Petr Macinka sharply rejected her remarks, saying any discussion of the issue must begin with the Nazi annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938 rather than the events of 1945.
Conservative German outlet Junge Freiheit described the planned gathering in Brno as “a historic breakthrough” and criticised Prague’s response as “historically remarkably short-sighted,” while Czech news site Forum24 argued that “the time for reconciliation has come,” stressing that the Sudeten German association “is in no way a successor” to the pro-Nazi Sudeten German Party of the 1930s.
