Beneš Decrees and Their Retrospective Application
The Beneš Decrees are a series of regulations adopted by the Czechoslovak government-in-exile and issued by the President of the Republic during the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in the World War II. The decrees aimed to establish the foundations of the post-war state. President Eduard Beneš issued 141 decrees between July 21, 1940, and October 27, 1945 (following April 4, 1945, the Slovak National Council also adopted resolutions, which shall be interpreted alongside presidential decrees). 13 decrees pertained to the German and Hungarian minorities, effectively establishing their collective guilt. Individuals belonging to the German and Hungarian minorities were stripped of their citizenship, denied access to work, pensions, and healthcare, and their properties were confiscated. Slovakia continues to apply the Beneš Decrees retroactively to this day. In 2020, the European Court of Human Rights also recognized this legal practice in the case of Bosits v. Slovakia. The legal basis for the confiscations is the Resolution no. 104/1945 of the Slovak National Council on the confiscation and swift distribution of agricultural land of Germans, Hungarians, and traitors and enemies of the Slovak nation. In the course of its implementation, authorities examined each individual’s ethnic background and issued confiscation orders accordingly which were entered into the land registry, and the property was taken from the individual. However, between 1945 and 1948, many individual decisions were made erroneously, and in practice, the state did not confiscate the respective land. Currently, courts and state authorities seize property from individuals on the basis that their land should have been confiscated from their ancestors prior to 1948 because of their Hungarian or German ethnicity. In recent years, the Slovak Land Fund has invoked the Beneš Decrees to claim ownership of several hundred hectares of land. This carried out within administrative proceedings, and in cases where inheritance procedures had already taken place, the Fund initiated court proceedings to facilitate the state’s acquisition of the disputed properties.