After going through all national judicial instances, Broniowski reached the European Court of Human Rights and won the case concerning his grandmother's property. The house and plot of her land in the Lviv region, after the revision of the border between Poland and the USSR, ended up on the territory of Ukraine. Now the Polish treasury is obliged to pay the persistent citizen about €85,000 (including about €6,000 for court costs).
However, the consequences of this court case will cost Warsaw much more. It became a precedent for approximately 80,000 Poles (according to the Polish government's own calculations), whose families also lost their homes and lands during the postwar border revision. Last year, the country's authorities already passed a compensation law, according to which they intended to pay no more than 15% of the value of lost property in cases similar to Broniowski's. The maximum possible payment was 50,000 Polish zlotys (about €11,000). The European court's decision puts Warsaw in a difficult position: it is not entirely clear where it will find the funds. At the same time, Poland is preparing a new compensation bill to avoid mass lawsuits to the European court.
Let us recall that today not only Poles but also millions of Germans, who were actually expelled from their homes during the border revision, are counting on compensation. At the beginning of World War II, Nazi Germany attacked Poland. And at the end of the war, under pressure from the USSR, a significant part of Germany's territory was transferred to Poland. At the same time, about 12 million Germans were evicted from their homes located, in particular, in the territories of East Prussia. Now, 60 years later, some of the Germans and their relatives have decided that the time has come, and are seeking material compensation.
Of course, such an idea causes acute discontent in Poland. The country's government has more than once hinted that it may file a lawsuit for $30 billion for the destruction of the Polish capital at the end of the war, when German troops suppressed the Warsaw Uprising. Then 200,000 Poles died, and 80% of the capital's buildings were destroyed. The question of responsibility for the failure of the uprising, which began when Soviet troops were already approaching Warsaw, has not been resolved to this day.
In August 2004, German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder visited Poland on an official visit and took part in events dedicated to the 60th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising against the Nazi occupiers. Having agreed that Germany bears responsibility for the crimes of the Nazis, the chancellor then left no doubt that the federal government did not intend to support the German 'Union of Expellees'. And this is exactly the organization that demands compensation from Poland for the loss of property and lands. At the same time, the chancellor rejected the idea of the head of the 'Union of Expellees', Erika Steinbach, to create an international center in Berlin that would deal with the problem of deportation and expulsion. On the other hand, Steinbach received support from the CDU, of which she is a member. The 'Union of Expellees' sharply criticized the outcome of Social Democrat Schröder's visit to Warsaw; they believe that this reconciliation is 'a clear attempt to shift the burden of problems onto the shoulders of their compatriots'. And if so, then Germany itself will have to pay compensation to Germans expelled from Poland, Steinbach believes.
However, it is not yet entirely clear whether the consequences of the Broniowski case will extend to similar situations in other countries, for example, to the Baltic states, whose borders were also shifted by the Stalinist authorities.