German–Polish Border Treaty (1990)
| Type | Border treaty |
|---|---|
| Signed | 14 November 1990 |
| Location | Warsaw, Poland |
| Effective | 16 January 1992 |
| Signatories |
 Poland Germany
|
| Languages |
English German Polish |
The German–Polish Border Treaty of 1990 finally settled the issue of the Polish–German border, which in terms of international law had been pending since 1945. It was signed by the foreign ministers of Poland and Germany, Krzysztof Skubiszewski and Hans-Dietrich Genscher, on 14 November 1990 in Warsaw, ratified by the Polish Sejm on 26 November 1991 and the German Bundestag on 16 December 1991, and entered into force with the exchange of the instruments of ratification on 16 January 1992.
The full title of the treaty is "Treaty between the Federal Republic of Germany and the Republic of Poland on the confirmation of the frontier between them, 14 November 1990" (Vertrag zwischen der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und der Republik Polen über die Bestätigung der zwischen ihnen bestehenden Grenze in German, and Traktat między Rzeczpospolitą Polską a Republiką Federalną Niemiec o potwierdzeniu istniejącej między nimi granicy in Polish, the order of the countries being reversed in the Polish text).
In the Potsdam Agreement of 1945, the Allies of World War II had defined the Oder–Neisse line as the line of demarcation between the Soviet occupation zone in Germany and Poland, pending the final determination of Poland's western frontier in a later peace settlement. This transferred regions to Poland which had been part of German states for centuries, reducing Germany to approximately three quarters of its territory as of 1937. The Treaty of Zgorzelec of 1950 between East Germany and the People's Republic of Poland confirmed this border as final. West Germany, which saw itself as the only legal successor to the German Reich and did not recognize East Germany, insisted that final settlement on the Polish–German border could only be accepted by a future reunited Germany. Although West Germany, for all practical purposes, accepted the Oder–Neisse border in the Treaty of Warsaw (1970), its legal caveat that only a future peace treaty would formally settle the issue remained in effect.
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