Post by JustJohn or JJ on May 21, 2015 4:14:15 GMT -7
Dear Poland: The Czech Land Is in the Mail
Czechs owe Poland about 1.42 square miles. So far, the transfer of land has taken nearly six decades
Part of this farm in the Czech Republic is set to become part of Poland. Photo: Jan Chytil
By Leos Rousek
Updated May 20, 2015 1:24 a.m. ET
DOLNI OLDRIS, Czech Republic—Jan Chytil can see the Polish border from the barn where he keeps his cattle. Soon that border may shift and, he fears, cows will have to use a different door to avoid setting hoofs in another country.
A border change by force last year, when Russia swiftly took Crimea away from Ukraine, set off global alarm bells. This newest change of borders in Europe promises to be peaceful, and work to complete it has been done at a more glacial pace.
The shift centers on an undisputed and tiny land debt owed by the Czechs to their northern neighbors. The Czechs owe about 1.42 square miles, an area only slightly bigger than Central Park. But so far, the transfer of land has taken nearly six decades.
The Polish land claim dates back to 1958 when Soviet overlords of the two countries at the time ordered them to straighten their border to simplify its patrolling. Poland lost and the Czech Republic gained territory when the two states switched several land tracts. The Czechs still have to compensate their neighbors for it.
Because roads have been built over the decades on some of the land involved in the border shift, different patches—all fields, meadows or forests—will be used now. That includes the 49-acre pasture Mr. Chytil leases from the Czech state. His pasture is only a portion of the total 909 acres the Czech Republic is to chop away from its territory.
“This is a good and arable plot of land and the Poles would be foolish not to take it,” said Mr. Chytil. “But I still hope it won’t come to that.”
Dormant during the Cold War, the settlement issue resurfaced in the early 1990s, initially prompting talks about financial compensation. But reaching an agreement on valuations led nowhere. A breakthrough in the talks came last year when the Czech government agreed to shrink its territory and bear the costs of redrawing the country’s border with Poland.
“We’re now at what can be described as a home-run stretch in this decadeslong border debt settlement process,” said Jan Zverina, head of the border department at the Interior Ministry.
In the Czech Republic, farmer Jan Chytil, right, and village mayor Romana Sidlova stand on a farm road along a field, left, set to become part of Poland.
Photo: Leos Rousek/The Wall Street Journal
Years can pass by easily when negotiating territorial matters on “the largest border shift the Czech Republic and Poland have ever faced during peaceful times,” Mr. Zverina said.
His team of Czech officials, including legal, surveyor and water-management experts, meet regularly with their Polish counterparts, led by border service colonel Magdalena Surmacz. Even after the recent progress on the border shift, the completion “depends on the Czech side,” she said.
The list of what needs to be done to shrink the Czech territory involves several steps, Mr. Zverina said, each likely to take months or longer, before both chambers of the country’s parliament can vote on it.
Acres slated for the handover are scattered in several communities along the rugged 495-mile boundary between the two nations. The tracts must be owned by the state, without structures on them. They have to be measured, marked by temporary surveyor signs, visited and approved by teams for both countries.
Then an estimated 1,000 new permanent border markers—made of granite and each weighing about 220 pounds—can be installed, while detailed topographic descriptions of the new border are drafted.
The grass field Mr. Chytil is going to lose accounts for a fraction of his 741-acre farm in this village at the end of a backcountry road where the Czech territory protrudes into Poland.
But the farmer is upset about his leased pasture even getting considered for the restitution because he has hoped to buy it from the state.
“I’ve wanted to build another barn on it, so I’ll still try to persuade the officials to take it off the handover list,” Mr. Chytil said. “The state may use other land instead or should have paid Poland rather than move the border all the way to my farm.”
“Debts must be paid but there isn’t much talk about it in Poland,” said Andrzej Owczarek, a Polish cyclist on a trip with his son along a bike path—on the Czech side of the border—south of Mr. Chytil’s farm. He said “this isn’t anything thorny that can sour relations between the Poles and the Czechs.”
Elsewhere on the Czech side of the border, locals say they are frustrated by the absence of discussion with the Czech government about the reshuffle.
“I understand this land debt has to be settled but it’s also about how the authorities talk to us and whether they ask what they may do for us in return,” says Miroslav Kocian, mayor of Bila Voda, a Czech village a mile away from Poland and about 119 miles east of Mr. Chytil’s farm.
Mr. Kocian’s village is to shrink by about 3 acres when the land moves into the jurisdiction under of the Southern Polish town of Zloty Stok.
Most Poles and Czechs won’t notice any change after the border moves. It won’t affect their easy travel and contacts, officials say. The two European Union nations are also inside the bloc’s Schengen area of states that have abolished passport and other types of controls at their common borders.
“I’ve only heard by passing about this border land compensation and that it’s likely to affect our area but this isn’t anything that bothers our communities and cross-border relations,” said Zloty Stok mayor Grazyna Orczyk.
However, Mr. Chytil is skeptical the hassle-free travel regime will help him negotiate a new lease with Polish authorities, so that his cows can graze in Poland and move freely across the border to get to their barn in the Czech Republic.
The farmer and others affected by the Czech government’s land debt settlement still have years to consider their options before the border actually changes.
“If everything goes smoothly from now on, the earliest we can expect this to be finished is in 2020,” Mr. Zverina said.
Write to Leos Rousek at leos.rousek@wsj.com
