page_title: Poles in Germany
section_title: Today
hierarchical_section_title: Poles in Germany / Today
caption_attribution_description: Polski: Instytut Polski w Berlinie Deutsch: Polnisches Institut Berlin, Burgstraße 27
context_page_description: Poles in Germany are the second largest Polish diaspora in the world and the biggest in Europe. Estimates of the number of Poles living in Germany vary from 2 million to about 3 million people living that might be of Polish descent. According to the latest census, there are approximately 2,006,410 Poles in Germany. The main Polonia organisations in Germany are the Union of Poles in Germany and Congress of Polonia in Germany. Polish surnames are relatively common in Germany, especially in the Ruhr area.
context_section_description: Today the German government does not recognise German nationals of Polish ethnicity as a national minority. Polish agencies claim, that this way Germany is not recognising the right of self-determination for the group. After Poland joined the European Union, several organisations of Poles in Germany attempted to restore the pre-war official minority status, particularly claiming that the Nazi decree is void. While the initial memorandum to the Bundestag remained unanswered, in December 2009 the Minority Commission of the Council of Europe obliged the German government to formally respond to the demands within four months.
  The position of the German government is, that after the German territorial losses after World War II, the current Polish minority has no century old roots in the remaining German territory, because Germany lost all the territories where people of German and Polish ethnicity overlapped. Since they are therefore only recent immigrants, they do not fulfill the requirements of a national minority according to the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and the Treaty of Good Neighbourship. Being German citizens, they still retain all civil and political rights every German citizen possesses, and therefore can voice their will in the political system.
  About 10,000 Polish citizens have recently moved to German localities along the Polish-German border, depopulated after the unification of Germany.
caption: Polish Institute in Berlin
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