Opinion ID: 3020161
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Negotiations for a Reparations Fund

Text: The United States and German governments, aware of the significance of the underlying claims and the seriousness of the risk posed to the German economy, encouraged negotiations between plaintiffs and defendant German corporations. In the Fall of 1998, the German government asked Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Stuart Eizenstat5 to facilitate a resolution of the class action suits. Over the next year and a half, Deputy Secretary Eizenstat chaired a series of meetings among lawyers for the victims, lawyers for the German companies, and representatives of the German government. Leading negotiations on the German side were Chancellor Schroeder’s Envoy and Chief German Negotiator, Count Otto Lambsdorff, and his predecessor, Bodo Hombach. 5 Before moving to the Treasury in 1999, Stuart Eizenstat served as the Secretary of State’s Special Envoy on Property Restitution in Central and Eastern Europe (since 1995), as Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, and, before that, as Under Secretary of Commerce and United States Ambassador to the European Union. 9 On February 16, 1999, German Chancellor Gerhardt Schroeder, joined by the German companies that comprised the German Foundation Industrial Initiative, announced plans for formal negotiations to settle all pending litigation in United States courts relating to German companies’ Nazi era conduct. The United States State Department hosted the first plenary session of formal negotiations on May 11 and 12, 1999. The goal was to create a foundation (a reparations fund) to compensate Nazi-era victims and to fund ongoing projects to prevent religious and ethnic intolerance in Germany. In exchange for funding the foundation, German companies would receive “legal peace”—the termination and resolution of all suits against them in United States courts on WWII-era claims and an assurance of protection from future suits. A total of 12 plenary sessions were held in Bonn and Berlin, Germany, and in Washington, D.C. Lawyers in the pending cases joined government representatives from the United States, Germany, Israel, Belarus, the Czech Republic, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, representatives from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, and representatives from the German Foundation Industrial Initiative. Negotiations reached a breakthrough in December 1999. Responding to an offer from the German companies to fund the foundation with DM 8 billion, the plaintiffs’ lawyers, with the support of Poland, the Czech Republic, the Republic of Belarus, and the Ukraine, countered on December 13 with an offer for DM 10 billion. President Bill Clinton wrote to Chancellor 10 Gerhard Schroeder that day, urging acceptance of the DM 10 billion “counteroffer,” which was “a firm commitment for settlement of which we both could be proud.” See Garamendi, 539 U.S. at 405–06. The next day, Chancellor Schroeder accepted the counteroffer, thanking President Clinton for his “decisive impulses for a consensus which could be accepted by all parties involved.” Also that day, Deputy Secretary Eizenstat communicated to the victims’ attorneys the German Foundation Industrial Initiative’s and German government’s acceptance of this offer. President Clinton announced the agreement from the Oval Office the following day, December 15. Two days later, the parties made a formal public announcement in Bonn, Germany. Over the ensuing months, the parties negotiated allocation details—how much money would go to each partner organization and which types of victims were eligible—and detailed procedures for the Foundation’s operation. On July 20, 2000, the foundation, called “Remembrance, Responsibility and the Future,” was formally established.