The accession of the Czech Republic to the European Union has brought the case of
annulment of the so-called Benes decrees to the agenda of German-Czech relations.
The decrees were legal acts of the same force as the parliamentary Acts and they were
being passed by the Czech emigration authorities since 1942 and signed by E. Beneś, the president
of the republic. They were meant to act against the Sudeten Germans inhabiting the
inter-war German-Czech frontier. The main thrust of the decrees was to deprive the Sudeten
Germans of their property and citizenship as a response to their declaration of allegiance to
the Nazi Germany after the capture of the Sudeten Mountains and other parts of Czechoslovakia
by the Nazis