Deadlocked in Dualism: Negotiating for a Final Settlement

Abstract

While on the international plane Germany has as strong a position as one could wish for, a second appeal to the ICJ does not seem advisable. Though not formally estopped from challenging Sentenza 238/2014, Germany would at least face a principled contradiction (Wertungswiderspruch). Like Italy, Germany takes the position that international obligations must be disregarded should they be found incompatible with fundamental rights enshrined in the national constitution. Concerning the underlying conflict, another formally strong German position proves to have inherent shortcomings. To argue that, as far as Italian citizens are concerned, all matters of compensation had been dealt with comprehensively in the German–Italian lump sum agreement of 1961 carries some conviction. However, the limitations of that agreement, the erosion of the individual’s strict mediatisation in international law, and recent German compensation schemes for other victims of World War II (WWII) have fuelled a growing discontent with this final settlement. Having been doubly denied recognition as victims by the injustices of non-retroactivity and of differentiation, the Italian WWII victims ‘in oblivion’ have pursued compensation claims for over a decade now. It would go too far to argue an individual claim for financial compensation under international law for historic wrongs. The principle of intertemporal law, however, has its merits as well as its defects. This chapter argues in favour of mildly piercing the veil of intertemporality by reliance on fundamental ethical principles as part of the law in force already at the time of the original violation. A breach in this kind of obligation should give rise to an obligatio de negotiando under the principle of just satisfaction. Such a legal construction takes up the idea that in most of the recent cases of ‘history taken to court’, compensation is but a secondary aim, the primary aim being to ‘tell one’s own story’ as a counter-narrative to hegemonic discourse. By entering into negotiations with the victims ‘in oblivion’, Germany—and Italy—could and should attempt to finally solve what has been and remains a fundamentally unjust situation.