Gruber-De-Gasperi Agreement

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The Gruber-De-Gasperi Agreement (also known as the Paris Agreement or the South Tyrol Agreement ) was concluded between Austria and Italy on September 5, 1946 in Paris . The treaty guarantees the protection of the cultural uniqueness of the German-speaking population in the Trentino-South Tyrol region . The agreement was signed by the Austrian Foreign Minister Karl Gruber and the Italian Prime Minister Alcide De Gasperi at the Paris Peace Conference in 1946 and forms the basis of today's autonomy in South Tyrol .

prehistory

On April 26, 1915, the Entente in London signed a secret treaty with Italy ( Treaty of London ). For its entry into the war against the Central Powers, it was to receive Tyrol, along with other territorial commitments, south of the Brenner Pass . With the end of the First World War and the break-up of Austria-Hungary , the crown land of Tyrol was divided. The northern part of Tyrol was assigned to the new German Republic of Austria (founded as German Austria ) and the southern parts (today South Tyrol and Trentino ) were annexed to the Kingdom of Italy in the Treaty of Saint-Germain . When the fascists came to power in Italy under Benito Mussolini in 1922, a systematic cultural and economic marginalization of the non-Italian-speaking majority of the population (Germans and Ladins ) was promoted in South Tyrol . The Italianization of South Tyrol was to be concluded with the resettlement agreement ( option ) in 1939 between the Mussolini regime (Italy) and the Adolf Hitler regime ( German Empire ) (see History of South Tyrol ). In the course of the Second World War , South Tyrol was occupied by the Wehrmacht (1943 to 1945) and, as an operational zone, the Alpine Foreland was occupied by Hitler's Germany.

After the collapse of the dictatorships, many South Tyroleans who had previously emigrated returned to their homeland. Part of the German-speaking population now strove to join the re-established Republic of Austria . However, the reunification of Tyrol failed due to the veto of the victorious powers USA , Great Britain and the USSR as well as France , who already acted in relation to the South Tyrol issue under the impression of the looming East-West conflict and, instead of pushing for territorial concessions, the state of Italy to guarantee obligated by protective provisions for the benefit of the German-speaking population of South Tyrol.

Negotiations and implementation of the agreement

On the Italian side, Alcide De Gasperi, who was then provisional head of Italy, did not negotiate himself, but instead sent the Italian ambassador to Great Britain, Nicolo Carandini, to Paris as a negotiator. In the course of the negotiations, the Austrian Foreign Minister Karl Gruber initially aimed at annexing South Tyrol to Austria. The Italian Prime Minister Alcide De Gasperi did not move away from Italy's territorial claim to the area, but held out the prospect of autonomy for the Trentino-Alto Adige region . Gruber agreed to De Gasperi's proposal despite reservations, with the United Kingdom in particular pushing for an agreement.

Particularly controversial was the territorial delimitation of the agreement, which did not clearly limit the claim to autonomy to the area of South Tyrol or the province of Bolzano, but enabled the establishment of the extended region of Trentino-South Tyrol . By including Trentino and the province of Trento, the Italian central government deliberately created an Italian-speaking majority of the population in the region (the approx. 200,000 German-speaking South Tyroleans were compared to approx. 500,000 Italian-speaking inhabitants) in order to limit the political decision-making freedom of German-speaking parties on site .

Italy considered the Gruber-De-Gasperi Agreement with the constitutional constitution of the Autonomous Region of Trentino-South Tyrol and the so-called First Statute of Autonomy in 1948 to be fulfilled. However, the political representatives of the German- and Ladin-speaking South Tyroleans found this solution to be inadequate. In the decades that followed, there were intensive political negotiations on the autonomy of South Tyrol with the renewed participation of Austria, which finally led to the entry into force of the much more comprehensive Second Statute of Autonomy in 1972 . With this statute, the now significantly expanded autonomous powers of the Trentino-Alto Adige region were ultimately largely transferred to the two autonomous provinces of Trento and Bolzano.

Legal meaning

The juridical significance of the Gruber-De-Gasperi Agreement from 1946 is that with it, for the first time, concrete protective provisions in favor of the German-speaking population of South Tyrol (especially with regard to school instruction in the mother tongue, the use of language in public offices and the allocation of public positions ) have been securitized at international level. However, the Ladin language group was not yet taken into account in the Gruber-De-Gasperi Agreement; their position was only strengthened with the adoption of the Second Statute of Autonomy in 1971.

By signing the agreement, Austria was also indirectly recognized by Italy as a contractual partner in the area of ​​the South Tyrol issue. The so-called protective power function (or protective function ) of Austria for the German- and Ladin-speaking population of the region was derived in the political discourse from this fact, as well as from the bilateral negotiations practiced for years on the Second Statute of Autonomy , which, however, was not explicitly mentioned in any document. Measures on the part of the FPÖ to expressly enshrine this protective power function in the Austrian Federal Constitution in 2012 were unsuccessful.

The UN resolution 1497 / XV of October 31, 1960 recognized the international law character of the agreement. In the following year, another UN resolution on the South Tyrol issue was passed (Res. 1661 / XVI of November 28, 1961), calling on Italy and Austria to make further efforts to find a solution.

These efforts finally led to the package and operational calendar of 1969, which led to the adoption of the so-called Second Statute of Autonomy (Constitutional Law No. 1 of November 10, 1971, Standard Text No. 670 of August 31, 1972 with the text of the new Statute of Autonomy). The dispute that had been pending before the United Nations since 1960 was only declared over with the so-called Dispute Settlement Declaration of June 11, 1992, submitted by Austria. This declaration of dispute settlement had already been included in the 1969 operations calendar. The text of this declaration could still be changed in 1992 in such a way that the entire Second Statute of Autonomy, including the changes made since 1972, could be raised to the level of international law. It can therefore be assumed that Austria can also demand compliance with the autonomy regulation for South Tyrol from Italy under international law. Previously, this was disputed for a long time, and some of the opinion was expressed that only the First Statute of Autonomy from 1948, which provided for much weaker protective provisions, would be protected under international law, while all subsequently issued protective regulations were voluntary benefits Italy, which would therefore also have at any time can be withdrawn.

Text of the agreement

  1. The German-speaking inhabitants of the Province of Bolzano and the neighboring bilingual towns of the Province of Trento will be guaranteed full equality of rights with the Italian-speaking inhabitants within the framework of special measures to protect the national character and the cultural and economic development of the German-speaking part of the population.
    In accordance with legislative measures that have already been taken or are in preparation, German-speaking citizens will be granted the following in particular:
    2. Elementary and middle school instruction in the mother tongue;
    4. Equality of the German and Italian language in the public offices and official documents as well as in the bilingual place names;
    6. the right to restore family names Italianized in recent years;
    8. Equal rights with regard to employment in public offices in order to achieve a more appropriate ratio of job distribution between the two ethnic groups.
  2. The population of the above-mentioned areas will be given the exercise of autonomous regional legislative and executive powers. The framework for the application of these autonomy measures will also be determined in consultation with local German-speaking representatives.
  3. In order to establish good neighborly relations between Austria and Italy, the Italian government undertakes, in consultation with the Austrian government, within one year of the signing of this contract:
    2. To revise, in a spirit of fairness and generosity, the issue of citizenship options arising from the 1939 Hitler-Mussolini Agreement;
    4. to reach an agreement on the mutual recognition of the validity of certain academic degrees and university diplomas;
    6. to draw up an agreement for the free movement of people and goods between North and East Tyrol by rail and, to the greatest possible extent, also by road;
    8. to conclude special agreements to facilitate extended border traffic and a local exchange of certain quantities of characteristic products and goods between Austria and Italy.

literature

  • Herbert Miehsler : The South Tyrol Agreement: Origin, Interpretation and Paths to Decision. In: The Danube Region. Volume 5, December 1960, pp. 125-138, doi: 10.7767 / dnrm.1960.5.jg.125
  • Peter Hilpold : The South Tyrolean way of international law step-by-step solution in a European comparison . In: Siglinde Clementi / Jens Woelk (ed.) 1992: End of a dispute , Nomos, Baden-Baden 2003, pp. 109–117.
  • Rolf Steininger : Autonomy or Self-Determination? The South Tyrol question 1945/46 and the Gruber-De Gasperi Agreement . Studienverlag, Innsbruck et al. 2008, ISBN 978-3-7065-4332-3 ( Innsbruck research on contemporary history 2).
  • Michael Gehler (Ed.): Failed self-determination. The South Tyrol question, the Gruber-De Gasperi Agreement and its inclusion in the Italian peace treaty 1945–1947 (files on South Tyrol policy 1945–1958, vol. 1), with the collaboration of Andreas Schimmelpfennig and Evi-Rosa Unterthiner. Studienverlag, Innsbruck / Vienna / Bozen 2011.
  • Andreas Raffeiner (Ed.): 70 Years of the Paris Treaty 1946–2016. Prehistory - contract - future prospects . Dr. Kovač Verlag, Hamburg 2016, ISBN 978-3-8300-9284-1 ( series studies on international and European law, vol. 143).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Gehler : "From half autonomy to inner self-determination". In: Hannes Obermair et al. (Ed.): Regional civil society in motion - Cittadini innanzi tutto. Festschrift for Hans Heiss . Folio, Vienna / Bozen 2012, ISBN 978-3-85256-618-4 , pp. 325–342, esp. Pp. 326–327 (thesis 5).
  2. ↑ documents-dds-ny.un.org (PDF)
  3. ^ Peter Hilpold: Modern minority law . 1st edition. Manz, Vienna 2001, ISBN 3-214-00069-1 , p. 167 ff .