Office of the Historian

Conference files, lot 60 D 627, CF 196

No. 515
Proposal of the Soviet Delegation1

[Translation]

confidential
FPM(54)38
Berlin, February 6, 1954.

Measures To Alleviate the Financial-Economic Obligations of Germany, Arising From Consequences of the War

Considering that Germany has already fulfilled a major part of her financialeconomic obligations to the United States of America, the United Kingdom, France and the Soviet Union, arising from the consequences of the war,

recognising that measures for the alleviation of the financial-economic obligations of Germany, arising from the consequences of the war, will prove to be of real assistance in the development of Germany’s peaceful economy and in the improvement of the material welfare of her population,

the Governments of the U.S.A., France, the United Kingdom and the U.S.S.R. have agreed that, beginning January 1, 1954:

1.
Germany is completely released from the payment of reparations in any form and also from the repayment to the Four Powers—the U.S.A., France, the United Kingdom and the U.S.S.R.—of postwar state debts, with the exception of debts arising from trade obligations.
2.
The payment of expenses connected with the presence of troops of the Four Powers on German territory is reduced to an annual limit not to exceed five per cent of the revenue of the state budgets of the German Democratic Republic and the German Federal Republic.
3.
Germany is fully released from the payment of the indebtedness for external occupational costs of the Four Powers which has accumulated since 1945.

  1. This proposal was introduced at the twelfth plenary on Feb. 6. For a record of that meeting, see Secto 100, Document 435.↩