Bernd Posselt

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Bernd Posselt (born June 4, 1956 in Munich) is a German politician (CSU) and a son of expellees.

Posselt has been a Member of the European Parliament since 1994. In 1998 he became president of the Paneuropa-Union Deutschland, the German branch of the International Paneuropean Union.

Posselt is the leading German advocate of the rights of those Germans whose ancestors lived in the Sudetenland district of Bohemia as well as Moravia and who were expelled by the Potsdam conference and the governments in Central and Eastern Europe after the Second World War. His main goal - and the principal aim of the Sudetendeutsche Landsmannschaft that he has lead since 2000 - is to revoke the so-called Beneš decrees, as well as other acts of the post-war expulsions that were meant to punish the German population in the Sudetenland as a whole for its prevailing support of Nazism.

He enjoys much respect in the Sudeten German community and in his home state of Bavaria. The conservative Bavarian government has often supported the Sudeten German community, and was among those demanding that the Czech Republic should repeal the Beneš decrees before being allowed into EU. No politician in the Czech Republic is willing to negotiate with Posselt.