Cold War

Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany
Hans-Dietrich Genscher and other participants in the first round of talks conducted in March 1990 to negotiate the treaty, 14 March 1990, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Bonn.
1990 Sep 12

Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany

Germany

The Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany is an international agreement that allowed the reunification of Germany in the early 1990s. It was negotiated in 1990 between the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, and the Four Powers which had occupied Germany at the end of World War II in Europe: France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States; it also replaced the 1945 Potsdam Agreement before. In the treaty, the Four Powers renounced all rights they held in Germany, allowing a reunited Germany to become fully sovereign the following year. At the same time, the two German states agreed to confirm their acceptance of the existing border with Poland, and accepted that the borders of Germany after unification would correspond only to the territories then administered by West and East Germany, with the exclusion and renunciation of any other territorial claims.