Pariser Abkommen#

Paris Agreement (Gruber-De Gasperi Agreement), a bilateral agreement signed by the Austrian and Italian ministers of foreign affairs K. Gruber and A. De Gasperi, on September 5, 1946. In this agreement the protection of the German-speaking minority in Italy was guaranteed. It became the annex to the peace treaty of 1947 with Italy and formed the legal basis for the Austrian Ministry for Foreign Affairs to safeguard the rights and interests of the German-speaking population of South Tyrol. The Paris Agreement provided for equal rights for the German-speaking and the Italian-speaking population, it granted the region local and autonomous legislative and executive powers, and Austria was accepted as the protecting power. In 1948 the autonomy which had been promised to South Tirol was granted to the newly formed region "Trentino-South Tirol" instead, which had an Italian-speaking majority. This resulted in conflicts between Austria and Italy over the German-speaking and Ladin-speaking minorities. In 1959 Austria took legal action against Italy before the United Nations. The main issues of the conflict were solved in the South Tyrol Package.