Poland–Slovakia border

Spisz and Orava

After the First World War both Poland and the new Czechoslovakia claimed the districts of Spisz and Orava in the Carpathians. In September 1919 the Allied Supreme Council declared Spisz a plebiscite area, but at the Spa Conference on 10 July 1920 the two countries agreed to drop the vote and let the Allied Powers decide. On 28 July 1920 the Conference of Ambassadors divided the districts, leaving Poland the north-west of Spisz.^[2]

A delimitation commission then worked out the line on the ground. Poland hoped to obtain Jaworzina, a commune on which five Polish Spisz villages depended economically, by an exchange. The commission’s president reported in 1921 that the real object of the dispute was the northern slope of the eastern Tatras, which the 1920 decision had given to Czechoslovakia.^[2]

“…the true subject of the dispute is in reality the possession of the northern slope of the eastern part of the Tatra…”^[2]

The court and the mountains

The League of Nations asked the Permanent Court of International Justice for an opinion. On 6 December 1923 it found that the question had been settled by the Conference of Ambassadors’ decision of 28 July 1920, which was definitive and had to be applied in full, subject only to the adjustments that decision itself allowed.^[2]

Along the High Tatras the frontier runs along the summits. The range extends for about 64 km and holds some 300 named peaks; the Polish side is protected as Tatra National Park and the Slovak side as Tatry National Park.^[1]