Causes and consequences of ambivalence in Germany’s policy towards the Eastern enlargement of the European Union

Germany’s support for the Eastern enlargement of the European Union was a key factor in the successful completion of this idea in 2004. Germany’s policy towards the enlargement was, however, ambivalent and for this reason perceived as controversial. This thesis examines and explains the reasons of this paradox. German policy makers endorsed the idea of the Eastern enlargement of the EU for the reasons deriving from the national identity, based on a history-related narrative, and from the fact of the successful unification of Germany. As Chancellor Helmut Kohl captured it — the unification of Germany and the unification of Europe were two sides of the same coin. Eastern enlargement was, however, a novel idea and was changing the existing European order and concepts of the European integration. It faced therefore powerful constraints both in the shape of still existing, though declining, Cold War structural grip, as well as of the conflicting with the enlargement interests of other member state of the EU and domestic economic preferences and interests. It caught German policy makers between powerful and mutually conflicting challenges and faced them with a need to choose strategic priorities for the foreign policy. The choice was continuity of multilateralism, the principle of the foreign policy of the West Germany. This choice turned the enlargement policy into one of the premises of the grand strategy of the German Europapolitik. Examining the ambivalence in the enlargement policy allows not only to explain its causes but also to observe a process of changing the concept of the European integration. This doctoral thesis is a result of the research conducted at the London School of Economics and Political Science under the supervision of Prof. William Wallace and Dr. Ulrich Sedelmeier.