Europeanization of German and Polish national foreign policy: The case of bilateral and trilateral cooperation

See English abstractThe creation of the European Union (EU) redefined the coexistence of European countries. Today, the EU comprises 28 member states and an increasing number of institutions. Together, they represent the key actors in this unique institutional format of economic and political cooperation. Yet, the member states retain a predominant position in certain policy areas, such as that of foreign policy. This dissertation concerns the Europeanization of German and Polish national foreign policy. Its objective is to study the horizontal dimension of Europeanization in case of German-Polish relations. Cooperation related to the Weimar Triangle serves as the starting point of research. Investigating how both countries utilise their relations in the context of foreign policy cooperation, and whether they are able to pursue their national foreign policy preferences within EU context, is the topic of exploration.The investigation builds upon two policy areas of the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), analysing how Germany and Poland formulate their foreign policy: the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), and the Eastern Dimension of the EU (in which the crisis in Ukraine has taken over the policy agenda). If EU member states decide to cooperate on foreign policy matters, this could either signal the importance of the CFSP and a ‘Europeanized’ national foreign policy to a certain degree, and/or the pursuit of national foreign policy preferences. Germany and Poland have established close relations providing a fruitful source for the analysis. Moreover, Germany joined the European Economic Community (EEC) as early as 1957; Poland only recently became a member of the EU in 2004. The 47 years of difference in membership make it interesting to compare an old with a new member state of the EU (Wong and Hill 2011). Furthermore, both Berlin and Warsaw belong to the Big Six, which makes them comparable to a certain degree. Both countries belong to “the bigger and more internationally significant states” and thus gained more attention in Europeanization studies (Hill and Wong 2011: 212).The research question is twofold. a) The exploration fathoms whether there are signs of Europeanization in the horizontal dimension of German-Polish relations. b) In addition, the evaluation of the findings allows for further establishing the horizontal dimension of Europeanization within the literature – the horizontal dimension represents a niche area and has gained less attention in Europeanization studies. Overall, the investigation allows for exploring cooperation between countries in the context of Europeanization. A methodological discussion will clarify on this matter in detail elucidating the chosen approach.This dissertation is structured as follows. The present chapter introduces the objective of the dissertation and European foreign policy (1.). Subsequently, a theoretical chapter deals with conceptualising Europeanization, the methodology behind the investigation, and the research niche (2.). The following literature review surveys the Europeanization of Polish and German foreign policy, and German-Polish relations (3.). As fourth part an analysis starts with the exploration of cooperation between Germany and Poland. It is divided into three sections: introducing the countries and their ability to shape the CFSP (4.); the ESDP (5.); and the EU’s Eastern Dimension (6.). An evaluation assesses the findings referring to the methodology (7.). A conclusion completes the research (8.)