The geopolitics of enlargement

Germany was one of the key supporters of the 2004 EU enlargement, as the project benefited it immensely — geopolitically and geo-economically.

The accession of Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary to the EU allowed for the integration of their economies into the supply chains of the wider German geo-economic space, the “German-Central-European manufacturing core”.

As a result, Germany is the top trading partner for all four Visegrad countries by a clear margin, with export and import shares well over 20 percent.

Accession also fulfilled the dual geopolitical goal of stability and security. EU enlargement stabilised Germany’s eastern neighbourhood, contributed to the domestic stability of democratic regimes, and effectively filled a power vacuum that kept the influence of other geopolitical big players in the region, like Russia, at bay.

However, shortly after 2004, accession fatigue hit not only the new eastern member states, but also German foreign policy toward the region.

Germany’s geopolitical interests seeming stable and guaranteed, a “mission accomplished” attitude settled in. Berlin dialled back its political initiatives and effectively stopped acting as a norm-setting power in the region.

It failed to adequately invest in long-term compliance with democratic values, despite the valuable lessons it had learned with democratisation after 1949. In short, the geopolitical dimension of German engagement faded and a geo-economic approach became dominant.

Obviously, the preeminence of the geo-economic approach is not specific to the German policy toward the East-Central-European countries in the period after 2004, but a central characteristic of German foreign policy overall, as Hans Kundnani explains.

However, despite the dominance of geo-economics generally, Germany was still able to formulate and pursue its national interest in East-Central-Europe in geopolitical terms for the first decade or so after 1990, but this changed in the wake of the 2004 enlargement and even further in the crisis period after 2008.

Paralysed by geo-economics

The 2008 financial and economic crisis took the “economisation” of German foreign and European policy thinking to a new level.

Geo-economics took centre stage, and nearly all of Germany’s available political resources were mobilised to the management of the euro crisis.

Budgetary discipline, austerity, and compliance with the Maastricht criteria suddenly had clear primacy in EU decision-making over compliance with the Copenhagen political criteria of democracy, rule of law and human rights.

This shift opened the way for conscious autocratisation strategies by East-Central-European elites that wanted to get rid of any checks and balances — constitutional institutions, free media, critical civil society — that could constrain their power and benefiting from corruption.

Thus, the post-2008 era saw a deepening geo-economisation of policy that turned away from enforcing democratic rules as democratic values in the region began to be undermined.

The ongoing democratic backsliding has destabilised the democratic systems and domestic politics of the East-Central-European countries and put them at an increasing distance from EU policies, with the notable exception of Slovakia.

The ongoing democratic backsliding has destabilised the democratic systems and domestic politics of the East-Central-European countries and put them at an increasing distance from EU policies.

Furthermore, as crises and slow growth have lessened the attractiveness of the European model, “sharp powers” like Russia and China started to gain greater influence in the region.

Thus, internal developments and external actors are undermining the democratic stability of the Visegrad countries and their cohesion with the EU, both of which are key to German geopolitical interests in East-Central-Europe.

Unfortunately, due to the uncontested primacy of the geo-economic approach and a lack of reflection, German and EU foreign policy failed to adjust at the strategic level.

From this perspective, the geo-economic approach does not only represent continuity in German foreign policy, it is also the source of a major rupture.

It has contributed to the overall crisis of Germany’s role as “normative power” in political sense and to the weakening of its soft-power toolkit.

Against this background, the re-politicisation of Germany’s strategic approach toward the East-Central-European countries — that is, the adoption of an at least partially geopolitical lens — appears to be inevitable.

Berlin has to be able to define its interests also in political terms in its immediate geopolitical neighbourhood. With one eye on the domestic and international developments of the past decade, stability and security appear to be again the right starting points, beside a self-critical reflection on past failures.