From Status Quo Power to Reform Engine

Shifts in the goals and interests of German European policy

Like its predecessor – as expressed in the 2018 coalition agreement –, the new Federal Government has declared its ambi­tion to work towards strengthening and deepening the EU. Berlin’s fundamental interest in a democratic Union capable of taking action has not changed. However, a shift in Germany’s European policy self-image is clearly discernible in the coalition agreement: it wants to move away from being a status quo power and move towards becoming a driver of further deepening. The word “cohesion” (”Zusammenhalt” in Ger­man) does not appear once in the agreement’s chapter on “Germany’s responsibility for Europe and the world”, but a “fed­eral European state” is mentioned as the long-term goal of the integration process. The government also emphasises its willing­ness to amend the treaties. Its ambition to pursue a more active European policy is also expressed in the declarations that it wants to take a quicker and clearer stance on the rule of law and, if necessary, to move forward with groups of states in terms of integration policy – both policy approaches have been avoided by Germany since the mid-2010s.

The interests of the Federal Republic should be assessed differently. The crises of the past decade have anchored EU policy in social consciousness. In central areas of public life, the EU has assumed more respon­sibilities (even if this has not been reflected in an increase in competences). These include, for example, procuring vaccines and constructing an infrastructure for digital vaccination certificates, but also securing the external borders.

Added to this is the increased relevance of existing Union competences. The Ger­man government’s major goals to transform and modernise its economy in the climate, energy, digital and transportation fields can only be realised within the EU framework. However, a Union that takes such far-reach­ing decisions on the transformation and repositioning of its economy will become further politicised and inevitably require a greater capacity to act and greater demo­cratic legitimacy.

Last but not least, the power of the EU on the international stage diminishes almost daily if it is not united. Moscow and Wash­ing­ton negotiate the future of European security over the heads of EU Europeans. In the competition between China and the US, Europe could become a pawn rather than a player. Under these conditions, German risk assessment steers it from the status quo and pushes it to deepen and strengthen the EU.

Balancing crisis management and reforms

First, the German government must find a new balance between crisis management and long-term reform. In order to prevent Germany, and the EU as a whole, from being once again absorbed by crisis manage­ment, it should draw up a European policy reform compass as soon as possible and formulate its own dedicated agenda for the future of the EU. Building on the goals of the coalition agreement, this could also set the tone of future climate, digital and social policy initiatives. This, in turn, could be important for the legislative projects of the Union and also contribute to its deepening by setting building blocks for the trans­forma­tion of the European economy. Such an agenda would also require concrete ideas, for example on the question of how the democratic legitimacy of these far-reach­ing decisions can be strengthened.

If it wants to be a champion of integration, the German government would need to abandon the path of consensus orientation and path dependency. In the past, with a view to maintaining cohesion and safe­guarding German national interests, it was often sufficient to build up blockade minor­ities or to point out an existential threat in a moment of crisis in a “controlled panic” in order to push through instruments such as the European Stability Mechanism (ESM). A reform policy without an acute threat, on the other hand, requires intensive nego­tiations to balance interests, transfers of sov­ereignty, and political and financial bur­den-sharing. Not least in Germany, this requires much more active European policy communication of the goals, trade-offs and advantages of EU deepening.

Uniting the community method and differentiation

Secondly, in order to be able to implement this agenda for the future, Germany should offer a mix of measures to its partners: it should propose to them to strengthen in­stru­ments that do not require a change to EU treaties and with which they can break the taboo of primary law reform in the long run. The German government should opt for an approach that contributes to signifi­cantly upgrading the EU institutions. It should closely cooperate with the Commission and engage in robust discussions in the Council and the EP, particularly with respect to the upcoming negotiations on the Green Deal, Digital Agenda, social policy projects and the Single Market. Even with explicit German support, the road to this goal is long, rocky and fraught with risks. For it to culminate in a constitutional convention – or the coalition agreement’s objective of a European federal state – will remain a distant goal for the time being. In contrast, a more active shaping of the EU, in which integration is achieved through joint transformation of the economy and thus also through public debate, can create the preconditions for support of treaty changes in the medium-term. Treaty change – until now taboo – should no longer be a blockade to EU reform.

Nevertheless, even the German government is unlikely to succeed in convincing all 26 EU partners to take part in all further steps towards deepening. A serious push for integration will therefore only be achieved within groups of member states. But this need not be in contradiction to the com­mu­nity method. The EU Treaty, with the pos­sibility of enhanced cooperation in internal policies as well as the Permanent Structured Cooperation in security and defence policy, has enough means at its disposal to allow groups of member states to make progress using the community institutions and to shape this differentiation in such a way that others can follow.

Fostering active intra-European diplomacy

Thirdly, Germany needs partners for its reform agenda. Berlin should therefore intensify its dialogue with various states and groups of states while further developing intra-European diplomatic relations on a bi- and minilateral level. Given its eco­nomic and political weight, Germany is already at the centre of European diplomacy. In following the maxim of cohesion, the Federal Republic has pursued this role with two objectives: on the one hand, it has acted as a bridge-builder, bringing about compromises between different camps in the EU, especially in acute crises. Thus Ger­many – with the exception of the Weimar Triangle – is not a member of the mini­lateral formats such as the Visegrád Group, the “New Hanseatic League” or the “Frugal Four”. On the other hand, this has helped the Federal Republic to present the position of its own national interests in EU negotiations as “moderate” and, for example, with the help of the “Frugal Four”, to act as a mediator rather than a veto player in EU budget negotiations.

As a reform-oriented power, however, Berlin will need to forge active coalitions rather than block minorities. France remains the most important partner here, particularly when it comes to transforming the results of the Conference on the Future of Europe into integration impetus or into shaping strategic sovereignty. But the Franco-German motor has always worked best when Germany and France represented different camps within the EU. This is no longer the case in the more heterogeneous EU-27. The creation of the recovery fund, the greatest Franco-German success of the last ten years, has shown that the involvement of other states is just as important. Germany should therefore increasingly cultivate active intra-European diplomacy with “like-minded countries” and groups, but also approach Poland, the Nordic coun­tries and Italy with the aim of pursuing joint initiatives in order to bring together as many supporters as possible. If necessary, this should involve forming groups of countries willing to forge ahead via differ­entiated integration. One option for this would also be the reactivation of the “Ven­totene” format between Germany, France and Italy. Cooperation under this umbrella ended after the Lega came to power in Italy in 2018; with Mario Draghi, however, new life could be breathed into this triumvirate. Italy’s prime minister recently expressed his willingness to sup­port EU reform by signing the Franco-Italian Quirinal Treaty. Estab­lish­ing reform coalitions thus requires Germany to be a different kind of bridge builder – one that strengthens supranational institutions and brings national gov­ernments together in groups that want to consolidate the EU and move forward with concrete projects.

Operationalising strategic sovereignty

The fourth major task is to operationalise the desired goal of “European strategic sovereignty”. In the last decade, there have been enough “wake-up calls” indicating that Europeans need their own instruments of power lest they become a pawn and not an actor in the geostrategic competition between the US and China. The humiliation during the Trump years, the poorly coordi­nated withdrawal from Afghanistan, the ring of crises in the neighbourhood and, most recently, the negotiations between Moscow and Washington without independ­ent European participation have shown how insufficient the EU is in the eyes of its geopolitical competitors.

During the German EU Presidency, Ber­lin initiated the development of a Strategic Com­pass (see SWP Comment 3/2022) for the EU’s security and defence policy. In addi­tion, it has repeatedly put forward ideas on how decision-making procedures in EU foreign policy could be made more flexible. Both processes must be consistently completed by the traffic light government.

However, it must also provide answers to operational questions: when and where would Germany deploy military and/or civilian missions within the framework of the EU? For which military purposes does it want to use joint armament projects? And is it prepared to export these and other military goods, currently to Ukraine, for example?

However, solidarity in practice is not limited to the realm of hard security policy. It also extends to cases like Lithuania – which should be able to count on EU assis­tance in the face of Chinese threats – and to the case of refugee policy – a field in which Berlin has all too often refused to share the burden with its partners on the EU’s southern periphery. Politically, the conviction must prevail in Berlin that only a Union that can also represent the inter­ests of its members and its citizens inter­nationally can remain credible internally and continue to deepen in the long-term.