Description
Why did Germany, once a champion of Eastern enlargement, become a more reserved supporter over time? This paper examines the discursive and policy shift in German preferences concerning the EU’s 2004 and 2007 enlargement rounds. Drawing on historical institutionalism, it develops a qualitative case study through process tracing of German and EU primary sources – official policy documents, key political speeches, and European Council conclusions – and secondary literature. The paper argues that Brandt’s Ostpolitik and the EC’s exceptional incorporation of the GDR in 1990 helped institutionalise a path-dependent German commitment to eastward enlargement, framed around the themes of ‘return to Europe’ and ‘European unification’. Yet this commitment later evolved into a more cautious position because of the deepening-widening dilemma, itself shaped by competing West and East German legacies, as well as post-reunification challenges, and migration and security concerns. The paper suggests this shift helps explain the roots of Germany’s current conditional support for future EU enlargement to the Western Balkans, Ukraine, and Moldova. Linking Cold War détente, post-1990 enlargement and contemporary accession politics, the paper contributes to International Studies by showing that today’s enlargement debates are shaped not only by current geopolitics but also by historical memory and institutional sequencing.