Poland And Germany In The European Union

This book explores the political and social dynamics of the bilateral relations between Germany and Poland at the national and subnational levels, taking into account the supranational dynamics, across such different policy areas as trade, foreign and security policy, energy, fiscal issues, health and social policy, migration and local governance. By studying the impact of the three explanatory categories – the historical legacy, interdependence and asymmetry – on the bilateral relationship, the book explores the patterns of cooperation and identifies the driving forces and hindering factors of the bilateral relationship. Covering the Polish–German relationship since 2004, it demonstrates, in a systematic way, that it does not qualify as embedded bilateralism. The relationship remains historically burdened and asymmetric, and thus it is not resilient to crises. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of European and EU Politics, German politics, East/Central European Politics, borderlands studies, and more broadly, for international relations, history and sociology.

Zaborowski's study is a vivid and authoritative account of Polish-German relations, convincingly analysed using 'Europeanisation' as a conceptual prism. The book evaluates the relationship from both a historical and contemporary perspective, assessing its broader European significance. Zaborowski puts particular emphasis upon EU enlargement, which he sees as a centrepiece of the post-1989 rapprochement between the two states.

By all accounts, the case of Poland and its segue to market economy and democracy is a success story: 30 years of uninterrupted growth and development, infrastructure expansion, and modernization of the economy and society. Epochal changes have unfolded in a timespan of merely three decades. Change has taken place so fast that children born in late 1980s and onwards cannot remember what life in Poland under communism was like and cannot relate to it. Also, many elderly people, easy victims of romanticizing their own youth, tend to forget. As a result, the uniqueness of Polish transition and transformation, the boldness and efficiency of reforms, and the success that Polish society mastered together, tend to be undermined today both domestically and internationally. Poland has now been a member of the EU for more than 15 years. During that time, Poland’s image on the EU scene evolved from newcomer, through ‘model child’, champion of growth, to – in some respects – a maverick. This volume’s objective is to remind society, old and young, researchers, scholars and practitioners, that Poland’s success is an outcome of well-thought out and bold structural reforms implemented in a swift and timely manner, of society’s support for these reforms, and of third actors’ benign assistance. Looking back on the 30 years since the collapse of communism, and at the over 15 years of EU membership, this book offers an interdisciplinary, comprehensive and critical insight into factors and processes that have led to today’s Poland.

Based on the diverging interests of Germany and Poland as influential members of the European Union on the Eastern Partnership (EaP), the contributions in the anthology analyse specifics and current problems of the states in EU’s Eastern neighbourhood. By including the interests of Russia and the USA, which go beyond the EU, the geostrategic implications of these relations for the Eurasian region will also be highlighted. The studies of renowned German and Polish experts represent the results of individual research and bilateral exchange on the current state of EU’s relations towards its Eastern neighbours.

This book describes the transformative power of the European Union in the area of gender equality policy in Poland and Germany from 2004 until 2012. It gives the readers an insight into the process of implementing EU law and the major actors and variables which influence this process and its outcome. The book includes an analysis of national law from the perspective of the implementation of EU directives as well as interviews with experts in this area. It identifies the main actors that support or block the law's implementation as well as the sociocultural conditioning of the process of implementation and its final outcome in both countries. This shows that every Member State, due to its unique configuration of national actors and conditions, develops a different final way of implementing the same EU law, and therefore the transformative power of the EU leads to divergent outcomes in different Member States.