Germany

From normalcy to hegemony to impotence? German foreign policy and European external relations
system, which causes the problem, and the most recent example is the European refugee
crisis – where German leadership capacity is failing and German impotence to “fix” the
refugee crisis leads to acute European disorder.
Germany had undoubtedly experienced an uncontested and largely unexpected gain of
power within Europe over the past years. As a result, the three traditional patterns of
German power in Europe before 1989 became less relevant. Franco-Germany relations
have lost the old engine function. Germany is increasingly bypassing smaller EU countries,
which are close to irrelevant in European external relations today. And lastly but
most importantly, the change from community method to Union method announced in
Angela Merkel’s speech at Brugge College in November 2010 shifted the systemic importance
from the European Parliament and the European Commission away to the European
Council. These three factors together contributed to a paradigm change in the decision
making of the European Union and boosted the German position in Europe. Germany, in a
way, changes European policy directions with the thumb up or down. Whether Greece
leaves the EU or whether Dublin II is respected or not, is ultimately a German decision.
Germany has the power to ask, for example, an Austrian Chancellor to negotiate a European
“Schengen” in the refugee question; or it creates the formats in which it wants to
discuss visa questions in the Balkans (Lippert 2015). In other words: Germany is beyond
institutions in the EU – or above institutions. Or Germany is the instituted EU. This may
work as long as there are policy results pleasing all other European partners – or most. If
there aren’t, such a dominant position is a risk, and this is the case now. The ongoing refugee
crisis is probably the turning point, where Germany’s role in Europe is shifting from
hegemony to powerlessness, not to say impotence.
The reactions of the European partners
The changes in the German role did not remain unnoticed. All European countries had
their specific reaction to the changing German role in Europe and Germany exerting hegemony
in both the euro group and the foreign policy arena. These reactions all came with a
certain delay. In sum, there are three types of reactions: the reactions of the big EU countries
France, the United Kingdom and also Poland; the reaction of the European South;
and the reaction of the smaller EU countries that surround Germany and are economically
strongly dependent on it, such as Czech Republic, Slovenia, Austria and Finland.
Starting with the latter, this stance can be described as “cultural intimidation”. Being
economically strongly dependent on Germany – euro countries such as Slovenia are
de facto a sort of outsourced workbench of the German automobile industry – these
countries decided to side with Germany on most policy questions. The situation of eco-
Shifting Power and Human Rights Diplomacy | Germany
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