Germany Now

Germany is reunited, and despite many fears, it neither left NATO nor abandoned the EU. Berlin is strongly committed to multilateralism, but German foreign policy has also become more interest- driven than before. However, our program is not just another project evaluating German foreign policy or German-Polish relations. We claim that there is another Germany emerging from the post - Kohl era: value shifts and economic and social reform under the Schröder cabinets and the Grand Coalition have modernized the country, Germany has become a global player with troops deployed in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Central Africa. Unemployment has been reduced considerably, and - after years of reform blockage and wait-and-see, Germany has become a powerful actor in the EU again.

In the framework of "Germany now", we focus on the consequences of German reform policies- economic as well as social and political- we analyze value shifts within society, the significance of new social movements and the impact of voter realignments and election outcomes. We pay special attention to phenomena which are regarded as dubious, suspicious and exotic in Poland (like the Green Party, the radical right and the populist left) and ask how their development can be explained and what their impact on German reforms and foreign policy may be. We do this in a European perspective, asking how reform policies and changes in the party system affect Germany's position in the EU and international organizations (like NATO, OSCE and the UN).