Germany's Contribution to Europe's Common Foreign Policy (efp) in the Middle East – from Brakeman to Key Supporter of a Strong European Role in Middle East Peace Making

This paper relies on theoretical approaches from the IR-discipline to account for important changes in Germany’s support for a common European foreign policy toward the ArabIsraeli dispute since the early 1990s. It first describes two major shifts in Germany’s approach towards Middle East peace making: first, Germany’s growing support for EuroMediterranean cooperation in the second half of the 1990s; and second, Germany’s increasing support for a stronger political role of the EU in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process subsequent to the outbreak of the second Palestinian intifada in September 2000. Subsequently, the paper engages in a theoretically informed analysis of the described foreign policy changes. In a first step, it draws on rationalist arguments which understand foreign policy change primarily as the result of a shift in Germany’s economic and soft security interests in the MENA region. It is argued that particularly the greater German exposedness to soft security threats from the MENA region – which resulted from the implementation of the Schengen agreement in 1995 had a strong effect on Germany’s policy approach toward the Middle East. However, changes in Germany’s material interests in the region fail to account for other important aspects of Germany’s foreign policy behaviour. Here, (constructivist) explanations of experiential learning can help to close the rationalist explanatory gap. Patrick Mueller Institut for Advanced Studies (HIS) Vienna [email protected]