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German Eastern policy – fears, interpretations and facts


The German government supports sanctions against Russia and does not plan to ease them at the moment. Also the representatives of the German business understand the political importance of the sanctions, even though they may have negative consequences for the German economy – these are the main conclusions of the discussion during the conference “German Eastern policy – fears, interpretations and facts“.

During the debate  between Thomas Bagger, the head of Policy Planning of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Tobias Baumann, the head of the Russia, Eastern and Southern Europe, Turkey and Central Asia department at the Association of German Chambers of Industry and Commerce, and  Viola von Cramon, Eastern policy expert of the Green Party, many up-to-date topics were taken up. The discussion revolved around the questions of the EU sanctions against Russia, energy security, the pro-Russian aspect of German society and the Polish-German cooperation in the area of Eastern policy.


The debate began with the question on the stand of Germany regarding EU sanctions against Russia. When asked if Germans are going to try to ease the sanctions due to their negative influence on the German economy, Thomas Bagger replied that this moment has not come yet and the final decision will depend on how the situation in Ukraine evolves. The decision must, moreover, be taken jointly by all the EU Member States  Tobias Baumann, representing the position of German business, pointed out that the sanctions do not only have negative influence on the economy of the country against which they are applied but also affect the countries that apply them. Nevertheless, according to Baumann, the representatives of the German business sector understand the political importance of the sanctions and do not question their adequacy. The role of the organizations such as the one represented by Baumann  is to explain to the  society and to the entrepreneurs what the sanctions are aimed at and what their side-effects might be, so that the society accepts such measures.  According to him, what has the most detrimental impact on the economy – both German as well as the Russian or Ukrainian ones – is the Ukrainian-Russian conflict itself. The conflict destabilizes the exchange rates and renders the investments in the region more risky.

Viola von Cramon was highly critical of Germany when answering the question on the pro-Russian aspect of the German society . Even though there have been changes in the past year in the way of perceiving Russia by the Germans, there is still a lot to be done in this matter, says von Cramon. While in November 2013 only a small percentage of Germans had a negative opinion about the Russian politics, this has  significantly changed after the annexation of Crimea by Putin. Since the annexation of the peninsula we can observe a gradual growth of the awareness of the German society, which has so far had a relatively permissive attitude towards the politics of the Kremlin  regarding its neighbours.  This approach, however, is not uniform in all parts of Germany. The Western federal states in Germany are highly critical towards Putin’s politics. The inhabitants of Eastern Germany, on the other hand, have still a rather positive attitude towards Russia (the difference between East and West Germany in terms of perceiving Russian politics can reach 25%). Viola von Cramon finds it necessary to conduct an intensive information campaign, which should inform the German society about Putin’s campaign and fight back the Kremlin propaganda in Germany.

Another topic of the debate was the energy security in Europe, especially in Germany and Poland. The  panel speakers agreed that one of the most important issues is to reduce the dependence of Germany, Poland and the whole EU on Russian gas supplies, thus making Europe less vulnerable to Russia’s blackmailing. The speakers differed, however, in terms of the visions of  the strategy that Germany and the rest of the EU should adopt.  The expert of the Green Party argued that Europe should try to reduce the amount of money which Putin earns by selling gas and oil. In this context, she criticized the former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder for opposing the construction of a gas port in Wilhelmshaven. This would have enabled Germany to reduce gas imports from Russia, since it would have been made possible to import more LNG (liquefied natural gas) from other countries.
The representatives of the Association of German Chambers of Industry and Commerce and the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs underlined that the renegotiations of gas prices that have previously been agreed upon is very difficult. They have underlined that the EU Member States honor  the contracts that have been signed and act in the rule of law, which makes them different from Russia.
The panel speakers also discussed the Polish-German cooperation in the field of Eastern policy. Answering the question on  why Poland was not invited to a diplomatic meeting of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine in Berlin, the representative of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs pointed out that there have been many different formats of the discussions and Germany was not invited to all of them either (round table in Geneva).
Among numerous comments of the audience there were those pointing at the danger of the imperialistic politics of Russia, which, according to one of the participants, is aimed at confronting the West in the course of the next 30-50 years. In this context the speakers said that it is necessary to work out a new vision of EU-Russian relations, which will not, however, lead to complete isolation of the country ruled by Putin. Another comment was about the engagement of Germany in the construction of the gas pipeline Southstream. According to one of the participants, this clearly shows  that Germany is not acting to reduce the country’s dependence on Russian gas imports. Quite the contrary, the degree to which the German economy depends on gas imports from the East is growing. A yet another comment from the audience raised the questions of the necessity of providing military support to Ukraine, in particular in the form of selling weapons.  Another important issue, according to one of the conference participants, would be offering Ukraine a large scale German-Polish NGO support program under the auspices of the European Union.
The debate was organized in cooperation with the Foundation for Polish-German Cooperation (FWPN) , the Bertelsmann Foundation, the Institute of Public Affairs, the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Poland and the European Council on Foreign Affairs.  

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