Germany and enlargement to the east of the European Union

This paper aims to account for the ambivalences of the German policy concerning the Eastern enlargement and for the shift in the government strategy since the SPD-green coalition came to power : it discusses different hypotheses and analyses the role of the economic interests in the formation of national preferences. It examines the strategies of German actors in the case of the adhesion of Poland, considering the policies of the interest groups since the beginning of the nineties and these of public actors. It brings to light the modes of action of these groups at the bilateral, regional, domestic and European levels, and the channels through which the German influence is exerted in Brussels. The analysis of the economic factors and of geopolitical constraints is not sufficient to account for the strains in the German policy, also referring to representations conveyed by the rhetoric of politics.