ABSTRACT
The issue of European integration in the political life of the Federal Republic of Germany is dominated by two specific features. First, German political parties – whether of the Left or the Right – are quite pro-European in their attitudes. Second, Germany – along with France – has been a crucial engine of European integration since the early 1950s (Bulmer, Jeffery and Paterson 2000; Lees 2002; Müller-Brandeck-Bocquet et al. 2002). The catchphrase ‘Europapolitik als Staatsraison’ (‘European policy as a reason of state’) describes very well this common denominator in German (foreign) policy (Müller-Brandeck-Bocquet 2006). In contrast to many other countries where (a) the ‘question of Europe’ has been contentious in party competition, and (b) the respective social democratic parties have often adopted Eurosceptic attitudes, only minor party political differences can be detected in Germany. Finally, the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) can be portrayed as ‘one of the strongest and most influential political parties supporting integration within the European Community, particularly amongst socialist parties’ (Featherstone 1988, 163). Against this background, this chapter not only seeks to answer the question regarding the origin of the SPD’s particular preferences on European integration, but also attempts to explore the reasons for that bipartisan consensus. In this regard, two further questions arise. First, is there any considerable social democratic impact on Germany’s European policy since World War II? Second, under what circumstances did the SPD’s political preferences on European integration differ from those held by the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the SPD’s main (bourgeois) competitor? In fact, the SPD twice deviated from the aforementioned bipartisan consensus, namely during the early 1950s, when the SPD vehemently opposed European integra - tion, and the mid 1990s, when it was divided on the question of European Monetary Union (EMU). In both cases, the German Social Democrats swung back to the Europeanist line after some time.
