Recalibrating Germany's Role in Europe: Framing Leadership as Responsibility

Abstract

Unification has had a catalytic effect on discursive justifications for Germany’s involvement in the European Union at two levels: first, through the Federal Republic’s more exposed leadership role in an enlarged EU; and second, through the rise of the Left Party as a predominantly East German, but also the first consistently Eurosceptic party with parliamentary representation at the federal level. Investigating plenary debates in the Bundestag regarding the Lisbon Treaty and the management of the Eurozone crisis, the article investigates the adaptation of political discourse to these new circumstances in the contention between Chancellor Merkel on the one hand, and speakers of the Left Party, on the other. While both sides refer to two sources of normative justification – the appraisal of European integration as a project for prosperity and peace, and the norms of the Basic Law as the foundation for Germany’s involvement in the EU – the main dispute centres on how these justifications must be applied to changed external circumstances. It is shown that the normative concept of responsibility plays a key role for the way in which entrenched norms are used either for the justification or the critical contestation of Germany’s political leadership in the European Union.