The Post-1990 SPD between Idealistic Pro-Europeanism and Domestic Ideological Priorities in Germany

This paper aims to examine the evolution of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD)’s pro- European attitude from German reunification in 1990 until 2010. German unity marked a turning point in the SPD’s formerly idealistic stance on the EC/EU, forcing the party to give more emphasis to domestic problems. As such, the main argument of this paper is that the SPD found itself in a persistent dilemma between idealistic/internationalistic sentiments and domestic considerations in its pro- Europeanism following the national reunification. The SPD’s idealistic pro- Europeanism was increasingly challenged by its rather suspicious take on Europe owing to domestic ideological priorities. This tension culminated in ideology-orientated criticisms towards the EU, as seen in the debate on single market by the early 1990s, and some contradictory official positions, as seen during the Euro crisis in 2009. As a result, the weight of ideological pragmatism rose at the expense of idealistic (non- ideological) pro-Europeanism in the SPD’s approach towards Europe, not least after Gerhard Schröder took over as chancellor in 1998. To examine this tension between the two tendencies, semi-structured qualitative interviews and archival research were employed as the data- collection methods. In this respect, 16 senior political elites from the SPD who previously served in the top party, parliamentary and governmental positions were interviewed. In addition, several selected physical and digital archives on the party’s European vocation were covered. To analyse the collected data, the reflexive thematic analysis (RTA) method was used.