The Impact of German-Russian and Polish-Ukrainian special relations on European Foreign Policy: energy supplies and visas in the EU neighbourhood

The foreign polices of EU member states are increasingly influenced and challenged by the institutionalisation of the European Foreign Policy (EFP). Nevertheless, member states keep preserving autonomy in designing their national foreign policies and in maintaining bilateral relations with other international actors. Likewise, member states influence the EFP decision-making process, its outcomes and implementation. However, these various interdependencies between member states’ bilateral relations and the EFP have hardly been analyzed and explained.
The purpose of the paper is thus to analyse the link between bilateral relations of member states maintained with non-member states and the developments of the EFP. Concretely, this study propose to analyse two parallel special relations (Polish-Ukrainian and German-Russian), each of them based on a specific constellation of shared interests and norms, and how these relations have influenced the making of the new European Ostpolitk emerging after the latest EU enlargement and the adoption of the European Neighbourhood Policy. This analysis will focus on the question how these two parallel strands of the foreign actions (national and European) interact and what kind of outputs this interaction bring about, both at the national and at the European level. In so doing, this study will also address how the respective special relations of Germany and Poland with Russia and Ukraine, impact on the course of the Polish-German relations.