The wave of protest movements and revolts spreading in the Middle East and North Africa presents the EU and the US with a unique opportunity: to help create a freer and more stable environment in the South and Southeast. A joint strategic approach with the US, a reformed and enhanced ENP with serious conditionality and a renewed emphasis on trade and migration policy, and a greatly enhanced effort to help build civil societies and democratic party structures are the decisive ingredients of a response to the Arab Spring that is based on our core values.

Under the autocratic rule of Vladimir Putin, Russia has become fundamentally antagonistic to the West, and it will not become cooperative in the near future. The Russian regime wants to secure its own authoritarian power structure, recreate an empire and weaken the West. It has developed a new set of instruments, such as hybrid warfare and projecting political influence, to which the West still has to find the right answer. However, the project of strengthening the West to face this massive threat must be undertaken. NATO and the EU will have to find innovative answers. What is crucial is finding the political will to do so.

The eastward enlargement of the European Union may well be the biggest challenge in the history of European integration. It is, however, accompanied by profound internal and external crises highlighted by the EU’s difficulties in coping with the effects of economic globalization, of which the most obvious are high unemployment and a growing scepticism with regard to integration. This article argues that the solutions to both these challenges are deeply interconnected: while enlargement is a strategic necessity in its own right, it is also the only factor galvanizing EU member states into action for the reforms which are inevitable if the integration project is to be kept afloat. As the new democracies of central and eastern Europe prepare for EU membership and the EU prepares for enlargement, Poland and Germany can reflect on the past eight years of a historically unprecedented improvement in their relationship. Bringing Poland into the EU (as well as into NATO) has become a key item in the Polish‐German ’community of interest’.

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Germany's peaceful unification 20 years ago can be rated as one of the lasting success stories of German and European history. Nevertheless, some feelings of frustration with unification and the ensuing process of transition in the East continue to exist among many East and West Germans. While West Germans often feel like the paymasters of German unity, many East Germans feel their lifetime in the GDR is not respected and argue that even Communist East Germany would have had a few positive contributions to make to a united Germany. While these frustrations are slowly receding in their significance for day-to-day public affairs, the centre of gravity of German politics has shifted leftward domestically and especially in foreign policy.