Zusammenfassung:
Against the background of the economic crisis, which significantly diminishes the Europeans’ capacity to act in a coherent manner, Bucharest and Warsaw face common challenges, which may be easier to tackle if the two manage to reach a coordinated approach on the major policy dossiers. This is not an easy task, given that significant changes in the European strategic thinking have started shaping up the policy preferences of EU member states on important dossiers such as fiscal and monetary, energy and security policy. Whether Poland and Romania will manage to coordinate their positions on these sensitive policy dossiers, will impact Europe’s response towards these policies as well as these countries’ influence inside the EU.