Germany has played a leading role in the European Union and has maintained a stong alliance with France since the end of World War II. The alliance was especially close in the last 1980s and early 1990s under the leadership of Christian Democrat, Helmut Kohl and Socialist Francois Mitterrand. Germany is at the forefront of European states seeking to advance the creation of a more unified Euopean poilitical, defence and security.
For a number of decades after WWII, the federal Republic of Germany kept a low porfile in international relations, because of both its recent history and its occupation by foreign powers.
Germany is a founding member of the EEC in 1957, which became the European Union in 1993. It maintains close relations with its neighbors to coordinate EU politics.
In 1999, Chancellor Gerhard Schroder's government defined a new basis for German goreign policy by taking a full part in the decisions surrounding the NATO war against Yugoslavia and by sending German troops into combat for the first time since World War II.
The governments of Germany and the United States are clost political allies. The 1948 Marshall Plan, U.S. support during the rebuilding process after World War II, as well as War children, and the strong cultural ties have crafted bond between the two countries, although Shroder's very vocal oppositing to the Iraq War suggested the end of Atlanticism and a relative cooling of German-American relations.
