Greek EU membership - Relationship between the EU and Greece PDF

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Relationship between the EU and Greece...

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EU membership – the Greek case Despite previous agreements European Community (EC)-Greece1, the Greek official request to fully join it happened in 1975, under the Karamanlis’ democracy consolidation process. This relevant decision was raised by the necessity of a guided economic reform since Karamanlis understood that becoming part of the EC would have brought Greece closer to the other democratic EC members and an increase of security and stability (Pridham, 1991; Ioakimidis, 2000). The word ‘modernisation’ was associated with the ‘Europeanisation’ process. Thus, according to Ioakimidis (2000), this description corresponds to the ‘intended’ Europeanisation, applicable to the Greek case. Indeed, this concerns a process of deep change involving economy, society, institutions, and everything related to a state’s functioning. Even though Greece felt the EC membership as an ‘external saver’ (Magone, 2016), Euroscepticism has still been part of the Greek process. However, as it will be shown, this phenomenon did not obstacle a successful Europeanisation (Verney, 2011). When Greece approached full membership, the state was highly centralised, and this was deeply affecting Greek society and economy. Hence, the firm presence and regulation of the state in its economy still allowed a proper functioning of it, yet without making Greece powerful (Ioakimidis, 2000). Therefore, Greece started nationalising significant segments of the economic and muting territorial and institutional sectors, conforming to the community models and enforcing the administrative structures (Pridham, 1991; Featherstone and Yannopoulos, 1995). Despite this, before an EC’s fundamental intervention in 1985, Greece escaped the EC recommendations by pursuing expansionary and damaging policies. When the Copenhagen Criteria were established with the Maastricht Treaty, Greece was forced to fulfil the European Union (EU) expectations. Thus, Simitis’ government successfully began reforming the system reducing the budget deficit, public expenditure and local financial support (Sotiropoulos, 1993). This inevitably brought, for the first time, liberalization, support, progress, and changes in the state dimensions. In fact, as above-mentioned, institutions are also part of the Europeanisation process (Ioakimidis, 2000). In Greece, the state renounced its centrality in favour of the EU leading capacities, which favoured new policies’ development in different fields and a strengthening process of democracy and institutions, confirming Karamanlis’ expectations. However, locally, Europeanisation was not always well seen and, in fact, helped Euroscepticism grow. This phenomenon particularly affected Greek left parties which suddenly changed position once in power, a common case for Eurosceptic parties (Szczerbiak and Taggart, 2008). Thus, despite the votes, Euroscepticism in Greece remained marginal until 2014’s elections, when SYRIZA and Golden Dawn were supported by a growing number of voters. In fact, after the 2009 crisis, negative public opinion towards the EU increased and the 2014’s elections confirmed it (Verney, 2015) also overcoming Verney’s marginality and electoral unpopularity Euroscepticism measuring criteria (Verney, 2011). To date, this negative tendency seems to be softened. As Featherstone (2003) claims, both advantages and side-effects of the EU membership have shown up. However, without the EU support and funds, Greece would have not overcome all its crises, from the economic one to the most recent Covid-19 one. Greece remains a weak state in its basis, with the risk of depending too much on the EU, but this still convenes to Greece....