Search Results

This chapter explores Greece’s turbulent and ambivalent relationship with European integration. Despite initial hesitation during the initial stages of EU membership, Greece grew into one of the most pro-European member states. This enthusiasm ended abruptly after 2010 with the eurozone crisis and resultant EU–IMF bailout agreements that necessitated unpopular reforms and austerity. Consequently, Greece witnessed a seismic change in its party system, with a dramatic increase in the popularity of anti-system parties on both the Left and the Right of the political spectrum. Euroscepticism became more prevalent among Greek voters who blamed foreign actors (such as the EU, the IMF, Germany) and their domestic interlocutors for the country’s economic hardship. Greece’s Europeanization has been difficult, not least because of endemic weaknesses in public administration and the public policy process. EU-driven adaptational pressures on policy, polity, and institutions have been severely mitigated by entrenched veto points at the domestic level.

This chapter brings together what have usually been presented as separate ‘consequences’ of European integration. First, it examines Europeanization: the process through which domestic politics and polities are changed by their engagement with the EU. Second, it considers three literatures that capture contemporary challenges to integration: a new domestic politicization of the EU; the rise of Euroscepticism; and a questioning of whether the EU is experiencing disintegration. Third, a continuing challenge for the EU has been its democratic legitimacy, and rising Europeanization is linked to questions of legitimacy of the EU amongst the public. This chapter deals with these interrelated phenomena: the EU’s impact on its member states and the issues arising.

The development of European integration has meant that member states have experienced Europeanization and as a consequence the EU has become a more politicized issue in domestic politics. Politicization has come over time and as a consequence of the decline of a permissive consensus and takes some very different forms. The chapter considers the place of the domestic politicization of European integration in theories of European integration and then reviews different periods of the history of European integration, highlighting the growing phenomena of Europeanization and politicization. The chapter then looks at Euroscepticism and its meaning and different forms and identifying which parties can currently be identified as Eurosceptic and what issues Euroscepticism blends with in different member states. The chapter then offers a typology for understanding the different ways in which the politicization of European integration plays out in the party systems of member states.