THE HELLENIC REPUBLIC OF GREECE AND THE EUROPEAN UNION: A 45-YEAR VOYAGE THROUGH STORMY SEAS TO CALMER WATERS

The article discusses three “flashpoints” in that relationship between the Hellenic Republic of Greece and the European Union: (1) Greece’s role in the early 1980s with regard to the Iberian enlargement; (2) Greece’s drawn-out name controversy with today’s North Macedonia, which started in the early 1990s; and (3) Greece’s sovereign debt crisis, which reached a fever pitch in the mid-2010s. More generally, the article offers important lessons about the dynamicity of “gives and takes” between a regional integration project and a sovereign nation-state.