European Politeia, 1/2015
The debt crisis has revealed deep economic, institutional and ethical discrepancies affecting the European integration process as a whole. The cohesion of the European Union has been challenged and existing institutional weaknesses have been brought to the surface. This has certainly served as a test of endurance for what has already been achieved and will probably be an opportunity for a reconfiguration which should be closely observed for what could be named as a relapse in terms of distribution of power.
Greece, as the most unprepared of all Member States, has been severely hit by the debt crisis, mainly because of internal structural weaknesses. Notwithstanding such misfortune, Greece has also served as a political experiment for all entities involved; a political body on which new therapies might be tested under conditions of considerable uncertainty as to the appropriateness and content of the applicable norms as well as states well able to impose their views on the institutional apparatus of the Union which appeared, for constitutional and conjunctural reasons, to be in retreat, unable to organise a political debate on valid alternatives.
In the present issue, two accounts systematically survey the avalanche of the economic (Professor Panagiotis Liargovas and Professor Spyridon Repousis, The Greek Crisis: A Chronology of Events) and legislative measures (Associate Professor Rebecca-Emmanuela Papadopoulou, Mr. Sofoclis Stratakis and Mr. Ioannis Mournianakis, Legislative Compliance with the Economic Adjustment Programmes for Greece: An Overview and an Attempt at a Typology (2010-2013)) taken in Greece in the framework of what is known as a "budgetary adjustment assorted with structural changes". The forthcoming issue, still bearing on the same central theme, will include a third account commenting on the ever-growing resistance to austerity measures as gradually moving through courts. Three sets of contributions take an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on economic and juridico-political views on the particular issues as defined within the main target theme for the first issues. At the outset, Dr. Xenophon Yataganas and Mr. Anastassios Banos (La constitutionnalité du programme de consolidation financière pour la Grèce) explore the major clash caused, in a state of emergency related to a fiscal crisis, between the therapies proposed and eventually imposed by the creditors, and the Constitution of the country hit by such a crisis. In a first vis-à-vis, Dr. Kosmas Boskovits (The Greek Economic Adjustment Programmes as an Institutional Experiment: Patterns of Enhanced Surveillance) and Professor emeritus Panos Kazakos (Griechenland in der Krise - Anpassungsprogramme und Widerstände. Eine vorläufige Bilanz) draw a parallel between the institutional and economic shifts which intentionally or accidentally affected the general set-up of the integration process. In a second vis-à-vis, Mr. Nikos Frangakis (Solidarity: The Principle and the Practice - From the Institutions to the Citizen) and Professor Eleftherios Thalassinos (The Trilemma and the Eurozone: A Pre-announced Tragedy of the Greek Debt Crisis) show how responsibilities built on negligence and abstention, or on positive remedial action against great need, strangely interact. The contribution of Professor Panagiotis Roumeliotis and Dr. Eleni Panagiotarea ('Painting' Greece's Debt Sustainable: An Exercise in Futility or a Viable Project?) examines the question of Greece's debt sustainability and reviews four combined actions needed to achieve this. Finally, Professor Dimitris Triantafyllou (De la gouvernance économique à la "Constitution" de la zone euro) sketches out the critical background in juridico-political terms against which all the particular institutional shifts should be referred.
PROLEGOMENA
Editorial: The Challenge
Editor's Note: Timing the Stimulus
PRAXIS
Rebecca-Emmanuela Papadopoulou / Sofoklis Stratakis / Ioannis Mournianakis, Legislative Compliance with the Economic Adjustment Programmes for Greece: An Overview and an Attempt at a Typology (2010-2013)
Panagiotis Liargovas / Spyridon Repousis, The Greek Crisis: A Chronology of Events
THEORIA
Xénophon Yataganas / Anastassios Banos, La constitutionnalité du programme de consolidation financière pour la Grèce
Panos Kazakos, Griechenland in der Krise - Anpassungsprogramme und Widerstände: Eine vorläufige Bilanz
Kosmas Boskovits, The Greek Economic Adjustment Programmes as an Institutional Experiment: Patterns of Enhanced Surveillance
Nikos Frangakis, Solidarity: The Principle and the Practice - From the Institutions to the Citizen
Eleftherios Thalassinos, The Trilemma and the Eurozone: A Pre-announced Tragedy of the Greek Debt Crisis
Panagiotis Roumeliotis / Eleni Panagiotarea, 'Painting' Greece's Debt Sustainable: An Exercise in Futility or a Viable Project?
Dimitris N. Triantafyllou, De la gouvernance économique à la "Constitution" de la zone euro
VARIA
Xénophon Yataganas, Deux livres sur les memoranda de la Grèce
