Greece officially submitted its application to the European Economic Community (EEC) in June 1975, inspired by friendly support and its own hopes for economic development. However, the EEC objected to its application due to the following reasons, majorly economic and political reasons: The Commission noted that Greece’s economy and agriculture lagged behind the nine more industrialized nations that made up the EEC (Kalaitzidis and Zahariadis 2015). The Commission proposed that the Nine establish a pre-accession period because they believed a long transitional period would be necessary for the Greek economy to adapt and integrate into the community successfully. They also warned the Member States of the potential danger of involving the Community indirectly in the dispute between Greece and Turkey. The dispute was revived by the Cyprus crisis in July 1974, after the northern part of the island was occupied by Turkish troops (Kalaitzidis and Zahariadis 2015). A number of the caveats set out in the Commission’s opinion provoked a strong reaction in Greece.
Another reason is difficulties in the administrative adaptation of Greece to the European Union. Although the Greek political party system has typically produced a stable two-party system, it has failed to create incentives and initiate the process by which the country would adopt an efficient and rational administrative system. One of the greatest drawbacks is the inability to transform legal texts into actual public policy (Kalaitzidis and Zahariadis 2015). Greece adopts the European acquis communautaire and other European directives but has trouble successfully implementing them. For example, the open method of coordination has failed in Greece due to the fact that it is one of the most statist member states in the EU (Kalaitzidis and Zahariadis 2015). This factor made it hard to transpose a decision-making mechanism that would take away power from the central administrative apparatus. Additionally, Skills and Maris connect the relative underdevelopment of Greece vis-à-vis its European partners with the expansion of the Greek State during the twenty years of socialist rule.
Reference List
Kalaitzidis, Akis, and Nikolaos Zahariadis. 2015. “Greece’S Trouble with European Union Accession”. Cahiers De La Méditerranée, no. 90: 71-84. doi:10.4000/cdlm.7951.