Desperately hanging on in Greece – European Council on Foreign Relations, January 2013

The current Greek debate over Europe is inescapably related to its traumatic
experience at the epicentre of the crisis. Since 2010 the country has had to
deal with sky-high interest rates, severe recession, harsh austerity, structural
reform, and the indignity of emergency injections of cash to keep it solvent.
Many Greeks, who had seen membership of the EU as a factor in socioeconomic
progress, now blame elements of Europe for much of what they face. New
political movements such as Syriza have capitalised on this discontent.
However, the most negative – even catastrophic – scenarios involving Greece
remain unlikely, provided conditions allow the fundamentally pro-European
sentiments of the majority of Greeks to reassert themselves. Despite disquiet
about their current predicament, Greeks believe that the current crisis cannot
only be solved in Greece alone. And their continued faith in a solution to both
their own crisis and the systemic crisis of the eurozone itself is crucial for the
continuation of the entire project of European integration.

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