The Eurozone crisis’ impact: a de-Europeanization of Greek and Portuguese foreign policies?

ABSTRACT

This article compares the impact of the Eurozone crisis on the foreign policies of Greece and Portugal from a de-Europeanization perspective. These two Southern European countries were significantly Europeanized in the past and both suffered greatly from the Euro crisis. Focusing on the Troika period and on relations with China, the article shows that both Greece and Portugal’s foreign policies towards Beijing went through an important degree of de-Europeanization during the Eurozone crisis. Such effect was, however, more intense and durable in the case of Greece, much driven by domestic politics. These national factors were intimately connected with exogenous drivers, such as EU-level developments and Beijing’s agency, both more relevant for illuminating the case of Portugal. Ultimately, the Eurozone crisis strengthened the influence of external actors like China over EU foreign policy-making, working as a complementary driver of de-Europeanization.

KEYWORDS:

• de-Europeanization
• Greek foreign policy
• Portuguese foreign policy
• Eurozone crisis
• China

Acknowledgments

This article is based upon work from COST-Action ENTER (CA17119), supported by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology). António Raimundo´s contribution was also supported by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) under Grant SFRH/BPD/99579/2014.

Disclosure statement conflict of interest

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. This preference found some echo among the conservative Social Democratic Centre-Popular Party (CDS-PP), which was the junior partner in the centre-right coalition government (2011–2015), responsible for implementing the bailout programme, and whose leader, Paulo Portas, was Portugal’s Minister of Foreign Affairs during the first half of that government’s mandate. As foreign minister Portas stated several times in domestic discussions that with the Troika’s intervention Portugal had become a ‘protectorate’ and needed to restaure its ‘sovereignty’ (Sousa and Gaspar 2015, 105–106).

2. Showing commitment in those negotiations was seen as important to ensure support in solving Portugal’s financial problems and to distinguish itself from the case of Greece.

3. Initially known as ‘16 + 1’, the group became the ‘17 + 1’ when Greece joined.

4. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/26/world/europe/greece-china-piraeus-alexis-tsipras.html

5. Nonetheless, while Greece badly needed FDI, this was not the whole story. There are strong indications that Greek shipowners not only facilitated COSCO’s investment in Piraeus, but also initiated the whole process (Huliaras and Petropoulos 2013, 14).

6. At the time only four other European countries (France, Germany, United Kingdom and Spain) had established a strategic partnership with China.

7. In 2003 Beijing established in Macau the Forum for Economic and Trade Cooperation between China and the Portuguese-speaking Countries.

8. While securing the lion’s share of the privatization wave and involving sensitive sectors, Chinese investments’ share of Portugal’s total FDI stock remained relatively small (around 1.6% in 2016).