pean Exchange Rate mechanism in March 1998. At long last, Greece seems to be making a successful transition from the status of an emerging market to that of a mature economy, and the bets are heavily on Greece’s admission to the European monetary union by the year 2001. Even domestic politics has become less polarized and personalized; and perhaps verging on the boring for the taste of some Greeks used to charismatic leaders and interminable fights between the good and the evil.Slow Adjustment to EU MembershipThe European Union is now much more than the incomplete common market it had been for many years. Yet, European construction is still very much about economics in the wider sense - low politics being arguably a misnomer for what constitutes the bread and butter of political life in contemporary democratic societies. European economic integration can be in turn divided into three main areas: the opening (and regulation) of the internal market for goods, services, persons and capital; the redistribution of resources, mainly through structural policies; and now, economic and monetary union (EMU).Accession to the EC/EU has meant for Greece a radical change in the relationship between the state and the market. Greece had a long history of high external protection and extensive state intervention in the economy, usually arbitrary and non-transparent and directly linked to the operation of the clientele system. As a member of the Union, Greece has been forced to adjust to open and highly competitive markets and also to the requirements of joint rule-setting in Brussels. With the deepening and widening of the process of European integration, the scope of joint rules and externally imposed constraints has been greatly extended, now covering not only different barriers to entry to the domestic market but also inflation, budget deficits and interest rates. In other words, economic sovereignty in the context of the EU has become a very r...
