The EU’s Impact on the Greek Welfare State: Europeanization on Paper?

Abstract

For the past 25 years in Greece, welfare-state reforms have been the result of the interplay between domestic politics and European influences. While pension reform has been aborted, some targeted and smallscale reforms have proven more successful. Wholesale changes of the welfare system have met with strong resistance from private interests and bureaucratic mechanisms. The EU’s impact has mostly been felt in the policies of employment, vocational training, regional development and, less so, social assistance. Other welfare-state reforms have remained mostly on paper. However, the Greek welfare regime is gradually undergoing a cognitive change, manifested in the diffusion of social rights, and has adopted EU-driven policy tools for consultation and decision making. Throughout, path dependence has interacted with reform dynamics, flowing from the country’s integration into the EU.