Drawing on FRAGMEX’s second Work Package other research reports and new data from Eurobarometer surveys and opinion polls from the polling company Public Issue, this paper documents the emergence of a normative/ discursive rift in the Greek public sphere, whereby the EU and Germany in particular, are distinguished as largely responsible for the crisis suffered by the Greeks. The EU is held responsible because of its inability to resist Germany’s domination and display a more solidary face to Greece; Germany for being a privileged economic superpower, which dictates a harsh economic policy that serves its own national interests. In this context, aggressive public discourse against both the EU and particularly Germany has been articulated by both politicians and the general public. More generally, the paper documents an outbreak of Euroscepticism in Greece, as well as a gap between elites’ and the general public’s attitudes towards the EU, with the latter feeling much more alienated and untrusting of the EU, than the former. Nonetheless, the analysis also shows that while disappointed, Greeks do not reject the EU and still want their country to be part of the European integration project. Indeed, it could be said that a positive message that emerges from the analysis, is that the criticism leveled against the EU, is not that EU has gone too far, but on the contrary, that integration has not gone far enough, in order to guarantee a more efficient and just crisis management mechanism.

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