Europe is currently faced with a crisis that unfolds at three overlapping and mutually reinforcing levels: the global economic and financial crisis, the political and constitutional crisis of the European Union (EU) and the public debt crisis of the Eurozone countries. This ‘Eurocrisis’ has an extraordinarily high potential for generating a deep and ongoing politicization of the EU within and across national domestic politics, fuelling age-old (and in some cases dormant) identitarian and normative conflicts, which in turn shape public perceptions of crisis and the legitimacy of ‘crisis government’. Focusing on Greece, an EU member state at the epicentre of the crisis, this paper examines how the current configuration of the political order in Europe is contested in response to the ‘Eurocricis’. A virtually pro-European country prior to the outbreak of the crisis in 2009, Greece has since seen a remarkable surge in Eurosceptic sentiment, which appears to focus in particular on Germany and its role in the handling of the crisis. This paper investigates the extent to which the discursive positions that are taken in response to the Eurocrisis are already embedded in encompassing normative foundations and identities. The analysed data is drawn from a variety of public discourse sources- citizens’ protests, newspaper editorials and commentaries, popular blogs and political cartoons.
