The paper deals with policy reform in two Southern European member-states (Greece and Italy) in light of the increased EU pressures for change due to the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis. Building on two key parameters deriving from the Europeanization literature, the chapter offers a comparative study of policy reform in time of crisis which started in late 2008. The first parameter concerns the importance of time and of the increased speed of Europeanization for the understanding of pressure for change. The second parameter concerns the type of change and thus a policy structure approach is applied in the case of employment reform in Greece and Italy. Although the Eurozone crisis is fairly recent, we claim that the past five years (2008-2012) have been crucial for ‘fast-forwarding’ Europeanization processes, especially with respect with its ‘top-down’ nature. Welfare state reform is a telling area for research on Europeanization given that initially mainly soft mechanisms of Europeanization have been in place, often with limited substantive results, whereas recent changes have been much more substantial. In fact, welfare state reform is crucial in the ‘austerity’ packages required by Eurozone rules and European institutions. More specifically, the Eurozone crisis and the overarching pressures towards austerity politics have led to renewed top-down pressures for welfare state reform in member states. A comparison between Greece, which is under a Memoranda process and Italy, which is under increased but less formal pressure, has a lot to offer for both a better understanding of Europeanization mechanisms in times of crisis and for the analysis of policy change itself.
