Administrative Adaptation during the Eurozone Crisis: Greece and the CAP Reform

Since 2009 a number of significant events, such as the Eurozone crisis that followed the global financial crisis in 2008, struck the economies of the EU member states and particularly Greece. Following the Eurozone crisis, the EU institutions acted as managers of the crisis. The EU introduced new institutions such as the TROIKA (European Central Bank, European Commission and the International Monetary Fund), followed by the QUARTET (The European Stability Mechanism was added to Troika), the European Stability Mechanism in the management of the crisis process and changed the EU’s role in relation to domestic politics and policy. These events were not directly connected to agriculture. However, they also affected the domestic agricultural administrative structures. Moreover, the 2013 CAP reform introduced changes in the CAP. These changes responded to the emerging climate and sustainability challenges and connected the CAP directly to green economy, which among other aspects introduced new domestic administrative demands. This paper examines how these events, the crisis along with the CAP reform at the EU level are relevant in the examination of administrative adaptation to the CAP in Greece, since the outbreak of the Eurozone crisis. For this purpose, I identify and analyse three domestic factors, that include both institutions and actors in order to analyse the administrative changes and adaptation during the course of the Eurozone crisis 2009-2017, including the 2013 CAP reform. I show that there have been organisational and administrative changes, which were triggered by the EU management of crisis but remain domestically shaped and path dependent to the pre-existing institutional and organizational settings.