Implementing EU environmental policy in times of crisis (2008-2018). To what extent does the image of Greece as an environmental ‘laggard’ hold true?

EU’s and Greece's environmental policy performance throughout the economic crisis showed that significant implementation challenges and problems remain. While the improvement of the EU’s environmental policy performance is acknowledged, Greece’s capacity and ambition to implement the environmental policy have been reduced as evidenced by the rather weak implementation pattern in a highly volatile economic environment. A key determinant for Greece's rather unsteady and poor performance is attributed to the inefficiencies of public administration. The proposed paper seeks to provide an in-depth analysis of a hitherto under-researched Southern Member state using the 'goodness of fit' approach as an explanatory mechanism to examine its implementation performance in difficult times. Particularly, the goal of this study is to provide a contemporary analysis of the 'leader-laggard' dynamic and an updated account of Greece’s environmental policy implementation record from 2008 to 2018 based on 17 interviews with Greek and European participants and descriptive statistics in the form of environmental infringements.