This study aims to analyze the policy success of the two economic adjustment programmes introduced to solve the Greek debt crisis to better understand the EU's change and development after dealing with crises. The analysis uses McConnell’s (2010) policy evaluation framework, which enables the study to see what degree/spectrum of policy success occurred and which of the five policy areas were more or less successful. The findings of this study conclude that the crisis management policies are leaning towards the spectrum of success and that there is an incentive to suggest that policy success is a factor contributing to the EU's organizational change and development, but that more research is needed to confirm it as a significant factor. Furthermore, the study does reveal which policy success areas can be a bigger cause for the EU’s change and development, them being more achieved implementation, the targeted policy group/actor seeing benefit without damaging other groups/actors, and there being minor opposition aimed towards the policies introduced in crises.

This study offers a reinterpretation of the so-called Eurozone crisis, arguing that its crisis character is overstated and that it is rather a normal stage in the process of European banking sector integration. Particularly, I maintain that it is neither a sovereign debt crisis caused by profligate peripheral governments, nor a crisis of the Eurozone's common monetary policy. Nor, however, are the Eurozone's low growth, high unemployment, and economic and political instability deliberate policies, whether by German or Greek governments, European institutions, or the European banking circuitry. Rather, I trace the Eurozone's low growth and high unemployment back to what I call transpositions. Transpositions change the possible boundaries of perceiving political and economic situations by altering the syntagmatic structure governing their intelligibility. The shift from 2003-2007 'boom times' to post-2007 'times of crisis' is one such transposition, which occurs behind the backs of human actors and thus forms the horizon of possible behavior of market and political actors. The Eurozone's 'crisis' transposition, results in differentiations within the asset class of Euro-denominated sovereign debt between a 'core,' comprising Germany, Austria, Latvia, and Finland, among others, and a 'periphery,' encompassing Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and Cyprus. It follows that the solvency of Eurozone member states is a derivative function of banking sector liquidity, reversing the conventional 'sovereign debt crisis' explanation to what I call the country-fundamental transposition. The second transposition I explore is the austerity transposition. I maintain that the Eurozone's real economy is more interconnected than conventional narratives of European economic unification allow, and that supposedly national European economies – including particularly that of Germany – are integrated subcircuits of Europe's real economy. Constituting them as supposedly national economies is itself a transposition, necessary for the preservation of the European banking circuitry's interconnected balance sheets. Yet, the austerity transposition goes further, beyond a form of political economy oriented towards growth and sustainability, and into a moral economy of condemnation differentiating between morally virtuous and morally pernicious economies in the Eurozone. Its destructive effects are therefore neither irrational nor the result of a German hegemonic agenda, but that of the Eurozone's post-2007 syntagmatic structure. / Ph. D.

The introduction of euro in 2002 was considered to be a risky "experiment. Even before its actual existence, many economists have doubted the success of the Economic Monetary Union (EMU) emphasizing the potential costs of such a bold action. The traditional Optimum Currency Area by Mundell (1961), Mc Kinnon (1963) and Kenen (1969) has pointed out the loss of the exchange-rate mechanism and the structural differences among the member states as the main sources of costs within a monetary union. Ten years after the circulation of euro, the ongoing Greek debt crisis has revealed the imperfections of the EMU. Greece has become the "black sheep" of the union, having accumulated unsustainable levels of public debt and deficits that could pose a threat for the future of the Eurozone. It is widely believed that the profligate fiscal policies of the Greek government and the domestic flaws of the Greek economy have played an importan role on the country's debt crisis. However, the impact of Greece's accession to the EMU on the current crisis is still a moot question.

The purpose of this study is to analyze if the workmethods in the European Commission's crisis management had post-bureaucratic characteristics, more specifically less hierarchy, horizontal communication, collective decision-making and own responsibility, during the Greek debt crisis 2010-2015. To carry out an analysis this study identifies four characteristics of a post-bureaucratic organization, in order to use the theory as a tool to clearly identify if there are any post-bureaucratic characteristics in the Commission's workmethods during the Greek crisis 2010-2015. The material used in the study is based on published reports from the European Parliament, European Court of Auditors, International Monetary Fund and the European Commission where facts on the European Commission’s crisis management are presented. This study's analysis shows that post-bureaucratic characteristics can be identified on the workmethods the Commission used in some situations during the Greek debt crisis 2010-2015. The study's conclusion is summarized by the fact that the European Commission’s workmethods in relation to post-bureaucratic characteristics are only found in some instances. Therefore the study can not conclude that the European Commission is a post-bureaucratic organization during the Greek crisis 2010-2015.

Many people have already questioned whether Greece would default: investors, economists, politicians and general public. The Greek debt crisis has also caused a great turmoil in the EU causing fears of its spreading to other countries with poor fiscal situation in Eurozone through bond markets. Finally the rescue package was prepared for Greece consisting of EUR 110 billion loan facility from both Eurozone and IMF. We study the Greek fiscal crisis in the thesis. We try to find its real causes in the historical chapter and we also show the methodology which can be used to assess the credit risk of Greek government using bond market information and CDS contracts information. In the empirical part we study the evolution of the probability of default of Greek government during the debt crisis using parsimonious model based on the bond market information.

The thesis deals with discourse surrounding the topic of the Greek debt crisis (GDC) in the online version of the British daily newspaper the Guardian (www.theguardian.com). The study builds on a bilateral division of the EU public discourse on the economic crisis, distinguishing between two opposing perspectives: "the Northern diagnosis" (DeGrauwe 2011: 5) prevailing in Germany and other creditor states, and 'the Southern opinion' on the situation held mainly by the debtor countries. The thesis examines the position of the Guardian in relation to this bilateral discourse framework. The Guardian represents a liberal, socially aware and traditionally EU-supportive newspaper that is published in a country which counts among the Europe's leading economic and political powers, a country that is also characterized by strong Eurosceptic tendencies. These aspects form a complex background with regard to the EEC/GDC discourse framework. There are factors supporting both "the Northern diagnosis" of the GDC and those suggesting inclination to 'the Southern opinion'. The analysis, dealing with a self-collected corpus (altogether 349 texts, 277 973 words) consisting of the Guardian online news on the GDC is situated - both theoretically and methodologically - in the field of Corpus- assisted discourse studies...