The making of Southern Europe:an historical overview

The 2008 euro crisis came hot on the heels of the global economic crisis that exploded in 2007. Almost overnight, Southern Europe became home to the profligate and the indolent.1 The derogatory term PIGS, which had fallen into disuse soon after it was coined in the 1990s,2 resurfaced to describe the economies and (at times) the people of Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain.3 How the geopolitical region termed Southern Europe came about, and why Greece, Portugal and Spain joined the EEC has apparently become lost in the panic that gripped the EU. It is useful, therefore, to re-examine and reiterate how the current notion of a ‘Southern European region’ emerged in order to provide some depth and context to the current Eurozone debate