Reflections on the Impact of Membership in the European Communities on Greek Legal Culture

The European Community's legal order, itself an amalgam mostly of Continental origin, is already incorporated into all member states, including Greece, in a quasi-federal mode. Beyond its formal applicability, such order is also bound to pervade Greek law in many fields, affecting especially the law professionals. However, its impact will not be of major consequence in terms of legal culture because it itself traces its roots to the same Ancient Greek notions of justice and Roman-Byzantine legal system and also because Modern Greece has already been heavily influenced by Western legal models. The more intriguing question is whether certain attitudes current among the Greek public and shared with other peoples in the region-attitudes whose power to undermine the spirit of legality and to reduce formalized social cooperation through the rule of law is partially explained or justified as (1) resistance to a remote, bureaucratic, heavy-handed state and (2) impatience with all abstract rules-will be moderated (or perhaps aggravated) by integration into Europe, possibly also moderating in reverse the formalism of the Community order. Finally, integration raises for Greece once again, as for other states, the difficult issue of balance of powers not only between Brussels and Athens but among Brussels, Athens, and the regional and local communities where a truly indigenous, albeit limited, legal culture may eventually emerge.