ABSTRACT
Southern European EU Member States differ in size, population, political and economic strength and foreign policy tradition, with Italy and Spain often being referred to as ‘middle powers’ (Wood, 1987; Giacomello and Verbeeck, 2011) and with Portugal and Greece, and Cyprus and Malta, considered to be ‘small states’ and ‘micro-states’ respectively (Magone, 2000; Pace, 2002, 2005; Tsardanidis and Stavridis, 2011). Comparative analysis is also affected by diachronic factors: it may be difficult to engage in comparing Europeanisation given that both Maltese and Cypriot actors have not yet become firmly established in the EU context, as opposed to, say, their Italian counterparts, who are operating in the circles for fifty years. However, longer membership does not guarantee better adaptation to EU rules and principles as the cases of Greece or even Portugal have shown (in the former case, an ‘enfant terrible’ not only of EU integration but also over foreign policy issues, let alone economic and financial disciplines, in the latter especially during the first years of the 2008 crisis).
