The prehistory of the Greek euro crisis goes back to the 1980s, when Greece became a member of what was then the European Community. What proved decisive, however, was Greece’s 2001 entry into the eurozone, for it eliminated the option of compensating for Greece’s developmental lag vis-à-vis the European core states by devaluing the drachma. The subsequent boom in infrastructural investment coincided with the development of an increasingly unfavourable balance of payments and the deterioration of foreign trade. This unbalanced development was rendered openly visible by the world economic crisis of 2008/2009. Greece entered a recession that has continued to worsen to this day, and which has been accompanied by the accumulation of a massive public debt. Since May of 2010, Greece has been forcibly administrated by the so-called troika (the EU Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund). In this way, Greece’s bankruptcy has been – and continues to be – postponed until its effects on the eurozone and the world economy can be softened by the introduction of new containment instruments.