&gt; <i>&quot;[...] allowed Greece to lie their way into the EU&quot;</i><p>I believe you hit the nail, but not quite on the head.<p>The fact that it was <i>possible</i> to get into EU through systematic lies was a symptom of a much bigger problem. I remember when Greece joined. Everyone I know thought that it was an insane idea, because Greece simply wasn&#x27;t ready or financially stable enough.<p>But at the time the main political drive in EU was expansion. It was almost as if the heads of EU states felt that unless the union was large enough it would be irrelevant. So the policy was expansion at all costs.<p>And there was nothing subtle about it. Hell, a Finnish politician got the seat of a <i>commissary of EU expansion</i>!<p>Not sure whether that was naked ambition or just institutional myopia.