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The Greek crisis has hampered the perception of an EU recovery in foreign reporting. Furthermore, it has damaged the reputation of other indebted EU economies and brought the language of the financial crisis back onto the agenda. A Media Tenor study of the foreign perception of EU economies investigates the damage caused to international media sentiment regarding EU economies.

Greece troubles bring peripheral economy state debt onto the agenda

Perception of the Greek economic crisis peaked in January with Greek Prime Minister Papandreou´s appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Here, the Greek Prime minister presented a key message – Greece needed help. Fiscal policy and EU solidarity for over-burdened states have since brought the perception of the so-called peripheral EU economies, Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain, under the spotlight.

Media Tenor data shows that, as a group, the economic perception of these economies as a group fell from a slight positive 0.1% balanced rating in foreign news reports in November to -72% in February. Interestingly in this group, Greece´s balance was not the worst; Spain showed worse ratings for its economy in US, Middle Eastern, Asian, German and UK TV reporting.

The EU faced with fundamental debate: is Greece too big to fail?

The Greek crisis has also weighed on the perception of the so-called “core EU economies” of Germany, The Netherlands, France, Austria and the UK. The reason for this is that European stability, and the stability of the Euro was fundamentally called in question.

As Media Tenor researcher Michael Gawthorne puts it, “France and Germany have to decide to either bail out dissident economies, or take the hard line. In the case of Greece, Western media perception may make any decision to kick it out of the Euro, or enforce austerity messages relatively easy – Spain and Italy would be a totally different dilemma”.

Green shoots in foreign perception eroded by the crisis – return to crisis language

Media Tenor´s study shows a further unfortunate by-product of the Greek crisis for French and German perception: the rollback of positive reporting on their economies. The 2009 month by month data show that both France and Germany had been perceived in significantly positive terms since August and July 2009. However, the Greek crisis has been occupying up to 10 times the raw volume of economic coverage in non-European media - masking perception of recovery.

Gawthorne suggests that with the news that France and Germany would be the key sponsors of a bailout, positive perception of the French and German economies has been turned into a repetition of the financial crisis – but with more at stake. “Germany is once again being described with the crisis vocabulary – ‘bailout´, ‘too big to fail´, ‘system relevant´. Yet these references are now not being used for rescuing companies, but rescuing whole countries – and that is not the type of threat people like to see hanging over recovery.”

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