The five papers which follow are the outcome of a Conference on Greece and its role in the European Union sixteen years after its accession, hosted by the University of Birmingham. It took place on the 16th of May 1997 at the Institute for German Studies which kindly offered its facilities for this event. The papers of the Conference which have been substantially revised for publication in this journal had as a purpose to explore not only the political, military, economic, and cultural role of Greece since it became a full EEC member but also the contemporary role of the only Balkan state that is an EU member, in the tremendous changes that take place in Europe in the 1990s.