The evolution of the ongoing economic crisis from a financial distress to a sovereign debt one, has exemplified the resilience of the neo-liberal ideas in EU and has largely determined the neoliberal ideational perspectives of the European political economy of adjustment. Although the initial expectation was that the crisis would open a window of opportunity for a counter-paradigm to emerge, the reality has been much different. While the neoliberal policy paradigm was fiercely questioned shortly after the collapse of the Lehman Brothers in 2008, it was soundly reconfirmed almost a year later with the Eurozone crisis in 2009. Harsh austerity has become the new economic orthodoxy across the EU since then. Instead of the triumphant comeback of social democracy, the crisis manifested even more prominently its ideational and political inability to propose a coherent counter-paradigm to the neoliberal policy pragmatism.