The 2008 financial crisis and European integration

Official URL: http://192.168.1.20/record=b1295927 (Table of Contents)

The financial crisis of 2008 has devastated global economy. The Eurozone countries received the immediate impacts of the crisis on their banking sector. These economies suffered from liquidity shortage, recession and unemployment. The Eurozone members have managed to take the crisis under control owing to euro, the European Central Bank and state aids. The emerging economies of Central and Eastern Europe received the impacts later; but the implications have been much harder. The crisis has generated serious balance of payment problems in the whole region, but particularly in the countries that were the most dependent on foreign capital, such as Hungary, Latvia and Romania. Economic downturn has caused social unrest, political instability and government collapses in these countries. In the aftermath of the crisis, the member states had made the commitment of withstanding the crisis with a common action plan and in solidarity. This thesis is an attempt to analyse the extent to which the EU has kept to this promise by the first quarter of 2009. It will be argued that the EU’s solidarity proved to be vulnerable; the major member states attempted to break solidarity when their national and sectoral interests fell at stake. The crisis has made more apparent the conflict of interests between member states and the Commission as well as the divide between Eurozone and non-Eurozone countries.