Effects of European Debt Crisis and Prospects of Euro Zone

The European economy is just recovering after the crisis and is facing numerous problems that prevent the transition to a sustainable economic growth. Among the most significant problems are massive fiscal deficits and public debt. This imposes the risks of default and can cause a collapse of national economies’ encouragement programs. Large-scale foreign trade imbalances threaten the already shaky stability of the global monetary and financial system. Huge amounts of speculative capital contribute to the formation of price bubbles in the domestic and international stock and commodity markets. It is obvious that these difficulties are systemic by their nature. In order to overcome them the leading European states have to undertake decisive and concerted measures for the restructuring of the existing economic order. An understanding of the respective need is currently declared at the highest political level, including the European Central Bank and G20. In practice, however, the efforts so far are concentrated mainly on the soft and cautious reform of the regulation of financial markets in the countries of the Eurozone. Implementation of the steps to create a more reliable and secure European financial and economic architecture is restrained by dramatic differences in the interests of the leading countries. According to most analysts, efforts to overcome this are likely to fail in the coming years. The failure to address fundamental problems of the financial crisis increases the uncertainty of the development of the European economy and creates the preconditions for new crisis situations.