The Management of the Costs of Crisis Management Eurozone, EU 2020 and the Future of European Integration

Although the European Union (EU) was not the main source of the global financial and economic crisis, as one of the leading economic players, it was fundamentally affected by the immediate and longer-term consequences of the crisis. Similarly, it is expected that it would play an important role in how to get out of the crisis (not yet clear, whether a passive or an active one). Almost all areas of community-level and member-state-based economic policy were affected by the crisis. Three of them have been chosen to be addressed in this paper. First, the challenge to the Eurozone and the common currency, as an immediate impact of the crisis will be dealt with. Second, as a coordinated answer to crisis management and post-crisis coordinating (and decision-making) mechanism, the idea of European Economic Governance will be analyzed. Third, in a longer-term perspective of post-crisis sustainable growth, the EU 2020 project will be shortly described and assessed.