Eurozone periphery post-crisis - Financialisation and industrialisation in Slovenia and Slovakia

The article provides a comparative study of Slovenia and Slovakia to analyse the transformation of dependent accumulation regimes in the Eurozone periphery after 2010. The study of these two economies from CEE is particularly insightful to understand how the Eurozone countries from the industrial periphery coped with the challenges of restructuring after the outbreak of the crisis. The article combines dependency and régulationist approaches to study European asymmetrical accumulation regimes. We argue that the post-crisis economic trajectories in CEE continue to reflect main traits of the pre-crisis asymmetrical relationship with the core. The key vulnerabilities are linked to the on-going reliance on FDI for export industrialisation, the narrow export specialisation, and, particularly in Slovakia, a rapid expansion of household debt. In Slovenia, under the EU supervision, the pre-crisis private debts were shifted to the public sector and henceforth burden public investment. Our findings suggest that financialisation as well the Eurozone monetary constraints should be systemically included in the analysis of post-crisis CEE growth trajectories. In addition, despite economic recovery, the accumulation regimes at Eurozone industrialised periphery continue to exhibit strong anti-labour bias.