Abstract:

This study presents the origins and manifestations of the economic crisis that started in 2008 at both world level and in the European Union. In both cases the study analyzes also some of the measures undertaken in order to overpass the crisis and their results. During the same year, 2009, the European Union witnessed a decline of its GDP by 4.4 %, while the Euro zone had a decline of 4.5 %. Only from this synthetic data results a conclusion that the European Union and the Euro zone were more affected by the economic crisis than the rest of the world. This situation remained true in 2013 and 2014. In 2013 the world economy had a growth rate of its GDP of 2.3 % while European Union had a growth rate of 0.1 % and the Euro zone of – 0.5 % (World Bank Data).  In 2014, according to the forecasts of the World Bank the world economy had a growth rate of 2.6 % while the Euro zone of only 0.9 % (World Bank Data) and the European Union as a whole of 1.3 % (Forecast for European Union for 2014 from Eurostat). A second part of the study is focused on the situation of European Union from the perspective of the current year, 2015, as well as from the point of view of the prospects for 2015 and the coming years.