Fiscal Sustainability of the Central and Eastern European Countries in the Process of Entering the Eurozone

Fiscal sustainability is not only an attractive discussion topic in academic circles, but also a widely discussed problem among institutions responsible for economic policies, especially in the context of the global financial crisis and the following Eurozone debt crisis. There is no doubt that the approaches of international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund analyze broadly and in-depth the problem of the fiscal sustainability, but there is need for a specific insight to homogeneous groups of countries, as is, for example, the region of Central and Eastern Europe. The selected 10 countries are small and open economies, some of them already Eurozone members. The active and effective integration within the Economic and Monetary Union requires coordinated convergence and maintaining growth with common strategy in countries with similar economic development. Special attention should be devoted to the factors which have the most influence on the budget balance in each economy, while at the same time not neglecting common characteristics of the countries.