Regional Formation and Development Studies

The introduction of the Maastricht criteria was a crucial step in ensuring fiscal discipline and economic stability in the European Union. However, the crises of recent decades, including the Great Recession, the sovereign debt crisis, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the energy crisis, have revealed the limitations of these rules. Strict fiscal requirements have hindered countries’ responses to economic challenges, highlighting the need for a more flexible and adaptive fiscal policy to better withstand future economic shocks. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of the European Union’s fiscal rules over the 20-year period, analysing GDP growth differences between the EU and the Eurozone, as well as the fiscal performance of individual member states. It also seeks to

Income inequality has received widespread attention in the scientific literature. Income inequality has a significant impact on the health and education levels of the population, as well as increases social tension and crime rates, however there is less research on the impact of income inequality on people`s overall life satisfaction. In Lithuania and Latvia, income inequality expressed by the Gini index of disposable income is among the highest in the EU, whereas in Estonia, income inequality is slightly higher than the average in the EU. Similar results are also found for the Lithuania and Latvia regarding overall life satisfaction, which is among the lowest in the EU, while overall life satisfaction in Estonia is somewhat lower than the average in the EU. The aim of the research is to assess whether income inequality has a negative impact on people`s overall life satisfaction and to evaluate how fiscal policy has affected income inequality and overall life satisfaction in the Baltic States. The results of the research show that income inequality and life satisfaction are negatively correlated, and that fiscal policy has reduced income inequality in the Baltic States, expressed by the Gini index based on market income, on average by 30%.