Klaipėdos universitetas

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