My thesis deals with the current debt crisis in the eurozone with a focus on the situation in Slovakia. The aim of this work is to discover what impact this crisis has had on Slovakia as a member of the Monetary union. The first part deals with the beginning of the crisis, its general impact on the Union, and financial instruments and then shifts to the situation in Slovakia. Than the work deals with the impact of the crisis on the political and economic situation which is looked at both in terms of nominal and real convergence. The last part deals with the impact on Slovak society including opinions on the current situation of individual inhabitants.

This diploma thesis discuss the influence of the euro currency on economical situation and its development in Italy, Portugal, Greece and Spain. It is also concerned with the debt crisis which these countries are passing through. First, I analyze development of these countries in the last 20 years prior to entering the eurozone. After that, I focus on the fulfiling of Maastricht criterias and Optimal currency area theory, mainly the convergence of business cycles. Next chapter puts in place the questions of positive expectations, which should have be brought be the euro. In the fourth chapter the work shifts in time to the period after adopting the euro and it analyses the development of several macroeconomic values in the years 2001 - 2010 in southern countries. The results of these research are explained with focus on the influence of the euro. Last chapter concerns about the path of Italy, Portugal, Greece and Spain to the debt crisis, which peaked by the incapability of further finacing some of these countries. It research the possible effects of euro as well.

The subject of the thesis is an important document of our time - the Lisbon Treaty. The thesis is divided into three parts. The first part focuses on 10 years of evolution of the document helping to understand its final form. In the second part, the legal content of the treaty is described. The third and final part presents an overview of the first two years of Lisbon Treaty implementation, with most stress on the prevailing Eurozone debt crisis.

The present dissertation focuses on the impact of the adoption of common European currency on trade of the eurozone countries. There have been several studies published on the subject of the possible euro's pro-trade impact on economies of the first eurozone participants, most of those studies use sample periods prior to 2003. This thesis contributes to the literature by adding six more years of eurozone data to 2011, capturing two further enlargements of the European Union and four eurozone expansions. The results of the models estimate the effect of common currency on trade to be insignificant. On the other hand, membership in the European Union proved to have significant and important trade enhancing effect of 13 % - 25 %.

The thesis deals with the European Central Bank which is a central institution of the European Monetary Union; its establishment, structure, organs and its relationship to other European Union institutions. Core principles of monetary poli cy and instruments are described. The second part is dedicated to the analysis of monetary policy with focus on changes in the rate of main refinancing operations with respect to the economic development (inflation rate, GDP growth etc.). The time from 1999 is divided into several periods and particular attention is paid to the contemporary economic crisis and ECB's non-standard measures.

The goal of this work is an assessment of the hypothesis whether the fiscal union in euro area can cope with the consequences and causes of the debt crisis. Categorized proposals leading to fiscal union are presented. These proposals are facing problems of moral hazard, perverse incentives, new taxes, inefficient allocation of scarce resources, and general issues of fiscal policy. New steps towards fiscal union will be accepted at the supranational level, some of these steps are more likely than others. The tighter rules, fiscal oversight and regulation the fiscal union will provide, the longer and more successful will be preventing of the crisis in the euro area. Because the euro area cannot be considered an optimal currency area and because the tragedy of the commons problem is observed here, then fiscal union in the long run, along with all the problems of the new proposals will only lead to a deepening of the crisis, or creating a new and much stronger one.

This thesis examines current problems in eurozone with special focus on international trade. An important part of the research will be the impact of the economic crisis which came to Europe in 2008. First chapter describes the development of eurozone's exports and imports between years 2001 and 2011. It analyses changes and trends in the commodity and territorial structure of eurozone's foreign trade. Some important issues which are linked to these topics are discussed in the first chapter as well, including current bargaining for bilateral free trade agreements. Second chapter deals with macroeconomic imbalances between the northern and the southern part of eurozone. It tries to identify reasons which caused this problem and assesses the role of euro in it. Finally, it offers some possible ways to adjustment between the both country groups. Third chapter concerns with the competitiveness of eurozone's members and measures how it has changed since the beginning of the crisis. In the second part of this chapter, selected weaknesses of the Italian competitiveness are stated together with a comparison with Germany. Final summary recapitulates previous chapters and presents the most important findings.

This paper analyses the essential aspects, causes and consequences of contemporary European integration process and examines the performance of individual EU countries. The analysis is done through the view of five crises: first the political and institutional; second the public finance, respectively the debt; third the different quality and competitiveness of single economies; fourth the banking, financial, respectively economic; and fifth the view, which focuses on the psychological aspect of trust. Substantial measures proposed or implemented by the EU institutions are subjects of analysis (European bonds; tax on financial transactions, banking union, fiscal pact and bail-out fund), including their critical evaluation, especially activist policy of the European Central Bank. Summary is contained in the SWOT analysis. This work also proposes recommendation for further development in the Czech Republic. The research section made by testing selected variables among 2003-2012 based on the method Beta convergence confirmed, that instead of theoretical assumption of faster real convergence of EU countries, the divergence between the core and periphery countries took place in the examined period. Beta convergence is confirmed within the designated groups in the new EU member states in the pre-crisis growth and in the overall monitored period. The second method -- the cluster analysis created groups, respectively clusters of countries that are the most similar based on selected indicators. On the one hand, the repeated grouping of core countries into one common cluster was verified with different options of the model. On the other hand, the used Ward's method showed, among others, that in majority of observed periods the countries commonly categorized into periphery groups (such as Italy and Ireland) have greater economic similarities to the core countries rather than countries such as Spain, Portugal and Greece.

The aim of my thesis is to analyze the German economy and chart position of Germany in the European Union. Emphasis will be placed on the current economic position of Germany and changes caused by the global financial and debt crisis. The first chapter introduces the political system and assesses the socio-economic characteristics of the country. The second chapter describes the economic development of both East and West Germany after World War II. The success of the social market economy of West Germany is assessed, contrasting the development in East Germany that focused on heavy industry. The economic situation after the unification of Germany is analyzed in the third chapter by using macroeconomic indicators such as GDP, inflation, current account balance and unemployment. Further attention is paid to foreign trade and investment abroad by German and foreign investments in Germany. The second part of third chapter describes the global financial and subsequent debt crisis and its impact on the German economy. The last chapter deals with the position of Germany in the European Union and solving current problems in the Eurozone.

The goal of this diploma thesis is to examine whether the theory of Optimum Currency Area (OCA) confirms the view that the economies of southern and northern member states of the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) display different economic characteristics. The thesis strives to answer whether a hypothetical separation of current EMU into two separate monetary blocks makes sense from the perspective of the theory of OCA. First, the thesis examines the evolution of the theory of OCA with a special focus on suggested criteria and their usefulness for the analysis of hypothetical break-up of EMU. These criteria are subsequently divided into economic and political criteria and into centrally fulfilled and separately fulfilled criteria. The thesis then examines how the member states of the EMU cope with the proposed criteria.