ABSTRACT
The Central East European (CEE) new member states of the EU, by the time of the outbreak of the global financial and economic crisis, had undergone a series of transition crises, and had by then only in part been able to consolidate and stabilize their economies and institutions before the new crises, the global and the Eurozone crisis, hit them. As a consequence, these countries’ resilience to the effects of the crises was limited; in fact, in the early stage of the global financial crisis (2008–09), they turned out to be the most vulnerable of the EU member states with the exception of Ireland. The severe impacts could be observed through drops in GDP growth rates or exports, increasing government debt and public deficit or lacking foreign direct investment. Although the Eurozone crisis also had a negative impact on these countries, these were less severe. The country-level shocks required different kinds of crisis management measures in the CEE region. Nevertheless, some of the paths that the CEE countries followed did correlate with the international trends, while on the other hand the countries of the region also came up with highly diverse solutions. Despite the crisis management measures that they adopted, the time needed to reach pre-crisis output levels differ greatly among the CEE countries.
